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Health & Fitness

Rare Blueberry Cheesecake for Watertown, Massachusetts

When I was a little girl, we spent idyllic summers with my father's family in Watertown, Massachusetts - seeing the news this week made me feel like a time traveler had ravaged my past.

When I was a little girl, we spent summers with my father's family in Watertown, Massachusetts - which was brutally jerked into the national news this week.

I didn't often get freedom at home...but on vacation with my cousins and grandparents in sleepy New England, things were different. I was allowed outside on my own, and could explore the neighborhood a bit. I'd make "haystacks" with the fragrant pine needles that were ankle-deep under the trees in the front yard. I'd eat Concord grapes off the grapevine and marvel at the giant leaves on the rhubarb, the perennial legacy of a long-gone victory garden. On hot summer days, I would hide in the shady driveway beside my grandmother's brown-cedar-shingled duplex and play with the next-door neighbor's dog. His owners, pitying both sweaty girl and panting pet, would find icy drinks and homemade Armenian Baklava for me and biscuits for the pup: sunshine, pastry and walnuts melting and crackling in my mouth as the dog wagged after the crumbs.

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At my grandmother's house there were at least as many candy jars as there were braided rag rugs on the wood floors. Ribbon candy, cut rock candy, candy canes, and my favorite, hard pillow-shaped candies that had melty chocolate centers: my grandmother and I secretly shared candy and watched Lawrence Welk on her tiny television. Her enormous old-fashioned kitchen had two pantries big enough to climb in - and believe me, I got myself in trouble climbing in them. The food pantry was filled floor to ceiling with baking supplies - my grandmother's chocolate cake was legendary - and the butler's pantry contained an enormous collection of novelty salt-and-pepper shakers in every imaginable shape: dogs, cats, kitchen appliances, celestial objects, radios...

My grandfather, who chose to live in Watertown as a proud graduate of nearby Perkins Institution for the Blind, used to take me on walks to the corner store, up Dexter Avenue past Laurel and around to Cypress and back. I used to hold his arm in case there were puddles, and I felt very grown-up helping him to steer - he never let on that he got around fine on his own. At the store, he would lay in a stock of "Hoodsies" ice creams and "Za-Rex" grape drink concentrate and always, always, always he would buy me my own pack of cinnamon Dentyne gum, which would tickle my nose and throat as I thoughtfully chewed all the way home. We'd take the long way back to enjoy the sunny side of the street, around the curve of Cypress. When we got home, we'd sit together on the screen porch with the sun slanting in around the edges of the blinds, and listen to the Red Sox game on his tinny portable radio. I'd say "Tell me about the dogs, Grampy," and he'd patiently relate, with me prodding, everything he ever knew about every single dog he'd ever owned or encountered, and the afternoon would dustily, lazily topple into evening as fireflies glinted under the pine trees.

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Sometimes, my cousins would liberate me even farther to their house in Bedford. We'd go to the shore and shiver in the icy New England water; I'd cut my feet walking on beach mussels and wonder if they were as good to eat as clams. I once made a sand-cake that looked so good I tasted it...with horrifying and immediate regret. We'd play pirates or knights and my youngest cousin and I were stuck as victims, impatiently waiting to be "rescued" while the boys engineered homemade costumes and swords to whack each other with. Back at their house, blueberries and toads grew wild in the scrub by the side of the road, and we'd scrounge for them on our hands and knees - flipping up the bottoms of our t-shirts into a makeshift pocket to free one hand and carry our booty, either squirmy or juicy-sweet-tart.

Sometimes, on toadless days, we pooled our efforts and our shirt-pouches and filled a large empty coffee-can with blueberries. We'd head back to Watertown and the girls (sometimes with my oldest cousin's girlfriend) would get a box of cheesecake mix from my grandmother's pantry. We'd kick the boys out of the kitchen and those of us who weren't mixing filling got to work on homemade blueberry topping for the no-bake cheesecake. "Don't tell anyone how easy it is," my cousin would say "I want them to think we worked hard." When we unveiled it after dinner ("supper," as my grandmother called it,) we'd all groan and wipe our brows with mock effort, grinning secretly at each other and fighting the boys for the last creamy bits.

I am blessed to live where I do now - but, sadly, like many people in urban neighborhoods, I am no stranger to either violence or gunfire. Seeing the safe, sleepy neighborhood overrun with black armored vehicles and SWAT teams made me feel as though a time traveler had ravaged the past. I cried when I heard a woman from Dexter Avenue say that she'd never heard gunfire before this week.

My heart breaks to see this jagged dark stain on the very street where my flip-flops were run thin as paper and my knees were always dusty, where the crosswalks buzz like bees and the air smells of honeysuckle...and where I used to guide my grandfather around the puddles.

To honor Watertown the way I remember it, Sparky and I made you this no-bake blueberry cheesecake. Don't tell anyone how easy it is.

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