Food, Family and Memory

My mother always had soup on the stove or in the refrigerator waiting for us when we got home from school. Her beef shank based soup was the one that I loved the most. When I make it, it’s like a little visit with her, crowned by eating the marrow from the shank as she watched and smiled lovingly.

Beef and Macaroni Soup

1-two-inch thick beef shank with bone

6 cups of water, enough to cover the beef by an inch

1 - 14.5 ounce can of whole tomatoes, broken up with your hand into large pieces

1 large onion, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup peeled and chopped carrots, 1/2 inch pieces

Salt, pepper and a large bay leaf

3/4 cup elbow macaroni

Simmer the shank, water, tomatoes, carrots, onion, celery, salt, pepper and bay leaf for an hour and a half with a cover on. Remove the beef shanks and let cool until you can cut it into ½ pieces. Add ¾ cup of elbow macaroni and stir so it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Cook until the macaroni is tender. Add the cut beef back in and simmer for a few more minutes to allow the flavors to marry. The one you love gets the bone marrow.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, my five-year-old son began making paper hearts. He had discovered how to make a perfectly balanced heart by carefully folding the paper first. There seems to be a metaphor here, but for what I’m not certain: maybe for love, maybe for the way my son approaches every task, perhaps for both of these things. Years later, as an adult, he will design and make models of water treatment plants, bridges, glass windows that are a full story high; he will marry a woman who sometimes wears a hardhat as she performs bridge inspections.

In 1989, at the age of five, he is making hearts. He uses up a package of oversized construction paper; he appropriates post-it notes, his father’s business cards, and his older sister’s loose leaf. He rummages in the drawer where I keep wrapping paper and cards from Christmases and birthdays and baby showers, and he begs for sheets from the yellow legal pads that I use for my lesson plans. I suggest in vain that he turn his attention to turkeys, pumpkins, horns of plenty.

I wish I could tell you exactly how many yards it was for me to get to Roxbury Park to give you the visual.    A hop.   Not even a skip and a jump.  I walked two houses up, crossed Olympic and I was there.

That is where I spent my summers.  Basically, doing absolutely nothing.  Kind of like a Seinfeld episode.  No sunblock.  No checking in with my mother.  I didn’t excel at anything in Roxbury Park.  Not at caroms.  Not the monkey bars.  And certainly not the rings.

At the rings, I watched other kids adept at swinging quickly back and forth from one to the next.  I stood high up one day, grabbed ahold and leapt off, but unable to catch the next ring, which seemed to move further and further away, I landed back where I started.  I spent long days trying to push myself further until I did finally grab onto that second one, which was such a victory.   Then I kept swinging back and forth, trying to gain the momentum I would need to get to the next, but failed and dropped to the ground.  Again I tried, over and over, all summer until I was finally able to go back and forth, leaving the other kids waiting in line, drumming their fingers.  And like a monkey, I would copy what the other ring junkies would do just before taking over the set for their performance.  They would dig their hands into the sand and rub some of it between their palms for better friction.  Or use chalk.   It never seemed to work for me, but I did it to look cool, like them.  Inevitably all us monkeys ended up with blisters.

After 3 days of steady rain the outside temperature on the ground was stuck at 32 degrees and warm air was still sandwiched aloft causing the precipitation. I was nervous and so was the Weather Channel. I checked the icicles on the wires outside my kitchen window regularly - they are my predictor. My lawn was covered with birds out heavily feeding - not a good sign.

Maine was on the verge of serious trouble - perfect conditions for a severe icing event. By noon on Monday ice was collecting on top of the wires but the hanging icicles were still growing longer. That changed by early afternoon. ‘It’ was starting just as they predicted. The temperature was dropping and the icicles started to flip-they no longer hung straight down. Ice formed on top of the wires, freezing instantly and no longer dripping. Ice was forming the minute it hit any surface. When ice forms just on the top of wires it grows quickly heavy and the hanging icicles weighing less, literately flip. My icicles had rotated more than 45 degrees. This is so not a good thing.

Everything became encased in over an inch of heavy, clear ice. The weight of that much ice is more than anything can tolerate; electrical wires break, trees bend, limbs snap bringing more limbs with them and roofs collapse. It was too dangerous to leave my home and too dangerous to stay, but it’s didn’t matter anymore. I was staying with the ship.