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Sunday, November 25, 2012
Cooking From Vibration
I don’t remember a time in my upbringing where books were not abundant in our home. They ranged in genre and author, but my mother was always buying them, and building bookshelves on which to keep them. To Jean, books were more important that food.
When it was just the two of us living in a shitty apartment in Berkeley, the bookshelves were made of boards and cinderblocks. Later, when we lived in the big house in Corte Madera, there were whole rooms filled with books, all from my mom. My step-father fancied himself a writer, but he believed reading anything other than what was important to his own alcohol-inspired manifesto was a waste of paper.
My mother, on the other hand, believed that all problems could be solved with discipline, a proper book on the subject, or a pot roast (or lasagne). Whenever she would return from a business trip or a day or errands, on my bed she would place a new book. When I was 9, she put 10 copies of Our Bodies Ourselves on my bed and told me to give to any friends who wanted them. This made me popular for about 48 hours, until my mother started receiving phone calls from irate parents who absolutely positively did not want their daughters saying or reading the word “vagina” out loud.
When I was bored, I would wonder into the library my mom built and grab a book. She had them organized according to author. After I had exhausted the elementary school’s library collection of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and The Phantom Tollbooth, I started in on my mom’s. The first stop was James Baldwin. The last, Richard Wright.
While our collections of fiction, science, mystery, politics, art, travel, and women’s health continued to grow, and despite Jean’s avid love of there were only two sets of cookbooks in the house: Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, and The Encyclopedia of Cooking, a Time-Life collection of 15 or so volumes. When I was six, she gave me my first cookbook, The Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls. I read it over and over again, memorizing every recipe.
My mother used cookbooks sparingly. She would grab one from the shelf to look up a new recipe, get the gist of the ingredients, and then create the dish without referring to the book again.
“Why don’t you follow the recipe, Mom?” I would ask, watching her in the kitchen, sometimes fetching things from the refrigerator for her to use.
“You don’t cook from recipes, silly,” she would say, “unless it’s baking, which is why I generally don’t bake, except for things you can hedge on, like banana bread.”
“Well, how do you know what to do?”
“Vibration. Just like everything else in life; you have to feel what’s right, and then follow your heart. You have to understand what a dish needs. Books can teach you basic techniques, like how to braise or pan-sear. They can give you an idea of what is in a recipe, like that you should add tomatoes and onions, but they cannot tell you how it should taste; you have to feel that for yourself.”
The vibration of things is always in you, that was my mother’s perspective. It can be lost if you depend too much on other things to tell you what to do. You know what’s right. Do that thing, not the other thing.
“It’s like the Bible,” my mom said. “Most of the people who rely on that stupid piece of fiction to find their moral compass are the most immoral assholes I know.” Early on, we learned not to trust people who went to church very often. My mom kept her atheism under wraps. It was very unpopular with black people.
The true essence of things, she said, would tell you how to treat them. Trust your instincts.
“See, this chicken?” she’d tell me, cleaning and cutting it for preparation. “The meat is sweet, so unless you only want to use it as a protein source or it’s of poor quality, steer clear of pungent sauces. If she made chicken with buerre blanc, we knew she had gotten an expensive piece of meat. If she made chicken cacciatore, with its peppers, and tomatoes, and garlic and onions, she wanted us to focus on the sauce.
Jean’s menus were ever practical, a nuance I didn’t come to appreciate until I started attending others’ dinner parties, where the host was so busy trying to cook, she never left the kitchen and we were beholden to the food, our movements largely scripted by when certain dishes were ready.
“Food can be memorable in hindsight, but should complement the party, not the other way around,” she’d say. “It should spark, not overshadow, the conversation.”
If the party was to have many guests, and she couldn’t afford help (which she could only afford if it was an office function), she would call it an open house, and create a buffet. Since people would come and go at different times, she could spend time with each guest. The food she served on these occasions was designed to hold up over a long period without a lot of fuss. Things that got soggy, like leafy salads, were off the list. Things that got ugly, like scoopable desserts, were off the list.
“Swedish meatballs are a good choice for big parties,” she’d say, “because they get better as the sit and don’t look bad if the pot is nearly empty. Soup, too.” Passed hors doeuvres were only appropriate with outside help or at small gatherings; otherwise you spent your time going from guest to guest and couldn’t enjoy a conversation. There were always rules. As kids, we used to say that there were two ways to do things: mom’s way and the wrong way.
Because buffets had had to look good over time, after people had taken food, she loathed the cheese spread. She preferred the brie-in-bread-boule to the soft cheese set up. My mother had little faith in the human race’s ability to keep things neat, even if they were her friends.
“People need a lot more home training around cheese,” she’d say, disgusted at how guests would dig out the soft center of cheese, leaving the milk rind for others to see. “If I ever see you do something that inconsiderate, I’ll knock you into next week.”
She showed me how to take a proper slice of soft cheese, cutting the rind and cheese together. If I didn’t want to eat the rind (although it was perfectly good), it could be discarded on my own plate. Leaving trash for others to work around was just rude.
Other good buffet foods, according to my mother, included chips and salsa, empanadas, which were good hot or cold, and anything that could be cut into squares or stacked into a pyramid shape, like bread pudding, which she would serve next to a fondue pot full of lemon whiskey sauce. Or meatloaf cupcakes (she would bake meatloaf in cupcake tins, and put a circle of mushrooms on the bottom so when they were inverted, they would look nice.
The sixties were dead, and the seventies gave way to more informal parties. I watched rumaki and cucumber sandwiches disappear from the rotation. In their place, miniature quiches, tomatoes stuffed with homemade boursin, jello blocks made with rum, cheese fondue with kirsch, and chocolate fondue surrounded by chunks of apple, banana, strawberry, and Sara Lee pound cake. Sweet or savory, she always made enough fondue for there to be leftovers we could use to make hot chocolate the next morning.
Fondue – chocolate or cheese – can be done two ways. You can make it in advance if you are having a buffet, and people will marvel at your culinary skills. Or, if you want to put on a show at a dinner party and display your confidence under pressure, you can make it tableside. It’s not as dramatic as a tableside bananas foster with its blue flame, but you’ll still get a lot of respect.
Here is Jean’s recipe for chocolate fondue. The measurements are not exact, meaning it will work if you do it exactly as I’ve written it, but it will work if you use your own vibration. Have fun:
1 package of any chocolate chips that do not kill African babies or put money in the hands of people who kill African babies. Guittard or Ghirardelli are good choices (this is about 12 oz, but use your gut). If you prefer, chop up some good quality candy bars.
1 stick of unsalted butter
2 cups heavy cream
A pinch of sea salt (if you are wondering why the butter is unsalted but she adds back the salt, my mom was always of the opinion that salted butter was of a lower quality, and it was also better to control the amount of salt in your food. She will also be quick to tell you that salt is a necessity.
1 tbl. vanilla extract
1/3 cup Grand Marnier
Put the butter and cream into a saucepan with a thick bottom. Aluminum is not a good choice here (is it ever, really?), but if it’s all you have, just be careful to use a low heat. You can also use a fondue pot with a heat source underneath if you’re tableside.
Heat the liquid until it is very hot, but not boiling. Dump in the chocolate and stir the mixture constantly until the chocolate is fully melted. Add the rest of the ingredients and serve with various dipping fruits, cake and bread.
You can use any liquor you like. We’ve made this fondue with Cointreau, whiskey, kahlua, really anything. Here are my favorite combinations:
Southwest: ½ cup Kahlua and 1 tbl chile powder
Lavender: While the cream is heating, add 2 tbls food-grade lavender. Prior to adding the chocolate, strain out the lavender and return it to the pot.
Earl Grey: use the lavender method, but use 2 Earl Grey tea bags and omit the vanilla.
Peanut Butter: using a whisk, whisk in 3 heaping tablspoons of peanut butter into the milk, whisking until smooth. Then add your remaining ingredients.
This recipe is extremely easy. It is also a show-stopper. You absolutely positively cannot go wrong with this dessert (unless you have purchased chocolate that kills babies). You can get crazy and dip all sorts of other things: pretzel sticks, prunes, dried mango, or my personal favorite, Fritos.
In winter months, Jean’s parties often included soup. When she served soup, Jean would leave it in the kitchen on low heat, which allowed her freedom from replenishing it. She merely set out the whole pot, piled up some bowls and spoons next to the pot, and laid some crusty French bread and a ceramic pot full of butter next to it.
“Always cut a few slices of the bread so people can see how to cut it,” she’d say.
“It’s common sense how to cut bread, mom.”
“No such thing as common sense. People are idiots.”
Jean still believed a party should have its own drink. During the holidays she would make giant batches of hot buttered rum batter and I would create a calligraphy sign of the poem she’d written for guests to follow. The ditty went like this:
To make this drink of hot buttered rum
Follow these instructions ‘til you’re done.
Put a heaping spoonful of this stuff in a cup,
Add a jigger of rum, and with hot water fill-up.
Stir briskly, and then put cream atop your brew.
Enjoy the good cheer, happy holidays to you!
Hot buttered rum was her most often-requested recipe. Here it is, in her words, which is largely how I learned all her recipes:
“Oh, let’s see. I think just smash up a couple of sticks of butter with a couple of cups of brown sugar. Then add nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon, and cloves.” The batter will keep for a week without refrigeration. It will keep pretty much forever in the fridge, but if you still have some leftover after 30 days, make a coffee cake with it.
Sit-down dinners – the ones that usually ended with me decorating an apology card – were another story. Care and attention had to be paid to each part of the dinner party. First, sit-down dinners were never to be more than 10 people. Bigger than that, and my mother felt it was more suitable for a buffet/party.
I knew she was planning a sit-down party when she got out the index cards. Each card would have the name of a guest and she would shuffle them around until she got the right seating combination. This, she said, was the secret to a good dinner party.
“Never sit couples next to one another, unless they have only been dating for a very short time.”
“What different does it make?” I’d say. “It’s not like you’re all that far away from each other.”
“Three reasons: first, couples can talk to one another any time. A dinner party should be a new experience, not just dinner at someone else’s house. That’s not a party.
“Second, people tend to become insular and judgmental if they are not required to open their mind. The surest way to a disaster party is to have couples whispering to one another in the middle of someone talking.
“Third, people are more likely to speak the truth if there isn’t someone next to them squeezing their hand under the table. That makes the conversation interesting.”
I considered this last point and asked, “Like how Jerry calls people assholes?”
“No. Not like that.”
There were other considerations I thought of as tedious then, but now understand why she took so much time on the details. The more amusing and gregarious people had to be split up because if you didn’t, one side of the table would be roaring with laughter while the other side of the table was relegated to wondering what was so funny. Too many pretty women around one man wasn’t good, either; it could fuel a bit fight in the car later. Nevertheless, it was important to space out the genders equally around the table.
Flower arrangements had to be low, candles tall, and only blocking the hosts’ view. Flowers should not have a strong scent; it would interfere with the food. Name cards were not necessary, except where guests had no home training and would not wait to be told where to sit. We had name cards a lot.
Music should be recognizable, but not sing-a-long or dance-a-long style until after dinner, when brandy was served. Charles Aznavour was her preferred dinner music. Dinah Washington afterward. My step-dad preferred Bob Dylan, which my mother thought was too polarizing for a friendly party. She allowed it only during their revolutionary planning meetings. She had one cardinal rule I always thought was silly until I violated it in my adulthood:
“Never think you can mend fences or bring people together over food. People are only able to come together over ideas. Do not invite enemies and think you can get them to see eye-to-eye because you made a great pot roast. And I make a damn good pot roast!” I broke this rule only once in my adulthood, and I paid the price. Don’t do it.
Jean’s attention to the tiniest consideration and her understanding of what worked – her vibration -- was what defined her as my mother. Her own vibration, told her when to add a pinch of dill or omit the sugar. She knew without looking that I had not set the cup handles at exactly 4 o’clock simply because the table seemed off to her. She could sense when a guest wasn’t comfortable and could quickly change the subject. She lost her vibration with her children, but when it came to setting a perfect table, no one could compete. When these characteristics attention began to fade, I didn’t recognize her.
The changes were small at first, but significant to me. Her closer friends later in life – many of them slobs themselves – didn’t see the signs, but I and a few old friends did see them. Magazines and newspapers were piling up. When we tried to take them away to recycle, she’d freak out.
“Put those down! I’m planning to read them.”
Jean never reads day-old papers. Just after the Thanksgiving where my father-in-law had revealed she was not in fact mastering the Sudoko, I come over to her house to test her feelings about buying duplex together. I suspect this will infuriate John’s children; they seem to be laying in wait for their inheritance and are unlikely to relish the idea of a new property, but I cannot be bothered about that now. My husband and I agree she really needs to have someone nearby, and with a job and a child, the only way is to have her live with us (or right next door). We know how she treats caregivers and don’t want to subject them, or her, to that. For now, that option is off the table.
We offer to buy the house next door to ours, but quickly abandon that plan when we realize she will be too far away from downtown once her driver’s license is taken away, which may happen at some point in the next couple of years. We find two duplexes, one in Berkeley, the other in Oakland.
I stop by after work to see her. Crap is everywhere. It looks like a bad curio shop. Every flat surface is covered with stuff.
Photographs without frames, once relegated properly to photo albums and shoeboxes, were leaning against every wall. Any and every reminder of John she can display is out on a table or credenza. His ashes, a basket to hold his ashes. newspaper articles about his death, now yellowed and curling, they are all in the dining room.
Art books John loved are set out on tables instead of sitting in their bookshelves. Shoeboxes of memorabilia from various vacations they’ve taken are out on display, even plane ticket stubs from 1998 have found their place on the liquor cabinet-turned-shrine.
When she runs out of tabletop surfaces, she buys narrow decorative tables and puts up more things. There are now three of these tables to clutter the living room, and she has set up a second dining room table to display each and ever serving platter she can find, just as she did years ago when prepping for a large party. When questioned about it, she says she wants to be prepared for a book club luncheon. The number of serving platters on the table could host food for 80.
The fireplace mantle, once empty, save a single blue wine bottle, is now littered with ceramic pieces, photographs, decorate pots, two hot pots, more server platters, and glassware. The clutter is making me crazy, and I think suddenly of the saint my husband is for even suggesting we all live together. I steel myself and ask.
“Mom, Dan and I were thinking we could buy a duplex together – you on one side and us on the other. Then you would be near your grandchild, which would be great for him, and when you are no longer able to drive, we can drive you or you can walk to different places without a car.”
“I love this house,” she says. “I see no reason to leave.” I will soon learn the reason why.
It is not merely the memory of John she hopes to preserve, she is much worse off than we see. In fact, when she tries to go shopping, take a drive, do anything outside the walls of her house alone, she becomes completely confused. She does not know where she is. She has been using the house to trigger behavior.
If she is in the kitchen and forgets why she came in, she will assume she is there to eat something. If she is sitting at the dining room table, she will offer guests a libation. In her office, she is reminded to pay bills. My husband sees this clearly, but the rest of us do not. I continue to try to convince her she should leave.
“Mom, this house is 3000 square feet. You hardly need that much room for one person. Besides, it’s way up in the hills. You cannot get anywhere without driving. Don’t you want to be more central? Someplace where you can walk?” I try to play on her fantasies next. “You and John were going to get a place in Opera Plaza so you could walk to everything.”
“I don’t need to be anywhere where I can walk,” she says resolutely. “I have a car.”
Oh God. I was hoping not to bring up the A-word, but she is not budging. I give it a shot (ready to duck another flying object if I have to).
“Mom, eventually they are going to take away your driver’s license.”
“Why? I’ve never had an accident.” She has actually had several small ones, but does not remember. I worry she has simply driven away on some of them.
“Because,” I pause. I have to say it. “Because you have Alzheimer’s.”
The fuse is short, the retort is rapid.
“I don’t have Alzheimer’s! Those fucking doctors don’t know what they’re talking about. I got a second opinion and I don’t have Goddamn Alzheimer’s.”
“What? What second opinion?”
“Dr. Huang says I do not have Alzheimer’s.”
Dr. Huang is John’s former Parkinson’s doctor, whom Jean adores. She has seen him, she says. (Later, I will fax his office a HIPAA release and my mom’s durable power of attorney allowing me to know her medical condition, but he will refuse my calls. I will have no idea what he says until he sends the records to her current doctor. His diagnosis is Jean’s condition is inconclusive as to Alzheimer’s. All Jean remembers is that he did not confirm Dr. Richardson’s diagnosis.) She has thrown away her meds.
People do really really stupid things and call them trying to be helpful. I will learn this as I continue to struggle with what to do. Doctors who have no backbone suddenly become friends. Friends who have no medical training suddenly become doctors. One of my mom’s more control-freaky friends (one who will later pepper me with abusive phone calls and threats) has fueled my mother’s paranoia that her current neurologist is a quack and her daughter is not to be trusted.
Up to this point, I have largely ignored this friend. She was not around when I was a kid. She does not know my relationship with Jean. She doesn’t really know Jean. Virtually every assumption she has made is wrong. In the grand scheme of things, Ariana (that’s what we will call her) has known Jean for only about 10 years, is out of central casting for Jewish busy-body know-it-all, and does not affect my life. What I could not know was how this third party could so affect the decisions I made about my mom.
“OK,” I say, claws drawn “You got a second opinion and you’re just fine, huh?. Really? You’re going with that, mom? How, exactly do you explain this house? It’s a fucking shit storm.”
I am still in my own denial about how to deal with my mother. I have not completely bought into the nurse’s admonishment that I shouldn’t make things worse by calling Jean on her logic flaws, her memory loss, her confusion. I am, after all, my mother’s daughter and I and self-righteously helping her (did I mention, daughters become assholes). I believe, completely and totally incorrectly, that I can talk sense into her. If she just looks around her, if I just remind her of how many times she’s lost her keys, forgotten her ATM code, triple-written a check, she will come to her senses.
I am ready for the fight. I will verbally knock sense into her. Bring it, mom. I can take you. Hit me with what you’ve got.
Instead of getting angry, she starts to cry.
“I’m so lost without John,” she says. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s at the foot of the bed. I miss him so much. I just can’t get anything done without him here.”
I hug her, tell her it will be OK. The next day, she receives a notice from the DMV that her driver’s license has been revoked.
I receive a phone call the next day. Without her medication, Jean is a wreck, but now convinced she doesn’t need it, refuses to take it. She is as angry as I have never seen her when she calls me. Her voice is shaking and she is speaking in that psychopathic tone she would use when we were kids, just before she went berserk on us. I can see her crazy-eyes through the phone.
“I need a lawyer,” she says slowly. “I’m going to sue that bitch.”
“What bitch? I ask.
“The BITCH who revoked my license.”
She is referring to her doctor. Some months ago, when Jean was out of earshot, her doctor had told me.
“You have no idea what you’re up against. This disease is going to make her life and yours a living hell. There is one thing I can do to ease your burden, however: let me be the heavy when it’s time to revoke her license. Your mom will go crazy. She’ll probably try to sue me.” She was right.
Jean is consumed with anger: the anger over losing her best friend John, the anger over losing her memory, the anger over losing her license. Now she has someone on which to unleash it, and she’s going full tilt, channeling every last bit of it against the doctor who has now become the real source of her problems. Fueled by Ariana’s comments that Jean is still competent to drive (“I'm sure you’re behind this,” Ariana tells me in a phone call), Mom is on the warpath.
“Mom, I don’t think that’s such a great idea. I mean, I know lawyers in the elder law area, but don’t you think you should transition from driving at this point? I think you should consider this a newfound freedom.”
“I don’t give a FUCK what you think!” scrams Jean. She is screaming so loud that later, her neighbor will call me to find out what was going on (and Jean never opens her windows). “If you don’t find me a lawyer, I’ll find one.” She slams down the phone.
As an officer of the court, I believe in the justice system and I firmly support my mother’s right to have an elder law attorney represent her. I am confident no scrupulous, ethical, or competent elder law attorney will fight for her to get back her license. I also know that not everyone who has a license to practice law is scrupulous, ethical, or competent.
Jean has lost her vibration. The Alzheimer’s has inverted her world, made her trust those who are suspect, and suspect those who are trustworthy. It will be up to me to do the right thing. I think about her friend Ariana, who has inserted herself in Jean’s business and will no doubt assist her in the process of securing her license if I don’t do it. I think about how it must feel to be Jean, trying to access files in her mind that are now empty, frightened that her world is closing in on her. I think hard about what is right.
I get Jean a lawyer.
For the record, Ariana is right: I am behind the revocation of my mother’s license. 100%. Boom.
When it was just the two of us living in a shitty apartment in Berkeley, the bookshelves were made of boards and cinderblocks. Later, when we lived in the big house in Corte Madera, there were whole rooms filled with books, all from my mom. My step-father fancied himself a writer, but he believed reading anything other than what was important to his own alcohol-inspired manifesto was a waste of paper.
My mother, on the other hand, believed that all problems could be solved with discipline, a proper book on the subject, or a pot roast (or lasagne). Whenever she would return from a business trip or a day or errands, on my bed she would place a new book. When I was 9, she put 10 copies of Our Bodies Ourselves on my bed and told me to give to any friends who wanted them. This made me popular for about 48 hours, until my mother started receiving phone calls from irate parents who absolutely positively did not want their daughters saying or reading the word “vagina” out loud.
When I was bored, I would wonder into the library my mom built and grab a book. She had them organized according to author. After I had exhausted the elementary school’s library collection of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and The Phantom Tollbooth, I started in on my mom’s. The first stop was James Baldwin. The last, Richard Wright.
While our collections of fiction, science, mystery, politics, art, travel, and women’s health continued to grow, and despite Jean’s avid love of there were only two sets of cookbooks in the house: Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, and The Encyclopedia of Cooking, a Time-Life collection of 15 or so volumes. When I was six, she gave me my first cookbook, The Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls. I read it over and over again, memorizing every recipe.
My mother used cookbooks sparingly. She would grab one from the shelf to look up a new recipe, get the gist of the ingredients, and then create the dish without referring to the book again.
