PB & inJustice

My sister was over the other night, yes I have a sister. I have a few secrets. Yes, even from you my dearest friends. So my sister was over at my house eating peanut butter and said. “I love peanut butter so much now. I think it’s because we could never have it growing up because of you”.
Do I have a peanut allergy? No, that would make too much sense. This is my family. My mother never bought peanut butter because I was fat. I think that she was afraid that if she brought such a fattening sugary food into the house that I would go berserk. Perhaps her fear was that if she tried to sneak a jar into the house that I would smell the sweet peanut buttery smell wafting up the apartment building stairs and storm down armed with a loaf of wonder bread and a butter knife and kick her ass.

Maybe she was depriving me from peanuty goodness because she was actually afraid? I am the only kid in America who never took a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school. I am so ashamed. No matter her motivation the reality of the situation was that I was never allowed any other normal kid foods anyway. Because of my “issues” we ate no cookies, chips, pie, cake, sugary cereals, juice, candy, Pop tarts, Devil Dogs, Ring Dings, ice cream or anything produced by hostess, or Entenmanns in our home. Little Debbie and Sara Lee were not friends of my mothers.

Yeah…so my mother, sister, and I suffered 18 years of culinary deprived childhood and I was fault. My fault? Why are they blaming me? I wasn’t the one not buying the junk food. I bought tons of junk food everyday on the way home from school. I didn’t care if we had crap foods in the house or not. I never went hungry.

What is the moral of our story? Did all of this militant control ever help me lose a single pound? Yes of course it did! That’s why I am a perfect size 2. NO! Size 2 add a zero! I am of course my mother’s controlling food weirdness made me freak out about food and I am still riding the aftershocks. Basically if you want to insure that your child has an eating disorder this is the plan for you. I have to go eat a whole jar of peanut butter now!

Ned

Ned was raised in Bainbridge a conservative New England town where people took pride in being ordinary. Ned never had a chance. In the first grade he begged his mom to buy him a Wonder Woman costume for Halloween. She brought home a Luke Skywalker costume and locked the family TV in her bedroom. On Halloween night, Ned being Ned talked his mother into letting him go around the neighborhood alone. He waited until he was around the corner from his house and took off his costume. He wore the mask as a hat and tied the white plastic tunic to the back of it and went trick-or-treating as a bride. Instead of saying “Trick or treat” he walked; left together stop-right together stop, up to his neighbor’s doors and proclaimed “I do” them helping himself to a piece of candy from his astonished neighbors. This time his mother locked herself in her bedroom.

Rewrite #1

As I turn down Mimi’s street the harsh glare on my windshield softens under a canopy of lacy green leaves. Concrete curbs give way to ancient stone walls abandoned in the woods. Her house is marked by a lone post over dressed in a collection of recycled reflectors removed from rusty bicycles. I turn down her dirt driveway and park in front of her dilapidated garage which seems to be tilting more to the left since the last time I was here. I walk over to the house and knock on the pealing blue door. No answer. I peak in the cracked kitchen window. I see her woodstove now covered with boxes filled with generations of debris. Her family has always lived on this land. The house itself built before the civil war like Mimi never took well to age. The house rejected indoor plumbing. The floors grew tired of waiting for repair and simply gave up and fell in. The shingles on the roof battered and broken cling for dear life and pray for relief.


I walk around the house ducking underneath white cotton panties clothes pinned to a rope tied between two trees. I continue around the house passing concord grapes, old aluminum pots, and massive raspberries bushes. As I pass the outhouse I regret the amount of ice coffee I drank on the ride down and vow to wait until we go out to lunch. The outhouse is one of the subjects that Mimi and I never talk about, like my adoptive family we pretend that it doesn’t exist. Even though the outhouse is visible it’s the easier of the two subjects to ignore. My adoptive family’s undeniable presence often looms between us in moments of uncomfortable silence; an invisible guest always sitting between us at our monthly lunch dates. Mimi prefers to forget the fact that I was put up for adoption. She chooses to believe that the 28 years between our first and second meeting do not exist. I leave the shadow of the house and walk into her makeshift garden. In Mimi’s garden plants are staked to old TV antennas and broken broom handles, and tied in place with old pantyhose. I see my Mimi’s bright red kerchief poking out from behind the cherry tomatoes.
I yell out, “Hey who is that glamour girl?” Mimi looks over at me and quickly stands up and holds her gloved hand to her heart.

“Oh honey-girl! You scared me!” She takes off her kerchief and fluffs her steal gray wiry curls. “I thought you was coming later, I must look a wreck.”

I smile. “You look great to me.” I say. She frowns.

“Honey you’re crazy! I don’t even have my face on “we hug and she slaps me on the butt. At 93 years-old Mimi is no longer the legendary beauty she once was. But she is still a prefect size four with curves in all the best places.

