I think I’m nesting in my own way – I have to believe that it’s an individual process, specific to each woman’s own need to control very specific points of crazy in her own home. I’ve begun purging the closets and, well, that’s about it right now.  For the most part, I keep things pretty organized around here because disorder makes me twitchy and then I can’t relax (Do I ever relax? And now I can’t even have bourbon. I’ll get into my attempt at a prenatal yoga dvd later.), or focus, and then I end up turning on Bravo and it’s an honest to goodness shitshow of reality TV for the next 2-3 hours. So yeah, a place for everything and everything in it’s place helps keep me from spinning into oblivion.

In the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to get a handle on any projects that need attention, make sure the house isn’t completely falling apart, keep a tab on my mental health (because somedays my hormones tell me that it is totally rational to cry uncontrollably over a Hall and Oates song or and episode of American Pickers), and convince Jose that we need to move tons of furniture around to accommodate the needs of a person who will be small enough to fit in a basket. Not that I plan on putting our child in a basket – he’s not Moses. That I’m aware of. Anyway, in the midst of me making lists and preparing and trying to maintain some sense of calm, our cat, Papa, decides that he needs to start shitting around the house. The litter box is for the weak, apparently. Who needs it when you have the floor? Furry little fuckface.

Granted, Papa has had some emotional bathroom issues in the past. He’s not what you might call “stable.”  It’s because of him that we had to tear up an entire hallway of carpet and replace it with tile, because he had taken to peeing wherever he pleased. Which was exclusively on the carpet. But after creating the optimal potty situation for the little man, he seemed to finally be back to normal. The litter boxes were being used for onesies and twosies, and our downstairs finally didn’t smell like we were running a nursing home. On rare occasion, we might find an errant turd, rolling next to the litter box like an abandoned mitten, but we thought, “Sometimes, it just falls out, right?” Our little man was finally behaving.  And then I got pregnant. Turdapalooza.

It started slowly and sporadically enough: the aforementioned errant turd next to the box, a random nugget in the corner of the downstairs living room. Nothing apocalyptic. We thought, “Poor little man, he must be so embarrassed.” We took him to the vet to make sure he wasn’t sick, since we had lost our other two cats the year before. They put him on Miralax to relieve possible constipation, after looking at an X-ray of his tummy that suggested he might be a Pez dispenser of poop. Our cat is on a daily stool softener.  We are pathetic assholes.

Physical maladies ruled out thus far, we went back to foolishly thinking that things were under control. And then the formations began appearing. I went downstairs one morning to my office and spotted a circular formation of turds right next to the phone table. It was so intricate and, for a moment, it creeped me out. I wondered if the Blair Witch had visited us during the night, and quickly looked around to see if there was a stick figure hanging from the ceiling or if Papa was staring mindlessly into a corner of the room. Nope.  Everything was status quo.  So I picked up the semi-petrified offering and flushed it, going to look for Papa to see what was up.  He was curled up on his pillow in our bedroom, having some quiet time. Huh. I let it be.

A few poop-free days later, another formation appeared, this time in a different location, again in a corner of the living room, near the television stand. It was more scattered, kind of like a version of macaroni art but less palatable. I picked it up, flushed it and went to find Papa again.  This time he was snoozing on the upstairs couch, blinking softly at me past the sunlight.

“Seriously, little man, what is your deal?  Use your words.”  Nothing, just a long stretch and then a flash of nippled tummy. He seemed unfazed, you know, because he’s a cat. Christ.

Days turn into weeks, and now the formations are becoming an almost daily staging. He has his favorite places, except now he has taken to bedazzling a stair or two with turds, and then there are the borderline comical instances where he goes bounding through the house, a few stragglers rolling down the hall after him. We take to calling him “The Mad Shitter,” or an old standby, “The Turd Burglar.” In an ill-formed attempt at reverse psychology, I leave one little pile untouched to see if I can trick him into thinking he already did his business. He poops next to my yoga mat in our bedroom to shake things up.  We officially have a troubled child on our hands.

