I'm one of those people you cite when you recount all the things that have been discovered in the last half century or so, to illustrate how the world has changed. First World, that is. Third World knows all about it, though, from the movies and television. There is a wider gap between haves and have-nots than ever before in history. That's an aside.

I can remember when a refrigerator was delivered to my parent's kitchen. I remember the kitchen therefore the house, therefore my age. I was four years old. My mother never stopped calling it the ice box for the rest of her life. I don't remember not having a telephone but I remember a patient from the country coming to the next house to see the doctor. Mother invited him in to phone my father's office and make an appointment. When he had completed his call, he was shaking and pale; it was the first time he had ever used a telephone. Well. And since then we have contact with everyone unless they'e in a bank vault or in a mine six miles under the earth's surface. The "watch" that Dick Tracy used to communicate had two-way radio plus a picture, like Skype - well, you know. You, being younger, know much more than I do about all the techie stuff available now in cyberspace (the word was coined by William Gibson, did you know that?).

Well, you can look up long long lists of things that have changed or new things that are available that never existed just a few decades ago. You can use me as a touchstone. I am 83 years old today. (Do NOT say "83 years young," or I will throw up.)

Look for me tomorrow. I'll be here, blogging along.

The great French chef, Escoffier, is supposed to have said that. I wonder what he would have said about people who eat marshmallows.

I've been thinking about the food of my childhood and growing years as I rake the embers of my memories for illumination. (Sorry - couldn't resist that; no one's going to notice.) Generally I can't remember what I ate. I remember sitting on the cottage steps in the summer shelling peas and I can remember the peas, hot but barely cooked because they were so tender, swimming in butter in small amber glass bowls. Did we have anything else? I can remember egg and onion sandwiches and raspberry vinegar at beach picnics. Oh, I can remember eating Shepherd's Pie for lunch at the convent school I attended from age 5 to age 8, and thinking it was named for Jesus, the Good Shepherd. I remember my teeth stained blue from blueberry cobbler the day of a school recital when I had to recite "D'óu viens-tu, bergère?" and being so pleased because the shepherdess costume I wore was lavender blue and matched my teeth. Oh, and I remember "goutée" (or was it gouter?), the afternoon snack we littlest ones were given, particularly snow apples, with pink flesh at the core.

How is it I can't remember anything my mother cooked? I was 8 when World War Two began and my father, a doctor, was in it soon enough, head of a Casualty Clearing Station and gone, first in Canada, then overseas. My mother was a single mother for five years, holding everything together with reduced finances, somehow keeping up payments on the new, elegant house my father had bought just before war was declared. I look back on the food I remember best and have finally figured out that it was based on frugality. I remember enjoying lunch: little cubes of bread with milk and sugar, or rice pudding with raisins. No wonder I got fat. The only dinner meal I remember was chili con carne and I remember that because of the powdered chili seasoning I showered over it. (I didn't discover garlic till my twenties.) Of course, there was rationing, too. I do remember that Mother cooked liver and kidneys and sweetbreads and I still love them. I think they weren't rationed.

I should be. Rationed. For time, I mean. I'm sure you've had enough. (Does it trigger any memories?)