The Last Supper, and the first

I arrived hot and sweaty, hair plastered to neck, drowning in a sea of exhaustion. Pushing my key into the unfamiliar lock I wrestled with it for what seemed like hours, growing ever more flustered by the moment. After much trial and error the door gave way and I tumble into my new apartment, suitcases cascading through the entrance as I collapsed in the hallway.

I had arrived. One day after leaving the plush evergreens of the Pacific Northwest I was in London, plunged into the middle of a bustling, monumentally large, noisy, and vibrant city. It was, to say the least, quite a change from sleepy Whidbey Island.

After blearily reading the note left for me in the kitchen, shuffling down the hall to find my room, and collapsing again onto the bed, I shut my eyes against the lurching, plunging world. Five minutes passed and I noticed that my body was still swaying, even with eyes firmly shut. Perhaps it was the combined effect of transatlantic air travel, a serious deficit of sleep, and little food. (Bored and hungry as I'd been, I couldn’t face the rubbery muck that airlines shamelessly call food, and it wasn’t long before I ran out of tamari almonds and black licorice.)

There was only one solution, and I grinned stupidly at the ceiling as I remembered my planned first feast in the motherland. Just the thought of it gave me the strength to stagger upright, splash cold water on my face, and slip on my boots. Within minutes I had marched outside, located a store and seized upon my objective. Paying for the wax-papered bundle, I strode back to my building and dashed up to the kitchen. Not knowing where the plates were I didn’t bother but simply sat down, tore open the paper, and beamed at my prize. It was a small, heavy, pastry-clad round. Taking a knife, I sliced carefully into the center and drew out a wedge. The thick crust encased a thin layer of translucent jelly and within this lay a center of indistinguishable pinkish-gray meat, not altogether appealing to the uninitiated.

I do not remember the first time I ate pork pie. It was one of those childhood memories that subsides into the shadowy depths of the mind. Yet when I bit into this rather unexceptional specimen as a 25 year old girl newly arrived in London, a sea of sense memories flooded my body. Aunt Jojo’s chickens, the smell of her kitchen, picnics, Granny Bun’s pony and cart, cow shit, hay, New Market high street, the clattering motion of a train, the heavy feel of pound coins in the palm of my hand . . .

The power of food to evoke memory is mysterious. Surely everyone has had the experience of biting into a certain food, or simply smelling a specific aroma that sends them back to another time and place: a brand of hot chocolate perhaps, or mom’s recipe for mac and cheese. No matter their source, these memories are incredibly visceral and strangely emotive.

I sat in the kitchen munching on that evocative pork pie and looking out at an unfamiliar jumble of roofs, trees, and snaking streets. And simultaneously a portion of my past surged through my body, carried by that particular configuration of texture and flavor. It was strange moment, quiet whirlpool in which past and present formed, merged, and dissolved leaving a clearing in my mind and body.

In that moment I knew. I found the answer to the question I’d been asking for months. Fifty-Two Feasts is over. This is the last supper. The project that inspired and sustained me for a year on a rainy island near Seattle is not meant for London. It belongs to another nexus of time and place. And this pork pie is like a benediction, blessing and releasing the project for good.

The pork pie is also a beginning, marking my first meal in this country that feels so old and familiar yet so very new—a place brimming with possibilities and kindling other fires within my mind.