I am desperate at this point, having visions of caring for a poopy newborn and trying to dodge cat turds all at the same time. I have dreams of not being able to find the floor because it has become a yellow-brick-road of cat turds. I panic about the baby beginning to crawl and, in a moment of slow motion horror, running over to pry a petrified nugget out of his pink little hand. I need help. I google “cat behaviorists.” And I know what many of you are thinking, and I get it, “Why don’t you just get rid of him or duct tape him to the litter box?”  Well, because as I mentioned before, we’re assholes.  We love him and he’s our little man. And seriously, look at this face. It’s the perfect mixture of adorable and mentally unstable. It’s haunting, really.

So I reached out, by email, to a behaviorist at Treehouse, and one at Anti Cruelty and waited. By the end of the day, I got a phone call from the specialist at Treehouse. I wish she had emailed instead.  Crazy is so much easier to deal with in print. Here is a reenactment of that phone call. And no, I didn’t make up the stuff about the bears:

LADY: So I understand that you have an elimination problem in your house?

ME: Help me. It’s everywhere.

LADY: Well, cats rely on their intrinsic instincts from being in the wild.

ME: Sure.

LADY: They are always very aware of when a bear might come and attack them. They don’t like to feel threatened. They don’t know when a bear might come into the room and attack when they’re eating or using the litter box.

ME: I don’t think we have bears in our condo…

LADY: They don’t know that. It’s very instinctual.

ME: I think he’s upset because I’m pregnant. He didn’t start doing this regularly until this happened. But otherwise he’s totally normal and sweet and…

LADY: ….they like open spaces and not being backed against a wall or in front of a doorway. They need to be able to look out for predators. If a bear is approaching, they need to have an exit strategy. They need to be able to escape from the bear. Cats have a specific way of communicating with us. This might be his way of telling you he needs other options for going to the bathroom.

ME: See, I think that’s the problem, he’s found it and it’s the floor. He has two perfectly clean boxes, an army of Feliway plug-ins and more love than he knows what to do with.  I really think he’s just upset….

LADY: …I think he’s trying to tell you he wants potty’s on both levels. They need several options. They don’t like to feel limited or closed off. In the wild they have free reign of where to eliminate. Let him tell you where he needs to go. Maybe he feels there is a threat in your basement, that there isn’t a clear exit from bears.

ME: Last week, while my husband was on the toilet and the cat was in the bathroom with him, the cat looked straight at my husband, walked over to the bathmat, and pooped right in front of him.  He maintained eye contact.

LADY: That was probably him telling you “Hey mom and dad, you have a potty upstairs, I want one too!” See, he’s communicating with you.

ME: This has been really helpful. Thank you.

LADY: Good luck!

Someone pays this woman to do her job. I am unemployed. The world is mad and full of bears.

The next day, I get an email from the woman at Anti Cruelty. She acknowledges that Papa may very well be expressing anxiety over my pregnancy, that they smell hormone changes and that it might be a good idea to check in with our vet about natural anti-anxiety remedies or a prescription to help get him though this stressful time. I wish I had the same luxury right about now.

WARNING: I’m finally breaking down and talking about baby stuff. You’re in or you’re out (I really kind of hope you’re in, because the whole thing is just a string of ridiculous and I promise I won’t talk about fluids or anything that will make you not be able to sleep at night), because honestly, for the last four months, I’ve been in a holding pattern of weird where I can’t think of much else. I haven’t written a goddamn thing and the guilt, the intense, gut-wrenching guilt that has resulted because of it, is bordering on crazy-making. There is nothing worse as a writer than to come to the realization that you have ultimately become The Writer Who Doesn’t Write. I don’t want to be that writer. I don’t want my kid to see me as that writer. So, here it all is. I can’t even begin to take stock of the countless hours of shame-inducing, bad television I have watched as some kind of bizarre coping mechanism to wrap my brain around the immensity of what is happening. This is all-encompassing, fifteen different kinds of awesome and quietly (sometimes not-so-quietly), terrifying. I am really hoping there is some kind of secret decoder ring being sent to me as a welcome gift into this new world of Mom-ness. That’s a thing, right?