“Why don’t you follow the recipe, Mom?” I would ask, watching her in the kitchen, sometimes fetching things from the refrigerator for her to use.
“You don’t cook from recipes, silly,” she would say, “unless it’s baking, which is why I generally don’t bake, except for things you can hedge on, like banana bread.”
“Well, how do you know what to do?”
“Vibration. Just like everything else in life; you have to feel what’s right, and then follow your heart. You have to understand what a dish needs. Books can teach you basic techniques, like how to braise or pan-sear. They can give you an idea of what is in a recipe, like that you should add tomatoes and onions, but they cannot tell you how it should taste; you have to feel that for yourself.”
The vibration of things is always in you, that was my mother’s perspective. It can be lost if you depend too much on other things to tell you what to do. You know what’s right. Do that thing, not the other thing.
“It’s like the Bible,” my mom said. “Most of the people who rely on that stupid piece of fiction to find their moral compass are the most immoral assholes I know.” Early on, we learned not to trust people who went to church very often. My mom kept her atheism under wraps. It was very unpopular with black people.
The true essence of things, she said, would tell you how to treat them. Trust your instincts.
“See, this chicken?” she’d tell me, cleaning and cutting it for preparation. “The meat is sweet, so unless you only want to use it as a protein source or it’s of poor quality, steer clear of pungent sauces. If she made chicken with buerre blanc, we knew she had gotten an expensive piece of meat. If she made chicken cacciatore, with its peppers, and tomatoes, and garlic and onions, she wanted us to focus on the sauce.
Jean’s menus were ever practical, a nuance I didn’t come to appreciate until I started attending others’ dinner parties, where the host was so busy trying to cook, she never left the kitchen and we were beholden to the food, our movements largely scripted by when certain dishes were ready.
“Food can be memorable in hindsight, but should complement the party, not the other way around,” she’d say. “It should spark, not overshadow, the conversation.”
If the party was to have many guests, and she couldn’t afford help (which she could only afford if it was an office function), she would call it an open house, and create a buffet. Since people would come and go at different times, she could spend time with each guest. The food she served on these occasions was designed to hold up over a long period without a lot of fuss. Things that got soggy, like leafy salads, were off the list. Things that got ugly, like scoopable desserts, were off the list.
“Swedish meatballs are a good choice for big parties,” she’d say, “because they get better as the sit and don’t look bad if the pot is nearly empty. Soup, too.” Passed hors doeuvres were only appropriate with outside help or at small gatherings; otherwise you spent your time going from guest to guest and couldn’t enjoy a conversation. There were always rules. As kids, we used to say that there were two ways to do things: mom’s way and the wrong way.
Because buffets had had to look good over time, after people had taken food, she loathed the cheese spread. She preferred the brie-in-bread-boule to the soft cheese set up. My mother had little faith in the human race’s ability to keep things neat, even if they were her friends.
“People need a lot more home training around cheese,” she’d say, disgusted at how guests would dig out the soft center of cheese, leaving the milk rind for others to see. “If I ever see you do something that inconsiderate, I’ll knock you into next week.”
She showed me how to take a proper slice of soft cheese, cutting the rind and cheese together. If I didn’t want to eat the rind (although it was perfectly good), it could be discarded on my own plate. Leaving trash for others to work around was just rude.
Other good buffet foods, according to my mother, included chips and salsa, empanadas, which were good hot or cold, and anything that could be cut into squares or stacked into a pyramid shape, like bread pudding, which she would serve next to a fondue pot full of lemon whiskey sauce. Or meatloaf cupcakes (she would bake meatloaf in cupcake tins, and put a circle of mushrooms on the bottom so when they were inverted, they would look nice.
The sixties were dead, and the seventies gave way to more informal parties. I watched rumaki and cucumber sandwiches disappear from the rotation. In their place, miniature quiches, tomatoes stuffed with homemade boursin, jello blocks made with rum, cheese fondue with kirsch, and chocolate fondue surrounded by chunks of apple, banana, strawberry, and Sara Lee pound cake. Sweet or savory, she always made enough fondue for there to be leftovers we could use to make hot chocolate the next morning.
Fondue – chocolate or cheese – can be done two ways. You can make it in advance if you are having a buffet, and people will marvel at your culinary skills. Or, if you want to put on a show at a dinner party and display your confidence under pressure, you can make it tableside. It’s not as dramatic as a tableside bananas foster with its blue flame, but you’ll still get a lot of respect.
Here is Jean’s recipe for chocolate fondue. The measurements are not exact, meaning it will work if you do it exactly as I’ve written it, but it will work if you use your own vibration. Have fun:
1 package of any chocolate chips that do not kill African babies or put money in the hands of people who kill African babies. Guittard or Ghirardelli are good choices (this is about 12 oz, but use your gut). If you prefer, chop up some good quality candy bars.
1 stick of unsalted butter
2 cups heavy cream
A pinch of sea salt (if you are wondering why the butter is unsalted but she adds back the salt, my mom was always of the opinion that salted butter was of a lower quality, and it was also better to control the amount of salt in your food. She will also be quick to tell you that salt is a necessity.
1 tbl. vanilla extract
1/3 cup Grand Marnier
Put the butter and cream into a saucepan with a thick bottom. Aluminum is not a good choice here (is it ever, really?), but if it’s all you have, just be careful to use a low heat. You can also use a fondue pot with a heat source underneath if you’re tableside.
Heat the liquid until it is very hot, but not boiling. Dump in the chocolate and stir the mixture constantly until the chocolate is fully melted. Add the rest of the ingredients and serve with various dipping fruits, cake and bread.
You can use any liquor you like. We’ve made this fondue with Cointreau, whiskey, kahlua, really anything. Here are my favorite combinations:
Southwest: ½ cup Kahlua and 1 tbl chile powder
Lavender: While the cream is heating, add 2 tbls food-grade lavender. Prior to adding the chocolate, strain out the lavender and return it to the pot.
Earl Grey: use the lavender method, but use 2 Earl Grey tea bags and omit the vanilla.
Peanut Butter: using a whisk, whisk in 3 heaping tablspoons of peanut butter into the milk, whisking until smooth. Then add your remaining ingredients.
This recipe is extremely easy. It is also a show-stopper. You absolutely positively cannot go wrong with this dessert (unless you have purchased chocolate that kills babies). You can get crazy and dip all sorts of other things: pretzel sticks, prunes, dried mango, or my personal favorite, Fritos.
In winter months, Jean’s parties often included soup. When she served soup, Jean would leave it in the kitchen on low heat, which allowed her freedom from replenishing it. She merely set out the whole pot, piled up some bowls and spoons next to the pot, and laid some crusty French bread and a ceramic pot full of butter next to it.
“Always cut a few slices of the bread so people can see how to cut it,” she’d say.
“It’s common sense how to cut bread, mom.”
“No such thing as common sense. People are idiots.”
Jean still believed a party should have its own drink. During the holidays she would make giant batches of hot buttered rum batter and I would create a calligraphy sign of the poem she’d written for guests to follow. The ditty went like this:
Follow these instructions ‘til you’re done.
Put a heaping spoonful of this stuff in a cup,
Add a jigger of rum, and with hot water fill-up.
Stir briskly, and then put cream atop your brew.
Enjoy the good cheer, happy holidays to you!
“Oh, let’s see. I think just smash up a couple of sticks of butter with a couple of cups of brown sugar. Then add nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon, and cloves.” The batter will keep for a week without refrigeration. It will keep pretty much forever in the fridge, but if you still have some leftover after 30 days, make a coffee cake with it.
Sit-down dinners – the ones that usually ended with me decorating an apology card – were another story. Care and attention had to be paid to each part of the dinner party. First, sit-down dinners were never to be more than 10 people. Bigger than that, and my mother felt it was more suitable for a buffet/party.
I knew she was planning a sit-down party when she got out the index cards. Each card would have the name of a guest and she would shuffle them around until she got the right seating combination. This, she said, was the secret to a good dinner party.
“Never sit couples next to one another, unless they have only been dating for a very short time.”
“What different does it make?” I’d say. “It’s not like you’re all that far away from each other.”
“Three reasons: first, couples can talk to one another any time. A dinner party should be a new experience, not just dinner at someone else’s house. That’s not a party.
“Second, people tend to become insular and judgmental if they are not required to open their mind. The surest way to a disaster party is to have couples whispering to one another in the middle of someone talking.
“Third, people are more likely to speak the truth if there isn’t someone next to them squeezing their hand under the table. That makes the conversation interesting.”
I considered this last point and asked, “Like how Jerry calls people assholes?”
“No. Not like that.”
There were other considerations I thought of as tedious then, but now understand why she took so much time on the details. The more amusing and gregarious people had to be split up because if you didn’t, one side of the table would be roaring with laughter while the other side of the table was relegated to wondering what was so funny. Too many pretty women around one man wasn’t good, either; it could fuel a bit fight in the car later. Nevertheless, it was important to space out the genders equally around the table.
Flower arrangements had to be low, candles tall, and only blocking the hosts’ view. Flowers should not have a strong scent; it would interfere with the food. Name cards were not necessary, except where guests had no home training and would not wait to be told where to sit. We had name cards a lot.
Music should be recognizable, but not sing-a-long or dance-a-long style until after dinner, when brandy was served. Charles Aznavour was her preferred dinner music. Dinah Washington afterward. My step-dad preferred Bob Dylan, which my mother thought was too polarizing for a friendly party. She allowed it only during their revolutionary planning meetings. She had one cardinal rule I always thought was silly until I violated it in my adulthood:
“Never think you can mend fences or bring people together over food. People are only able to come together over ideas. Do not invite enemies and think you can get them to see eye-to-eye because you made a great pot roast. And I make a damn good pot roast!” I broke this rule only once in my adulthood, and I paid the price. Don’t do it.
Jean’s attention to the tiniest consideration and her understanding of what worked – her vibration -- was what defined her as my mother. Her own vibration, told her when to add a pinch of dill or omit the sugar. She knew without looking that I had not set the cup handles at exactly 4 o’clock simply because the table seemed off to her. She could sense when a guest wasn’t comfortable and could quickly change the subject. She lost her vibration with her children, but when it came to setting a perfect table, no one could compete. When these characteristics attention began to fade, I didn’t recognize her.
The changes were small at first, but significant to me. Her closer friends later in life – many of them slobs themselves – didn’t see the signs, but I and a few old friends did see them. Magazines and newspapers were piling up. When we tried to take them away to recycle, she’d freak out.
“Put those down! I’m planning to read them.”
Jean never reads day-old papers. Just after the Thanksgiving where my father-in-law had revealed she was not in fact mastering the Sudoko, I come over to her house to test her feelings about buying duplex together. I suspect this will infuriate John’s children; they seem to be laying in wait for their inheritance and are unlikely to relish the idea of a new property, but I cannot be bothered about that now. My husband and I agree she really needs to have someone nearby, and with a job and a child, the only way is to have her live with us (or right next door). We know how she treats caregivers and don’t want to subject them, or her, to that. For now, that option is off the table.
We offer to buy the house next door to ours, but quickly abandon that plan when we realize she will be too far away from downtown once her driver’s license is taken away, which may happen at some point in the next couple of years. We find two duplexes, one in Berkeley, the other in Oakland.
I stop by after work to see her. Crap is everywhere. It looks like a bad curio shop. Every flat surface is covered with stuff.
Photographs without frames, once relegated properly to photo albums and shoeboxes, were leaning against every wall. Any and every reminder of John she can display is out on a table or credenza. His ashes, a basket to hold his ashes. newspaper articles about his death, now yellowed and curling, they are all in the dining room.
Art books John loved are set out on tables instead of sitting in their bookshelves. Shoeboxes of memorabilia from various vacations they’ve taken are out on display, even plane ticket stubs from 1998 have found their place on the liquor cabinet-turned-shrine.
When she runs out of tabletop surfaces, she buys narrow decorative tables and puts up more things. There are now three of these tables to clutter the living room, and she has set up a second dining room table to display each and ever serving platter she can find, just as she did years ago when prepping for a large party. When questioned about it, she says she wants to be prepared for a book club luncheon. The number of serving platters on the table could host food for 80.
The fireplace mantle, once empty, save a single blue wine bottle, is now littered with ceramic pieces, photographs, decorate pots, two hot pots, more server platters, and glassware. The clutter is making me crazy, and I think suddenly of the saint my husband is for even suggesting we all live together. I steel myself and ask.
“Mom, Dan and I were thinking we could buy a duplex together – you on one side and us on the other. Then you would be near your grandchild, which would be great for him, and when you are no longer able to drive, we can drive you or you can walk to different places without a car.”
“I love this house,” she says. “I see no reason to leave.” I will soon learn the reason why.
It is not merely the memory of John she hopes to preserve, she is much worse off than we see. In fact, when she tries to go shopping, take a drive, do anything outside the walls of her house alone, she becomes completely confused. She does not know where she is. She has been using the house to trigger behavior.
If she is in the kitchen and forgets why she came in, she will assume she is there to eat something. If she is sitting at the dining room table, she will offer guests a libation. In her office, she is reminded to pay bills. My husband sees this clearly, but the rest of us do not. I continue to try to convince her she should leave.
“Mom, this house is 3000 square feet. You hardly need that much room for one person. Besides, it’s way up in the hills. You cannot get anywhere without driving. Don’t you want to be more central? Someplace where you can walk?” I try to play on her fantasies next. “You and John were going to get a place in Opera Plaza so you could walk to everything.”
“I don’t need to be anywhere where I can walk,” she says resolutely. “I have a car.”
Oh God. I was hoping not to bring up the A-word, but she is not budging. I give it a shot (ready to duck another flying object if I have to).
“Mom, eventually they are going to take away your driver’s license.”
“Why? I’ve never had an accident.” She has actually had several small ones, but does not remember. I worry she has simply driven away on some of them.
“Because,” I pause. I have to say it. “Because you have Alzheimer’s.”
The fuse is short, the retort is rapid.
“I don’t have Alzheimer’s! Those fucking doctors don’t know what they’re talking about. I got a second opinion and I don’t have Goddamn Alzheimer’s.”
“What? What second opinion?”
“Dr. Huang says I do not have Alzheimer’s.”
Dr. Huang is John’s former Parkinson’s doctor, whom Jean adores. She has seen him, she says. (Later, I will fax his office a HIPAA release and my mom’s durable power of attorney allowing me to know her medical condition, but he will refuse my calls. I will have no idea what he says until he sends the records to her current doctor. His diagnosis is Jean’s condition is inconclusive as to Alzheimer’s. All Jean remembers is that he did not confirm Dr. Richardson’s diagnosis.) She has thrown away her meds.
People do really really stupid things and call them trying to be helpful. I will learn this as I continue to struggle with what to do. Doctors who have no backbone suddenly become friends. Friends who have no medical training suddenly become doctors. One of my mom’s more control-freaky friends (one who will later pepper me with abusive phone calls and threats) has fueled my mother’s paranoia that her current neurologist is a quack and her daughter is not to be trusted.
Up to this point, I have largely ignored this friend. She was not around when I was a kid. She does not know my relationship with Jean. She doesn’t really know Jean. Virtually every assumption she has made is wrong. In the grand scheme of things, Ariana (that’s what we will call her) has known Jean for only about 10 years, is out of central casting for Jewish busy-body know-it-all, and does not affect my life. What I could not know was how this third party could so affect the decisions I made about my mom.
“OK,” I say, claws drawn “You got a second opinion and you’re just fine, huh?. Really? You’re going with that, mom? How, exactly do you explain this house? It’s a fucking shit storm.”
I am still in my own denial about how to deal with my mother. I have not completely bought into the nurse’s admonishment that I shouldn’t make things worse by calling Jean on her logic flaws, her memory loss, her confusion. I am, after all, my mother’s daughter and I and self-righteously helping her (did I mention, daughters become assholes). I believe, completely and totally incorrectly, that I can talk sense into her. If she just looks around her, if I just remind her of how many times she’s lost her keys, forgotten her ATM code, triple-written a check, she will come to her senses.
I am ready for the fight. I will verbally knock sense into her. Bring it, mom. I can take you. Hit me with what you’ve got.
Instead of getting angry, she starts to cry.
“I’m so lost without John,” she says. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s at the foot of the bed. I miss him so much. I just can’t get anything done without him here.”
I hug her, tell her it will be OK. The next day, she receives a notice from the DMV that her driver’s license has been revoked.
I receive a phone call the next day. Without her medication, Jean is a wreck, but now convinced she doesn’t need it, refuses to take it. She is as angry as I have never seen her when she calls me. Her voice is shaking and she is speaking in that psychopathic tone she would use when we were kids, just before she went berserk on us. I can see her crazy-eyes through the phone.
“I need a lawyer,” she says slowly. “I’m going to sue that bitch.”
“What bitch? I ask.
“The BITCH who revoked my license.”
She is referring to her doctor. Some months ago, when Jean was out of earshot, her doctor had told me.
“You have no idea what you’re up against. This disease is going to make her life and yours a living hell. There is one thing I can do to ease your burden, however: let me be the heavy when it’s time to revoke her license. Your mom will go crazy. She’ll probably try to sue me.” She was right.
Jean is consumed with anger: the anger over losing her best friend John, the anger over losing her memory, the anger over losing her license. Now she has someone on which to unleash it, and she’s going full tilt, channeling every last bit of it against the doctor who has now become the real source of her problems. Fueled by Ariana’s comments that Jean is still competent to drive (“I'm sure you’re behind this,” Ariana tells me in a phone call), Mom is on the warpath.
“Mom, I don’t think that’s such a great idea. I mean, I know lawyers in the elder law area, but don’t you think you should transition from driving at this point? I think you should consider this a newfound freedom.”
“I don’t give a FUCK what you think!” scrams Jean. She is screaming so loud that later, her neighbor will call me to find out what was going on (and Jean never opens her windows). “If you don’t find me a lawyer, I’ll find one.” She slams down the phone.
As an officer of the court, I believe in the justice system and I firmly support my mother’s right to have an elder law attorney represent her. I am confident no scrupulous, ethical, or competent elder law attorney will fight for her to get back her license. I also know that not everyone who has a license to practice law is scrupulous, ethical, or competent.
Jean has lost her vibration. The Alzheimer’s has inverted her world, made her trust those who are suspect, and suspect those who are trustworthy. It will be up to me to do the right thing. I think about her friend Ariana, who has inserted herself in Jean’s business and will no doubt assist her in the process of securing her license if I don’t do it. I think about how it must feel to be Jean, trying to access files in her mind that are now empty, frightened that her world is closing in on her. I think hard about what is right.
I get Jean a lawyer.
For the record, Ariana is right: I am behind the revocation of my mother’s license. 100%. Boom.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
The Tapioca Incident in which we Feed Mom a Line. The Tracking Incident in which We Hunt Her Down.
Birthday parties were not the only thing that got better in the new house. One significant change was we had our own dedicated telephone line. In Point Reyes, we had a party line, which meant the telephone was strictly utilitarian. If you talked too long on the line, someone would interrupt and ask you to get off the damn phone. If children were allowed to use the phone at all, there was no dilly-dallying.
The Corte Madera house didn’t have a party line. Without it, my sister, then 17, had no reason to get off the telephone. Ever. On the weekends when our parents were out running errands, she would approach me with $5.00 and a list of her chores.
“Here. I’ve got some important calls to make,” she’d say, cramming the list into my hands. “The $5.00 is yours if you do my chores.” Eager to please, I could always be paid off. I stashed the money between the pages of my Mrs. Piggle Wiggle book and motored through her list.
“I’ll trade you napkin ironing for cleaning up the dog shit,’ my brother Lee would offer.
“Deal.” I hated that smelly sand pit where we “composted” the dog’s messes. It was like a giant poo landmine. We could not use the garbage can because our parents would not allow us to use plastic garbage bags (we lined our garbage cans with used newspaper, because it was biodegradable). Without them, the garbage men refused to empty our can if it contained dog shit. Why we could not use the plastic sleeves from our newspapers I do not know.
“If you fold the laundry, I’ll wash the windows,” Scott would say.
“Deal.” Years of being alone with my mom meant I could motor through the pile of laundry faster than anyone.
This horse-trading went on for years. My mom and step-dad had grandiose ideas about gender neutrality and they tried to be progressive about the Saturday chores; they wanted the boys to iron and the girls to repair things. As soon as they left, however, we’d swap lists. That women’s lib thing was for grownups. Our goals were much simpler: complete the tasks with as little effort as possible. They never caught on. Ever. My mother is still angry when she is reminded we thwarted her efforts.
Money was still tight. Because we were now paying rent instead of living in a paid-for house, we had to cut corners in other ways. One such cost-cutting measure was to dilute the milk.
Here is my mother’s recipe for diluting milk. Read it, and then throw it away. Maybe burn it. Never ever ever use it. If you are poor, just don’t buy milk. It’s not that great for you, anyway. This recipe will cost your children more in therapy than it will in just buying milk and letting them drink it.
First, go to the store and purchase a gallon of perfectly good milk. If you are super into the whole recycling thing, or if you have trust issues around reusing plastic, buy the kind that comes in the glass. Then, ask your neighbor if he has a spare gallon jug he was going to throw away anyway. You need only ask one time. After that, you will always have enough containers.
Bring the milk home and pour half of it into the empty milk jug. If you want to go for maximum torture, do this part in front of the child who loves milk the most.
Once you have done that, make 4 quarts of powdered milk using the cheapest, most disgusting powdered milk you can find. Pay no attention to the temperature of the water. In fact, for maximum effect, use lukewarm. You may use that Pyrex double boiler to make this milk-substance. Fill up each of the containers the rest of the way with the powdered milk and shake well. You have just turned one gallon of perfectly reasonable whole milk into two gallons of nearly undrinkable swill for just pennies! Go lie down in a dark room and think of the permanent damage you are inflicting on your children.
My mom cut the milk regularly. If she came home and got too busy to cut the milk, say, making dinner, my brothers wasted no time in drinking most of it, right from the carton. My mom would freak out. Lee and Scott would feign ignorance.
“Oh, you hadn’t cut that yet? We didn’t know.”
