Cheese

I had cheese fondue on New Year’s Eve in Switzerland when I was a teenager. It was by no means either my first fondue or my first fondue in Switzerland, the heart, soul and home of that liquidy, lactic delight, but it was a memorable one. We were in a village in the Bernese Oberland, the Virgin, Ogre and Monk towering above us, and, as bells rang out, we gorged ourselves on cubes of bread and pungent melted cheese, and felt so sophisticated and grown-up and European.

And we tried to replicate that the following year. In suburban Michigan. With warmed up packets of cheese we’d found at some Metro Detroit specialty food store. We melted the cheese, cubed the bread, toasted to the end of a year and the start of another. And then I graduated high school. And I got older. And New Year’s Eve became something else. Something to be guzzled and binged. And, eventually, dreaded.

And then I met Ed. On New Year’s Eve. And then we had Theodore, on the day before New Year’s Eve. And it became a night to celebrate, not dread. And then, this year, we had cheese fondue again, to close out 2022. A Vacherin Mont D’or, that is— with cubed supermarket bread, some fancy champagne, fireworks all around us (how Theo slept through a Walthamstow NYE I do not know, but, man, am I jealous of that deep-sleeping ability!), and we danced in our pajamas to Guy Lombardo and Auld Lang Syne, and felt grateful and hopeful and content….and full of cheese.

#cheese , today’s @thegfw prompt 🧀

[ps: I made that little blue and white cornichon pot. In class at @skandihus_london ]