Poached Eggs

My most cherished adult, my dearest Grandpa Lar, loved midnight snacks and 4AM poops. How he connected with people was finding their collective 'thing'. For us, that was food. Anyone who loves me dearly is usually also a person that feeds me.

My grandfather and I would stand in the kitchen eating saltine crackers with only the range light on on the oven, because my grandmother had gone to bed and the dishwasher was on. There was some wonderful unspoken rule that when the lights were out and the dishwasher was on and grandma was upstairs watching the news; that the house slowed, quieted and got darker. Which is when we ate saltine crackers (mine, butter sandwiches and his with smooth peanut butter).

My story isn't about saltine crackers, though. It is about a particularly hungry night where I needed something else and my grandpa said 'I'll cook you anything, what do you want?' we searched in the fridge and landed on eggs. He suggested poached eggs, which I had never had. He simply couldn't believe it, because poached eggs are amazing and he knew I loved runny yolks.

So. He made me poached eggs. He walked me through the whole thing: boiling the water, letting the butter melt in the wee poaching cups and then moving it around. He cracked each egg and watched it for a while, all while gyratting it around. For good measure, he would sometimes threaten an egg "don't you dare stick, you sonofabitch!"

When those eggs were almost done, he made my toast. To me, perfect toast is almost not toasted. It is a wee bit crunchy on the outside, but warm and soft on the inside. And, he knew that, because of that part I mentioned about feeding me = loving me or vice versa.

My God. Those were the most delicious eggs I had ever tasted. They were heavenly. I loved everything about them: how soft they were, how careful you had to be with your toast, how when you bit them the hot yolk would just shoot down your throat, and how inevitably they were totally messy and my face ended up covered in egg.

It became a favourite I often requested. And I have never found someone who put as much care into their poached eggs as my grandpa.

He died in 2008. I got married that year and with my wedding money I bought my first egg poacher. The first time I used it, it melted. I didn't get poached eggs and I was devastated.

I never tried again, until tonight. Covid made me do it. I often take my son to Sunday breakfast and I always order poached eggs, hoping for a miracle that they will just as good as Grandpas.

Tonight at almost midnight I made myself poached eggs. I found a lovely step-by-step that wasn't quite like my grandpa's, but it promised to yield good results. I recently found a gluten free bread that doesn't agitate my stomach. So, I toasted that baby and went to making poached eggs.

I ate them just after midnight, sitting in the near dark with the dishwasher on. They were perfect. I sobbed. I sobbed with egg on my face balancing the toast so I wouldn't pop my other egg.

I go to bed tonight with a full belly, a heart full of gratitude and a burned mouth from that yolk shooting to the back of my throat.

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