“How could you not fucking know?” my mom would scream. “The seal wasn’t even broken!”
Depending upon my mom’s mood, they would sometimes get grounded for this transgression, but if there wasn’t too much screaming to go along with it, they didn’t care: it was worth it to have milk that tasted like milk.
Saturday was chore day. My mom had a huge matrix posted in the kitchen that was the foundation for the chore-trading. If my mom and step-dad came home and saw we had completed our chores, they might buy us ice cream, or my mom would make something special for us. Treats were not an everyday occurrence.
Sometimes we would get an extra hour of television (we had to make a weekly list of what we would watch and were limited to 6 hours of non-PBS programming a week, except during the Olympics). Sometimes mom would whip up a dessert. Banana bread was popular (especially because it used up all the brown bananas that mom refused to toss, which meant we didn’t have to eat them), but Tapioca pudding was our collective favorite!
Owing to the fact that mom had tried – and failed – to produce edible tapioca pudding with her Frankenmilk, she always made her pudding with whole milk, real sugar, and lots of vanilla. Sometimes she would even venture down to Chinatown and pick up tapioca pearls, but usually it was the stuff in the familiar red box. When she announced we were having tapioca, my brother or sister would volunteer to make the pudding, because this gave them direct access to the milk and they could skim a bit off the top.
For my part, I hated milk. My step-dad would force me to drink a glass a day. It would sit in front of me at the dining room table. It may have been that my early exposures to milk amounted to my mom’s economy version, but whatever it was, I would gag trying to get it down. I would later discover my lactose intolerance, but back in the 60’s we had to suck it up.
“You will sit here and you will drink that milk if you have to sit there all night, you little shit.” Jerry would tell me, teeth clenched. I would look over at my mom, who was stone-faced. Jerry would continue. “All right kids, clear the dishes. Leave nothing on the table but Tsan’s milk.” If he was feeling particularly vindictive, he would turn off the dining room lights and I would sit there in the dark.
“C’mon, Dad,” my brother Scott would say. “Just leave her alone. She’s just a little kid.” Scott and I fought morning to night, but he always came to my rescue.
If my brothers were feeling particularly charitable (which they often were), they would sneak into the dining room when mom wasn’t looking, and drink it for me. This was no easy feat. To get past my parents, they had to crawl from the kitchen on their hands and knees so they would not be seen above the couch in the living room, reach up without looking, down the milk, replace the glass, and crawl back out.
Later in the evening, when my mother would tuck me in, I’d ask why she didn’t come to my rescue. I never had to drink milk when it was just the two of us.
“It’s Jerry’s way. He wants you to be healthy and he thinks milk will do that. He loves you, too.”
“No he doesn’t. He hates me.” Many years later, just before his death, he would admit that, yes, he had hated me from the day I came into his life. Trust your kids.
On May 6th, 1973 my mother received a Dutch oven for her birthday. Not just any Dutch oven, it was the exact one that Julia Child used on her show “The French Chef.” It was a Le Creuset. It weighed about a million pounds because it was cast iron, like her skillets, but coated with ceramic glaze. It was very very expensive.
The outside was bright orange. The inside was creamy white. It was my mother’s first-ever pot that did not come to her second hand.
“Oh, this is the best gift I’ve every gotten,” she squealed. ‘I’m going to tuck it away until Thanksgiving and I’m going to make the eggnog in it.” For once, Jerry had done good.
My mother’s eggnog was a cooked eggnog. It took nearly an hour of stirring over a hot stove to make it, and she always made it in small batches because she never had the proper pot to make more. We had lots of pots and pans, but if they weren’t cast iron skillets from some flea market, they were cheap aluminum pans. These were OK for boiling spaghetti or cooking potatoes, but mom said the aluminum reacted with the egg and milk in eggnog and made them taste funny. Now she could make eggnog a gallon at a time.
“Don’t you kids touch my pot, at least until I’ve used it once!” she admonished with a teasing, wagging finger. It wasn’t a real threat, but we knew she should get first crack at the pot.
Some time later, my step-father brought home the weekly gallon of milk instead of my mother. He was far too important in our house to engage in manual labor and so he put it in the fridge for my mom to cut when she came home. By some miracle, my mother didn’t notice, and my brothers didn’t either. On Saturday morning, as Jean and Jerry sped away for their Saturday errands, there it was, a single beautiful gallon of milk, un-retouched.
“What should we do with it?” said my sister to us all. We stood there looking at the milk as if we’d never seen such a sight. And of course, there was no thought that we would just leave it.
“Let’s make a gallon tapioca pudding,” said my brother. “If we make enough of it, we can eat a bunch now, before they get home, and have some for dinner, too, without them knowing we had some now. And they won’t be mad at us because it’s dad’s favorite, too. We could use Jean’s new pot. It will hold at least that whole gallon of milk.” In fact, it was the only pot that could do this.
The proposal was daring indeed. Dessert twice in a day was crazy enough. That we were contemplating double-dipping with all the forbidden milk, in the forbidden pot was unthinkable. It had to be done.
My sister volunteered to make the pudding while my brothers and I split up her chores. She dragged the heavy pot out, measured out the ingredients, and began the slow process of stirring.
Tapioca is used as a thickening agent. In addition to its value as a standalone pudding, it can also be sprinkled into fruit pies in place of flour or cornstarch, and in a pinch, can be used for thickening gravies. Our kitchen did (and does) always have a box of tapioca in the pantry.
Combined with sugar and milk in a pudding (where the heat source comes from below), tapioca has a tendency to stick to the bottom of a pan and ultimately burn if any of the mixture is allowed to sit for any length of time. Like caramel, the process can start slowly, and even take on a wonderful burnt sugar smell, but once the tapioca, sugar, and milk begin to truly burn, the smell becomes pungent and sour, and the burnt flavor affects the entire batch, even if the top tapioca is not yet brown. Only constant passive scraping of the bottom with a spoon can prevent this. Lynne stayed, therefore, at the helm without wavering.
When the phone rang, and it was for her, she handed me the spoon to take over.
“Here,” she said. “Just stand here and stir and stir. I’ll come back and check it in a few minutes. Don’t do anything by stir it, freak. Don’t you fucking move!”
“OK,” I said, grabbing the spoon.
The pot was taller than I was, so I couldn’t see into it. I kept stirring, not realizing my spoon was never reaching the bottom of the pan. I could hear the blop blop blop of the pudding coming to a slow boil. I could smell the beginnings of caramel.
I think it’s done,” I yelled to my sister, engrossed in her private conversation. “Can you come look?” The texture was getting heavy and thick against the pressure of my spoon. It felt like pudding. I could smell the vanilla and sugar. It felt done. It was done.
“I”ll be right there,” she yelled back.
The smell was getting stronger.
“Lynnnnnnnnnnnne,” I think you should come now!” Then, the odor began to change and the burning milk smell quickly filled the kitchen.
By the time my brothers arrived – Lynne still chatting away on the phone – the entire ot was ruined.
There was a moment of silence followed by a collective panic.
“We have to get rid of this,” said Lynne, opening the windows in the kitchen to air out the smell. “Jean and dad will kill us!” Not only had we wiped out nearly a dozen eggs, but we had consumed an entire gallon of whole milk with nothing to show for it. We had to dispose of the evidence as best we could or there would be hell to pay.
“Jean will see it in the garbage can,” said Lee. “Let’s use the garbage disposal.” We poured a bit in the sink and turned on the disposal. The tapioca started bubbling back up, bringing with it dirty water and other foods recently disposed of. The disposal was broken. We panicked.
“The toilet! Let’s use the toilet!” While I used my hands to transfer the crud from the sink to the garbage, my siblings carried the heavy pot to my parents’ master bathroom, poured in a small amount to test it, and pushed the handle, only to see the water begin to rise. We had now backed up the toilet. Thinking quickly, Scott lifted the ball and averted a flooding disaster, but now we had to bail the toilet. We used mom’s mixing bowls from the kitchen to scoop out the excess water, and we slowly drained the toilet water and tapioca goo into the tub. While Lynne worked the plunger to get the last bits of pudding from the toilet, we panicked over what to do next. They would be home soon and the vast majority of tapioca was still in the pot.
“Let’s bury it with the dog shit!” We had finally lighted on the solution to at least part of our problem. Scott was enlisted to dig the hole, Lee would wash the pot, and I would refill the milk jug with 100% powdered milk. “Use double the powder,” my brother said, “That will make it look more like whole milk.”
There was nothing to be done about the eggs, so we all agreed we had made a giant omelet for lunch. My brothers would also have to drink – quietly – the 100% powdered milk, which Jean would likely re-dilute with more powdered milk. We were nearly done covering our tracks when Lee turned around from the kitchen sink, ghost-white.
“We are going to die,” my brother said soberly, showing us the bottom of mom’s new Le Creuset pot. The pudding had become so stuck that the entire surface had turned brown, and in one very noticeable spot, the sugar had burnt through the ceramic coating, revealing the black cast iron underneath. The pot was ruined and Jean had not used it even once.
A good bleach-soak can usually whiten anything – and did – but nothing can recoat ceramic cast-iron. Though we were able to return the inner surface to its creamy white color, there was no hiding the big black hole in the center. We were resigned to take our punishment, but our sister would not hear it.
“Listen you shits. We are not going to EVER admit to this. EVER. Give me that thing.” She pulled out every other pot we had in the cabinet and put the burnt pan it the nether regions of the cabinet, stacking up the old pots in front of it.
“It’s May,” she said. “By the time she wants to make eggnog in it, I’ll come up with something.” She pointed a finger at me.
“As for you, you tattle-telling little freak, don’t forget who was stirring the pudding when it burnt. Keep you mouth shut or I’ll throw you under the bus. Don’t think I won’t!”
The scream heard round the world was made later than year on November 27, 1972. We all came running to see what had happened and saw Jean, holding her new pot. My sister was first to speak, her iron grip digging a hole into my shoulder.
“What happened?” she said with the innocence of Mary. My mother’s voice was low and steady, but we could hear her seething just under the surface.
“Who. Did. This?” she snarled, looking at each of us. We stood, frozen.
“You did,” my sister said with a shrug. “You don’t remember?”
“No I don’t remember, and I never touched this pot,’ came the flat reply.
“Well, we all do,” my sister continued, undaunted, while the rest of us were frozen in our tracks. I watched as my brothers nodded their agreement with Lynne.
“What? What are you talking about, Lynne? I have no memory of this.”
“You must have blocked it out,” replied Lynne, cool as ice. “We were all there when it happened. It was that time you had that dinner party.”
Then something happened I’d never seen before. My mother began doubting herself.
“I . . . I have absolutely no memory of that,” she said, narrowing her eyes at my sister. “I mean, I really cannot remember a thing. How did it happen?”
“Oh, you were making a batch of sauce for lasagne, and the phone rang. I think you just left it on the stove.”
“Well,” my mom said. “That’s possible I guess. Gee, whoever would have thought I’d block that out.” She turned to me, the weak link, and raises one eyebrow. “So you remember this too?” I nodded agreement, Lynne’s grip tightening on my shoulder.
We could see that she still wasn’t entirely sure about the story, but with all of us a united front where usually there was none, she seemed to give in. I rarely lied to my mother. I believed she’d find out and I’d be in worse trouble. But she never did. I wouldn’t try to make her believe things happened that really didn’t for 30 more years.
2008 is marked first with John’s death in February. By April, she has gotten in a few fender-benders, lost 2 sets of keys, locked herself inside her house at least once, burnt out two electric tea kettles, and misplaced large amounts of tax documents. Frequently, she doesn’t leave the house for days. I am too unfamiliar with the symptoms of Alzheimer’s to know if this behavior is symptomatic of the disease, but it’s clear something is wrong.
Because Jean has given me permission to speak directly with her doctor, I make a call expressing my concern about Jean’s condition.
Her doctor says at this stage, the depression is probably a combination of both her husband’s death and the realization that she has Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s not uncommon, she says, for people to lapse into a depressed state, all of which can exacerbate her symptoms.
“She’s still early-stage, though,” says her doctor. “She’s got some living to do before things will get really difficult. She’s still driving and can live on her own, so long as you are checking in on her. I’d say you have about a year before you really have to reign her in. Check back with me in a year, or if things get worse. In the meantime, get her to fill those prescriptions, and here,” she hands me a piece of paper, “check out some of these groups. They’ll give you a lot of information about Alzheimer’s.”
The next time I visit I catch her in a weak moment. She is wearing the same dirty t-shirt I found her in when she was caring for John. She clearly has not slept. I insist and she agrees to try the meds, on condition that they are only temporary, to help her get over John, and not – absolutely not – for any goddamned Alzheimer’s crap. Her doctor proscribes an anti-depressant and a memory enhancement drug, careful to say only that it is for mild forgetfulness during stress.
We put a tracking device on her phone. So long as she has it with her, we can find her.
In my classes, I learn that Alzheimer’s comes in fits and spurts. The depression is common because sufferers know something is not right. Somehow, I had gotten myself to believe that she wouldn’t know what she didn’t know, so it would be as if things just didn’t happen.
“It doesn’t work that way,” said the nurse at the senior center. “Your loved ones will absolutely know they are forgetting things. They will be cognizant of their memory lapses and be fully aware their mind is going. They will read numbers that once made sense, like on a checkbook, and not be able to make out their meaning. There will be significant logic deficits, where they cannot get from point A to point B in a concept. Worse, all of this will cause nearly paralyzing fear that may manifest itself as fierce anger if you point it out. Be kind to them.”
Over the few weeks I attend the classes and support groups, I learn more about the disease. She will forget how to hold her bowels. She will forget how to eat. Her brain will even forget how to swallow. Eventually, the disease will kill her: she will forget how to have a heartbeat. I think of the difficult past she has had and know she’s been given a raw fucking deal.
One month later, the drugs are having a positive effect. After my own education in Alzheimer’s, I find myself trying to see things Jean’s way: she is not pre-Alzheimer’s, it’s just a little dementia. She is no different than any other aging person who’s been under stress. We even let her hang out with our 5 year old, now that she’s not burning up tea kettles. We do, however, put a tracking device on her phone so we can find her, and tell her not to drive Moses around (he gets car-sick, we tell her, but really, we don’t want her behind the wheel with him in the back).
One afternoon, I call to come pick up my son and there’s no answer. I try the mobile phone. No answer. Dan and I turn on the tracking device, just to make sure she’s at home. She’s not. We panic.
“It’s showing she’s on San Pablo,” says Dan, sitting at the computer.
“Oh, OK. No big deal. She’s probably taken Moses for ice cream down at El Cerrito Plaza,” I say.
“No,” his voice is steady. “She’s way up San Pablo, and the little indicator is showing she’s still moving. Where the hell could she be taking him?! GET IN THE CAR!”
I jump in the car, while Dan stays at the computer. While I drive, panic-stricken with my mobile headset in my ear, he tells me whether I’m close.”
“Turn left. No, hang on, she’s making a u-turn. Go straight. What the fuck?” Jean’s driving seems erratic. I am turning down streets in Richmond neighborhoods I don’t recognize. I cannot imagine what she is doing up this far. Occasionally I drop Dan to call her mobile. She doesn’t answer. I am imagining some sort of Gramdma-Grandson Thelma and Louise scenario. Dan calls back.
“OK, the car is stopped. You are about a mile away. Keep driving.” His voice is steady, but I can tell he’s concerned. I am trying to maintain control, but now I’m thinking they were carjacked and have been forced into some dark room where my child will be shot in the head.
With traffic, he says, I’m about 5 minutes away. I watch the road carefully, looking for the white Prius she loves so much. The 5 minutes seems like an hour. I am angry, worried, tired, excited, and grateful for technology. I find the car. I find them. They are having Moses’ blanket repaired by Mom’s Korean neighbor who has a dry cleaners and tailoring shop. All is well. She had put the phone in the trunk and didn’t hear it, that’s all. It’s the last time Jean is ever alone with our son again.
“I feel great!” Jean says to me one day when I stop by. “Thank you so much for those pills. I don’t know why I was so resistant,” she adds. Maybe she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, after all.
Jean continues to mourn John’s loss, but she’s getting out, going places with friends, having book salons at the house, even considering taking a trip up to Oregon with John’s grandson.
We take her camping, which she enjoys. Our friend, Deborah who has adopted Mom as her own, rides along with her to test her driving, which seems fine. Still, we are careful to call every day. It’s a hassle to do it, but I find it less stressful than the alternative of not knowing where she is. Jean has read an article about brain development and now constantly has a Sudoko puzzle book with her. This impresses me, given my complete inability to comprehend their attractiveness. They seem to be working, however. For awhile, at least.
By July, she has had quite a few fender bender accidents. Nothing major, but I realize now she won’t be driving soon. I read an article about a man with Alzheimer’s who stepped on the gas instead of the brake, killed some pedestrians and lost his retirement saving to their relatives. At the end of Jean’s next visit to the doctor, where she is given a cognitive test, her condition is reported to the Department of Motor Vehicles. She loses her license.
Thanksgiving that year is at our home in Berkeley. My in-laws fly out from Wisconsin and John’s kids come down for dinner, staying with Jean. Jean is in good spirits at Thanksgiving, eating heartily and enjoying the company. She has her Sudoko puzzle book in tow, touting it as the reason she has regained her brain power and memory.
“There’s just one problem with these Sudoko puzzles your mom has done,” my father-in-law says to me, when Jean is out of earshot. A puzzle fan himself, he has picked up her Sudoko book and leafed through her answers. “All of them are wrong.”
The Corte Madera house didn’t have a party line. Without it, my sister, then 17, had no reason to get off the telephone. Ever. On the weekends when our parents were out running errands, she would approach me with $5.00 and a list of her chores.
“Here. I’ve got some important calls to make,” she’d say, cramming the list into my hands. “The $5.00 is yours if you do my chores.” Eager to please, I could always be paid off. I stashed the money between the pages of my Mrs. Piggle Wiggle book and motored through her list.
“I’ll trade you napkin ironing for cleaning up the dog shit,’ my brother Lee would offer.
“Deal.” I hated that smelly sand pit where we “composted” the dog’s messes. It was like a giant poo landmine. We could not use the garbage can because our parents would not allow us to use plastic garbage bags (we lined our garbage cans with used newspaper, because it was biodegradable). Without them, the garbage men refused to empty our can if it contained dog shit. Why we could not use the plastic sleeves from our newspapers I do not know.
“If you fold the laundry, I’ll wash the windows,” Scott would say.
“Deal.” Years of being alone with my mom meant I could motor through the pile of laundry faster than anyone.
This horse-trading went on for years. My mom and step-dad had grandiose ideas about gender neutrality and they tried to be progressive about the Saturday chores; they wanted the boys to iron and the girls to repair things. As soon as they left, however, we’d swap lists. That women’s lib thing was for grownups. Our goals were much simpler: complete the tasks with as little effort as possible. They never caught on. Ever. My mother is still angry when she is reminded we thwarted her efforts.
Money was still tight. Because we were now paying rent instead of living in a paid-for house, we had to cut corners in other ways. One such cost-cutting measure was to dilute the milk.
Here is my mother’s recipe for diluting milk. Read it, and then throw it away. Maybe burn it. Never ever ever use it. If you are poor, just don’t buy milk. It’s not that great for you, anyway. This recipe will cost your children more in therapy than it will in just buying milk and letting them drink it.
First, go to the store and purchase a gallon of perfectly good milk. If you are super into the whole recycling thing, or if you have trust issues around reusing plastic, buy the kind that comes in the glass. Then, ask your neighbor if he has a spare gallon jug he was going to throw away anyway. You need only ask one time. After that, you will always have enough containers.
Bring the milk home and pour half of it into the empty milk jug. If you want to go for maximum torture, do this part in front of the child who loves milk the most.
Once you have done that, make 4 quarts of powdered milk using the cheapest, most disgusting powdered milk you can find. Pay no attention to the temperature of the water. In fact, for maximum effect, use lukewarm. You may use that Pyrex double boiler to make this milk-substance. Fill up each of the containers the rest of the way with the powdered milk and shake well. You have just turned one gallon of perfectly reasonable whole milk into two gallons of nearly undrinkable swill for just pennies! Go lie down in a dark room and think of the permanent damage you are inflicting on your children.
My mom cut the milk regularly. If she came home and got too busy to cut the milk, say, making dinner, my brothers wasted no time in drinking most of it, right from the carton. My mom would freak out. Lee and Scott would feign ignorance.
“Oh, you hadn’t cut that yet? We didn’t know.”
“How could you not fucking know?” my mom would scream. “The seal wasn’t even broken!”
Depending upon my mom’s mood, they would sometimes get grounded for this transgression, but if there wasn’t too much screaming to go along with it, they didn’t care: it was worth it to have milk that tasted like milk.
Saturday was chore day. My mom had a huge matrix posted in the kitchen that was the foundation for the chore-trading. If my mom and step-dad came home and saw we had completed our chores, they might buy us ice cream, or my mom would make something special for us. Treats were not an everyday occurrence.
Sometimes we would get an extra hour of television (we had to make a weekly list of what we would watch and were limited to 6 hours of non-PBS programming a week, except during the Olympics). Sometimes mom would whip up a dessert. Banana bread was popular (especially because it used up all the brown bananas that mom refused to toss, which meant we didn’t have to eat them), but Tapioca pudding was our collective favorite!
Owing to the fact that mom had tried – and failed – to produce edible tapioca pudding with her Frankenmilk, she always made her pudding with whole milk, real sugar, and lots of vanilla. Sometimes she would even venture down to Chinatown and pick up tapioca pearls, but usually it was the stuff in the familiar red box. When she announced we were having tapioca, my brother or sister would volunteer to make the pudding, because this gave them direct access to the milk and they could skim a bit off the top.
For my part, I hated milk. My step-dad would force me to drink a glass a day. It would sit in front of me at the dining room table. It may have been that my early exposures to milk amounted to my mom’s economy version, but whatever it was, I would gag trying to get it down. I would later discover my lactose intolerance, but back in the 60’s we had to suck it up.
