Ode to the New England Lobster Roll

Lobster is not quite part of me, but it is certainly in my culture. My parent's come from immigrant stock--we all do, of course, except for the vanishingly few of us who were here to begin with, and even they most likely immigrated themselves, albeit centuries earlier. My kin came with the early settlers to the Massachusetts Colony and were part of the City State of Boston before the Revolutionary War, and moved gradually northward--My mother's family English with a bit of Norman blood, and my father's more what 24 and Me calls "northern Scandanavian" origins--the Scots. They came for reasons of religious independence, but they were certainly living off the land and the lobster was easily caught prey. I learned to both cook and eat a lobster at an early age--as a child my favorite part was the legs--and as I grew older I gained an appreciation for learning to love the crustacean. So on a recent trip to New England, one where we left my dad behind, my mother, my spouse, and I all ate a lot of lobster, mostly as a lobster roll (my favorite, and one of his), and thought about how much he would have enjoyed joining us, and how I will never eat lobster without thinking of him.