When I hear the word potluck, I am transported, with a kind of olfactory immediacy, to the basement of my grandmother’s church. It smelled faintly damp — a mingling of industrial carpet cleaner and coffee that had been sitting on a warming plate too long. Curiously, I don’t remember the food itself in any particular detail. This is unusual for me. My memory for pleasurable meals is normally quite precise; I can recall a great pasta or a particularly good kiss with disconcerting clarity. But the potlucks of my childhood blur together into a kind of beige collective memory.
What remains instead are the categories. Aluminum trays of pasta bakes: lasagna, baked spaghetti, manicotti, stuffed shells. Big bowls of iceberg lettuce dressed in Italian vinaigrette. Brownies and bars cut into careful squares. Woven baskets filled with Parker House rolls or Hawaiian rolls. Tables that seemed to sag gently under the weight of carbohydrates.
