You Can't Replicate Memories - So Don't Even Try

Tentative First Date

Our first Date Event was to try to recreate lost memories. Trying to recall what it was I felt for James and how that felt on the inside. I opted for a lunch on our cultural cuisine. It was my hope that the tastes and flavours of our heritage might evoke the excitement of our younger dating days. As we had emigrated from our beloved South Africa 15 years ago, there were many occasions long lost to our past. Whilst I am a firm believer in not living in the past, I am also a firm believer in the fact that blood is thicker than water. The vast stretch of water that we had crossed to get to where we are today was not enough to erase the density of culture flowing through our veins. 

The lunch that I chose to rebuild our hopes and dreams on is called Vetkoek. Not as in an animal doctor! The letter ‘V’ is pronounced with an ‘F’ sound. It is an engorged ball of dough deep fried and filled to bursting with savoury mince. Yes, we used to savour them dripping with melted butter, using both hands to hold it altogether as we stuffed as much as we could into our mouths, letting the juices dribble down chin and arms. Sometimes our Vetkoek was dripping with jam instead - great big globs oozing out the edges with each enormous mouthful. On this day, our Vetkoek were flat as opposed to rounded, with just a decent amount of mince inside so as not to dribble and ooze with gastronomic vulgarity or delight. This was enough to extricate any shred of wanton heritage from my psyche. Bottom line: the Australian version is nothing like the authentic South African version.

What it did for James and I was simply to remind us of our own families, growing up. Vetkoek was, back then, a staple tradition on a Sunday night in many a household across the country. We laughed together as we reminisced about each of our own family traditions, sharing in the delight of each others’ individual recollections. Was it a bonding memory for us? No. Was it a shared new memory for us? Absolutely. I had to ask myself if this Date Event lived up to its purpose of helping me find a way to reach James emotionally. In a manner of speaking, it did.

It gave us an occasion to recreate new memories and to establish a tradition of going out of our way to experience something so similar yet completely different to what we were expecting. As the saying goes “expectation is the killer of all joy.”

I didn’t need our date outings to be flashy or expensive, after all, it was about reconnecting, finding common bonds and establishing new ones, while keeping the old memories firmly intact as precious treasures.

A perfect outcome.

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Image credit Eatout.co.za