Senior moments and aching joints are the least of aging’s problems. When you reach the point where there is no jacket in your closet, no tie, no pair of pants, no sweater, no shirt, no pair of shoes, that does not bear the telltale of declining mealtime motor skills, only then can you speak with authority about the trials and humiliations of growing older.

I don’t know when it started, but somewhere back along the zigzag path a tiny tremor announced the dinner hour, the slightest quaver of uncertainty, unnoticeable except as the cause of an occasional pea rolling across the floor or a small salad leaf landing soft and oily on my lapel. This was the start and it was a good while ago. In the intervening years the slight quivering of the hand became a dread quaking, a nightmare of flying food and a flood of juices and sauces rushing though the sluiceway of my shirt.

Yet I can still remember an earlier time of confronting a bowl of spaghetti with the calm confidence of the sure-handed and the skillful. A bowl of spaghetti was a piece of cake. So was a piece of cake.

Not any more. No tie would now survive even the smallest taster’s sampling of a simple pasta. And, with no tie as catchall in these open-necked days, your fondest white shirt will soon be headed to Goodwill. And then only if Goodwill is feeling full of good will. And the cake, the cake that once went directly from plate to mouth with zero wastage will now leave a heavy snowfall of crumbs on your lap and on your shoes and on the rug. Indeed most of the cake will fail to reach its destination.

Not that you can do much about any of this. Wearing a bib seems extreme and is not much of a style statement. Besides, it doesn’t protect your pants or most of your jacket, your shoes, or any of the floor. Of course you can eschew spaghetti and peas and cake, but eventually you must come to the unhappy conclusion that the only food you can handle without embarrassment is the intravenous kind.

Those who still think spaghetti and lobster are among the most threatening foods have not yet entered the twilight zone of palsied late-late-middle age. Watch out, they say to themselves, those slippery little strands of tomatoey pasta could cause trouble. No one who has crossed the line would have such a thought, for no one who has crossed the line would seriously consider eating spaghetti, and then only in a wet suit.

As the infirmity asserts itself, mealtime will become a trial of anxiety. Almost all foods begin to carry peril, some, of course, much more than others. Here are a few of the most perilous: corn on the cob; anything served in a sauce; stews; compotes; berries; salad of any kind, but especially those with beans or chickpeas, or any oily round thing that will escape from your fork and leap on to your lap; peaches; nectarines; plums; vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup; olives and their oil, particularly their oil.

There are no garments in my closet that haven’t been seasoned with a few drops from the groves of Tuscany. There is no tie on my rack that doesn’t bear the evidence of a savory sauce or a sybaritic syrup, no shirt without at least the ghost of a bygone meal, no lapel or pant leg or shoe top that wouldn’t like to start fresh, free and cleansed of the mark of the klutz.

In my case, chocolate is the stain of choice. For all the rich and colorful variety of dried globs on my clothes, none is so dear to me as the chocolate splotch. This indelible memento of all those profiteroles and chocolate sundaes and tarts, candies, cakes, and fudges makes it all seem worthwhile.

Sooner or later you will be known by the stains on your shirt. Wear them with the pride of a man who has been to the cleaners and back, and who knows where the chocolate is buried.

Posted by Paul Duffy at July 01, 2011 12:03 PM

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