Days of Wine and Chocolate Pudding

For decades, my mother was a staunch disciple of the celebrated nutritionists Gayelord Hauser and Adelle Davis. My brother, sister and I ate what other kids ate, but my mother enhanced everything. She stirred brewers’ yeast into our fruit juice and blackstrap molasses into our milk. She put soy flour in the biscuits and kelp in the soup. Once, after buying a vegetable juicer, the family drank so much carrot juice that our palms turned orange.

My mother had a stratagem to get us started on new foods. If she wanted us to try wheat germ, she’d sprinkle a little on our oatmeal. Each week she’d add more. Soon we were devouring bowls of the stuff. Now, time has played a similar trick on her--but with a cruel reversal. Bit by bit, Alzheimer’s disease has erased the nutritional knowledge from the table of my mother’s memory. Since my father, along with many other tasks, has had to take over the shopping and meal preparation, I’m worried that he and my mother are no longer eating wisely. I call my brother who still lives near our parents in Olympia, Wash. “Mom and Dad are fine,” he assures me. “I had a great supper with them last week.” “What did you have?” I ask. “Brownies,” he says.

When I fly home for a visit, I find the yogurt maker and canisters of whole grain flour gathering dust. The freezer is full of pizzas. Offering to fix dinner, I head for the supermarket. When I return in the afternoon, my parents are sitting by the fire chatting and eating chocolate pudding. “Why are you eating that,” I scold, “when you know I’m planning a nourishing dinner?” “It tastes good,” my mother says. “And it goes well with wine,” adds my father, pointing toward two empty glasses.

The next morning, my boyfriend takes us out for breakfast. My mother is bewildered by the menu. “What’s a blintz?” she asks. “What’s a waffle?” I explain each item. “What’s a French toast?” she continues. “A votre sante!” my boyfriend puns gently. “Oh, Mama,” I say impatiently, “you know all about French toast. You’ve made it a thousand times.” But I speak more in sorrow than in anger. My mother finally orders an omelet. “I’m not sure what it is,” she confides to me, “but I think I used to teach it.” I can’t always follow the leaps of her mind, but this time I do and it cuts to the heart. My mother was an English teacher. Now “Hamlet” and “omelet” are scrambled together into meaningless sounds.

When her order arrives, my mother drizzles honey over it. She strews blue and pink packets of sweetener on top. She gives the mess a good stir with her spoon, then pushes it away, She may have Alzheimer’s, but she’s not crazy. She leans close to my father and begins eating his pancakes. Suddenly she notices the little glass of maple syrup. “Is that whiskey?” she asks in astonishment. For a giddy instant I hope it is. I’d gulp it down in one swig, call for the rest of the bottle, and we’d all get looped enough to forget that my mother can’t remember. But the fantasy passes. And soon we’re laughing because she has so startlingly recalled the name of something she’s never had a drop of in her life.

I realize that my mother won’t be growing her own bean sprouts or baking her famous liver loaf again, but all is not lost. She’s given her recipes to my sister, who probably at this moment is sprinkling wheat germ on her kids’ cereal. My parents already have lived longer than Adelle Davis by a dozen years. Let them eat cake. Let them eat brownies. They’re in their 80s, in love and happy. Maybe the next time I’m home, they’ll share with me their late afternoon fire, wine and just desserts.