Home Cooking

My son, daughter-in-law and grandson are all are in Thailand this month, visiting my daughter-in-law’s family. This is her first visit home in seven years, and her family’s first time meeting Connor, so I’m sure it has been a fun-filled and exciting time for all of them. We’re keeping tabs on the visit via Facebook and smiling because most of the pictures involve eating. As my daughter-in-law reported this morning, “Eating is the national pastime in Thailand!"

She posted photos yesterday of some of her mother’s home-cooked specialities. “My favorite foods my mom makes!” she captioned the photos. “I've missed them so much!” 

It’s true, we miss those favorite home made foods, especially the ones we most associate with our childhoods. Growing up with two southern cooks in my house (my grandmother and my mother), as well as two more across the street (my great-aunt and my great-grandmother), there was certainly no shortage of home-cooked southern style goodness on our table. 

I grew up in an atmosphere where food equaled love. Great care was taken with every meal, every loaf of bread baked, every pie crust rolled and crimped at the edge, every cookie slipped hot and buttery off the sheet. My mother and grandmother’s day was devoted to domestic duties, so nothing was ever rushed or hurried. From fried chicken to grilled steaks, everything was prepared and served with love, a way of nurturing the body, but also the soul. 

It was also a time when we didn’t worry about what we ate. There weren’t daily news bulletins warning us away from all our favorite foods, no internet posts about the evils effects of fat or sugar or carbs or gluten. We ate what tasted good, we enjoyed it, and maybe most importantly, we didn’t feel guilty about it. When I was a child, I ate hot buttered toast (often made from thick slices of my grandma’s homemade bread), crispy fried bacon, and a steaming cup of milky coffee every morning of my life. Dinners were often more fried goodness: platters of chicken, golden brown and crispy on the outside, meaty and juicy on the inside; tiny, melt-in-your mouth lake perch, heaped on a platter, drizzled with lemon wedges, and gobbled up one after the other. Side dishes were potato salad, classic macaroni salad, baked or pinto beans, black eyed peas, wilted spinach with garlic, eggplant or okra (fried!).

My mouth waters at the memory. 

So, yes I miss all those home cooked favorites. They’re nothing like the dishes my daughter-in-law craves, and I’m quite sure her favorite foods are healthier than the ones I grew up on. But home cooking, as we all know, is about more than the sum of its parts. Because while I miss the aroma and taste of those meals, I miss even more the sight and sound of my grandmother bustling around in the basement kitchen of our house, wiping her hands on her ever-present apron. I miss seeing my mother working alongside her, preparing salad or vegetables, setting steaks out to marinade and eventually put on the grill. I miss us all sitting around the white formica table, my grandfather at the head of the table, my grandmother sitting nearest the stove, jumping up and down like a jack-in-the box to refill someone’s plate, add another batch of fish to the fry pan, or remove a fresh pan of biscuits from the oven. I miss being the center of attention while I told stories of my day at school, especially enjoying the reactions when the stories involved those classmates whose behavior was less stellar than mine. 

I know I’ll never taste anything like those foods again. My cooking skills (such as they are) were learned on my own. You’d think with two fine “home-cookers” in the house, someone would have taught me something. But there seemed to be a silent consensus between my mother and grandmother that I wouldn’t need to cook, that I was destined for “more” than a life in the kitchen. If I was hanging around aimlessly in the kitchen, instead of encouraging me to help with the meal, my grandmother might say, “Go up and play the piano for us while we’re cooking.” My mother might shoo me out of her way. “Go read your book, honey,” she’d say, giving me a gentle shove. “We’ll call you when it’s supper time."

Consequently, while I don’t mind cooking, it’s not an activity I’m passionate about. Most of the time, I do prefer eating at home to eating out. Most of the time I’m happier with the small portions of things I make for myself. I enjoy experimenting with new recipes, but since I’m feeding a staunch meat-and-potatoes Irishman, there’s not much room for exotic variations to the menu.  I imagine most of my son’s home cooking memories relate to things his grandmother (my mother) made for him: Shepherd’s pie, spaghetti and meatballs, turkey and stuffing, pot roast. Chocolate cake with caramel frosting, pumpkin pie with whipped cream. 

Comfort food of the highest order.

My grandmother would probably chuckle at the current obsession with cooking - all the food-related TV shows, and even a whole network dedicated to Food. To her, cooking was part of her job as a farmers wife, one of the vital chores she did every day. The fact that she was extraordinarily good at it was a point of pride, but not something she saw as an unusual accomplishment. Like everything else she did, it was done out of love for her family, out of necessity for their wellbeing, to make them FULL - of love, comfort, and tenderness, all sensed with a generous amount of butter, fat, and salt. 

