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.”
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