Gazpacho with Marilyn!
As I am approaching the end of my project, I started to reflect and realized that I had not yet had a Meals with Memories dinner with one of my own family members! I coordinated with my great Aunt Marilyn who I see every year for Thanksgiving, but somehow I didn't really know that much about her life before I was born.
The meal Marilyn chose for our dinner is gazpacho. There is no particular significance to the recipe for her except she said it’s delicious and it's so nice to eat a refreshing cold soup on a hot summer day. Gazpacho is a two day process because she said we need to let it chill and let the flavors sit overnight if we want it to taste good. So this became a two day experience - Marilyn invited me over to her house to spend time with her and cook the first day, and then she came over to my house for dinner the second night to enjoy our gazpacho together with my family. My dad also made my families Paella recipe to go with the Gazpacho. Marilyn is my paternal grandfather’s sister. My grandfather passed away about 10 years ago and although I have lots of pictures of me with him as a toddler, I unfortunately don’t remember him well. I was really looking forward to spending time with Marily and learning more about her life.
Marilyn grew up in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. She had two older brothers, Mel (my grandpa!!) and Barry. Her father worked as a cutter in the garment district 6 days a week and her mother did not work until Marilyn was in high school. She went to Tilden High School and had 1000 kids in her grade! The kids had to go to school in split shifts, where some kids went in the morning and some in the afternoon, because there were too many kids to attend at the same time!
Marilyn went to Stony Brook University for college and became besties with her random freshman year roommate. They ended up living together throughout all of college and even after school. They were best friends until her friend passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. Marilyn has so many fond memories of her. It was fun to hear about her roommate as I am about to embark on my freshman year with a new roommate too!
Marilyn wanted to be a teacher after college, but Stony Brook did not offer education majors when she was at school, so she studied psychology. After graduation she taught kindergarten for 3 years in Massachusetts but she wanted to come back to New York. She could not get a teaching job at that time as New York was struggling a lot financially so she took odd jobs such as waitressing. Eventually Marilyn ended up with a great job at The NY Times! She was hired in customer service for the classified section just when computers were starting to be used more commonly for businesses. Marilyn told us all about how classified ads were used to buy and sell things before we had the Internet and places like Facebook marketplace. I’ve never heard of a classified ad before, it was all very interesting!
When living in the city, she was set up with her future husband, Dan through a friend. They went on a first date and had a nice time together and Dan invited himself away with her to a beach house on Fire Island that weekend! They dated for 10 years and eventually married. Dan was a bartender and aspiring actor who coincidentally also got a job at the New York Times through a customer who he used to serve drinks to at the bar! Marilyn and Dan were married for 28 years and have a daughter, Nikki, who is my cousin. Dan got sick and passed away young. I am sad that I never had the opportunity to meet him because he seems like he was a really great guy!
I am so grateful that my Meals With Memories project inspired me to spend time with Marilyn. It’s hard to believe someone can be family and yet you don’t know as much about their lives as you would expect. And I think it's important to remember that family members can benefit from building intergenerational connections too! I had an amazing time hanging out with my Aunt Marilyn and I really feel like we know each other much better now!!