In her book, Home Cooking, writer Laurie Colwin says that “when life is hard and the day has been long, the ideal dinner is not four perfect courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose lovely ambrosial flavors are like nothing ever before tasted, but rather something comforting and savory, easy on the digestion - something that makes one feel, even if only for a minute, that one is safe."

That sense of safety and comfort is the one I most yearn for when i think back to mealtimes growing up. I think that’s the key to successful Home Cooking, no matter where your home lies on the globe. 

Getting Out of the Way

We don’t make a big fuss about holidays around here anymore. With just the three of us (Jim, myself, and my mom) in town, our celebrations are really low key. My mom doesn’t like to eat in restaurants, and really doesn’t like to leave home much at all anymore. It’s a struggle to get her to come to our house, and I can tell she’s not really comfortable here. So for Mother’s Day this year, she will do what she does so often - make a meal for us. I know that’s what gives her pleasure.

When Jim and I set our wedding date lo those many years ago, we weren’t thinking about the fact that it was the Saturday before Mother’s Day. This caused a few difficulties, not the least of which was that we had a tough time finding a florist willing to do a wedding on their busiest weekend of the year. Then it occurred to us that we would be on our honeymoon on Mother’s Day. So, like the dutiful (and perpetually guilt-ridden) only children that we were, we called our mother’s first thing from the hotel in Niagara Falls  on the morning after our wedding to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. 

I had hardly ever spent a night away from home before, and to initiate my permanent move out of the family home on Mother’s Day was like rubbing salt into her wound. But I was young and in love and eager to set off into my own life. She was gracious about it, as she always is, and never revealed any sadness she might have felt. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I know what a cruel blow it must have been for my mother to be separated from me for the first time on that day of all days. Something like the way I would feel about 20 years later, when my son moved to Florida at the age of 18, shortly thereafter married a young woman from another country, and settled out of state permanently. As for Mother’s Day, in the almost two decades since, I’ve actually only spent only one of those holidays with my son.

It’s a little bit sad, but as I said, we don’t make a big fuss about holidays in our family. 

One of the most important lessons I learned about motherhood is that you have to get out of your children’s way. You can’t be the security guard who stands at the crossroads of their lives, pointing them in the direction you want them to take or the one you think is best. You can’t put your arms out and block them from stepping into the future they want. The ability to do this  takes a lot of skill. And you will get plenty of practice as they grow from the completely dependent blobs of neediness that erupt from your womb into full grown people with very strange and rebellious ideas of their own. 

But as I wrote in Life In General, “there is nothing easy about this process. There’s no magic pill you can take to stop missing your children, to keep your heart from aching when you’re apart on birthdays and holidays, to prevent you from wondering what they’re doing or how their day is going, if they’re in a bad mood or on top of the world."

My mother, as much as I dearly love her, was not terribly good at getting out of my way. I had to learn that motherhood lesson on my own. And my son was a very good teacher. He had definite ideas about what he wanted for his life, was responsible enough to take charge of getting those things done, and simply refused to be held back.

So, I stepped aside and got out of his way.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if I stepped back too far. If I should have held on a little tighter, should have protested a little harder. I was so eager to prove that I wouldn’t be like my own parents who wanted to keep me so close, maybe I let go of him a little too easily. In contrast to my experience, where sometimes I felt loved too much - where the warm blanket of parental care and concern occasionally threatened to smother me and suck the life right out of me - I hope he felt loved enough. 

Now he’s 35 years old, with a growing family, a busy career, a home to maintain, plans for the future. He works incredibly hard, is a faithful husband and loving father. Nothing stands in his way, certainly not his mother. And I’m incredibly proud of him for all of that. 

And most of the time I’m proud of myself for having the courage to get out of his way and let it happen.

But there’s still that shadow of a crossing guard mother in me, the one that wants to go back in time and stand on the corner with her arms outstretched. “Stop! Wait! Look every which way you can before you cross that street! It’s dangerous out there where I can’t protect you."

And then enfold him in a tight embrace where I can keep him close and safe forever.

Coming Up the Stairs

There is a narrow and twisty cement stairway leading to the basement of the Martha Mary Chapel, the small historic church where my husband and I were married thirty nine years ago today. When the wedding consultant directed me down the dark passageway to the Bride’s Room on that bright spring morning, my stomach did a back flip. I was scared of stairs, scared of the dark, and mostly scared that I would trip over the filmy train on my wedding dress.  I carefully wended my way downward, my father ahead of me and my Maid of Honor trailing behind holding the train out of harm’s way, only to realize about half-way down that I’d have to make this torturous journey back UP in about 30 minutes.  I could feel my heart beating faster and faster, my knees getting weak. “Hey, you can’t give up now,” my friend said to me. “You can do this."

