"Is this your mother's sauce or my mother's sauce?"
—Willie Matricciani to his wife at dinner
Last summer, Kathy Saunders was helping her mother Joan go through the freezer at her parents' home in West Virginia, a verdant expanse to which her folks retired to raise vegetables after raising a family in Dundalk.
Buried beneath bags of produce grown on nearly seven acres in Berkeley Springs was a lone black walnut cake from the previous holiday, a confection made from the fruit of the juglans nigra that grow on the property.
"We thawed it out and had it for breakfast the next day," said Kathy, whose father Carl used to crack the walnuts for his wife with a hammer and a brick. "It smelled just like Christmas."
For as long as she lives, Christmas for my old friend Kathy Saunders will not be evergreen trees or fat men in red suits but the look, taste — and most powerfully the scent — of black walnut cake.
Just as the nuance between the tomato sauce Willie Matricciani grew up eating on Exeter Street and the one his wife enjoyed a few miles away near Patterson Park brings Willie's mother Angie back to life every time he savors pasta garnished the way his mama used to do.
Even photographs do not conjure a loved one the way — when prepared just right at just the right time — a plate of food does. Who doesn't have the relative who likes to crow at the Memorial Day cookout that their deviled eggs are "just like Mom's." That's a highly charged and contentious claim, but thank goodness there's someone in each family who keeps trying.
The time machine needn't be a proper dish. Frank Lidinsky, who grew up playing with Joan Saunders' younger brother Dave in Bocek Park, says the scent of peppermint immediately brings his mother Angela to mind.
"My mom was known for Joanie's black walnut cake, she made them in bread loaf pans," said Kathy. "Everybody got a black walnut cake for Christmas."
Joan Deinlein Saunders, a child of North Kenwood Avenue and the parish of St. Wenceslaus, died from multiple organ failure this past Mother's Day in Berkeley Springs. She was 77.
Among the things Joanie loved — canning bushels of peaches, making dill pickles and her independence — was cutting grass on her tractor, adopting dogs from the Humane Society and cutting a rug.
In the early 1970s, a time when middle-class grown-ups began letting loose, Joan would throw on a pair of white hot-pants and white go-go boots and hit the clubs with her husband. More demure outfits were brought home from her job as a supervisor in the children's department of Hutzler's Eastpoint, where she walked to work from the family rowhouse on Dalton Avenue.
"We all got nice clothes because of her employee discount," said Kathy, who said her parents began building their Mountain State retreat in 1983 with next-door neighbors from Dalton Avenue in Dundalk. The couples named the drive that led to their adjoining properties Dalton Trail. By 2002, the Saunders had given up the Avenue for the Trail for good.
Several years ago — now using a cane because of a stroke — Joan was working her strawberry patch when she fell and broke an ankle. Recent visitors to the Saunders farm could see her happily doing chores with a golf cart.
"She'd load it up with her gardening stuff, buzz around to where she wanted to go and then use her walker to get between the rows," said Kathy. "Mom hated not being able to do what she wanted when she wanted."
Thus lies tenacity unseen in each bite of a beloved Christmas cake.
Both of my parents are still very much alive. My Dad is probably reading this aloud to Mom right now as they face each other in arm chairs near the bay window of their Linthicum home. Thankfully, I do not yet know what will prompt keen memories of them down the line.
The sight of a tugboat?
A taste of egg custard snowball with marshmallow?
For many years, I have resided in the Greektown rowhouse where my father's parents lived for more than half a century. Many times — not always, but often — I am met with a wave of memories when I open the front door and stand in the small vestibule before unlocking the inner door.
It is there (and nowhere else in the house) where cling smells more than a half-century old; an odd whiff of coffee grounds boiled in a sauce pan and poured through a strainer — as my grandfather made his morning cup — mixed with the essence of old house keys.
I am eight years old and all four of my grandparents are alive.
On the days when the magic is present, I linger.
Early next month, the life of Joan Saunders — nearly eight decades of work, love and struggle mixed up like walnuts and buttermilk in a signature cake — will be celebrated at an outdoor crab feast.
As the hot, spiced and Halloween orange Jimmies are spread across picnic tables covered with newspaper, the air will be perfumed with Old Bay and the bouquet of the Patapsco River.
And bushel baskets of memories will be unleashed upon all who have come to pay their respects.
Rafael Alvarez, a former Sun reporter, will sign copies of his new book, "The Baltimore Love Project," at 6 p.m. on July 2 at the Eubie Blake Cultural Center, 847 North Howard Street. His email is orlo.leini@gmail.com.