“You will sit here and you will drink that milk if you have to sit there all night, you little shit.” Jerry would tell me, teeth clenched. I would look over at my mom, who was stone-faced. Jerry would continue. “All right kids, clear the dishes. Leave nothing on the table but Tsan’s milk.” If he was feeling particularly vindictive, he would turn off the dining room lights and I would sit there in the dark.
“C’mon, Dad,” my brother Scott would say. “Just leave her alone. She’s just a little kid.” Scott and I fought morning to night, but he always came to my rescue.
If my brothers were feeling particularly charitable (which they often were), they would sneak into the dining room when mom wasn’t looking, and drink it for me. This was no easy feat. To get past my parents, they had to crawl from the kitchen on their hands and knees so they would not be seen above the couch in the living room, reach up without looking, down the milk, replace the glass, and crawl back out.
Later in the evening, when my mother would tuck me in, I’d ask why she didn’t come to my rescue. I never had to drink milk when it was just the two of us.
“It’s Jerry’s way. He wants you to be healthy and he thinks milk will do that. He loves you, too.”
“No he doesn’t. He hates me.” Many years later, just before his death, he would admit that, yes, he had hated me from the day I came into his life. Trust your kids.
On May 6th, 1973 my mother received a Dutch oven for her birthday. Not just any Dutch oven, it was the exact one that Julia Child used on her show “The French Chef.” It was a Le Creuset. It weighed about a million pounds because it was cast iron, like her skillets, but coated with ceramic glaze. It was very very expensive.
The outside was bright orange. The inside was creamy white. It was my mother’s first-ever pot that did not come to her second hand.
“Oh, this is the best gift I’ve every gotten,” she squealed. ‘I’m going to tuck it away until Thanksgiving and I’m going to make the eggnog in it.” For once, Jerry had done good.
My mother’s eggnog was a cooked eggnog. It took nearly an hour of stirring over a hot stove to make it, and she always made it in small batches because she never had the proper pot to make more. We had lots of pots and pans, but if they weren’t cast iron skillets from some flea market, they were cheap aluminum pans. These were OK for boiling spaghetti or cooking potatoes, but mom said the aluminum reacted with the egg and milk in eggnog and made them taste funny. Now she could make eggnog a gallon at a time.
“Don’t you kids touch my pot, at least until I’ve used it once!” she admonished with a teasing, wagging finger. It wasn’t a real threat, but we knew she should get first crack at the pot.
Some time later, my step-father brought home the weekly gallon of milk instead of my mother. He was far too important in our house to engage in manual labor and so he put it in the fridge for my mom to cut when she came home. By some miracle, my mother didn’t notice, and my brothers didn’t either. On Saturday morning, as Jean and Jerry sped away for their Saturday errands, there it was, a single beautiful gallon of milk, un-retouched.
“What should we do with it?” said my sister to us all. We stood there looking at the milk as if we’d never seen such a sight. And of course, there was no thought that we would just leave it.
“Let’s make a gallon tapioca pudding,” said my brother. “If we make enough of it, we can eat a bunch now, before they get home, and have some for dinner, too, without them knowing we had some now. And they won’t be mad at us because it’s dad’s favorite, too. We could use Jean’s new pot. It will hold at least that whole gallon of milk.” In fact, it was the only pot that could do this.
The proposal was daring indeed. Dessert twice in a day was crazy enough. That we were contemplating double-dipping with all the forbidden milk, in the forbidden pot was unthinkable. It had to be done.
My sister volunteered to make the pudding while my brothers and I split up her chores. She dragged the heavy pot out, measured out the ingredients, and began the slow process of stirring.
Tapioca is used as a thickening agent. In addition to its value as a standalone pudding, it can also be sprinkled into fruit pies in place of flour or cornstarch, and in a pinch, can be used for thickening gravies. Our kitchen did (and does) always have a box of tapioca in the pantry.
Combined with sugar and milk in a pudding (where the heat source comes from below), tapioca has a tendency to stick to the bottom of a pan and ultimately burn if any of the mixture is allowed to sit for any length of time. Like caramel, the process can start slowly, and even take on a wonderful burnt sugar smell, but once the tapioca, sugar, and milk begin to truly burn, the smell becomes pungent and sour, and the burnt flavor affects the entire batch, even if the top tapioca is not yet brown. Only constant passive scraping of the bottom with a spoon can prevent this. Lynne stayed, therefore, at the helm without wavering.
When the phone rang, and it was for her, she handed me the spoon to take over.
“Here,” she said. “Just stand here and stir and stir. I’ll come back and check it in a few minutes. Don’t do anything by stir it, freak. Don’t you fucking move!”
“OK,” I said, grabbing the spoon.
The pot was taller than I was, so I couldn’t see into it. I kept stirring, not realizing my spoon was never reaching the bottom of the pan. I could hear the blop blop blop of the pudding coming to a slow boil. I could smell the beginnings of caramel.
I think it’s done,” I yelled to my sister, engrossed in her private conversation. “Can you come look?” The texture was getting heavy and thick against the pressure of my spoon. It felt like pudding. I could smell the vanilla and sugar. It felt done. It was done.
“I”ll be right there,” she yelled back.
The smell was getting stronger.
“Lynnnnnnnnnnnne,” I think you should come now!” Then, the odor began to change and the burning milk smell quickly filled the kitchen.
By the time my brothers arrived – Lynne still chatting away on the phone – the entire ot was ruined.
There was a moment of silence followed by a collective panic.
“We have to get rid of this,” said Lynne, opening the windows in the kitchen to air out the smell. “Jean and dad will kill us!” Not only had we wiped out nearly a dozen eggs, but we had consumed an entire gallon of whole milk with nothing to show for it. We had to dispose of the evidence as best we could or there would be hell to pay.
“Jean will see it in the garbage can,” said Lee. “Let’s use the garbage disposal.” We poured a bit in the sink and turned on the disposal. The tapioca started bubbling back up, bringing with it dirty water and other foods recently disposed of. The disposal was broken. We panicked.
“The toilet! Let’s use the toilet!” While I used my hands to transfer the crud from the sink to the garbage, my siblings carried the heavy pot to my parents’ master bathroom, poured in a small amount to test it, and pushed the handle, only to see the water begin to rise. We had now backed up the toilet. Thinking quickly, Scott lifted the ball and averted a flooding disaster, but now we had to bail the toilet. We used mom’s mixing bowls from the kitchen to scoop out the excess water, and we slowly drained the toilet water and tapioca goo into the tub. While Lynne worked the plunger to get the last bits of pudding from the toilet, we panicked over what to do next. They would be home soon and the vast majority of tapioca was still in the pot.
“Let’s bury it with the dog shit!” We had finally lighted on the solution to at least part of our problem. Scott was enlisted to dig the hole, Lee would wash the pot, and I would refill the milk jug with 100% powdered milk. “Use double the powder,” my brother said, “That will make it look more like whole milk.”
There was nothing to be done about the eggs, so we all agreed we had made a giant omelet for lunch. My brothers would also have to drink – quietly – the 100% powdered milk, which Jean would likely re-dilute with more powdered milk. We were nearly done covering our tracks when Lee turned around from the kitchen sink, ghost-white.
“We are going to die,” my brother said soberly, showing us the bottom of mom’s new Le Creuset pot. The pudding had become so stuck that the entire surface had turned brown, and in one very noticeable spot, the sugar had burnt through the ceramic coating, revealing the black cast iron underneath. The pot was ruined and Jean had not used it even once.
A good bleach-soak can usually whiten anything – and did – but nothing can recoat ceramic cast-iron. Though we were able to return the inner surface to its creamy white color, there was no hiding the big black hole in the center. We were resigned to take our punishment, but our sister would not hear it.
“Listen you shits. We are not going to EVER admit to this. EVER. Give me that thing.” She pulled out every other pot we had in the cabinet and put the burnt pan it the nether regions of the cabinet, stacking up the old pots in front of it.
“It’s May,” she said. “By the time she wants to make eggnog in it, I’ll come up with something.” She pointed a finger at me.
“As for you, you tattle-telling little freak, don’t forget who was stirring the pudding when it burnt. Keep you mouth shut or I’ll throw you under the bus. Don’t think I won’t!”
The scream heard round the world was made later than year on November 27, 1972. We all came running to see what had happened and saw Jean, holding her new pot. My sister was first to speak, her iron grip digging a hole into my shoulder.
“What happened?” she said with the innocence of Mary. My mother’s voice was low and steady, but we could hear her seething just under the surface.
“Who. Did. This?” she snarled, looking at each of us. We stood, frozen.
“You did,” my sister said with a shrug. “You don’t remember?”
“No I don’t remember, and I never touched this pot,’ came the flat reply.
“Well, we all do,” my sister continued, undaunted, while the rest of us were frozen in our tracks. I watched as my brothers nodded their agreement with Lynne.
“What? What are you talking about, Lynne? I have no memory of this.”
“You must have blocked it out,” replied Lynne, cool as ice. “We were all there when it happened. It was that time you had that dinner party.”
Then something happened I’d never seen before. My mother began doubting herself.
“I . . . I have absolutely no memory of that,” she said, narrowing her eyes at my sister. “I mean, I really cannot remember a thing. How did it happen?”
“Oh, you were making a batch of sauce for lasagne, and the phone rang. I think you just left it on the stove.”
“Well,” my mom said. “That’s possible I guess. Gee, whoever would have thought I’d block that out.” She turned to me, the weak link, and raises one eyebrow. “So you remember this too?” I nodded agreement, Lynne’s grip tightening on my shoulder.
We could see that she still wasn’t entirely sure about the story, but with all of us a united front where usually there was none, she seemed to give in. I rarely lied to my mother. I believed she’d find out and I’d be in worse trouble. But she never did. I wouldn’t try to make her believe things happened that really didn’t for 30 more years.
2008 is marked first with John’s death in February. By April, she has gotten in a few fender-benders, lost 2 sets of keys, locked herself inside her house at least once, burnt out two electric tea kettles, and misplaced large amounts of tax documents. Frequently, she doesn’t leave the house for days. I am too unfamiliar with the symptoms of Alzheimer’s to know if this behavior is symptomatic of the disease, but it’s clear something is wrong.
Because Jean has given me permission to speak directly with her doctor, I make a call expressing my concern about Jean’s condition.
Her doctor says at this stage, the depression is probably a combination of both her husband’s death and the realization that she has Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s not uncommon, she says, for people to lapse into a depressed state, all of which can exacerbate her symptoms.
“She’s still early-stage, though,” says her doctor. “She’s got some living to do before things will get really difficult. She’s still driving and can live on her own, so long as you are checking in on her. I’d say you have about a year before you really have to reign her in. Check back with me in a year, or if things get worse. In the meantime, get her to fill those prescriptions, and here,” she hands me a piece of paper, “check out some of these groups. They’ll give you a lot of information about Alzheimer’s.”
The next time I visit I catch her in a weak moment. She is wearing the same dirty t-shirt I found her in when she was caring for John. She clearly has not slept. I insist and she agrees to try the meds, on condition that they are only temporary, to help her get over John, and not – absolutely not – for any goddamned Alzheimer’s crap. Her doctor proscribes an anti-depressant and a memory enhancement drug, careful to say only that it is for mild forgetfulness during stress.
We put a tracking device on her phone. So long as she has it with her, we can find her.
In my classes, I learn that Alzheimer’s comes in fits and spurts. The depression is common because sufferers know something is not right. Somehow, I had gotten myself to believe that she wouldn’t know what she didn’t know, so it would be as if things just didn’t happen.
“It doesn’t work that way,” said the nurse at the senior center. “Your loved ones will absolutely know they are forgetting things. They will be cognizant of their memory lapses and be fully aware their mind is going. They will read numbers that once made sense, like on a checkbook, and not be able to make out their meaning. There will be significant logic deficits, where they cannot get from point A to point B in a concept. Worse, all of this will cause nearly paralyzing fear that may manifest itself as fierce anger if you point it out. Be kind to them.”
Over the few weeks I attend the classes and support groups, I learn more about the disease. She will forget how to hold her bowels. She will forget how to eat. Her brain will even forget how to swallow. Eventually, the disease will kill her: she will forget how to have a heartbeat. I think of the difficult past she has had and know she’s been given a raw fucking deal.
One month later, the drugs are having a positive effect. After my own education in Alzheimer’s, I find myself trying to see things Jean’s way: she is not pre-Alzheimer’s, it’s just a little dementia. She is no different than any other aging person who’s been under stress. We even let her hang out with our 5 year old, now that she’s not burning up tea kettles. We do, however, put a tracking device on her phone so we can find her, and tell her not to drive Moses around (he gets car-sick, we tell her, but really, we don’t want her behind the wheel with him in the back).
One afternoon, I call to come pick up my son and there’s no answer. I try the mobile phone. No answer. Dan and I turn on the tracking device, just to make sure she’s at home. She’s not. We panic.
“It’s showing she’s on San Pablo,” says Dan, sitting at the computer.
“Oh, OK. No big deal. She’s probably taken Moses for ice cream down at El Cerrito Plaza,” I say.
“No,” his voice is steady. “She’s way up San Pablo, and the little indicator is showing she’s still moving. Where the hell could she be taking him?! GET IN THE CAR!”
I jump in the car, while Dan stays at the computer. While I drive, panic-stricken with my mobile headset in my ear, he tells me whether I’m close.”
“Turn left. No, hang on, she’s making a u-turn. Go straight. What the fuck?” Jean’s driving seems erratic. I am turning down streets in Richmond neighborhoods I don’t recognize. I cannot imagine what she is doing up this far. Occasionally I drop Dan to call her mobile. She doesn’t answer. I am imagining some sort of Gramdma-Grandson Thelma and Louise scenario. Dan calls back.
“OK, the car is stopped. You are about a mile away. Keep driving.” His voice is steady, but I can tell he’s concerned. I am trying to maintain control, but now I’m thinking they were carjacked and have been forced into some dark room where my child will be shot in the head.
With traffic, he says, I’m about 5 minutes away. I watch the road carefully, looking for the white Prius she loves so much. The 5 minutes seems like an hour. I am angry, worried, tired, excited, and grateful for technology. I find the car. I find them. They are having Moses’ blanket repaired by Mom’s Korean neighbor who has a dry cleaners and tailoring shop. All is well. She had put the phone in the trunk and didn’t hear it, that’s all. It’s the last time Jean is ever alone with our son again.
“I feel great!” Jean says to me one day when I stop by. “Thank you so much for those pills. I don’t know why I was so resistant,” she adds. Maybe she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, after all.
Jean continues to mourn John’s loss, but she’s getting out, going places with friends, having book salons at the house, even considering taking a trip up to Oregon with John’s grandson.
We take her camping, which she enjoys. Our friend, Deborah who has adopted Mom as her own, rides along with her to test her driving, which seems fine. Still, we are careful to call every day. It’s a hassle to do it, but I find it less stressful than the alternative of not knowing where she is. Jean has read an article about brain development and now constantly has a Sudoko puzzle book with her. This impresses me, given my complete inability to comprehend their attractiveness. They seem to be working, however. For awhile, at least.
By July, she has had quite a few fender bender accidents. Nothing major, but I realize now she won’t be driving soon. I read an article about a man with Alzheimer’s who stepped on the gas instead of the brake, killed some pedestrians and lost his retirement saving to their relatives. At the end of Jean’s next visit to the doctor, where she is given a cognitive test, her condition is reported to the Department of Motor Vehicles. She loses her license.
Thanksgiving that year is at our home in Berkeley. My in-laws fly out from Wisconsin and John’s kids come down for dinner, staying with Jean. Jean is in good spirits at Thanksgiving, eating heartily and enjoying the company. She has her Sudoko puzzle book in tow, touting it as the reason she has regained her brain power and memory.
“There’s just one problem with these Sudoko puzzles your mom has done,” my father-in-law says to me, when Jean is out of earshot. A puzzle fan himself, he has picked up her Sudoko book and leafed through her answers. “All of them are wrong.”
Friday, November 23, 2012
Mom Starts Throwing Parties Again. And Dishes Again.
Growing up, there was a tradition in our family that on our birthdays, we didn’t have to have a regular dinner. We could choose instead to go to Berkeley Farms Restaurant, a fountain restaurant owned by a large dairy company in town, and get ice cream sundaes. Parents, too.
Owing to my parents’ Co-op board positions and their overall stance on sugar and processed foods, we were not allowed to have sweets in the house, except for the occasional batch of carob chip cookies which no one ate. Once in awhile, my parents would bring back a ½ gallon of ice milk, which would sit in the freezer until it got gummy and crystallized because it was so bad even the kids wouldn’t touch it. So, when our birthdays came around, we jumped at the chance to have the real stuff, and as much of it as we wanted. This meant we were guaranteed at least one dessert in March, April, May, June, July, and November.
I didn’t love ice cream because it gave me a stomach ache, but the thought of being able to shovel gobs of caramel and chocolate down my gullet with impunity was too enticing to give up. Besides, my parents were not big on birthday parties, so the trip to Berkeley Farms was likely the only birthday celebration we’d get to have.
When we lived in Point Reyes, the drive to Berkeley Farms took nearly 45 minutes. In 1972, after being run out of town, we moved to Corte Madera which made the trip more convenient. In fact, we noticed our parents used pretty much any excuse to “celebrate at Berkeley Farms,” even when we kids were not into it. In later years, we kids chalked it up to my mom’s addiction to ice cream.
“How would you like to have a birthday party?” my mom asked, shortly after we moved to the new house. “A real, honest-to-goodness birthday party!”
“Really?” I asked. When we lived in Point Reyes, I had only one friend, a girl named Kachina. She didn’t call me nigger, which was largely the basis for the friendship, but it wasn’t really enough for a party.
“Really. We’ll have cake and ice cream and we’ll play Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and everything. We are going to pull out all the stops!”
What I didn’t know was Jean had been pulling out all the stops for the past year just to make me feel like a normal kid, despite living in a racist town. I had no idea she had to go to the school board twice to get them to reverse the diagnosis of me as “retarded” or to correct the failing marks my teacher gave me, despite my doing A work.
I was oblivious to the real reason she wouldn’t let me cross through most families’ back property, like all the other kids did. I could only go to Kachina’s house, which was through our property and onto hers.
I was never told the truth about why I could not go over to other kids’ houses to play was their parents had not wanted a nigger to cross their doorstep. When my teacher would somehow “forget” to give me a toothbrush on “dental hygiene day,” or run out of red paper or doilies for me to make a card on Valentine’s Day just when it was my turn to get some, magically those things would appear the next day at the house.
“Huh, what’s this?” Jean would say, when she got home from work the day after I had told her about some such other indignity at the school. Though I had been home for hours, I didn’t notice the brown package she “found” on the back porch.
“It’s got my name on it,” I’d say, excited to see something addressed to me. I never noticed the package had no postage on it, or that it was nothing more than a brown stationery store bag taped shut.
“Why don’t you open it?” she’d say. Inside would be a special toothbrush, or perhaps a cache of red construction paper and doilies, glitter and glue. There would be a note: “Dear Tsan: we understand Mrs. Roberts ran out of Valentine’s Day construction materials yesterday. Please find enclosed replacement materials for your use. Thank you for your consideration.” I never suspected. She never took credit. She could always find an excuse to make it all real and right for me.
I celebrated my 9th birthday in the new house, with new friends from my new school. My mom was never much for overt sentimentality, but this year she really did pull out all the stops, just like she used to do at her cocktail and dinner parties before she was married.
Jean didn’t embarrass me by putting out soggy peanut butter sandwiches on Co-op special formula bread (the special formula made the bread inedible). She refrained from serving the carob crunch cookies. There were actual Lay’s potato chips in the bowl with Lipton onion dip, just like she served at the grown-up parties.
She bought dry ice and made swirly punch with lime sherbet that smoked like witches brew. She made pigs in blankets will real hot dogs instead of those colorless nitrite-free things. She made the biggest lemon sheet cake I’d ever seen, filled strawberries and fresh cream and topped with mounds and mounds of 7-minute frosting. And she served it with real ice cream.
We played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and everyone brought presents for me. The punch was a huge hit, and all the kids though I was so cool for serving it (the trick is to drop the dry ice in an empty soup can secured to the center bottom of the punch bowl with rocks). There were no goody bags, but everyone got to leave with a piece of cake.
The best gift of all was from my mom. She gave me Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls she had custom made. These dolls didn’t have white faces and shocks of red hair like the ones you get at Mr. Mopps. Instead, each was a different shade of brown, one representing my dad and the other representing my mom. They were nearly as big as I was and for the next 9 years, they took center stage on my bed. It was the best birthday ever.
7 minute frosting, also known as Swiss meringue buttercream, takes a whole lot longer than 7 minutes. It’s why most people don’t make it and instead satisfy themselves with the gritty butter-and-powdered sugar nonsense known as American buttercream. To make American buttercream, you dump a bunch of powdered sugar and butter together in a bowl and beat the crap out of it, adding vanilla or lemon, or coffee or maple or whatever to give it some flavor. The point is, it’s made with powdered sugar which means it will never be totally creamy smooth (there will always be some grit to it). Worse, within 20 minutes, it will have a crust on it. If you are vegan and do not like ganache (which means you are a communist), you will have to tolerate such garbage, because Swiss buttercream contains eggs. But if you have any culinary self-respect, make the real stuff. Besides, your children will remember the length of time you spent making their cake as directly proportional to the amount you love them.
This is my recipe for Swiss Meringue Buttercream, and it may very well be my mother’s recipe, too, although she was not much for measuring. It’s so old I cannot remember how I came to have it but I have used it without fail for years. For the record, the measurements can been fudged. The frosting it makes is positively the best, most fluffy and wonderful frosting you will ever eat. Seriously. No really.
The recipe uses fancy terms like “double-boiler” and “whisk attachment.” I have never actually owned a real double boiler. I prefer the homemade 6-cup Pyrex measuring cup with an open handle set into a large pot. It works perfectly, allows for visibility to your water, and doesn’t require you to go out and buy something you’re not going to use but once every 6 months. You do, however, need a hand whisk.