Yes, I told myself. It’s my wedding day, I’ve been waiting for this day, I CAN do this. And so I did, navigating slowly and gingerly, but successfully down the stairs, and then, back up again for the ceremony that set me on a new course for my life.

Today, almost four decades later, I realize how much of married life resembles that stairway. We enter into a relationship filled with excitement and hope, ready to commit ourselves heart and soul to this other person. We set ourselves on a path hoping for sunshine and flowers, seeking a yellow brick road, never knowing how many times we’ll be forced to detour down a dark, narrow passageway.

In her book, Magical Journey, author Katrina Kenison writes, “What I didn’t know...on the day I donned an ivory wedding dress and became a wife, was that every marriage is a gamble and the stakes are always high. Love, after all, is not synonymous with permanence; we offer our hearts into each other’s safekeeping on faith alone. Our relationship has survived, adapted, deepened, but it is hardly immaculate. In fact, the landscape of our lives together is a muddy criss-cross of mishaps and memories, exultation and grief, hallowed landmarks and forgotten detours made along the way as each learned, one day at a time, what it means to love another person for the long haul.” 

Getting down that dark twisted stairway was only the first of many challenges married life would present me.  In our many years together we’ve experienced long separations imposed by work, job losses and changes, my parents divorce, illness and death, moving house, giving up on dearly held dreams. So often it is these “muddy criss-cross of mishaps,” the “hallowed landmarks and forgotten detours” along the way that give us opportunities to strengthen our resolve, to look back and say, “we survived that and became stronger, more loving people because of it.”

I was really proud of myself for navigating to the bottom of that staircase, but I was even more proud to make my way back up again, to stand in the tiny vestibule of the church on that bright May morning in 1976, fix my gaze on the young man standing at the altar waiting for me, and take my first steps down the aisle into our future. Today, on yet another glorious spring day, I do the same thing, knowing so much more about what it entails.

“I stepped into my marriage convinced that passion would sustain us,” Kenison  writes. “Now, I know better. We will endure by the grace of acquiescence, cooperation, patience, and the small daily rituals that keep us close even as change transforms the landscape of our lives.”  Kenison is so right: If I’ve learned anything in all these years gone by, it is that those are surely the keys to getting back up from every dark stairway life puts in your way. 

So here’s to anniversaries, because they compel us to look back as well as forward, to see the long history of stairways successfully navigated, bridges painstakingly crossed, hurdles courageously cleared. And to know that with “the grace of acquiescence, cooperation and patience” we can continue on the journey together. 

The Thing With Feathers

Yesterday I wrote a long post in this space, a post in which I laid bare some of the pain of these past months. I revealed that I was going through a “valley time,” a time of anxiety, sadness, discontent. When I had finished it, I thought immediately that I should delete it, should not dare to reveal this weakness, should not indulge myself in such blatant self-pity.

But I changed my mind. Let it go. Released it to the eyes of others.

And then. Then you responded. In comments. E-mails. Private messages. “Yes, me too,” you said. “I’ve been there. I understand."

Once again a connection was made through writing, words were shared that shed some light on my darkness, much the way the morning sun just this minute broke through pewter colored clouds still laden with cold. That brief flash of sunlight directly outside the window reminds me, as your words did yesterday, that warmth and brightness are still there, even if they are sometimes obscured by the heaviness of clouds around us.

I had thought I was alone, and you reminded me I was not. You listened, you heard, you recognized. 

There is great strength in that. Today there is a crack of light in the darkness. I feel empowered to start the climb upwards, away from the recesses of that darker place where I’ve been dwelling. With that feeling comes hope..."the thing with feathers," as Emily Dickinson described it. A gentle, fragile, feeling, but one with the amazing power of lifting our hearts and taking wing against the darkness.

Although I mostly dwell in this land of sensing and feeling (my Myers Briggs profile is Introvert Sensing Feeling Judging) I am a practical person, a person who needs concrete things to do. So this week I have been putting only good food in my body - no sugar, no processed foods, no alcohol, and no caffeine (well, just a tiny bit in the morning). I’ve walked every day because walking for me is “moving meditation” and gets the blood flowing through my heart and to my brain. I’m planning my days so I can accomplish what I need to, and trying not to let myself be sidetracked by the time killers that so often disable me... especially the Internet. I’m looking at the world around me with brighter eyes, remembering how to savor the small moments of beauty -  like my pretty coffee cup, the call of ducks in flight over the ponds, the smooth pages of a brand new book, the warmth of my little dog as he snuggles next to me in bed.

I’m trying to get myself back on the track, the trail that leads out of the valley and into a brighter place. 

