My memories of Brighton Beach, a neighborhood in the southern portion of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, are frequently connected to a variety of scents. The salty smell of the ocean while walking on the boardwalk a few blocks from our paternal grandparent’s apartment building. Eastern European cooking odors wafting through the halls as we got off the elevator and headed to Grandma Gussie and Grandpa Benny’s front door. The sweetness of gossamer cotton candy spun before our eyes onto long conical paper holders on the boardwalk. The savory taste and smell of a Nathan’s hot dog (topped with a thin rope of ketchup) along with French fries at the Coney Island Amusement Park prior to our visits to our grandparents’ place.

Sometimes we went directly to Brighton Beach, skipping Coney Island, and at those times, if Mom and Dad knew that Grandma and Grandpa were not at home, we’d go to the beach and walk along the boardwalk in the breezy salt air until we reached a huge area covered from the sun by an awning under which sat dozens of elderly people dozing or sitting and talking, most often in Yiddish, in groups or pairs. There we would search among the grey and white-haired elderly in an attempt to spot Dad’s parents. After warm embraces in which I was buried in my grandma’s ample bosom and momentarily scratched by my grandpa’s stubbly chin hairs when he took my head in his hands and kissed me on my cheeks, we’d all walk back to their apartment building where Grandma Gussie had previously prepared a lavish lunch for all of us. 

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that Grandpa’s stubble was due to the fact that it was forbidden for him, as an observant Orthodox Jew, to shave on the Sabbath. I felt a pang of guilt when I realized that as a five-year-old, I had pulled away from his rough cheek when he embraced me. 

As soon as we were in their apartment, Grandma donned an apron and retreated into the small kitchen to putter around and Grandpa said to me and Janet, “Come, come, I have the funny papers in the bedroom for you girls.” There Benny had a collection of comics he’d removed from his daily newspapers and set aside for us. Our parents settled in the living room awaiting the call to the dining room. Grandpa Benny soon joined them. Hard of hearing but having refused to consider a hearing aid, he sat in a winged armchair in a corner of the living room ensconced in silence, yet content.

Once we were all seated at the table I had to remember not to ask for a glass of milk if meat was being served. Another rule of a kosher home. If Grandma Gussie made blintzes or potato pancakes, it was OK, because that meal was considered “dairy.” Regardless, both Janet and I preferred the special drinks Grandpa Bennie prepared for us, using real seltzer from a bottle with a special nozzle on top that made the soda fizzy. We had a choice of a coffee egg cream or what we simply called a “soda,” which was a mixture of seltzer and a deep purple syrup made from berries.

Lunch was quite an affair. Grandma made traditional Eastern European dishes and seconds and thirds were pushed on all of us, as though we’d never have a chance to eat again. The one thing Gussie didn’t know how to prepare were vegetables. My brother Buzz’s recollection was that she cooked them “until they were dead.” But her desserts were exceptional. Homemade rugelach, a complex cookie that was dense with raisins and scented by cinnamon and nutmeg; a family favorite was a candy called noent, which was a gooey mixture of honey and ground walnuts cut into diamond shapes when it cooled. It stuck to your teeth for a long time, which was not a bad thing. 

After lunch Janet and I would yearn to get out of the apartment for a while. Somehow, we still had room for more sweets and there was an old-fashioned candy store right next to the building. Once inside, we would linger over the choices until finally we’d return upstairs with a cache of candies of the day—mouth organs made of orange wax, elastic necklaces of pastel-colored candied disks, long paper straws filled with sour-sweet colored sugar, little wax bottles of syrupy liquid and multi-colored tiny sugar dots stuck to paper strips, which we pretended were medicine. We’d always remember to bring our mother a couple pieces of her favorite Mary Janes (a chewy peanut-butter-and-molasses taffy confection).

Our grandparents, who were three months apart in age, lived into their 90s, so they were lucky to have a long life together. On the centennial anniversary of their birthdays, our dad, aunts, uncles and cousins met at our brother’s house in Philadelphia. Everyone contributed dishes we remembered having with Gussie and Benny. There was beef brisket, noodle kugel with raisins, tzimmes (a slow-cooked dish of beef, carrots, and dried fruits), noent and coffee egg creams. Dad brought along his old photograph albums, so formal with their black paper pages, descriptions and dates, written with a bright white pencil in his familiar hand. We pored over the photos for hours. We reminisced. And we ate really, really well.