Sixteen-Cent Solution

I made a bowl of ramen noodles for lunch today.

It was the first time I've had the frugal college staple meal in probably 20 years. I was kind of dubious about it right up until I poured the steaming broth into the bowl and the flood of sensory memories came back to me.

I remember eating ramen thickened with cream cheese and broccoli as a young man. I was just starting out after school and on the cusp of a love that would last a decade. It was an exciting, scrappy time and the soup seemed like a make-do masterpiece- a revelation of possibility. We could make something presentable and excellent out of the meager supplies we had.

Years before that I sat on the floor in the basement of the art department and ate ramen raw between classes. I'd break off chunks like it was some lame granola bar. The look of astonishment on my professor's face when she saw me doing it puzzled me. I'm just eating ramen here. Doesn't everyone do this? Leave me alone, I'm doing my thing.

It's the MSG-flavored broth that holds the memory. It tastes like soup you buy in those vending machines; the kind with poker games on the side of the cup and a fortune on the bottom. I remember drinking that soup waiting in the train station in Hartford joking around with my family. The vended soup always tasted more nourishing than it was. And that's the way the ramen felt today- deeply nourishing. Drinking the broth at the bottom brought a sweat to my temple and a deep sigh to my lips as I put the bowl down.

I guess I'm feeling the past closely since the move. Some past selves seem impossibly-distant. Like you have no connection to the story of that life. Thinking it was really you then seems odd and apocryphal. Other moments are close. Like you could step out the door and into that different person's life.

But you can't and distance is a liar in both directions. So I sipped the soup and thought about it and sighed.