 I’m grateful. For the connections we shared, for the hands held out to my as I opened my heart on this page. 

And I’m hopeful. That thing with feathers is perched in my soul this morning.

Dress for Success

Last week a young woman of my acquaintance, an extremely bright, mature, and socially aware high-school student, took on the administration of her school in protest of dress code changes that would, among other things, prohibit students from wearing leggings to school. Apparently there had been some demeaning sexist comments from students and teachers alike regarding this item of clothing and the students who were wearing it. The administration’s response to those  comments and attitudes was to prohibit the students from wearing the item - rather than tackling the more difficult and disturbing behavior that prompted the comments in the first place.

This in itself isn’t surprising. It often happens that the innocent get punished due to the misbehavior of others. It ain’t fair, but it’s a sad fact of life. One worth fighting, I believe, and I’m proud of people who stand up against it - like this young woman and her friends, who were effective in their campaign, the administration agreeing to allow female students to continue wearing leggings to school. 

 This incident made me recall a similar situation from my own life. Back in the dark ages (about 1968) I mounted my own little dress code campaign. I was sowing some social justice oats of my own back then, and as the youngest-ever editor of the school paper I was having a good time wielding the Power of the Pen. 

But my issue was somewhat different: My mandate was to change the dress code to allow girls to wear pants to school. Remember, this is 1968, and the micro-mini skirt was in style. Every dress or skirt I owned at the time was at least six inches above my knees -  and I was considered a “conservative” dresser. But somehow or other, the authorities deemed it necessary for girls to wear dresses (no matter how short) in order to have the right frame of mind to learn. If we wore slacks to school, it was feared that our minds would no longer focus on education, we’d feel “too casual,” as if we were dressed for “playing outside” instead of learning. (The principal actually said those very words to me, I remember it clearly to this day over 40 years later and I think my jaw is still slightly open at the stupidity of it.)

In 1968, the news was filled with stories about women taking a stand for their “rights,” for the freedom to be taken seriously in the world outside the sphere of their home and family. For many woman, dress was a huge part of this struggle. Remember the mass “bra burning” at college campuses across the nation? Adult women were facing problems in terms of attitude about the way they looked. I had grown up seeing my mother dressed every day in cinched waist, full skirted “house dresses." Bras and girdles contorted a woman’s natural shape into one society thought most pleasing, no matter how uncomfortable. My 13-year old brain watched this all with great interest, and it seemed to me at the time that women’s clothing should not have any bearing on their intellect or their ability to achieve their professional or educational goals.

Plus, I was tired of freezing my ass off in short skirts while I waited for the bus during those cold Michigan winters.

So I started an editorial campaign to encourage a change in the dress code, at least for the winter months, using the cold and snow as leverage. I had enough support from other students and parents to finally achieve success. Girls would be allowed to wear “slacks” to school - solid dark colors only, no jeans, and no pants with “rivets” on the pockets. The rule soon filtered out to the other junior high schools, and the high school as well. The rest, as they say, is history.

These days we are debating something very similar, but also something very different. Yes, these girls were well within their rights to discuss wearing clothing that appealed to them. Aside from my personal feelings about the particular item of apparel in question, (and I have to say I think leggings are an abdominal piece of apparel) I am pleased that they were heard, and consideration given to their requests. 

What I really wish is that they didn’t want to wear those leggings in the first place.

Or the scoop necked tops that reveal embarrassing amounts of cleavage.

Or the spike-heeled shoes that make them walk like Chinese handmaidens with bound feet and will undoubtedly result in all kinds of back and knee impairments later in their lives.

I know these items are all fashionable and trendy. But I guess I’m still carrying around that 1970’s bra-burning mentality that shaped itself in my brain when I was 13, the one that tells me dressing provocatively doesn’t earn women the kind of respect we deserve. I wish women didn’t think they needed to wear tight fitting, revealing clothing in order to feel feminine or pretty or desirable. 

The term “dress for success” has some merit. I’ve been working on a project at my own company, revising the Policy and Procedures. At our office, we have a dress code too - a quite extensive one in fact (and yes, it prohibits wearing leggings to work). Many of the staff interact with attorneys, physicians, and health care professionals on a regular basis. They need to wear clothing that reflects their professionalism and authority. Maybe it’s wrong that their clothing has any bearing on their perceived ability. But like a lot of other things in life that are wrong and unfair - it does.

 I probably sound like a cranky old Granny. I don’t care. I believe what we put on our bodies should have less to do with what’s fashionable and more to do with the perception we have of ourselves and the way we want the world to perceive us. 

I suggest people (men and women alike) think in terms of “dressing for respect” - our own self-respect, and the respect we deserve from other people with whom we interact.