I've always wanted to end a book with the word "mayonnaise."

Ordinarily, there are only two kinds of phone calls I welcome. The first starts out, "Hi, this is [insert name of friend ] -- let's chat." The second says, "Hello -- I read your site/picked up your brochure/heard you give a presentation and I'd like you to teach a class or help me with my writing project/photo album."

Unfortunately, both kinds are rare, the first because we're all busy and just don't use the phone the way we did when we were teenagers, and the second because the services I offer are certainly non-essentials and I have not exactly been aggressive (or even very effective) in my business self-promotion.

So I'm good at identifying quickly those phone calls which, if allowed to go very far, will only waste my time and the caller's. I'm talking about callers who want to interest me in a pre-approved credit card, long distance service, basement waterproofing, or making a donation to a spurious-sounding charity I've never heard of. At the first hint of "Is this Mrs. Dean-Gelis?" (because they're reading my name from an all caps computer list) I can say "not interested please put me on the no-call list" and be disconnected in three seconds.

I can't remember now what got my attention last Thursday evening when a young man called wanting to talk about mayonnaise. Maybe he sounded like a long absent friend I've been hoping to hear from, or maybe he said my name right and fooled me for a moment. He did make it clear from the start that this was not a sales call, but a market research survey. He conveyed the impression that I would be rendering a real service to mayonnaise producers and consumers the world over.

I identified Hellman's as my brand of choice when it came to mayonnaise. There was a checklist that had to be run through with each question, even though the formula was quickly apparent: Is Hellman's Fat Free Mayonnaise a product you buy always, most often, seldom, or never? (I said NEVER to that -- aren't the designations "fat free" and "mayonnaise" mutually exclusive?)

When I wrote about buying a car a few days ago, I said that one should never send a poet to do this work -- we get too caught up in the romantic names and the ideas they're meant to convey. In the same way, perhaps a writer or anyone else who loves words shouldn't be answering market research polls -- I wanted to discuss why "prestigious" and "adventurous" were qualities I would NEVER consider when choosing a mayonnaise. This is a condiment, I wanted to say, not a sports car.

For not quite fifteen minutes (this guy REALLY had my attention!) we talked about mayonnaise. When prompted, I completed slogans: "Bring out the Hellman's . . .," said the young man, "and bring out the best," I answered, in the same reverent cadence that "Dominus vobiscum" draws "et cum spiritu tuo" from the brain cells that store my Catholic girlhood, now forty years gone. We talked about the commercial where Sylvester wishes to make a sandwich out of Tweety but can't because he doesn't have the right mayonnaise. And we talked about the blue ribbon logo on the Hellman's label.

In the end, I said, that's why I buy Hellman's. There's no secret to mayonnaise. Each brand is a basic amalgam of eggs, vinegar, vegetable oil, sugar, and assorted coloring agents, preservatives, and stabilizers. Why do I buy Hellman's over Kraft or the store brand?

It's what my mother bought. As far back as I can remember, nearly half a century now, we had Hellman's -- a blue ribbon encircling a gold label, the metal lid twirling off with a ping, the product inside scooped out with a flexible rubber spatula. I can see my mother reaching in, scraping the sides of the glass jar, capturing another quarter cup of the goo, plopping it down into a bowl of freshly de-tinned tuna or maybe some crumbled ham newly forced through the meat grinder that clamped onto the table. She's wearing a cotton house dress with blue stripes the same color as the Hellman's ribbon, she's just hung out the wash, and after lunch she'll read me a story.

We don't remember days, we remember moments, said Cesare Pavese. I don't buy mayonnaise, I buy the color of my mother's dress.