Potato Soup

This week, I thought I'd just share I a draft I wrote a while back. It's not very polished, but it reminds me of the holidays. Hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving break!

My childhood tasted like potato soup. Warm, milky, homemade potato soup. On still winter days, my dad would pick Josh, Brigitte, and I up at the playground fence at school and we’d come home to a bag of potatoes sitting on the black stovetop. Potato soup was an event for my father. Instead of spending the day tinkering on equipment at the shop or projects at the house, he spent the day checking (and double-checking) to make sure he had enough milk and flour and eggs. He would buy the biggest bag of potatoes they sold at Rightway Grocery and it would sit on the stove, awaiting our arrival. My dad almost burst with pride at our shrill chants, “Potato Soup! Potato Soup!” He had waited all day for that reaction.

I was quite often the potato peeler of the family. But this wasn’t because I was an expert at it. My dad is very particular about his cooking and doesn’t accept assistance readily. What got me the job was pure persistence. I would stand in the kitchen and watch him. I’d follow him from the fridge to the stove and back again. I’d sit on the laminate floor and tell him stories about what I learned in school or ask him questions about every step of the process. One day, he opened a drawer and made a racket digging through the utensils until he pulled out a potato peeler and then handed it to me along with the bag of potatoes. I became the peeler.

After that, on potato soup days, I’d finish my homework and wash my hands and drag a chair from the dining room to the kitchen and sit next to the trash can and hack away at the potatoes. My first several batches looked more like deformed snowballs with random divots and cuts than potatoes. I still talked my father’s ear off as he made his homemade egg noodles nearby, but at least I was a shadow with a purpose.

Potato soup was always served at the table, never TV trays or laps on the couch, like many other family meals. It was spread out like Thanksgiving with cheese and crackers, salt and pepper spread along the middle of the table. My brother and I would have competitions of who could eat the most bowls. Truthfully, I don’t remember who won more often. I do remember my record was eight whole bowls, although I still don’t know how that was possible, especially when I mashed in so many crackers and cheese into each serving.

Potato soup wasn’t exclusive to our immediate family, although my dad will have you believe he makes the best in the world. Each Christmas, his extended family would also make soup, not the traditional turkey or roast beef. All ten of us grandkids would choose potato and that meal was the quietest part of the entire night, as warm milk dripped down our chins and bowls were scraped for every last morsel.

Sometimes now when it’s a day that feels cold and still, I walk home from class and know it must be potato soup day. I always want to jump in my car and make the three-hour drive just to make it so. But today, Campbell’s soup will have to do.