Seltzer water, Dad, and a poem

Two days later and I am still shaken by the surprise at the restaurant. Oh, not the rabbit. There is a planet full of flavors and textures I have not tasted. I expect to find myself in new territory every time I enter a new restaurant.

No, the surprise that lingers is the memory stirred by the label on the bottle of water. The blue bottle sat on the table for several minutes, as we explored the menu. Then I was drawn to the bottle. First the color attracted my eye. An azure richness, like the sky on a clear day. Then I read the label, Selters.

From Selters Seltzer water

The letters rumbled through my memory, until the sound echoing in my mind finally settled on "Seltzer". I was transported to my childhood. I could hear my father ask me if I wanted any Seltzer and grape juice. I remembered him taking the heavy little canister, twisting it into the handle of the metal bottle, and almost magically transforming our simple tap water into fizzy fun.

I had not heard the word "seltzer water" since childhood. Was it really even a word I asked my self. Sure enough the Oxford English Dictionary definition was "an effervescent mineral water obtained near Nieder-Selters, Germany". The word was used as early as the 1700s. Trish remembers the word from her childhood, so I suppose it was in general usage in the 1950s. But the word has disappeared from the common lexicon.

The mystical web site of the Selters company says that the mineral springs on the northern slopes of the Taunus Mountains, just northwest of Frankfurt, were known has early as the year 1000. The company had bottled and distributed the water for over one hundred years, since 1898.

So the facts are clear, but the memory stirs up more than the facts.

I remember being a child under the care of my parents. I remember the sense of my childhood wonder at the simple, domestic marvels of the world. I am adrift in a distant time, and I am amazed once again.

How mysterious is the mind and the gentle way it wraps its arms around our past. What does it mean, to hold on to those memories. Why the sudden joy and sadness as my father's smirk and large hands once again reach out to me. Why? Why? Perhaps I ask why too much...

I brought with me to Germany one book of poems, "Sailing Around the Room", by Billy Collins. At this moment the poem, "Introduction to Poetry", gives me a sense of liberation from WHY, and fills me with a delightful acceptance.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.