Writer's Workshop Piece

As I turn down Mimi’s street the harsh glare on my windshield softens under a canopy of lacy green leaves. Concrete curbs give way to ancient stone walls abandoned in the woods. Her house is marked by a lone post over dressed in a collection of recycled reflectors removed from rusty bicycles. I turn down her dirt driveway and park in front of her dilapidated garage which seems to be tilting more to the left since the last time I was here. I walk over to the house and knock on the pealing blue door. No answer. I peak in the cracked kitchen window. I see her woodstove now covered with boxes filled with generations of debris. Her family has always lived on this land. The house itself built before the civil war like Mimi never took well to age. The house rejected indoor plumbing. The floors grew tired of waiting for repair and simply gave up and fell in. The shingles on the roof battered and broken cling for dear life and pray for relief.


I walk around the house ducking underneath white cotton panties clothes pinned to a rope tied between two trees. I continue around the house passing concord grapes, old aluminum pots, and massive raspberries bushes. As I pass the outhouse I regret the amount of ice coffee I drank on the ride down and vow to wait until we go out to lunch. The outhouse is one of the subjects that Mimi and I never talk about, like my adoptive family we pretend that it doesn’t exist. But, unlike my adoptive family the outhouse is always physically there. I walk into the field and see my Mimi’s bright red kerchief poking out from behind the cherry tomatoes.

I yell out, “Hey who is that glamour girl?” Mimi looks over at me and quickly stands up and holds her gloved hand to her heart.

“Oh honey-girl! You scared me!” She takes off her kerchief and fluffs her steal gray wiry curls. “I thought you was coming later, I must look a wreck.”

I smile. “You look great to me.” I say. She frowns.

“Honey you’re crazy! I don’t even have my face on“we hug and she slaps me on the butt. At 93 years-old Mimi is no longer the legendary beauty she once was. But she is still a prefect size four with curves in all the best places.

Too many cracks in the kitchen.

Easter time is here and I am in a baking mood. I want to make these amazing almond cookies that they used to serve at Wellesley College. I look in all of my antique cookbooks, then my modern cookbooks and then the internet to find the right recipe. These almond cookies are crisp on the outside then chewy and luscious on the inside. Like almond velvet melt in your mouth heaven.
I am ready to bake cookies. I found an Almond cookie recipe on Land O’ Lake’s website, even though I use Kate’s brand Butter. Before I go on you have to know something about cooking in my house. The second a measuring spoon rattles or a mixing bowl clanks Alice comes running into the kitchen screaming. “Momma I help you! Momma I help you!” She can be inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs or upside down; no matter where she is, she always comes running. This day is no different. She is outside playing on the swings so I quietly take out the mixing bowls and preheat the oven. I have the dry ingredients in the bowl and am tip toe over to the drawer to retrieve the measuring cups and poof! There she is there with her face smushed up against the glass kitchen door. I ignore her in the hopes that she’ll see that I am busy and go back to playing. She starts banging on the door yelling, “Momma! What you baking? I help you!”

Before I can lock the door she is in the house and dragging a chair over from the kitchen table. She puts the chair next to the counter climbs up and starts measuring. In mid pour I take the sea salt out of her little chubby hand and say. “Alice remember, if you are going to help Mommy what do you have to do?” Alice puts the measuring cup on the counter.

“Wash my hands!” She says enthusiastically holding her dirty hands in the air.

“Yes of course we always wash our hands before we cook. But what is the other most important rule?” Her smile turns into frown.

“I know” Sigh “Do what momma say” I smile and pat her head. “Correct! Now did mommy tell you to put a half a cup of salt in their? I ask pointing at the full measuring cup. She nods her head no and goes to wash her hands.

I love the idea of cooking with Alice, but the reality is hard. I have to concentrate on the recipe, I have been known to get distracted and leave out key components, like the time I made brownies without sugar. In my defense I have my little dog running around and at times under my feet. I have a defiant stubborn daughter who if left unattended will start randomly adding things, her favorite is eggs. No, not whole eggs, she used to smash them on the counter or in her hands then drop the massacred mass and most of the shells into whatever I am making. Now she murders them in a measuring cup on the counter.

On this day she is asking every four seconds if it’s time to crack the eggs Ten minutes and one pulsating forehead vein later it is time to crack the eggs. I give Alice her measuring cup and tow eggs. The first egg is squeezed to death and explodes all over her hands and runs down the side of the measuring cup. I clean up the mess and we begin again.

I take another egg in my hand. “Now sweetheart remember that we tap the egg on the side of the cup” I demonstrate. I tap the egg three times on the side of the measuring cup. Alice nods and takes the egg from me and then she taps it three times on the side of the cup. Then she holds the egg in both hands again and crushes another victim. This time the egg slides down in to the measuring cup with minimal shell.

She smiles. “See momma! No shelfs!”

I shake my head. “Yup, hardly any, but please try it the…”

Crack! Before I can finish other egg is smashed in her chubby little hands and poured into the batter.

She holds up the full measuring cup, “Done!” She looks at me. “now what I do?”

I think for a moment. Then it comes to me the prefect Alice task. I hand her a plastic bag of whole almonds a big rolling pin. She didn’t even need a tutorial. My sweet little girl beat those nuts like a human sledgehammer, which was not only amusing to watch but gave me some time to fish the “shelfs” out of the cookie batter.

P.S. The cookies were good, but not the right kind.