Regarding the whisk attachment, they come standard with a stand mixer. Get to know it. If, however, you’re not that fancy, you may use a plain old hand mixer. It will work just fine and it was used by countless cooks in the 60s who cared enough to make 7 minute frosting instead of that trailer trash crap.
What will absolutely not work with this recipe is a food processor. You will not be pleased with the results, you will call me a liar about this being the best frosting ever, and I will fire back that you did not truly listen to me. Now, if you are like my sister, you will do exactly what I tell you not to do. Good luck with that.
4 large egg whites
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups (1 lb) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tbl Vanilla
In top of double boiler, over simmering water, whisk together the eggs whites, sugar, salt, and cream of tartar until the mixture becomes too hot to comfortably touch (7 - 9 minutes). Remove the mixture from the heat and using a rubber spatula, transfer it to metal bowl of mixer fitted with whisk attachment (make sure the bowl is free of oil). If you do not have a stand mixer, you can use a hand mixer. Beat the mixture until the eggwhites hold a stiff peak and the bowl is no longer warm to the touch, about 8 to 9 minutes. Slowly add soft butter, one or two chunks at a time, beating after each addition, until all the butter is incorporated (do not worry if the mixture looks a little curdled before you whip all the butter in; it will come correct).
This makes enough frosting for 36 cupcakes or one standard layer cake. If you want, you can spruce it up with other flavorings once you’ve added the butter. If you like coffee, use instant espresso dissolved in a ¼ cup of water. A lemon frosting calls for the zest and juice of one lemon, plus 1 tsp lemon oil. Caramel can be simulated by substituting brown sugar for white sugar in the recipe, but authentic caramel frosting requires a different process.
The frosting recipe, made without the butter (that is, you stop once the eggs have been whipped to a frenzy and are cool to the touch), is a cross between meringue and marshmallow fluff (without the nasty corn syrup), and it is positively sublime. Forget that grainy meringue that comes with your favorite lemon meringue pie recipe. Instead, us this meringue, piped through a pastry bag fitted with the star tip, and brown the tops with a propane torch. Everyone should have a propane torch. You can buy them at the hardware store.
After my birthday, Jean started having parties of her own again much to my delight. Now that I was older, I was allowed to help her more in the kitchen. By 1972 she had moved on from rumaki and little wienies in red sauce, and was reading articles from places like New York where they were writing about all sorts of international foods. My mom bought a jar of grape leaves from a small import store in San Francisco called Cost Plus (named because everything was sold at the company’s cost, plus 10%, no matter what it was). We made grape leaves and guests were wowed.
Jean tried miniature macaroni and cheeses baked in individual muffin tins, with unknown cheeses like camembert and asiago, and people couldn’t stop eating them. She covered a giant wheel of brie with brown sugar and slivered almonds, set it in a hollowed-out bread boul and broiled it. Guests couldn’t get enough. She bought an encyclopedia of cookery and slowly worked her way through the recipes, some with more success than others.
Once, my brother surprised her in the kitchen while she was making brunch for 10. The main dish was a baked omelette. While she was getting together the eggs, my job was to make the cheese sauce, which would be served in the cool fondue pot she got at the Goodwill (my mom’s instructions were “take a hunk of that Velveeta, half a stick of butter, some tarragon and put it all in the fondue pot. Light the Sterno and stir it til I say it’s done.”).
“Holy shit, Jean, what the hell are you doing?” my brother asked, watching her dump an entire can of Budweiser into the eggs. “That shit is gross.”
“Beer?! Ew. I’m not eating that,” I said, and ran outside where the guests were snacking on a morning spread of banana bread and fresh fruit.
“There’s beer in the eggs!” I yelled to the happy guests, my face contorted to show my disgust. The eggs came to the table in a perfectly baked circle, and except for the piece my mom ate to show everyone they really were good, left in exactly the same way. I was grounded for a week (the eggs actually were disgusting. Don’t try this).
If the party was a dinner party, my step-father would be part of it (and my mom had to figure out how to insert mashed potatoes into the menu). If the parties were cocktail or game parties, where people had to mingle and be civil to one another, Jerry required her to make dinner for him and then would hole himself up in his office with a gallon jug of wine and tell everyone he had to do some revolutionary writing, so he couldn’t be bothered with their trivial and droll conversation. When he was there, the parties usually ended with him calling one of the guests an asshole.
We were still not allowed at the adult parties, but we knew when something had gone wrong. First, we were often awakened by the late night screaming fight between my parents. Both of them had tempers, my mother’s fueled by embarrassment, my step-father’s fueled by alcohol.
Their arguments always went something like this.
“You fucking asshole! How could you be so rude? What is the matter with you?”
“I can’t help it if your girlfriend is a capitalist cunt and stupid to boot. She deserved everything she got and you don’t need assholes like that as a friend.”
“Get the FUCK out of my bedroom. Get. The Fuck. Out.” BOOM! A shoe (or other bedroom object) would hit the wall.
The following day, without talking much about the disaster, my mother would put a piece of blank card stock and some paints or pens in front of me and ask me to draw something nice. This would them be used for a note of thanks (and apology) to the guest on whom Jerry unleashed his anger. I got very good and drawing flowers and my siblings got very good and requesting sleep-overs at other people’s homes. My sister never came home.
Jean’s folly was always her temper. She controlled it – with some exceptions – when guests were around, but we all walked on eggshells around the house and did our best not to set her off, which wasn’t difficult to do. A mis-made bed, a poorly cleaned refrigerator, anything could be a trigger. We all agreed it was far better to get whacked in the face – Jean’s punishment of choice – that to be screamed at. Her voice could curdle milk, and the vitriol with which she rained down her terror reduced you to a quivering mass.
When the boys got too big to smack across the face, she took to screaming and breaking things.
“God DAMMIT, Lee,” she’d say, and grab a wine bottle and smash it. “See what you made me do? Clean that up now!” At some point, the demand stopped working altogether. Lee just walked away, leaving the smashed glass in the place where it landed. Lynne never came home, and Scott burrowed himself in his room, coming down only to do chores and eat dinner. I continued to cower in her presence.
Years later, she would apologize for her temper and for raising her hands to us. The apology was heartfelt, and she never used the excuse we did for her behavior that it was a different time; a time when it was OK to hit your kids and scream at them. She was genuinely sorry, and asked my forgiveness. I had forgiven her years ago. In fact, comparing notes with other friends my age, I came to realize our parents had all done a number on us. Besides, Jean did more good than harm. Given her role models for child-rearing (a mentally ill abusive aunt and a flighty mother who cared more for her own preservation than her children’s), and her juggling of 3 husbands each of whom had mild to significant issues with alcohol and women, it could have been significantly worse.
Jean’s marriage to her third and final husband, John, does a lot to mellow her temper. John travels in the academic circle. He is not a hustler, like her first husband. He is not a faux-intellectual, like her second. He is the real deal.
While they are married, Jean and John dine with chancellors, and college presidents, and authors, people who are recognized nationally and internationally for their contributions to the world. One simply does not “lose it” around such people. Wanting to cultivate the air of respectability around John’s colleagues and friends, Jean sets aside her ghetto persona, and learns much more devious ways to humiliate people than smacking them across the face of calling them stupid. For years the standard temper tantrum is deep-sixed. Then John dies.
It is April 2008. John has been dead for nearly two months and we are pulling together the memorial service. John’s children will attend, but they do not respond to her requests to help plan the event or say something at the memorial, so Jean is responsible for pulling the event together herself. Normally, Jean would tuck into planning an event as big at this with the fervor of a snake handler, but she cannot seem to pull it together.
“Can you do the catering?” she asks me, one morning, about a week out. We scramble to get a caterer.
“Can you get the programs together?” she asks a few days before the memorial. We get a friend to put together a simple program.
“Can you work with the minister to orchestrate the day?” We go together to confirm the details of the service. Fortunately, the minister is far more prepared that we and has already done the necessary leg work to make things OK.
“Can you find a way to play the Carmina Burana?”
If a memorial can be termed a success, this was one. Over 100 people show to pay their respects. The minister does a masterful job in highlighting who John was, and she even finds a way to smooth things quickly when one of John’s sons – having no memory of being invited to say something – becomes incensed that he was not included in the list of speakers. The caterer sets the exactly right tone with the food – elegant but not festive. The music is John’s favorite. And Jean is recognized for her place in his life.
Jean’s mood does not get better. She is completely destroyed over the death of her husband and cannot seem to get into a frame of mind to move on. I am attending lectures on Alzheimer’s at the local senior centers and I know depression is one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s. It is also one of the only symptoms of Alzheimer’s that can actually be helped by medication. Although I know she will not recognize her disease, I suggest that she might be helped by some anti-depressants.
“Just until you get further away from John’s death, mom. Not forever,” I offer.
“No. I don’t need anti-depressants,” she says flatly, while we sit in her dining room. I have poured her a glass of wine. She is not a big drinker, but it has been a long week. John’s kids have left, the memorial is over, and she is left with nothing to do. The table is covered with pictures of John, trip journals from excursions they’ve taken, sympathy cards, and photo albums. She leafs through them endlessly and recounts stories. I wonder if my love for my own husband is as strong.
“It’s normal to be depressed when someone dies, Mom. You can’t just sit around the house and mope. You gave up the last three years of your life to him. It’s time to get out and see the world.”
Something I say triggers her. BAM! The wine glass goes flying across the dining room, hitting the wall and shattering. Carmenere is quickly soaking into the light gray carpeting.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
Here is how to remove red wine from white carpeting.
Dump an entire box of salt on the stain. Leave the salt – without touching it – until all the wine has soaked into it and the salt is completely dry. This make take 3-5 days. Vacuum the salt.
Owing to my parents’ Co-op board positions and their overall stance on sugar and processed foods, we were not allowed to have sweets in the house, except for the occasional batch of carob chip cookies which no one ate. Once in awhile, my parents would bring back a ½ gallon of ice milk, which would sit in the freezer until it got gummy and crystallized because it was so bad even the kids wouldn’t touch it. So, when our birthdays came around, we jumped at the chance to have the real stuff, and as much of it as we wanted. This meant we were guaranteed at least one dessert in March, April, May, June, July, and November.
I didn’t love ice cream because it gave me a stomach ache, but the thought of being able to shovel gobs of caramel and chocolate down my gullet with impunity was too enticing to give up. Besides, my parents were not big on birthday parties, so the trip to Berkeley Farms was likely the only birthday celebration we’d get to have.
When we lived in Point Reyes, the drive to Berkeley Farms took nearly 45 minutes. In 1972, after being run out of town, we moved to Corte Madera which made the trip more convenient. In fact, we noticed our parents used pretty much any excuse to “celebrate at Berkeley Farms,” even when we kids were not into it. In later years, we kids chalked it up to my mom’s addiction to ice cream.
“How would you like to have a birthday party?” my mom asked, shortly after we moved to the new house. “A real, honest-to-goodness birthday party!”
“Really?” I asked. When we lived in Point Reyes, I had only one friend, a girl named Kachina. She didn’t call me nigger, which was largely the basis for the friendship, but it wasn’t really enough for a party.
“Really. We’ll have cake and ice cream and we’ll play Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and everything. We are going to pull out all the stops!”
What I didn’t know was Jean had been pulling out all the stops for the past year just to make me feel like a normal kid, despite living in a racist town. I had no idea she had to go to the school board twice to get them to reverse the diagnosis of me as “retarded” or to correct the failing marks my teacher gave me, despite my doing A work.
I was oblivious to the real reason she wouldn’t let me cross through most families’ back property, like all the other kids did. I could only go to Kachina’s house, which was through our property and onto hers.
I was never told the truth about why I could not go over to other kids’ houses to play was their parents had not wanted a nigger to cross their doorstep. When my teacher would somehow “forget” to give me a toothbrush on “dental hygiene day,” or run out of red paper or doilies for me to make a card on Valentine’s Day just when it was my turn to get some, magically those things would appear the next day at the house.
“Huh, what’s this?” Jean would say, when she got home from work the day after I had told her about some such other indignity at the school. Though I had been home for hours, I didn’t notice the brown package she “found” on the back porch.
“It’s got my name on it,” I’d say, excited to see something addressed to me. I never noticed the package had no postage on it, or that it was nothing more than a brown stationery store bag taped shut.
“Why don’t you open it?” she’d say. Inside would be a special toothbrush, or perhaps a cache of red construction paper and doilies, glitter and glue. There would be a note: “Dear Tsan: we understand Mrs. Roberts ran out of Valentine’s Day construction materials yesterday. Please find enclosed replacement materials for your use. Thank you for your consideration.” I never suspected. She never took credit. She could always find an excuse to make it all real and right for me.
I celebrated my 9th birthday in the new house, with new friends from my new school. My mom was never much for overt sentimentality, but this year she really did pull out all the stops, just like she used to do at her cocktail and dinner parties before she was married.
Jean didn’t embarrass me by putting out soggy peanut butter sandwiches on Co-op special formula bread (the special formula made the bread inedible). She refrained from serving the carob crunch cookies. There were actual Lay’s potato chips in the bowl with Lipton onion dip, just like she served at the grown-up parties.
She bought dry ice and made swirly punch with lime sherbet that smoked like witches brew. She made pigs in blankets will real hot dogs instead of those colorless nitrite-free things. She made the biggest lemon sheet cake I’d ever seen, filled strawberries and fresh cream and topped with mounds and mounds of 7-minute frosting. And she served it with real ice cream.
We played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and everyone brought presents for me. The punch was a huge hit, and all the kids though I was so cool for serving it (the trick is to drop the dry ice in an empty soup can secured to the center bottom of the punch bowl with rocks). There were no goody bags, but everyone got to leave with a piece of cake.
The best gift of all was from my mom. She gave me Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls she had custom made. These dolls didn’t have white faces and shocks of red hair like the ones you get at Mr. Mopps. Instead, each was a different shade of brown, one representing my dad and the other representing my mom. They were nearly as big as I was and for the next 9 years, they took center stage on my bed. It was the best birthday ever.
7 minute frosting, also known as Swiss meringue buttercream, takes a whole lot longer than 7 minutes. It’s why most people don’t make it and instead satisfy themselves with the gritty butter-and-powdered sugar nonsense known as American buttercream. To make American buttercream, you dump a bunch of powdered sugar and butter together in a bowl and beat the crap out of it, adding vanilla or lemon, or coffee or maple or whatever to give it some flavor. The point is, it’s made with powdered sugar which means it will never be totally creamy smooth (there will always be some grit to it). Worse, within 20 minutes, it will have a crust on it. If you are vegan and do not like ganache (which means you are a communist), you will have to tolerate such garbage, because Swiss buttercream contains eggs. But if you have any culinary self-respect, make the real stuff. Besides, your children will remember the length of time you spent making their cake as directly proportional to the amount you love them.
This is my recipe for Swiss Meringue Buttercream, and it may very well be my mother’s recipe, too, although she was not much for measuring. It’s so old I cannot remember how I came to have it but I have used it without fail for years. For the record, the measurements can been fudged. The frosting it makes is positively the best, most fluffy and wonderful frosting you will ever eat. Seriously. No really.
The recipe uses fancy terms like “double-boiler” and “whisk attachment.” I have never actually owned a real double boiler. I prefer the homemade 6-cup Pyrex measuring cup with an open handle set into a large pot. It works perfectly, allows for visibility to your water, and doesn’t require you to go out and buy something you’re not going to use but once every 6 months. You do, however, need a hand whisk.
Regarding the whisk attachment, they come standard with a stand mixer. Get to know it. If, however, you’re not that fancy, you may use a plain old hand mixer. It will work just fine and it was used by countless cooks in the 60s who cared enough to make 7 minute frosting instead of that trailer trash crap.
What will absolutely not work with this recipe is a food processor. You will not be pleased with the results, you will call me a liar about this being the best frosting ever, and I will fire back that you did not truly listen to me. Now, if you are like my sister, you will do exactly what I tell you not to do. Good luck with that.
4 large egg whites
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups (1 lb) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tbl Vanilla
In top of double boiler, over simmering water, whisk together the eggs whites, sugar, salt, and cream of tartar until the mixture becomes too hot to comfortably touch (7 - 9 minutes). Remove the mixture from the heat and using a rubber spatula, transfer it to metal bowl of mixer fitted with whisk attachment (make sure the bowl is free of oil). If you do not have a stand mixer, you can use a hand mixer. Beat the mixture until the eggwhites hold a stiff peak and the bowl is no longer warm to the touch, about 8 to 9 minutes. Slowly add soft butter, one or two chunks at a time, beating after each addition, until all the butter is incorporated (do not worry if the mixture looks a little curdled before you whip all the butter in; it will come correct).
This makes enough frosting for 36 cupcakes or one standard layer cake. If you want, you can spruce it up with other flavorings once you’ve added the butter. If you like coffee, use instant espresso dissolved in a ¼ cup of water. A lemon frosting calls for the zest and juice of one lemon, plus 1 tsp lemon oil. Caramel can be simulated by substituting brown sugar for white sugar in the recipe, but authentic caramel frosting requires a different process.
The frosting recipe, made without the butter (that is, you stop once the eggs have been whipped to a frenzy and are cool to the touch), is a cross between meringue and marshmallow fluff (without the nasty corn syrup), and it is positively sublime. Forget that grainy meringue that comes with your favorite lemon meringue pie recipe. Instead, us this meringue, piped through a pastry bag fitted with the star tip, and brown the tops with a propane torch. Everyone should have a propane torch. You can buy them at the hardware store.
After my birthday, Jean started having parties of her own again much to my delight. Now that I was older, I was allowed to help her more in the kitchen. By 1972 she had moved on from rumaki and little wienies in red sauce, and was reading articles from places like New York where they were writing about all sorts of international foods. My mom bought a jar of grape leaves from a small import store in San Francisco called Cost Plus (named because everything was sold at the company’s cost, plus 10%, no matter what it was). We made grape leaves and guests were wowed.
Jean tried miniature macaroni and cheeses baked in individual muffin tins, with unknown cheeses like camembert and asiago, and people couldn’t stop eating them. She covered a giant wheel of brie with brown sugar and slivered almonds, set it in a hollowed-out bread boul and broiled it. Guests couldn’t get enough. She bought an encyclopedia of cookery and slowly worked her way through the recipes, some with more success than others.
Once, my brother surprised her in the kitchen while she was making brunch for 10. The main dish was a baked omelette. While she was getting together the eggs, my job was to make the cheese sauce, which would be served in the cool fondue pot she got at the Goodwill (my mom’s instructions were “take a hunk of that Velveeta, half a stick of butter, some tarragon and put it all in the fondue pot. Light the Sterno and stir it til I say it’s done.”).
“Holy shit, Jean, what the hell are you doing?” my brother asked, watching her dump an entire can of Budweiser into the eggs. “That shit is gross.”
“Beer?! Ew. I’m not eating that,” I said, and ran outside where the guests were snacking on a morning spread of banana bread and fresh fruit.
“There’s beer in the eggs!” I yelled to the happy guests, my face contorted to show my disgust. The eggs came to the table in a perfectly baked circle, and except for the piece my mom ate to show everyone they really were good, left in exactly the same way. I was grounded for a week (the eggs actually were disgusting. Don’t try this).
If the party was a dinner party, my step-father would be part of it (and my mom had to figure out how to insert mashed potatoes into the menu). If the parties were cocktail or game parties, where people had to mingle and be civil to one another, Jerry required her to make dinner for him and then would hole himself up in his office with a gallon jug of wine and tell everyone he had to do some revolutionary writing, so he couldn’t be bothered with their trivial and droll conversation. When he was there, the parties usually ended with him calling one of the guests an asshole.
We were still not allowed at the adult parties, but we knew when something had gone wrong. First, we were often awakened by the late night screaming fight between my parents. Both of them had tempers, my mother’s fueled by embarrassment, my step-father’s fueled by alcohol.
Their arguments always went something like this.
“You fucking asshole! How could you be so rude? What is the matter with you?”
“I can’t help it if your girlfriend is a capitalist cunt and stupid to boot. She deserved everything she got and you don’t need assholes like that as a friend.”
“Get the FUCK out of my bedroom. Get. The Fuck. Out.” BOOM! A shoe (or other bedroom object) would hit the wall.
The following day, without talking much about the disaster, my mother would put a piece of blank card stock and some paints or pens in front of me and ask me to draw something nice. This would them be used for a note of thanks (and apology) to the guest on whom Jerry unleashed his anger. I got very good and drawing flowers and my siblings got very good and requesting sleep-overs at other people’s homes. My sister never came home.
Jean’s folly was always her temper. She controlled it – with some exceptions – when guests were around, but we all walked on eggshells around the house and did our best not to set her off, which wasn’t difficult to do. A mis-made bed, a poorly cleaned refrigerator, anything could be a trigger. We all agreed it was far better to get whacked in the face – Jean’s punishment of choice – that to be screamed at. Her voice could curdle milk, and the vitriol with which she rained down her terror reduced you to a quivering mass.
When the boys got too big to smack across the face, she took to screaming and breaking things.
“God DAMMIT, Lee,” she’d say, and grab a wine bottle and smash it. “See what you made me do? Clean that up now!” At some point, the demand stopped working altogether. Lee just walked away, leaving the smashed glass in the place where it landed. Lynne never came home, and Scott burrowed himself in his room, coming down only to do chores and eat dinner. I continued to cower in her presence.
Years later, she would apologize for her temper and for raising her hands to us. The apology was heartfelt, and she never used the excuse we did for her behavior that it was a different time; a time when it was OK to hit your kids and scream at them. She was genuinely sorry, and asked my forgiveness. I had forgiven her years ago. In fact, comparing notes with other friends my age, I came to realize our parents had all done a number on us. Besides, Jean did more good than harm. Given her role models for child-rearing (a mentally ill abusive aunt and a flighty mother who cared more for her own preservation than her children’s), and her juggling of 3 husbands each of whom had mild to significant issues with alcohol and women, it could have been significantly worse.
Jean’s marriage to her third and final husband, John, does a lot to mellow her temper. John travels in the academic circle. He is not a hustler, like her first husband. He is not a faux-intellectual, like her second. He is the real deal.
