Slicing a banana for my morning cereal triggered a “Madeleine” experience, one that took me back to a childhood breakfast of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies in milk and sugar, topped with banana slices. I returned to a moment in my mother’s kitchen, a summer morning in 1947 or 1948. The mental tableau created by my remembrance of that concoction past was further enhanced by a remembered scent of honeysuckle and the feel of sunlit warmth coming in through an open screen door. Until now, I’d resisted trying to define the root of the bittersweet emotion, the sweet sadness that accompanied the vivid specificity of that lost moment. I’ve now come to believe that the poignancy of this six-decade flashback lies in a long unacknowledged recognition, not just of the warm innocence of that moment, but in an aching adult desire, a yearning to go back and start over, to try to make everything right again.
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