I feasted on Chicago style deep dish pizza the other night with my daughter and a few of her friends, all of them home for the summer after their first year of college. Not a big deal, just a brief interlude before what would be, for them, an evening hanging out with friends and, for me, an early bedtime.
"You've led a fascinating life," one of them remarked. I don't think I spoke of anything in my past that was any more interesting than garden variety dysfunction. I don't think it was my basic paper credentials, the stuff I've always relied on to fool prospective employers, the stuff that says as much about me as the Scarecrow's fake diploma from the Wizard says about him. I don't think it was that I grew up in an apartment on a congested urban street. They even admit to knowing some elderly people who had to grow up in apartments. I don't think it was my job, since I barely even understand what I do. I am pretty sure it was all about the pizza.
"What's better? This or New York pizza?"
My daughter jumped in with a provisional response, bought me some time while I nearly choked on a thick bite of cheese. "Not better or worse," she explained. "Just different."
I admired her poise. She's become a little defensive of Chicago pizza this year, surrounded as she is by so many New Yorkers at school. Still, she's been raised to know the truth. It's like football in the United States versus everywhere else. Not the same sport, and, dare I say, without being judgmental, not in the same league.
We all have a tendency to remain loyal to the familiar -- the familiar being the stuff that reminds us of another time, the time that formed us. Growing up, I rarely went more than a couple of days without a slice of pizza. A flimsy triangle of paper thin dough weighed down by a heavy slab of cheese glistening with orange grease that oozes off onto the floor (New York pizza is best eaten standing) when you fold the triangle in half may sound a bit unappetizing to the uninitiated, but to those of us who grew up thinking there is nothing but frontier west of the Hudson -- except New Jersey, which is kind of in a class by itself -- it's ambrosia. We learn early how to press a finger down into the middle of the sturdy crust and fold, catching the un-foldable and scalding narrow tip on our tongue without burning the roof of our mouth. We pretend not to notice the filth behind the counter when we sashay in on a whim to grab a slice to tide us over until the next meal.
To be fair, I have lived in Chicago for a long time now, long enough to feel some of that loyalty that comes from the familiar, the stuff that reminds me of a time that formed me. I raised my children here, I have eaten dozens of deep dish pizzas without complaint. I am not straddling the fence though. Football, futbol. Apples, oranges. Pizza, delicious Italian meal in shape of a pie. I'm okay with it all.
Almost a thousand miles away, only hours before the Chicago pizza feast, my older daughter had lunch in New York with my mother, her grandmother. They capped off lunch with a coffee by a fountain where, ages ago, that same daughter had thrown -- in the words of my mother -- the tantrum to end all tantrums. I remember it well, trying to choke down the Chinese food of my own childhood while my generally well mannered first child pitched a fit that surprisingly did not attract all sorts of child welfare workers. The story of their lunch made me yearn for that rather bland Chinese food, for the bustling streets of Manhattan where a screaming baby turns no heads, for the days when my kids were always around. For the familiar, even when it wasn't all that pretty.
Those days are few and far between. I know my mother savored that coffee with her oldest grandchild, remembering fondly that day long ago when it was hard to envision the fine, upstanding person she would become. And I savored the Chicago deep dish pizza, too, with my youngest daughter and her friends. Eating pizza with a knife and fork seems a bit sacrilegious, but it's really no different from watching football with a round ball. You just have to get past the semantics.
It's all about the pizza, which is sometimes not what I think of as pizza at all, but still very good.
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