While they are married, Jean and John dine with chancellors, and college presidents, and authors, people who are recognized nationally and internationally for their contributions to the world. One simply does not “lose it” around such people. Wanting to cultivate the air of respectability around John’s colleagues and friends, Jean sets aside her ghetto persona, and learns much more devious ways to humiliate people than smacking them across the face of calling them stupid. For years the standard temper tantrum is deep-sixed. Then John dies.
It is April 2008. John has been dead for nearly two months and we are pulling together the memorial service. John’s children will attend, but they do not respond to her requests to help plan the event or say something at the memorial, so Jean is responsible for pulling the event together herself. Normally, Jean would tuck into planning an event as big at this with the fervor of a snake handler, but she cannot seem to pull it together.
“Can you do the catering?” she asks me, one morning, about a week out. We scramble to get a caterer.
“Can you get the programs together?” she asks a few days before the memorial. We get a friend to put together a simple program.
“Can you work with the minister to orchestrate the day?” We go together to confirm the details of the service. Fortunately, the minister is far more prepared that we and has already done the necessary leg work to make things OK.
“Can you find a way to play the Carmina Burana?”
If a memorial can be termed a success, this was one. Over 100 people show to pay their respects. The minister does a masterful job in highlighting who John was, and she even finds a way to smooth things quickly when one of John’s sons – having no memory of being invited to say something – becomes incensed that he was not included in the list of speakers. The caterer sets the exactly right tone with the food – elegant but not festive. The music is John’s favorite. And Jean is recognized for her place in his life.
Jean’s mood does not get better. She is completely destroyed over the death of her husband and cannot seem to get into a frame of mind to move on. I am attending lectures on Alzheimer’s at the local senior centers and I know depression is one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s. It is also one of the only symptoms of Alzheimer’s that can actually be helped by medication. Although I know she will not recognize her disease, I suggest that she might be helped by some anti-depressants.
“Just until you get further away from John’s death, mom. Not forever,” I offer.
“No. I don’t need anti-depressants,” she says flatly, while we sit in her dining room. I have poured her a glass of wine. She is not a big drinker, but it has been a long week. John’s kids have left, the memorial is over, and she is left with nothing to do. The table is covered with pictures of John, trip journals from excursions they’ve taken, sympathy cards, and photo albums. She leafs through them endlessly and recounts stories. I wonder if my love for my own husband is as strong.
“It’s normal to be depressed when someone dies, Mom. You can’t just sit around the house and mope. You gave up the last three years of your life to him. It’s time to get out and see the world.”
Something I say triggers her. BAM! The wine glass goes flying across the dining room, hitting the wall and shattering. Carmenere is quickly soaking into the light gray carpeting.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
Here is how to remove red wine from white carpeting.
Dump an entire box of salt on the stain. Leave the salt – without touching it – until all the wine has soaked into it and the salt is completely dry. This make take 3-5 days. Vacuum the salt.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Chapter 5
One Suicide, One Death, and a Crapload of Chicken Soup.
With nearly 80 years of practice under her belt and excellent role models like my grandmother and my aunt, Jean is well-practiced in managing stress through denial by the time 2008 rolls around. She has honed her craft to an art form. When she is stressed, she cooks.
Although she is now officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Jean tells people who will listen she’s as healthy as a horse, and takes only a half aspirin daily. This is true only because she has tossed out any scripts given to her by Dr. Davis that appeared to be related to dementia or Alzheimer’s. She is handling it, she says to me, because she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. There is a lot of homemade chicken soup in the freezer.
Total denial is a young person’s game, however, and she is no longer in her 30’s. The passage of time has limited her ability to use sheer will -- physically or emotionally – to change her life situation. She cannot simply move away from pending death. She cannot change her name and cheat Alzheimer’s. She can no longer hide her inabilities to physically handle her third husband’s condition by quietly calling the fire department and asking them to come over and assist her.
There are just too many balls to juggle for her to deny something has to be done. While she is not ready – and never will be – to give in on herself, John’s care she seems ready to concede. A constant indoor temperature of 85 degrees, and the jarring loneliness of being in services to someone who can no longer speak, or move, or show his appreciation, is taking its toll.
By the end of 2007, her diagnosis is confirmed, be several doctors, but she has not mentioned anything to her friends. She even insists I have misheard the doctors, all of them. She does not have Alzheimer’s. She is simply a little stressed out. More soup.
“You would forget where your keys were too, if you had to care for a man who you had to feed through a tube!” she snaps, whenever we gently suggest her forgetful moments may be signs that she needs he own medication. “By the way, do you want some chicken soup or maybe some split pea? I made a whole batchful.”
For the record, my mom made really really great soup. Her bean soups would always start with a base of onions and garlic. Onions and garlic do not cook at the same rate, so she taught me either to sauté the garlic in oil and remove the pieces before adding the onions, or to add the garlic about halfway through the onion-saute. She omitted the garlic from chicken soup, because, she said, chicken soup should be comforting and easy. The sweetness of the chicken would be overshadowed by the garlic and overwhelming to the palate. Onions yes. Garlic no.
“It’s the details that distinguish good food from great food,” she’d say. “If you don’t have time for the details, then you may as well just make brownies.” She hated brownies. To her, they were the epitome of laziness.
“Any asshole can serve a gooey bunch of chocolate and make it taste good.” She was a creature of detail and brownies required no nuance at all. It was chocolate, egg, butter, and flour in some combination, and no matter the ratio, no one could tell the difference.
Soup, on the other hand, could be made sublime with just the proper attention to detail. In her later years, however, nuance had given way to convenience, and her soups tasted no better than the garbage that comes in the can. She used store-bought chicken base, and she never took the time to skim the chicken scum from the top when she did use a real carcass. The broth was cloudy and unappetizing. But there was a time when its clarity in appearance was surpassed only by its clarity of flavor.
Soup did tell me one thing: the more she made, the more stressed she was. In late 2007, her freezer was full.
“Mom, I think maybe you’re stressed because it’s all too much for your right now.”
“You seem to forget,” she replied, “I’ve weathered a lot of death. Your dad, your brother, your grandmother. I’m fine. It’s just stress, god dammit! Just like when your brother died. I’ll be fine once this is all over, just like I was when Scott died.” She is referring to her memory lapses.
My brother Scott died in 1990. I never called him my step-brother. I was young enough and in our own way we were close enough, that he was blood to me. Scott was found dead in his apartment, a dirty and dark black hole of a place in Tam Valley. When they found him the place strewn with the trappings of a drug addict. An autopsy proved he had lethal levels of heroin and alcohol in his system.
Depending upon whom you ask, he either died of an accidental overdose, or he committed suicide. My mom opined that either way, he wanted to die.
“What difference does it make?” said my mother, in response to my question about why he killed himself. “Is knowing going to change the way you live your life? If not, it’s irrelevant.” It didn’t much matter why; he chose not to get help, so there was no real value in exploring whether there were reasons behind it. He was dead and that was that.
Scott was the only one in our family to ever face our twisted reality with truth, but since he was no longer around to tell me what really happened, that truth died with him, though the pain did not. Each of us kids was left with a basement full of shit through which to plow.
My mom threw together a memorial service my sister didn’t attend. By 1990, if no one was going to give her money (and her brother’s funeral was surely not the place to ask), then she didn’t have much use for the family. We held the service in a beautiful Redwood Grove. After that, Jean didn’t talk about Scott. There were a couple of weeks where she lost her BART ticket a lot and mislocated her keys, the only indication she was anything but in control that year. She spent $200 replacing her keys over a 3 month period. And $175.00 on a new chest freezer.
Scott’s death – now 18 years in the rear view – does not appear to alter her self-perspective; the forgetfulness, the temper flares, the lost items, it’s all just a little stress. A batch of her famous brownies should do the trick.
2008 is going to be better. I stop by the first of the new year, after two weeks in Mexico with my in-laws. Prior to heading out of town, I had noticed a rapid decline in John’s condition coupled with an increased level of vitriol toward me from my mother. She was – she would tell me – sick and tired of me trying to get her help from stupid people who didn’t deserve to be paid for the fuck-all they did.
For the last year, the strain on our relationship has been pronounced. Although we had gotten along well in the years that followed high school, I knew this was largely because I could orchestrate the settings in which we interacted. We were happiest together discussing menus, holiday feasts, party planning, and travel. I had learned to appreciate her fierce desire to see me succeed and the sacrifices she made to make sure that happened. She was proud of me, my family, my son. Digging into feelings and weaknesses and the reality of death was not for Jean, and my consistent if not constant nudging toward these uncomfortable subjects was stressful for both of us. I decided to leave for the holidays, for the benefit of both of us. Perhaps 2008 I would try a different tack: support. The deceitful, underhanded, and secret kind that always seemed to work for my family.
New tan and my resolve intact, I ring and knock on her door. There is no answer. I cannot imagine Jean leaving John alone, so I ring again. At the very least, there would have to be a caregiver there for Jean to leave to run an errand. I peek through the mail slot and confirm the car is still there. I tap on the window glass at the front door. I ring again. Then I realize I have a key. Just as I put my key in the lock, I see shadows of my mom’s silhouette through the hallway glass coming to the door. It takes a good 3 minutes for her to answer the door.
“Mom? Are you alright?”
Jean, normally well groomed and smartly dressed, answers the door in an oversized, dirty t-shirt without a bra. Her hair is unkempt, she has only underpants on. Her face is gaunt and grey, her gaze is lifeless, but she manages a weak smile. I give her a hug and a kiss. She has not showered in some time.
“Hi honey,” she says. “I hope you had a great time in Mexico. Happy New Year.”
“Hi Mom. Happy New Year to you. You really don’t look so hot. Are you ill? Is everything OK? Where’s John?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she says, though it is clear she is not. “Come on in. John’s in the bedroom.” The stifling heat of the house has contributed to the staleness in the air and the place smells of rotting food and body odor. This is highly unusual for a woman who used to add bleach to the soapy water we used.
Notwithstanding my concern for her welfare, I cannot abide sitting with her when she smells this bad. I don’t want to tell her she stinks; this will only result in an angry response and a return to the strained relationship we had before I left for Mexico.
“It looks like you could use a break, Mom. Can I sit with John while you take a shower? You look like you haven’t had one today.”
“Yes, oh yes!” she says, hugging me again. It is the closest I have ever seen to her falling apart. She seems unable even to find a towel.
I lead her to the shower and go back to say hello to John, who is sitting up in his recliner, watching CNN. He cannot smile any more, but I know he recognizes me. He makes a barely audible sound, one that I have come to recognize as a “hello” of sorts. I squeeze his hand and kiss him on the cheek. Jean has not shaved him. Although she had one of the bathrooms retrofitted with a walk-in sit-down shower, she can no longer maneuver him to it. For the first time since I’ve known him, he has a beard.
“Happy New Year, John,” I say. He squeezes my hand. “How are you?” I ask. He makes another low noise. I can’t offer to get him a cup of tea, or something to eat. He doesn’t eat by mouth any longer. So I sit with him and watch CNN while Jean is taking a shower, and take note of her surroundings.
There is a handwritten list of medicines and the times they should be taken for John on the dresser, in Jean’s meticulous handwriting. There are hand-markings on it which seem to indicate either that she has forgotten to give him medicine and so has time-shifted the entire list; or that she has changed his schedule altogether (I suspect it is a little bit of both). Underneath are prior iterations of the schedule, including notes of phone calls to medical professionals and their recommendations.
Amid her jewelry boxes and ring holders are pill cutters, and pill grinders and cups with bits of liquid in them that have yet to be taken to the kitchen for washing. The rest of the house is spotless, but the bedroom is wanting for dusting and cleaning. I surmise the housekeeper has been coming to clean the house, but has been directed to leave John and the bedroom alone.
While Jean is in the shower and out of earshot, I lob a call in to the caregiver next door to see how things are going. After having chased away Sina, we have a deal to pay the caregiver next door to make a twice daily visit.
“Oh, he needs to be in a full-time care facility,” says the caregiver. “I do what I can when I’m there, but he needs to be cared for with greater attention. ‘Course, you know your mother. Thinks she can do it all, and kicks us out when we try to do more.”
“I know,” I say. “So, you think it’s time?”
“Oh, it’s well past time, if you ask me,” she says. “if it doesn’t happen soon, they’re going to take him away, anyway.” She is referring to Adult Protective Services. This troubles me. I know Jean wants the best for John, which is the reason she believes only doctoral candidates can truly care for him. It is her love for him creating the willful blindness that may be hurting him. She would never forgive herself if APS removed him from her home.
After Jean’s shower, we sit down together over tea, and I tell her I have spoken with the caregiver next door.
“Mom, John now requires full time care. I love you, but you just cannot handle his needs any longer.” I try to manage a smile, but my face is trembling. I cannot believe the emotion this is stirring in me. I am certainly not my mother’s daughter in this way – she would have done this with nary a tear, but I’m in it now, so I keep going. I tell her that if he doesn’t go to a “sniff” (skilled nursing facility), then perhaps a small home where a family can care for him.
“Let’s call John’s kids and tell them to come down. I’ll line up some places for us to visit.” I tell her this, knowing she will argue, yell, scream. I brace myself. One does not approach Jean with bad news without steeling oneself for the backlash.
“OK,” she says, sighing just a little. There is no protest. Things must be worse than they look. I wonder how hard it must have been on her for her to give in to this idea so easily. Up to this point, I have allowed Jean to convince me she and they are fine. There are days, even, when I think perhaps her doctors got it wrong. But there is no hunt in this dog today. Things must be very very bad. We call John’s sons. One agrees to come out and help look for places.
The next couple of weeks is spent calling places that might be appropriate for John, securing pricing information and brochures, and organizing visits so John’s son and Jean can tour the facilities. Although money is certainly a consideration because John has given up his pension to his ex-wife, Jean has saved enough for the both of them, so every form of facility is on the table. When John’s son and daughter-in-law arrive, we spend the day visiting facilities.
It is an awful process, going from one place to another. To make matters worse, there is a January heat wave. We learn quickly which places have air conditioning.
We meet a gentle and kind Filipino family that has opened their home in Pinole to care for the elderly. They charge almost nothing, but are willing to care for John. The place is Filipino-clean, which is to say spotless. The residents (there are 4) all speak highly of the family and their care. No one has bed sores. Everyone is happy and well fed.
These people are not the PhDs Jean has in her mind should be caring for John, but they are gracious and loving. Frankly, her expectations in this regard are unrealistic. The caregivers acknowledge their home could use a coat of paint and happily accept our offer to re-carpet the whole place should we choose to come there (which, for the money they charge, is still a bargain). The floors need retiling, too, and we offer to do that. There are few books on the shelves and those that are there do not impress Jean. The residents spend a great deal of their time watching television. Although the couple offer to read to John every day, their accent is heavy and Jean worries that John will not be able to understand the words. Jean says “no.” We move on.
The sniffs we visit are expensive and impersonal. With the heat wave in full swing, one can easily make out a distinct urine smell in some of them, despite efforts to cloak it with heavily perfumed disinfectants. Other facilities are spotless, but far too clinical. Some have residents lining the hallways, chin-to-chest, with no attention being given to them. They are holding tanks, purgatories for people doing nothing more than just waiting to die; my own worst nightmare I say “no.”
We land on a place that seems to be doing its best to create community and a healthy living (and dying) space for its residents. The seniors are well cared for and there is an acknowledgement by the staff that it’s OK to die, it’s comfort and not longevity that matters. There is no rehab equipment. The clarity of this message is jarring to John’s son.
We watch as residents spend time in the quiet and sheltered gardens with caregivers who seem attentive. There are nice places to sit and do nothing, and nice places to hear guest readers. They tell us John will have 24-hour nurse care. Jean can visit any time, they say. She can even stay overnight. I hear music playing. The dining room has cloth napkins and fresh flowers. The director tells us we can put up as much art as we want. In fact, the only thing we cannot do is put down carpeting. John’s room will be ours to create as we see fit.
“I can’t do it,” says his son in tears. “You make the decision.”
We are back in my office, reviewing the notes we’ve taken on each facility. The day has been too much for everyone. John’s son is the first to crack.. I turn to mom. She holds it together and reluctantly selects the highly-rated place in Berkeley; the one that allows her to stay overnight. It is also the most expensive. The unpleasant work of choosing John’s final home completed, John’s son and daughter-in-law go home.
I spend the following week pulling together the appropriate paperwork, sending over medical records, meeting with the staff at the new facility, getting things ready. Two days before he is to be transferred, my mother breaks down completely. It is the first time in my life I’ve seen her cry.
“I can’t do it,” she tells me through her tears. “I just cannot let him go.”
I expected this. I am ready to be firm, to tell her she has no choice. I’ve got the words stored and have even rehearsed them in the mirror, as my mother taught me.
But I cannot say no to her. She is so depleted, so utterly terrified that the love of her life is leaving her.
“OK,” I say. “We’ll figure something out.” I call the facility and lie to them about why we are not moving in. I say John has died. It is the only way for Jean to get her $10,000.00 deposit back. I cannot bring myself to call John’s son, to tell him all that work was for nothing. I go back to the drawing board.
At the end of January, and despite the protests of some of John’s more vocal friends who swear we are acting prematurely, we start hospice care in the house. One friend is particularly abusive to Jean, touting her hospice board membership as credentials. Jean becomes worried she has signed John’s death warrant too early and suggests we look at treatments. This time, I really do put my foot down.
“If Margaret wants to push this, mom, she’s going to have to go through me.” To make sure Jean does not try to override me, I tell the hospice coordinator she has Alzheimer’s and cannot make decisions independent of my input. She is the first person outside the family to know.
Jean hates the caregivers, all of whom she believes are beneath her and her brilliant husband. They live out their shifts doing the most awful kind of work: cleaning up after his incontinence all the while saying soothing things to their charge. They wipe his forehead with pleasure, and adjust his pillows to make him comfortable. They endure Jean’s abusive comments about their intelligence in silence, having been through it timeless times.
“I hate them all,” Jean says, just a little too loudly. “They are a stupid.”
14 days later, on February 8th, John dies. Jean does not tell me. I have left for a law conference in British Columbia, and she does not want to disturb me. True to form, she tells the next door neighbor, “What will it change? She will find out soon enough.”
The neighbor thinks better of this strategy, and calls us in Whistler. We immediately have the body removed, send for Jean to fly up and stay with us at the Fairmont. She does not say no.
“My life is over,” she tells me when she steps off the chartered bus to Whistler. That day, something leaves her. I wish I had a bowl of soup to give her.
Here is Jean’s recipe for chicken soup. If you like chicken soup, you will love this soup. If you don’t like chicken soup, you may wish to try the technique for making it, anyway. Jean’s recipe calls for making a raft. A food raft, as the name suggests, is a device that sits atop liquid and attracts non-liquid elements to it. It is a good technique to learn even if you don’t like chicken soup, as it can be used for any broth, including beef broth, vegetable broth and seafood broth. It takes an extra 10 minutes, but it’s worth the trouble. Here is her soup recipe.
One more word about Jean’s chicken soup. My mother’s theory about soups is the best ones begin with perfect broth, but with chicken soup, the best soup is the broth, with a few vegetables added to it after the broth is made. There should not be a lot of seasoning, or additives to really good chicken broth, nor should any stray flavors be covered by the addition of extra starches, like rice; the broth should stand on its own. Her recipe was all about making broth. Saute a whole onion in some olive oil until the onion is transparent. Your temperature should be low enough that the onion does not get brown on the edges. Add a chicken carcass from dinner the night before. There will likely be some chicken on it, close to the bone. Add enough water than the chicken carcass is 3/4th covered. Then, using a mallet or your hand, crush the carcass so that it is submerged under the water. Toss in a tablespoon of brown sugar and a pinch of salt.
Into a coffee filter, put a large handful of parsley, some coarsely chopped carrot, and some fresh dill. Twist it closed or use a twist-tie to secure it. Drop in the water and bring to a simmer, skimming off the foamy chicken crud as it rises. Simmer the whole batch for about 2 hours covered. Remove the baggie and discard it.
Then cook the shit out of it, like for 4 hours, always on a low simmer. You will end up with a yellow, possibly cloudy liquid mass. If you are not patient or not attentive, and you end up boiling it – rather than simmering it – then your liquid will be really cloudy. Through a fine mesh strainer (like a chinoise), strain the liquid, discard the collected pieces, and pour it back into the pot. Bring it back to a simmer.
Now, here is the really cool thing, the little detail that will make your soup perfect. It’s called rafting, and sometimes “date on a dime,” because if you have rafted correctly, your soup will be so clear you’ll be able to see the date on a dime through a gallon of broth.
Beat 2-3 egg whites to stiff, but not dry peaks. Stir the simmering soup in one direction to make a circular vortex, then slide the eggwhites into the soup. The tiny pieces too fine to be held by the strainer will be attracted to the eggwhite. Once the eggwhite is cooked, remove the egg mass and discard it. You will have a perfect and clear broth.
You can refrigerate the soup and remove the fat the next day from the top for another purpose, or you can let the fat remain. Saute two chicken breasts in olive oil, salt and pepper, and slice on the diagonal. Simmer a couple stalks of celery chopped; and a carrot, peeled, and sliced on the diagonal, for about 10 minutes, and drain. Add the chicken and vegetables to the heated broth and serve
If you are feeding children, add some cooked corkscrew pasta. Garnish with tarragon. Serve when you are stressed.
With nearly 80 years of practice under her belt and excellent role models like my grandmother and my aunt, Jean is well-practiced in managing stress through denial by the time 2008 rolls around. She has honed her craft to an art form. When she is stressed, she cooks.
Although she is now officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Jean tells people who will listen she’s as healthy as a horse, and takes only a half aspirin daily. This is true only because she has tossed out any scripts given to her by Dr. Davis that appeared to be related to dementia or Alzheimer’s. She is handling it, she says to me, because she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. There is a lot of homemade chicken soup in the freezer.
