Onion sandwiches.

Forget Marcel Proust and his poetic thé and madeleines that would transport him to his childhood and beloved mother and grandmother.
Perhaps not forget, but simply translate him into Hungarian, where the same sensations come from a raw onion sandwich on an oven-warmed roll with a cup of coffee.
This transporter room of taste-buds brings me back to the kitchen on North Fourth Avenue, where my father and I lived for several years after my mother's death.
This was not a happy time.

My father retreated to his room, or to sleep in front of the TV, and I retreated to my room, where I indulged in drinking, pot-smoking and stealing my father's prescription medicines when I needed something a little more. Let me say I was most generous with myself in those days.
It did not occur to us to speak our pain, because, after all. Actually, that's the only reason I can think of.

Mornings I would get myself ready to go to college(Douglass College in New Brunswick). Sometimes my father would drive me. Sometimes I'd take my bike.
This was our together-time.
Because the morning began with his shacharis prayers. I see him in his tallis and tefillin, with his black siddur,where every bottom page corner was blackened and worn thin by his fingers turning the page. Our together-time. Another instance of silence. I felt just a bit marginal, but kept my place as I was raised to do. Tiptoeing through the tulips of silence.

Prayers over, it was breakfast-time.
This I could join in, taking my mother's place in readying the coffee(instant-black for Dad, with Coffee-mate for me) and the heated hard-rolls in the oven, butter (Breakstone whipped unsalted butter in the red and white tub) melting in the holes, a big-fat slice of raw onion in the middle.

I don't even remember Dad asking me if I wanted the onion.
It was just ingrained in me. Kind of like the Hungarian language it would seem.
I've been eating onion sandwiches ever since, I just began to learn Hungarian last week.