Yogurt Culture

Stonyfield Farm makes some darn good yogurt. My sons like the drinkable "Super Smoothies" (Wild Berry) that come in a cardboard sleeve printed with green grass and happy cows. It's good stuff...unlike say, GoGurts ("I want the Shrek ones!") that kids can squeeze up and out of a plastic tube like some flimsy toothpaste tube sans cap. ("No, we're not buying that! I'm not even sure it's yogurt!") Oddly enough, when I shrieked about the bad Shrek yogurt, I wasn't even sure what made bad yogurt bad, and good yogurt good. I was just going off comments I'd heard my sister make.

People like to make their own yogurt, and that seems to make it "good." In fact, yogurt-makers save scrapings from their last batch of old yogurt to inspire the next batch. (Dubious, I know.) My sister, lover of the homemade yogurt, even has her very own yogurt maker. (Is it like a snow cone maker, only no Snoopy?) Thanks to the internet, I've discovered that yogurt is simply fermented milk heated to around 80 degrees Celsius (Fahrenheit, please!) to keep bad bacteria from entering the goo. And, this much loved breakfast/lunch/dinner food has been around for 1,000's of years. (Who knew?)

My uneasy relationship with yogurt began just over ten years ago. The first taste of yogurt I had was in the dorm cafeteria my freshman year of college, (Dannon, "Strawberry on the Bottom.") It was disgusting. I was sure the cup of grainy goo I'd dipped my institutionally washed spoon into had gone bad. And not bad in a good way. But, sportos, sorority girls, dreadlocked hacky-sackers, poets and dreamers all seemed to be eating it up. The cups of unnaturally colored butterscotch pudding lined up in cases by big women in hairnets seemed safer. The yogurt culture was not for me; I played it safe.

But safety and familiarity brought some strange flavors to Freshman year. I had the boyfriend from high school (at another university, 2 hours and twenty minutes away via Greyhound) and the high school friends with whom I ventured onto campus with, only to realize how difficult it was to stay connected, our relationships sitting like unpopped popcorn at the bottom of a very large kettle. But then, there were the rich mochas at Espresso Royale Cafe, and greasy burgers at the Union. Be Bim Bop super cheap just off the main drag, and ice cream instead of dinner at Stucci's. The falafel place and the Chinese restaurant with the dry yellow cookies decorated with an almond in the center. And beer. Of course there was beer.

But what was college if not a supreme exercise in uncovering the tastes that were most interesting/exciting/comforting? The man-boys, the beer, the courses in lit crit, all of them were just filters allowing light to either enter the room, or not. My senior year I worked in the inter-library loan office. The first half of the job entailed standing at the copier with crumbling books that professors from other universities needed copies from because the books couldn't travel from their home in Special Collections. It was boring/easy. The second half of the job required reshelving the books. I was given a small cart, and would steer my charges into the elevator and descend into the stacks. Their were rumors that people had sex in the stacks, were raped, even murdered. But it was too peaceful down there to worry about most of it. The floors had translucent panels to allow light from above to filter down, and the wrought iron rails spoke to a more decorative, a more dignified time in campus history. I would lose myself in those stacks, return one book to the shelf, then pull down three more to page through. Heavenly, I tell you.

But, my shift at the library would end, and I would return the little cart and reenter the world. College was really movement from one culture to the next in an endless, dizzying parade. But sitting here, in my house on this evening, with my three children tucked safely into bed, I wonder what all of those experiences add up to for my life now, as a mother. What becomes of all of those memories and past selves? Looking backward has its purpose, is comfortable and familiar. Looking forward is three times as hard. I guess, like loving yogurt, some things you just have to learn from your kids.