Total denial is a young person’s game, however, and she is no longer in her 30’s. The passage of time has limited her ability to use sheer will -- physically or emotionally – to change her life situation. She cannot simply move away from pending death. She cannot change her name and cheat Alzheimer’s. She can no longer hide her inabilities to physically handle her third husband’s condition by quietly calling the fire department and asking them to come over and assist her.
There are just too many balls to juggle for her to deny something has to be done. While she is not ready – and never will be – to give in on herself, John’s care she seems ready to concede. A constant indoor temperature of 85 degrees, and the jarring loneliness of being in services to someone who can no longer speak, or move, or show his appreciation, is taking its toll.
By the end of 2007, her diagnosis is confirmed, be several doctors, but she has not mentioned anything to her friends. She even insists I have misheard the doctors, all of them. She does not have Alzheimer’s. She is simply a little stressed out. More soup.
“You would forget where your keys were too, if you had to care for a man who you had to feed through a tube!” she snaps, whenever we gently suggest her forgetful moments may be signs that she needs he own medication. “By the way, do you want some chicken soup or maybe some split pea? I made a whole batchful.”
For the record, my mom made really really great soup. Her bean soups would always start with a base of onions and garlic. Onions and garlic do not cook at the same rate, so she taught me either to sauté the garlic in oil and remove the pieces before adding the onions, or to add the garlic about halfway through the onion-saute. She omitted the garlic from chicken soup, because, she said, chicken soup should be comforting and easy. The sweetness of the chicken would be overshadowed by the garlic and overwhelming to the palate. Onions yes. Garlic no.
“It’s the details that distinguish good food from great food,” she’d say. “If you don’t have time for the details, then you may as well just make brownies.” She hated brownies. To her, they were the epitome of laziness.
“Any asshole can serve a gooey bunch of chocolate and make it taste good.” She was a creature of detail and brownies required no nuance at all. It was chocolate, egg, butter, and flour in some combination, and no matter the ratio, no one could tell the difference.
Soup, on the other hand, could be made sublime with just the proper attention to detail. In her later years, however, nuance had given way to convenience, and her soups tasted no better than the garbage that comes in the can. She used store-bought chicken base, and she never took the time to skim the chicken scum from the top when she did use a real carcass. The broth was cloudy and unappetizing. But there was a time when its clarity in appearance was surpassed only by its clarity of flavor.
Soup did tell me one thing: the more she made, the more stressed she was. In late 2007, her freezer was full.
“Mom, I think maybe you’re stressed because it’s all too much for your right now.”
“You seem to forget,” she replied, “I’ve weathered a lot of death. Your dad, your brother, your grandmother. I’m fine. It’s just stress, god dammit! Just like when your brother died. I’ll be fine once this is all over, just like I was when Scott died.” She is referring to her memory lapses.
My brother Scott died in 1990. I never called him my step-brother. I was young enough and in our own way we were close enough, that he was blood to me. Scott was found dead in his apartment, a dirty and dark black hole of a place in Tam Valley. When they found him the place strewn with the trappings of a drug addict. An autopsy proved he had lethal levels of heroin and alcohol in his system.
Depending upon whom you ask, he either died of an accidental overdose, or he committed suicide. My mom opined that either way, he wanted to die.
“What difference does it make?” said my mother, in response to my question about why he killed himself. “Is knowing going to change the way you live your life? If not, it’s irrelevant.” It didn’t much matter why; he chose not to get help, so there was no real value in exploring whether there were reasons behind it. He was dead and that was that.
Scott was the only one in our family to ever face our twisted reality with truth, but since he was no longer around to tell me what really happened, that truth died with him, though the pain did not. Each of us kids was left with a basement full of shit through which to plow.
My mom threw together a memorial service my sister didn’t attend. By 1990, if no one was going to give her money (and her brother’s funeral was surely not the place to ask), then she didn’t have much use for the family. We held the service in a beautiful Redwood Grove. After that, Jean didn’t talk about Scott. There were a couple of weeks where she lost her BART ticket a lot and mislocated her keys, the only indication she was anything but in control that year. She spent $200 replacing her keys over a 3 month period. And $175.00 on a new chest freezer.
Scott’s death – now 18 years in the rear view – does not appear to alter her self-perspective; the forgetfulness, the temper flares, the lost items, it’s all just a little stress. A batch of her famous brownies should do the trick.
2008 is going to be better. I stop by the first of the new year, after two weeks in Mexico with my in-laws. Prior to heading out of town, I had noticed a rapid decline in John’s condition coupled with an increased level of vitriol toward me from my mother. She was – she would tell me – sick and tired of me trying to get her help from stupid people who didn’t deserve to be paid for the fuck-all they did.
For the last year, the strain on our relationship has been pronounced. Although we had gotten along well in the years that followed high school, I knew this was largely because I could orchestrate the settings in which we interacted. We were happiest together discussing menus, holiday feasts, party planning, and travel. I had learned to appreciate her fierce desire to see me succeed and the sacrifices she made to make sure that happened. She was proud of me, my family, my son. Digging into feelings and weaknesses and the reality of death was not for Jean, and my consistent if not constant nudging toward these uncomfortable subjects was stressful for both of us. I decided to leave for the holidays, for the benefit of both of us. Perhaps 2008 I would try a different tack: support. The deceitful, underhanded, and secret kind that always seemed to work for my family.
New tan and my resolve intact, I ring and knock on her door. There is no answer. I cannot imagine Jean leaving John alone, so I ring again. At the very least, there would have to be a caregiver there for Jean to leave to run an errand. I peek through the mail slot and confirm the car is still there. I tap on the window glass at the front door. I ring again. Then I realize I have a key. Just as I put my key in the lock, I see shadows of my mom’s silhouette through the hallway glass coming to the door. It takes a good 3 minutes for her to answer the door.
“Mom? Are you alright?”
Jean, normally well groomed and smartly dressed, answers the door in an oversized, dirty t-shirt without a bra. Her hair is unkempt, she has only underpants on. Her face is gaunt and grey, her gaze is lifeless, but she manages a weak smile. I give her a hug and a kiss. She has not showered in some time.
“Hi honey,” she says. “I hope you had a great time in Mexico. Happy New Year.”
“Hi Mom. Happy New Year to you. You really don’t look so hot. Are you ill? Is everything OK? Where’s John?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she says, though it is clear she is not. “Come on in. John’s in the bedroom.” The stifling heat of the house has contributed to the staleness in the air and the place smells of rotting food and body odor. This is highly unusual for a woman who used to add bleach to the soapy water we used.
Notwithstanding my concern for her welfare, I cannot abide sitting with her when she smells this bad. I don’t want to tell her she stinks; this will only result in an angry response and a return to the strained relationship we had before I left for Mexico.
“It looks like you could use a break, Mom. Can I sit with John while you take a shower? You look like you haven’t had one today.”
“Yes, oh yes!” she says, hugging me again. It is the closest I have ever seen to her falling apart. She seems unable even to find a towel.
I lead her to the shower and go back to say hello to John, who is sitting up in his recliner, watching CNN. He cannot smile any more, but I know he recognizes me. He makes a barely audible sound, one that I have come to recognize as a “hello” of sorts. I squeeze his hand and kiss him on the cheek. Jean has not shaved him. Although she had one of the bathrooms retrofitted with a walk-in sit-down shower, she can no longer maneuver him to it. For the first time since I’ve known him, he has a beard.
“Happy New Year, John,” I say. He squeezes my hand. “How are you?” I ask. He makes another low noise. I can’t offer to get him a cup of tea, or something to eat. He doesn’t eat by mouth any longer. So I sit with him and watch CNN while Jean is taking a shower, and take note of her surroundings.
There is a handwritten list of medicines and the times they should be taken for John on the dresser, in Jean’s meticulous handwriting. There are hand-markings on it which seem to indicate either that she has forgotten to give him medicine and so has time-shifted the entire list; or that she has changed his schedule altogether (I suspect it is a little bit of both). Underneath are prior iterations of the schedule, including notes of phone calls to medical professionals and their recommendations.
Amid her jewelry boxes and ring holders are pill cutters, and pill grinders and cups with bits of liquid in them that have yet to be taken to the kitchen for washing. The rest of the house is spotless, but the bedroom is wanting for dusting and cleaning. I surmise the housekeeper has been coming to clean the house, but has been directed to leave John and the bedroom alone.
While Jean is in the shower and out of earshot, I lob a call in to the caregiver next door to see how things are going. After having chased away Sina, we have a deal to pay the caregiver next door to make a twice daily visit.
“Oh, he needs to be in a full-time care facility,” says the caregiver. “I do what I can when I’m there, but he needs to be cared for with greater attention. ‘Course, you know your mother. Thinks she can do it all, and kicks us out when we try to do more.”
“I know,” I say. “So, you think it’s time?”
“Oh, it’s well past time, if you ask me,” she says. “if it doesn’t happen soon, they’re going to take him away, anyway.” She is referring to Adult Protective Services. This troubles me. I know Jean wants the best for John, which is the reason she believes only doctoral candidates can truly care for him. It is her love for him creating the willful blindness that may be hurting him. She would never forgive herself if APS removed him from her home.
After Jean’s shower, we sit down together over tea, and I tell her I have spoken with the caregiver next door.
“Mom, John now requires full time care. I love you, but you just cannot handle his needs any longer.” I try to manage a smile, but my face is trembling. I cannot believe the emotion this is stirring in me. I am certainly not my mother’s daughter in this way – she would have done this with nary a tear, but I’m in it now, so I keep going. I tell her that if he doesn’t go to a “sniff” (skilled nursing facility), then perhaps a small home where a family can care for him.
“Let’s call John’s kids and tell them to come down. I’ll line up some places for us to visit.” I tell her this, knowing she will argue, yell, scream. I brace myself. One does not approach Jean with bad news without steeling oneself for the backlash.
“OK,” she says, sighing just a little. There is no protest. Things must be worse than they look. I wonder how hard it must have been on her for her to give in to this idea so easily. Up to this point, I have allowed Jean to convince me she and they are fine. There are days, even, when I think perhaps her doctors got it wrong. But there is no hunt in this dog today. Things must be very very bad. We call John’s sons. One agrees to come out and help look for places.
The next couple of weeks is spent calling places that might be appropriate for John, securing pricing information and brochures, and organizing visits so John’s son and Jean can tour the facilities. Although money is certainly a consideration because John has given up his pension to his ex-wife, Jean has saved enough for the both of them, so every form of facility is on the table. When John’s son and daughter-in-law arrive, we spend the day visiting facilities.
It is an awful process, going from one place to another. To make matters worse, there is a January heat wave. We learn quickly which places have air conditioning.
We meet a gentle and kind Filipino family that has opened their home in Pinole to care for the elderly. They charge almost nothing, but are willing to care for John. The place is Filipino-clean, which is to say spotless. The residents (there are 4) all speak highly of the family and their care. No one has bed sores. Everyone is happy and well fed.
These people are not the PhDs Jean has in her mind should be caring for John, but they are gracious and loving. Frankly, her expectations in this regard are unrealistic. The caregivers acknowledge their home could use a coat of paint and happily accept our offer to re-carpet the whole place should we choose to come there (which, for the money they charge, is still a bargain). The floors need retiling, too, and we offer to do that. There are few books on the shelves and those that are there do not impress Jean. The residents spend a great deal of their time watching television. Although the couple offer to read to John every day, their accent is heavy and Jean worries that John will not be able to understand the words. Jean says “no.” We move on.
The sniffs we visit are expensive and impersonal. With the heat wave in full swing, one can easily make out a distinct urine smell in some of them, despite efforts to cloak it with heavily perfumed disinfectants. Other facilities are spotless, but far too clinical. Some have residents lining the hallways, chin-to-chest, with no attention being given to them. They are holding tanks, purgatories for people doing nothing more than just waiting to die; my own worst nightmare I say “no.”
We land on a place that seems to be doing its best to create community and a healthy living (and dying) space for its residents. The seniors are well cared for and there is an acknowledgement by the staff that it’s OK to die, it’s comfort and not longevity that matters. There is no rehab equipment. The clarity of this message is jarring to John’s son.
We watch as residents spend time in the quiet and sheltered gardens with caregivers who seem attentive. There are nice places to sit and do nothing, and nice places to hear guest readers. They tell us John will have 24-hour nurse care. Jean can visit any time, they say. She can even stay overnight. I hear music playing. The dining room has cloth napkins and fresh flowers. The director tells us we can put up as much art as we want. In fact, the only thing we cannot do is put down carpeting. John’s room will be ours to create as we see fit.
“I can’t do it,” says his son in tears. “You make the decision.”
We are back in my office, reviewing the notes we’ve taken on each facility. The day has been too much for everyone. John’s son is the first to crack.. I turn to mom. She holds it together and reluctantly selects the highly-rated place in Berkeley; the one that allows her to stay overnight. It is also the most expensive. The unpleasant work of choosing John’s final home completed, John’s son and daughter-in-law go home.
I spend the following week pulling together the appropriate paperwork, sending over medical records, meeting with the staff at the new facility, getting things ready. Two days before he is to be transferred, my mother breaks down completely. It is the first time in my life I’ve seen her cry.
“I can’t do it,” she tells me through her tears. “I just cannot let him go.”
I expected this. I am ready to be firm, to tell her she has no choice. I’ve got the words stored and have even rehearsed them in the mirror, as my mother taught me.
But I cannot say no to her. She is so depleted, so utterly terrified that the love of her life is leaving her.
“OK,” I say. “We’ll figure something out.” I call the facility and lie to them about why we are not moving in. I say John has died. It is the only way for Jean to get her $10,000.00 deposit back. I cannot bring myself to call John’s son, to tell him all that work was for nothing. I go back to the drawing board.
At the end of January, and despite the protests of some of John’s more vocal friends who swear we are acting prematurely, we start hospice care in the house. One friend is particularly abusive to Jean, touting her hospice board membership as credentials. Jean becomes worried she has signed John’s death warrant too early and suggests we look at treatments. This time, I really do put my foot down.
“If Margaret wants to push this, mom, she’s going to have to go through me.” To make sure Jean does not try to override me, I tell the hospice coordinator she has Alzheimer’s and cannot make decisions independent of my input. She is the first person outside the family to know.
Jean hates the caregivers, all of whom she believes are beneath her and her brilliant husband. They live out their shifts doing the most awful kind of work: cleaning up after his incontinence all the while saying soothing things to their charge. They wipe his forehead with pleasure, and adjust his pillows to make him comfortable. They endure Jean’s abusive comments about their intelligence in silence, having been through it timeless times.
“I hate them all,” Jean says, just a little too loudly. “They are a stupid.”
14 days later, on February 8th, John dies. Jean does not tell me. I have left for a law conference in British Columbia, and she does not want to disturb me. True to form, she tells the next door neighbor, “What will it change? She will find out soon enough.”
The neighbor thinks better of this strategy, and calls us in Whistler. We immediately have the body removed, send for Jean to fly up and stay with us at the Fairmont. She does not say no.
“My life is over,” she tells me when she steps off the chartered bus to Whistler. That day, something leaves her. I wish I had a bowl of soup to give her.
Here is Jean’s recipe for chicken soup. If you like chicken soup, you will love this soup. If you don’t like chicken soup, you may wish to try the technique for making it, anyway. Jean’s recipe calls for making a raft. A food raft, as the name suggests, is a device that sits atop liquid and attracts non-liquid elements to it. It is a good technique to learn even if you don’t like chicken soup, as it can be used for any broth, including beef broth, vegetable broth and seafood broth. It takes an extra 10 minutes, but it’s worth the trouble. Here is her soup recipe.
One more word about Jean’s chicken soup. My mother’s theory about soups is the best ones begin with perfect broth, but with chicken soup, the best soup is the broth, with a few vegetables added to it after the broth is made. There should not be a lot of seasoning, or additives to really good chicken broth, nor should any stray flavors be covered by the addition of extra starches, like rice; the broth should stand on its own. Her recipe was all about making broth. Saute a whole onion in some olive oil until the onion is transparent. Your temperature should be low enough that the onion does not get brown on the edges. Add a chicken carcass from dinner the night before. There will likely be some chicken on it, close to the bone. Add enough water than the chicken carcass is 3/4th covered. Then, using a mallet or your hand, crush the carcass so that it is submerged under the water. Toss in a tablespoon of brown sugar and a pinch of salt.
Into a coffee filter, put a large handful of parsley, some coarsely chopped carrot, and some fresh dill. Twist it closed or use a twist-tie to secure it. Drop in the water and bring to a simmer, skimming off the foamy chicken crud as it rises. Simmer the whole batch for about 2 hours covered. Remove the baggie and discard it.
Then cook the shit out of it, like for 4 hours, always on a low simmer. You will end up with a yellow, possibly cloudy liquid mass. If you are not patient or not attentive, and you end up boiling it – rather than simmering it – then your liquid will be really cloudy. Through a fine mesh strainer (like a chinoise), strain the liquid, discard the collected pieces, and pour it back into the pot. Bring it back to a simmer.
Now, here is the really cool thing, the little detail that will make your soup perfect. It’s called rafting, and sometimes “date on a dime,” because if you have rafted correctly, your soup will be so clear you’ll be able to see the date on a dime through a gallon of broth.
Beat 2-3 egg whites to stiff, but not dry peaks. Stir the simmering soup in one direction to make a circular vortex, then slide the eggwhites into the soup. The tiny pieces too fine to be held by the strainer will be attracted to the eggwhite. Once the eggwhite is cooked, remove the egg mass and discard it. You will have a perfect and clear broth.
You can refrigerate the soup and remove the fat the next day from the top for another purpose, or you can let the fat remain. Saute two chicken breasts in olive oil, salt and pepper, and slice on the diagonal. Simmer a couple stalks of celery chopped; and a carrot, peeled, and sliced on the diagonal, for about 10 minutes, and drain. Add the chicken and vegetables to the heated broth and serve
If you are feeding children, add some cooked corkscrew pasta. Garnish with tarragon. Serve when you are stressed.
Jean Grooms a Criminal, Marries a Drunk, and Makes Mashed Potatoes for 12 Years Straight.
At all times prior to 2008, the memory of my mother is always related to food in some way, and whether she was teaching me how to cook, how to shop, or how to change the world, it was always related to food. In her mind, food was the root of all evil and good.
“Everyone appreciates a good lasagne,” Jean would say, an assembly line of baking pans, noodles, cheese, and sauce in front of her. When I saw this, I knew someone we knew had lost their job.
My formative food years, 1966-1975, were framed by shopping with my mom at the Berkeley Co-op food stores. The Co-op is the foundation for my eating and shopping habits today. The Co-op is likely responsible for me reading labels, voting “yes” on food disclosure propositions, and trying my best to stay away from anything produced in factories. It is also responsible for my trust issues around bread, chocolate, peanut butter, and any puffed cereal-like food.
The Berkeley Co-op is hard to explain to any adult who did not grow up in the Bay Area in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a cooperative grocery store whose practices today are fairly in sync with stores like Whole Foods, but back then were revolutionary. Think Whole Foods meets Berkeley City Counsel meets Symbionese Liberation Army.
Everyone who was anyone in the progressive movement was a Co-op member. When you joined, you were given a number. Ours was 7021, which I would come to learn later was quite prestigious among the hippie crowd because it signified we were among the earliest members. Although the Co-ops closed in the 1980’s, most of us still remember our Co-op number. Like a prison tat.
The Co-op used fewer lights to save energy, which made the place look dingy, or closed all the time. They didn’t play that comfy elevator music that made you feel like you were in one of those happy television sitcom families. The people who shopped there didn’t iron their clothes or wear make-up or dye their hair. They smelled like the woods but not in the good way.
Jean was a Co-op board member. Because the store was run with input and direction from its members and the Board, it did things that fairly ensured any child of a member would not be trading lunch items. There would be no Fritos or Snowballs, or Chips Ahoy, or Wonder Bread in our lunches (there would be carob crunch cookies). There were ziplock baggies to protect our sandwiches (ours were wrapped with biodegradable waxed paper that opened up during the day so our sandwiches became stale or fell apart, or both). All end-aisle displays were healthy choice items, and despite push-back from companies like Kellogg’s, sugared cereals were put at adult level, not a child’s eye-level.
These were all things that mde the Co-ops awful for a kid who thought life should be more like Leave it to Beaver and less like Laugh-In, but what truly was a living hell at the Co-op was the Kiddie Korral. I would get the DTs just watching my mother load the car with those homemade, scratchy, saggy, reusable burlap grocery bags emblazoned on the side with Save a tree, recycle me.
“Please please please, mom. Don’t make me go!” I would beg her.
“It’s only for an hour or so,” my mother would say, pushing toward the screaming mass of unkempt caucasian Berkeley kids (black people were not shopping there).
“Please, mom. I’ll bag the groceries if I don’t have to go in there.”
“Deal.”
To avoid the Kiddie Korral, I would do anything. Even help my mother shop and listen to her mindless drivel about preservatives, saving the earth, and making collard grens the proper way.
The Kiddie Korral was designed to give parents a place to drop their kids so they could shop in peace. It was an ugly converted meeting room filled with shitty broken gender-neutral toys, those wooden puzzles that bore even babies, some ratty nasty books, and an indoor sandbox I was sure the boys peed in. If you were hungry, they had bruised fruit, likely pulled from the shopping floor because it couldn’t be sold. There was one attendant to watch everyone. She was either an old lady who sat reading in the corner not noticing that Lord of the Flies was being reenacted right in front of her, or a youngish teen who tried to be the interactive “with it” sitter, but smelled too much like the woods for anyone to want to be near her. There was no Kleenex anywhere to be found.
One day, instead of heading to the dingy old Co-op, my mom brought me to the Safeway nearby, with its bright lights and the people who bagged your groceries for you in clean, new brown paper bags. I was so excited. She handed me an oversized sweatshirt and told me to put it on.
Instead of going inside with me, she stopped at the entrance to the store, and knelt down to my level. Her voice was low.
“OK, I need you to go inside and do something for me,” she said to me.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I asked.
“I’m going to stand out here and wait for you,” she said. “Now listen carefully, because this is very important.” Jean reached inside her purse and brought out a box cutter. She held it out to me.
