Food, Family, and Memory

When Breakfast Changed My Life

When I was a kid, I was pretty much a geek. At nine I started to stutter so badly that the school put me into a class for “special” students and my parents sent me to a psychologist. The approach favored by the psychologist was to withhold talking until I said something. Since I didn’t want to stutter and didn’t want to talk to him anyway, we mostly spent 50 minutes in silence.

My father was a pragmatist which meant he figured that whatever was was, so if I was socially awkward and stuttered, that’s who I was and he left it at that. My mother however was an optimist. She had proudly attended Hunter Model School in New York and felt that she was part of the liberal intelligentsia that wouldn’t rest until the world was cleansed of poverty, racism, sexism, and war. Reading about the latest armed conflict in the newspaper, she would proclaim with frustration, “Why can’t people just get along?”

As American as Apple Pie

Three years ago my father remarried, had a baby and moved to the suburbs. He went domestic in a way only my father could. He is from Israel; his wife is from Poland; and the suburbs previously mentioned are Harrow, right outside of London. She has a brilliantly Goth 16 year old daughter from a previous marriage, he has three cynical Los Angelian children (including me), and the baby, as of now, speaks only Polish with a slightly British accent. Last weekend I went to London for my birthday. On my last night there, his wife and her daughter baked me, of all things, an apple pie. We all sat at the table and I stared out the window past my post-nuclear family to their white picket fence as Don McLean played in my head. Bye Bye Ms. American Pie. The pie was fantastic.

The Legend of Maw Maw and Chuckie

I was raised in a very sheltered household when it came to food. Sure, we would eat the incredible Italian or Chinese food my father prepared by hand, or feast on amazing French, Japanese, Indian, Greek, Bistro, or Thai cuisines from local restaurants. I mean, I did grow up in New York. But I was very cloistered when it came to one cuisine… American. I was probably 25 before I tasted my first meatloaf. My father and stepmother were both raised in the suburbs (one in Maryland, one in the Midwest) with very traditional American family fare and it was an unspoken law that that cuisine never would cross their daughter’s lips (or their own ever again).

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I married a man who had been raised on a gaggle of Air Force bases across the south. The Christmas after we got engaged we visited his grandparents who lived in Florida. His whole family had flown in from various places across the country, as they did every year. I had only met the nuclear family and was a little on edge to meet the rest of the herd. I was a young and outrageous artist and felt a lot of pressure to present myself as relatively normal to my new ultra-conservative family.

The first night we were all gathered in the 1960’s wood paneled eat-in kitchen as Maw Maw (his grandmother) announced we would be having Chuckie Casserole for dinner. This was met with a great cheer from the crowd.

What's in the Freezer?

Food and death are a marvelous combination, except for when one suddenly causes the other. In my family, news of someone’s passing usually initiates a steady stream of food delivered to the ground zero of loss. Sandwich platters, rice puddings, and pink cardboard pastry boxes tied up with string. These are a few of my favorite things. The food, not the death part.

The different foods that are bestowed upon the bereaved are a reminder of the living. Who else but the living would care enough to drop by with a Bundt cake? Keep the pan. I have extras for times like these. You can look at this delivered feast as a measure of the love for the deceased. Home made fried chicken is a great compliment; day old grocery store pie, not so much.

Poor Man's Butler

with-tony-and-bob-2-231x300 I don’t want to sound mean. Because I’m not. That said, I would sometimes ask my dad who this guy was or that guy. It would be a random dude that let’s say was always hanging around Jan Murray or Red Buttons. Sorry I’m not coming up with bigger names, but these were big names in my world. I guess I could say Frank. We’ll get back to Frank.

My dad would answer, “He’s a WITH.” And I will now explain what he explained to me because by this time in life, I knew what a “WITH” was. It’s a full-time, unpaid career of being best friends with someone famous. The prerequisite is that you usually did not have a real job and you just sort of hung around with someone. If you’ve seen “Entourage,” it’s sort of the modern day version. Okay, getting back to Frank, I have one name. Jilly. I’ll say no more.

Duke, my dad, had a way of getting his friends, in between wives and with no place to stay, to move in and help take care of him. (If you’re new to my blog, he was handicapped as a result of childhood polio.) Mostly, they were friends with lives and jobs and it would only last for a short period.

And then one day Tony moved in. Was Tony my dad’s WITH? Maybe. Although I’m not sure it counts if you’re not with someone famous. And Duke was not famous. His friend Mickey Hayes had a “WITH” and he wasn’t famous, so yes you can have one regardless. But Mickey had a ton of money. Duke was neither famous nor rich. Being my dad’s with was more like being butler to a poor man.

Food, Family and Memory