On Food, Friendships, and Facebook

Before my (un)professional colleagues shut me up at work, I used to take, every once in a while, cookies, brownies, and cakes to work, and share with a few--students and faculty.  One faculty colleague remarked that sharing food--especially food made at home--rarely happens anymore in America.  This contemporary state was unlike his own experiences when he was younger, and he argued that the reason was the price of food: it is now way less expensive than before and, therefore, we don't care about food itself that much anymore.

It is true that food is in plenty and accounts for a much smaller share of the household budget compared to even a generation ago.  But, that could also be the basis for arguing that one would then expect more people to share food with others, right?

This issue came up when I met with my friends, "D" and "J" over lunch (thanks for the lunch, "D.")  We caught up with our lives, which included a great deal of unfortunate developments, including deaths in the families.  "D" remarked that the response across the generations was sharply different--the younger generations texted, or posted on Facebook, or emailed sympathetic messages, whereas the older generations who lived close by went beyond that and asked if they could help out by bring over food.  The younger generations who lived close by didn't think about the food aspect.

I told her that sharing food with friends and neighbors is rapidly becoming a dying tradition.  "Literally" said "J" whose mother recently passed away.

My best memory of a neighbor sharing food left me with a deep appreciation of the neighbor and the idea of sharing food.  I was in high school when my grandmother died.  In the traditional brahminical context in which I grew up, no celebrations for a year, which meant that we kids wouldn't get to eat all those wonderful goodies that mother would have otherwise made.

Well, fully aware of this, our neighbor then sent across home-made sweets for every major religious event that entire year.  Not just a couple of pieces, but a tray full of tasty eats every single time.

It was not the sweets per se.  The neighbor's actions were immensely louder than powerful than the most commonly expressed phrase of "I am sorry to hear about your loss."

Of course, the situation doesn't have to be mournful in order to share food.  We can do it on good days too.  One of my best experiences when I reconnected with old school mates was when they invited me over to have food at their homes.  Equally wonderful was when I got some of them to come over to my parents' home to spend some time together and break that proverbial bread.

These experiences of interacting with, and understanding, friends is not the same as interactions with friends on Facebook.  There is simply no comparison at all, which is what the NY Times' David Carr found out a few months ago when he was invited to a dinner with a bunch of people with whom he had had extensive online interactions.  The host had baked the bread that Carr found to be very tasty, and he writes:

Now, he could have told that story in a blog post or in an e-mail chain, but it became a very different story because we were tasting what he talked about. The connection in an online conversation may seem real and intimate, but you never get to taste the bread. To people who lead a less-than-wired existence, that may seem like a bit of a “duh,” but I spend so much interacting with people on the Web that I have become a little socially deficient.

As I have often blogged (like here,) interactions on Facebook seem far from the real and substantive friendships that most of us prefer.

Carr notes:

you can follow someone on Twitter, friend them on Facebook, quote or be quoted by them in a newspaper article, but until you taste their bread, you don’t really know them.

I suppose living in a neighborhood with a whole bunch of people much older than me means that I am lucky in having a lot more food-sharing people around me.  "J" and "S" routinely invite me over to their place, and sometimes it is when "J" does that tastiest steaks I have ever had.  "ML" brought me lemon bars that were simply fantastic.  The cupcakes from "B" were awesome.

A few months ago, my neighbor Carol was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  A couple of times, I took food over to them.  At the last one, before my road trip, I took her husband and son a salad that I had made.  Her husband, Jim, asked me whether I wanted to visit with Carol.  I followed him to the bedroom, but she was asleep.

Carol died a couple of days ago.