“Here, put this in your hand and cover it with the sleeves of the sweatshirt. I want you to take this knife and go the baking section – aisle 6. I want you to drag the knife blade across all the bags of white sugar and all the bags of Nestle chocolate chips – you know, the yellow bags?” Actually I didn’t know, because my mother always bought carob, and the Co-op didn’t carry Nestle products.
“You want me to cut the bags? On purpose?”
“Yes, honey, that’s what I want you to do. You are small and at just the right height that if you just walk past the sugar and the chocolate chips and hold the knife out, you can cut them as you go by without anyone noticing. That’s why you have the sweatshirt on.”
“But why?
” “Because I said so.”
“But that’s not right,” I said.
“OK, fine. You want to know?” I could tell she was exasperated with me. “The people who make those chips in the yellow bag are very very bad people. They kill babies in Africa and we need to stop them by ruining their chocolate so they can’t sell it here and kill more babies. Can you be my soldier?”
“Do they make sugar, too?”
“No, that’s a loss leader. That punishes the store for selling the chocolate.”
“A what?”
“Just go cut the bags, and don’t let anyone see you. Then come back out.”
Years later, I wondered what my mother would have done – what I would have done – had I gotten caught. I didn’t. After slashing the chocolate chips (which was not nearly as fun as the sugar, which made a whooshing sound when I rand the knife through the bag), I came back outside and handed her the knife. Then we went back to the Co-op to pick up our groceries. These were the political years.
That same year, a friend and fellow Co-op board member named Nancy Pelosi encouraged my mother to run for President of the Berkeley Co-ops. My mom got her paperwork in on time and we stayed up all night making buttons for her, but when the voter brochure/ballot came out, she wasn’t on it. It was a misprint, they said, but there was nothing they could do about it. Jean would have to run a write-in campaign and pay for her own advertising. As a result, my mom had to do the one thing she hated most: ask my dad for a favor.
(My parents tried really hard to be cordial to one another, and my mother – though she got full custody of me – never ever interfered with my relationship with my dad, allowing me to see him and stay with him as often and for as long as I wanted. They, however, really sucked at being cordial to one another. And they often used me to fuel their hatred.
“You fucking asshole!” my mom would scream over the phone. “Do you know how long you have kept your daughter waiting?” She’s been sitting at the door since noon waiting for you, and it’s 3pm.” That was all true. Dad wasn’t very prompt. Then he’d start up the soft voice version.
“Do you realize that your controlling nature has sucked out every bit of self-confidence your daughter has in her? She thinks she’s fat, ugly and stupid. Would it kill you to give her a compliment?” Also true. Mom was not really forthcoming with the praise.
A weekly occurrence, I could hear her screaming at him on the phone behind closed doors, mostly about money, but when she emerged from the bedroom and asked what was wrong, she always said, “Oh nothing. Grownup stuff.”
In between the fights about money (he never paid child support), and the arguments about me, however, Jean acknowledged his talent as an artist. When she learned that she needed to launch a write-in campaign, she bit her tongue and asked him.
“Can you create some campaign flyers for me? I have to run a write-in campaign, because they forgot to print my information on the Co-op brochure.” My mom had me in tow when she asked.
Dad was an artist, and engineer, and a certified genius. He agreed to help out. From brochures to hand painted posters, he created an entire campaign in a weekend. They were the most beautiful signs and brochures in the campaign. People too notice.
I was fitted with a sandwich board that said “THEY FORGOT MY MOM!” which I reluctantly wore while I paced back and forth in front of the Telegraph Avenue Co-op. As with my dinner party training, my comments were scripted, and we practiced my lines at home before she sent me out to the front lines. She won.
At one of the board meeting’s that followed, Jean met her second husband, who was the President of the Marin Co-op. They were married in the courtyard of the grocery store, while shoppers passed by. My mother wore a powder blue silk gabardine dress. I thought she looked like Jackie Kennedy. My brother-to-be tripped over the cinder block planter while carrying the wedding cake and it landed face-up in the dirt. Kids came by and scooped out pieces of it with their hands. The wedding was in a meeting room. As a special treat, they opened up the Kiddie Korral for the kids.
We moved to a tiny house in Point Reyes Station -- about 40 miles away from Berkeley, that was owned by my new step-father, Jerry. It was a depression era salt box piece of shit. There I shared a room with my new sister, 9 years my senior. Money was tighter than it had been when it was just the two of us, because my mom and step-dad were saving for a bigger house, but we didn’t feel poor. Point Reyes – at least back then -- wasn’t home to lots of wealthy people, so by comparison, we were fairly average, or maybe even a little better off, since there were two working people in the house. Other people had far less than we did. Those that did have money, like the dairy farmers, didn’t flaunt it. The worst thing about the house was it had an electric stove.
We did things for fun that people who don’t have a lot of money do. I didn’t know that these were cheap activities at the time, but I later learned the world looked very different to many of my friends in college.
It was the early 70’s. We played monopoly and quadruple solitaire and “I doubt it,” (which we called “Bullshit”) for hours on the living room floor. The cards we had were so old that we began to be able to cheat based upon the creases in some of them.
During the summer months, my mom sent us out with giant plastic mayonnaise jars to go blackberry picking in the summer. She taught us how to make blackberry jam, blackberry cobbler, blackberry pie, and blackberry ice cream. There were some incidents of cow tipping, too.
There was no movie theater or much of a downtown back then. During the summer, the old vacant Palace Food Market (which was directly across the street from the new Palace Food Market) would show movies like “Paint Your Wagon,” or “Singing in the Rain.” When we didn’t have enough money from our allowances to go, my mom would pop massive amounts of popcorn on the stove, and we would bring it down in giant brown grocery bags, to barter for entry.
What we ate changed dramatically. My step-father insisted on mashed potatoes with every meal, so my mom changed her menus. We didn’t have beans and rice with cornbread, which was my second favorite thing to eat. Worse, she stopped making my favorite dish – soupy chicken – altogether. Here is how you make soupy chicken, circa 1967 (which, by the way is pronounced like this: SOOOOOOO-py chicken):
Take a sheet cake pan and oil it with Crisco or other cooking oil. Sprinkle 1-1/2 cups of rice on the bottom of the pan. Open a can of cream of mushroom soup and blend in enough water to it to make 3 cups of liquid. If you are fancy, add some tarragon. Pour the liquid over the rice. Pat dry a raw, cut up whole chicken (or if you don’t have enough money for that, a bunch of chicken thighs), and coat them with salt, pepper, and paprika (if you are fancy, toast the paprika in a pan first). Lay the chicken atop the rice and liquid. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about 45-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the thickest part of the chicken produces clear liquid.
She taught me how to make broiled lamb chops, and broiled chicken, and broiled steak. To broil anything, you season your meat with salt and pepper a day in advance, then wrap it up and put it in the fridge. Then, you take a broiling pan, set whatever meat you like on the top, and cook it for 3-5 minutes a side. Serve with mashed potatoes. Here is how you make really good mashed potatoes:
Figure 1.5 medium sized potatoes per person. Peel the potatoes and cover them with water. Add a pinch of salt. Boil them until tender (tender does not mean falling apart; it means a knife goes easily into them. If they are falling apart, then they are waterlogged and it will take a crapload of butter and cream to make them taste good).
Drain the water from the potatoes and briefly mash them to break them up. Add warm chicken broth to the pot so that it covers 1/3 of the potatoes. Begin mashing with a potato masher until there are no large lumps. If you like butter, add it now. Correct the seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve them exactly this way for the next 12 years. It will be the only thing they don’t complain (much) about in therapy..
Because Jerry’s kids were not adventurous eaters, we seasoned everything with salt-and-pepper. This would later change, but for the time being we were relegated to some form of meat-chops, mashed potatoes, and salad made with iceberg lettuce and Good Seasons Italian dressing.
I missed the fancy parties we used to have when it was just the two of us. I never got to take anyone’s coat. We never had parties of any kind, now. My mom said it was too far for her friends to drive for an evening. My new brother Scott said it was because my mom’s friends thought her new husband was an asshole.
One night my step-father was driving home from a bar and hit a kid, crippling him for life. Worse, the kid was a friend of the family. There was no discussion about it – I heard about it at school. When I asked my mom whether it was true, she said, very matter-of-factly, “Your step-father hit one of Jim’s boys. It was very dark. He’s very broken up about it.”
A few weeks later, a man came to our door with our dog in his arms. The dog was dead.
“I got your dog Tina in the back of my truck,” he said to my step-father, who answered the door. “Had to shoot her. She got out and was scarin’ my cows. Want me to dump her or you take care of her?” Scott told me it was retaliation for crippling the kid.
Sometime after the dog incident, my parents called a family meeting and told us we were moving to Corte Madera. My mom said it was because the 75 mile round trip commute was getting to be too much for her and we needed to be closer to San Francisco, and that was that. Scott told me it was because we were being run out of town.
It seemed to me as a child my family was either stirring up trouble, getting into trouble or pretending that the trouble never happened. No matter what, and through various arrests, drug raids, deaths, car accidents, abortions, molestations, and even my brother Scott’s suicide, my mother brushed herself off, picked up the pieces, deep-sixed the discussion, and that was that. I never saw her cry. Not once.
“Everyone appreciates a good lasagne,” Jean would say, an assembly line of baking pans, noodles, cheese, and sauce in front of her. When I saw this, I knew someone we knew had lost their job.
My formative food years, 1966-1975, were framed by shopping with my mom at the Berkeley Co-op food stores. The Co-op is the foundation for my eating and shopping habits today. The Co-op is likely responsible for me reading labels, voting “yes” on food disclosure propositions, and trying my best to stay away from anything produced in factories. It is also responsible for my trust issues around bread, chocolate, peanut butter, and any puffed cereal-like food.
The Berkeley Co-op is hard to explain to any adult who did not grow up in the Bay Area in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a cooperative grocery store whose practices today are fairly in sync with stores like Whole Foods, but back then were revolutionary. Think Whole Foods meets Berkeley City Counsel meets Symbionese Liberation Army.
Everyone who was anyone in the progressive movement was a Co-op member. When you joined, you were given a number. Ours was 7021, which I would come to learn later was quite prestigious among the hippie crowd because it signified we were among the earliest members. Although the Co-ops closed in the 1980’s, most of us still remember our Co-op number. Like a prison tat.
The Co-op used fewer lights to save energy, which made the place look dingy, or closed all the time. They didn’t play that comfy elevator music that made you feel like you were in one of those happy television sitcom families. The people who shopped there didn’t iron their clothes or wear make-up or dye their hair. They smelled like the woods but not in the good way.
Jean was a Co-op board member. Because the store was run with input and direction from its members and the Board, it did things that fairly ensured any child of a member would not be trading lunch items. There would be no Fritos or Snowballs, or Chips Ahoy, or Wonder Bread in our lunches (there would be carob crunch cookies). There were ziplock baggies to protect our sandwiches (ours were wrapped with biodegradable waxed paper that opened up during the day so our sandwiches became stale or fell apart, or both). All end-aisle displays were healthy choice items, and despite push-back from companies like Kellogg’s, sugared cereals were put at adult level, not a child’s eye-level.
These were all things that mde the Co-ops awful for a kid who thought life should be more like Leave it to Beaver and less like Laugh-In, but what truly was a living hell at the Co-op was the Kiddie Korral. I would get the DTs just watching my mother load the car with those homemade, scratchy, saggy, reusable burlap grocery bags emblazoned on the side with Save a tree, recycle me.
“Please please please, mom. Don’t make me go!” I would beg her.
“It’s only for an hour or so,” my mother would say, pushing toward the screaming mass of unkempt caucasian Berkeley kids (black people were not shopping there).
“Please, mom. I’ll bag the groceries if I don’t have to go in there.”
“Deal.”
To avoid the Kiddie Korral, I would do anything. Even help my mother shop and listen to her mindless drivel about preservatives, saving the earth, and making collard grens the proper way.
The Kiddie Korral was designed to give parents a place to drop their kids so they could shop in peace. It was an ugly converted meeting room filled with shitty broken gender-neutral toys, those wooden puzzles that bore even babies, some ratty nasty books, and an indoor sandbox I was sure the boys peed in. If you were hungry, they had bruised fruit, likely pulled from the shopping floor because it couldn’t be sold. There was one attendant to watch everyone. She was either an old lady who sat reading in the corner not noticing that Lord of the Flies was being reenacted right in front of her, or a youngish teen who tried to be the interactive “with it” sitter, but smelled too much like the woods for anyone to want to be near her. There was no Kleenex anywhere to be found.
One day, instead of heading to the dingy old Co-op, my mom brought me to the Safeway nearby, with its bright lights and the people who bagged your groceries for you in clean, new brown paper bags. I was so excited. She handed me an oversized sweatshirt and told me to put it on.
Instead of going inside with me, she stopped at the entrance to the store, and knelt down to my level. Her voice was low.
“OK, I need you to go inside and do something for me,” she said to me.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I asked.
“I’m going to stand out here and wait for you,” she said. “Now listen carefully, because this is very important.” Jean reached inside her purse and brought out a box cutter. She held it out to me.
“Here, put this in your hand and cover it with the sleeves of the sweatshirt. I want you to take this knife and go the baking section – aisle 6. I want you to drag the knife blade across all the bags of white sugar and all the bags of Nestle chocolate chips – you know, the yellow bags?” Actually I didn’t know, because my mother always bought carob, and the Co-op didn’t carry Nestle products.
“You want me to cut the bags? On purpose?”
“Yes, honey, that’s what I want you to do. You are small and at just the right height that if you just walk past the sugar and the chocolate chips and hold the knife out, you can cut them as you go by without anyone noticing. That’s why you have the sweatshirt on.”
“But why?
” “Because I said so.”
“But that’s not right,” I said.
“OK, fine. You want to know?” I could tell she was exasperated with me. “The people who make those chips in the yellow bag are very very bad people. They kill babies in Africa and we need to stop them by ruining their chocolate so they can’t sell it here and kill more babies. Can you be my soldier?”
“Do they make sugar, too?”
“No, that’s a loss leader. That punishes the store for selling the chocolate.”
“A what?”
“Just go cut the bags, and don’t let anyone see you. Then come back out.”
Years later, I wondered what my mother would have done – what I would have done – had I gotten caught. I didn’t. After slashing the chocolate chips (which was not nearly as fun as the sugar, which made a whooshing sound when I rand the knife through the bag), I came back outside and handed her the knife. Then we went back to the Co-op to pick up our groceries. These were the political years.
That same year, a friend and fellow Co-op board member named Nancy Pelosi encouraged my mother to run for President of the Berkeley Co-ops. My mom got her paperwork in on time and we stayed up all night making buttons for her, but when the voter brochure/ballot came out, she wasn’t on it. It was a misprint, they said, but there was nothing they could do about it. Jean would have to run a write-in campaign and pay for her own advertising. As a result, my mom had to do the one thing she hated most: ask my dad for a favor.
(My parents tried really hard to be cordial to one another, and my mother – though she got full custody of me – never ever interfered with my relationship with my dad, allowing me to see him and stay with him as often and for as long as I wanted. They, however, really sucked at being cordial to one another. And they often used me to fuel their hatred.
“You fucking asshole!” my mom would scream over the phone. “Do you know how long you have kept your daughter waiting?” She’s been sitting at the door since noon waiting for you, and it’s 3pm.” That was all true. Dad wasn’t very prompt. Then he’d start up the soft voice version.
“Do you realize that your controlling nature has sucked out every bit of self-confidence your daughter has in her? She thinks she’s fat, ugly and stupid. Would it kill you to give her a compliment?” Also true. Mom was not really forthcoming with the praise.
A weekly occurrence, I could hear her screaming at him on the phone behind closed doors, mostly about money, but when she emerged from the bedroom and asked what was wrong, she always said, “Oh nothing. Grownup stuff.”
In between the fights about money (he never paid child support), and the arguments about me, however, Jean acknowledged his talent as an artist. When she learned that she needed to launch a write-in campaign, she bit her tongue and asked him.
“Can you create some campaign flyers for me? I have to run a write-in campaign, because they forgot to print my information on the Co-op brochure.” My mom had me in tow when she asked.
Dad was an artist, and engineer, and a certified genius. He agreed to help out. From brochures to hand painted posters, he created an entire campaign in a weekend. They were the most beautiful signs and brochures in the campaign. People too notice.
I was fitted with a sandwich board that said “THEY FORGOT MY MOM!” which I reluctantly wore while I paced back and forth in front of the Telegraph Avenue Co-op. As with my dinner party training, my comments were scripted, and we practiced my lines at home before she sent me out to the front lines. She won.
At one of the board meeting’s that followed, Jean met her second husband, who was the President of the Marin Co-op. They were married in the courtyard of the grocery store, while shoppers passed by. My mother wore a powder blue silk gabardine dress. I thought she looked like Jackie Kennedy. My brother-to-be tripped over the cinder block planter while carrying the wedding cake and it landed face-up in the dirt. Kids came by and scooped out pieces of it with their hands. The wedding was in a meeting room. As a special treat, they opened up the Kiddie Korral for the kids.
We moved to a tiny house in Point Reyes Station -- about 40 miles away from Berkeley, that was owned by my new step-father, Jerry. It was a depression era salt box piece of shit. There I shared a room with my new sister, 9 years my senior. Money was tighter than it had been when it was just the two of us, because my mom and step-dad were saving for a bigger house, but we didn’t feel poor. Point Reyes – at least back then -- wasn’t home to lots of wealthy people, so by comparison, we were fairly average, or maybe even a little better off, since there were two working people in the house. Other people had far less than we did. Those that did have money, like the dairy farmers, didn’t flaunt it. The worst thing about the house was it had an electric stove.
We did things for fun that people who don’t have a lot of money do. I didn’t know that these were cheap activities at the time, but I later learned the world looked very different to many of my friends in college.
It was the early 70’s. We played monopoly and quadruple solitaire and “I doubt it,” (which we called “Bullshit”) for hours on the living room floor. The cards we had were so old that we began to be able to cheat based upon the creases in some of them.
During the summer months, my mom sent us out with giant plastic mayonnaise jars to go blackberry picking in the summer. She taught us how to make blackberry jam, blackberry cobbler, blackberry pie, and blackberry ice cream. There were some incidents of cow tipping, too.
There was no movie theater or much of a downtown back then. During the summer, the old vacant Palace Food Market (which was directly across the street from the new Palace Food Market) would show movies like “Paint Your Wagon,” or “Singing in the Rain.” When we didn’t have enough money from our allowances to go, my mom would pop massive amounts of popcorn on the stove, and we would bring it down in giant brown grocery bags, to barter for entry.
What we ate changed dramatically. My step-father insisted on mashed potatoes with every meal, so my mom changed her menus. We didn’t have beans and rice with cornbread, which was my second favorite thing to eat. Worse, she stopped making my favorite dish – soupy chicken – altogether. Here is how you make soupy chicken, circa 1967 (which, by the way is pronounced like this: SOOOOOOO-py chicken):
Take a sheet cake pan and oil it with Crisco or other cooking oil. Sprinkle 1-1/2 cups of rice on the bottom of the pan. Open a can of cream of mushroom soup and blend in enough water to it to make 3 cups of liquid. If you are fancy, add some tarragon. Pour the liquid over the rice. Pat dry a raw, cut up whole chicken (or if you don’t have enough money for that, a bunch of chicken thighs), and coat them with salt, pepper, and paprika (if you are fancy, toast the paprika in a pan first). Lay the chicken atop the rice and liquid. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about 45-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the thickest part of the chicken produces clear liquid.
She taught me how to make broiled lamb chops, and broiled chicken, and broiled steak. To broil anything, you season your meat with salt and pepper a day in advance, then wrap it up and put it in the fridge. Then, you take a broiling pan, set whatever meat you like on the top, and cook it for 3-5 minutes a side. Serve with mashed potatoes. Here is how you make really good mashed potatoes:
Figure 1.5 medium sized potatoes per person. Peel the potatoes and cover them with water. Add a pinch of salt. Boil them until tender (tender does not mean falling apart; it means a knife goes easily into them. If they are falling apart, then they are waterlogged and it will take a crapload of butter and cream to make them taste good).
Drain the water from the potatoes and briefly mash them to break them up. Add warm chicken broth to the pot so that it covers 1/3 of the potatoes. Begin mashing with a potato masher until there are no large lumps. If you like butter, add it now. Correct the seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve them exactly this way for the next 12 years. It will be the only thing they don’t complain (much) about in therapy..
Because Jerry’s kids were not adventurous eaters, we seasoned everything with salt-and-pepper. This would later change, but for the time being we were relegated to some form of meat-chops, mashed potatoes, and salad made with iceberg lettuce and Good Seasons Italian dressing.
I missed the fancy parties we used to have when it was just the two of us. I never got to take anyone’s coat. We never had parties of any kind, now. My mom said it was too far for her friends to drive for an evening. My new brother Scott said it was because my mom’s friends thought her new husband was an asshole.
One night my step-father was driving home from a bar and hit a kid, crippling him for life. Worse, the kid was a friend of the family. There was no discussion about it – I heard about it at school. When I asked my mom whether it was true, she said, very matter-of-factly, “Your step-father hit one of Jim’s boys. It was very dark. He’s very broken up about it.”
A few weeks later, a man came to our door with our dog in his arms. The dog was dead.
“I got your dog Tina in the back of my truck,” he said to my step-father, who answered the door. “Had to shoot her. She got out and was scarin’ my cows. Want me to dump her or you take care of her?” Scott told me it was retaliation for crippling the kid.
Sometime after the dog incident, my parents called a family meeting and told us we were moving to Corte Madera. My mom said it was because the 75 mile round trip commute was getting to be too much for her and we needed to be closer to San Francisco, and that was that. Scott told me it was because we were being run out of town.
It seemed to me as a child my family was either stirring up trouble, getting into trouble or pretending that the trouble never happened. No matter what, and through various arrests, drug raids, deaths, car accidents, abortions, molestations, and even my brother Scott’s suicide, my mother brushed herself off, picked up the pieces, deep-sixed the discussion, and that was that. I never saw her cry. Not once.
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