old man moriarty gots something to say *blows nose and stuffs hanky back in her cardigan sleeve*

The call of the cranky old man (or woman) is "things used to be different." It is that refrain running through my head that let's me know I've arrived at middle age (that, and my fortieth birthday looming on the horizon, just 16 months away).

A contributor to the blog I edit recently wrote something about pizza (because we're parents and this is what we have to talk about). And he said something that resonated with me. "Pizza used to be special." While he went on to talk about some amazing pizza joint in Fort Greene, I stayed with this idea. What happened to us that things like pizza are no longer special? Is it am emblem of the demise of home cooking and the family dinner? Is it a new interpretation of both?

Growing up with a mother who was once a farm girl, I was raised on some serious home cooking. Homemade bread, whole smoked chicken that she briefly considered selling at the local gourmet food shop, popcorn that was not made in the microwave or one of those awesome corn popping machines (which I desperately wanted). Lagsanga with béchamel. Steak with hollandaise. Butterflied lamb. These were the dishes served on holidays and at family dinner parties. But for birthdays we would get pizza, or at least on my sister's birthday we would. That was always her requested (I preferred the lagsana, because even gravel would go down smooth with a little béchamel). But pizza didn't come from Spucky's, our local pizza place where we occasionally order steak bombs. No, our mother made the dough, the sauce and dealt with chopping and grating all the various toppings herself. 

I watched her many times stretch the dough to fit a large baking sheet, pressing it into the corners. I watched her cover it with sauce and cheese and then together we'd add toppings. It was delicious, of course. But for many years I thought pizza was just OK. I didn't really understand other people's facisination with it, since I had never had the grease-soaked marvel that is a real slice. 

My own daughter has had many many slices of real pizza in her five years. She and her father often sneak off and have it as a snack or early dinner. Living in Brooklyn, you can't walk more than a few blocks without coming across a pizza place. But why is it that pizza has become part of the weekly menu, fish on fridays, pizza on saturdays? And we wonder why kids today are so jaded. They are consistently given more and more (as is the rest of our culture), bigger and better. And so simple pleasures are harder to appreciate because they don't come with a toy or a animatronic singing moose or a child-sized motorcycle.

See, I'm old now. This morning I was literally shocked when I saw a sign in the bodega that said cigarettes $15, and, out loud, I said, I remember when they were $5. The real problem is I'm not willing to move somewhere where life is slower and simpler. I'm not going upstate or to the Italian countryside (though if someone foot the bill I'd totally go there for awhile). So I guess I just have to accept that pizza is no longer special, and I must find something else to replace it in my daughter's childhood experience. No $5 cigarettes for her.