I wake up every morning and for a split second, everything seems status quo. I do a quick inventory: the cat is sleeping on his pillow, Jose’s clothes are in a pile on the bathroom floor, I’m covered in kleenex from nighttime allergies, and then it hits me:  Oh wait, that’s what’s different – I’m pregnant.  Holy. Shitsnacks. How did that happen?  I mean, I know how it happened, but it doesn’t change the fact that almost five months in, at moments, it still seems completely improbable. There is a wee, tiny person, who is squatting in my belly, biding his time before he can make a break for it.  It is nothing short of surreal.

Here’s the other funny thing that has added to the ridiculous quotient of this whole process– I’m considered a “geriatric pregnancy.” I’m old, y’all.  It’s true. Not old for like, Life, but old for this. At least that’s all I’ve been hearing for the last year since we started seeing doctors and making sure that I was healthy and we could go ahead and give this insane thing a try. I’ve heard a litany of  little warnings: The risks are so much higher; It could take forever to even get pregnant; If I miraculously did, it could just, you know, fall out, ’cause I’m old; Good luck with your five, shriveled remaining eggs; I could give birth to the equivalent of Squiddly Diddly (sailor hat optional), because our collective DNA offerings might possibly read more like a list of suggestions at this point.  Supportive stuff from the medical community that makes you think, “Yes!  This sounds like an excellent idea. And so much fun to be had! Let us embark on this act of complete and utter futility and see what kind of magic awaits us.” It’s been good times. Between our “advancing years”, my allergies and asthma, and Jose’s diabetes, the conception of this kid makes him some kind of unicorn child. Harps will play from thin air when he is born, kittens will weep, and he will most likely exclusively fart strawberry-scented rainbows. I think I just described key plot points to Legend and The Never Ending Story all at once.

It is a crazy time over here at Casa Jewmex. Sometimes Jose and I just stare at each other and say with our eyes (Words don’t cut it sometimes. After fourteen years together, you can basically communicate through clicks and blinking.), “Holy shit. How do we do this?” We’ll have to pay for this person, make sure he eats, gets the right kind of care and love,  that he doesn’t get his head stuck in the railings, that he knows– unlike the cat – that you don’t eat random things off the floor, and that no matter what any asshole kid on the playground says, he should know he is an amazing little person. Also, we’re trying to figure out how to tell him one day, that he should definitely go to college, but that we’ll probably never be financially solvent enough to pay for it. The scarring has already begun and he’s still just innocently floating around in his own little world. As much as we can’t wait to meet this little person, we encourage him to enjoy his time on the inside.

I’ve had these strong moment where I am drawn to write – where it takes on that familiar feeling of being imperative again. But then I don’t. I just make excuses for not doing the work, as though I’m afraid of what might come out.  Kinda like this rambling insanity, but I’m doing it, right?  That has to count for something. And what the shit am I afraid of writing about anyway?  I have close to no filter in everything else I’ve ever written – an entire 350 page thesis of all-kinds-of-embarassing, essays and little articles and performances made of Too Much Information. I think it’s this new content that has made me mute all of a sudden. Who the hell wants to read about another pregnant lady? I don’t, and I am one. I had a very dear friend, upon finding out I was pregnant, look me dead in the eyes and ask me “Please, promise me you won’t become one of those mommy bloggers.”  And I swear, that’s not what I want, not even close to my intention (no offense, mommy bloggers, keep doing the magic that you do). But this is what’s happening now, what is currently defining my day-to-day and I am, and always have been, a writer who writes what I know. Whether you like it or not, I am a strictly non-fiction kind of girl. The last time I made a genuine attempt at writing fiction for my own amusement, I was eight. I set up a typewriter in my bedroom and decided, with much passion, to write a folktale about a Russian sheepherder after reading a bunch of Isaac Bashevis Singer books. I just don’t think you can top that. I outdid myself creatively in third grade, and I’m okay with that.

I’m making sense of all of this as I go. It’s the best any of us can do with our own weird. I’m sure there will be a steady string of ridiculous to come, if it isn’t happening already. Rumor has it my sweet and lovely mother-in-law bought a tiny baby girdle in Mexico for us. I am mortified and wholly fascinated. It’s called a faha in Spanish, and is used to hold the baby’s bellybutton in and help avoid hernias. I’m already practicing my acceptance face for when she gives this to me, which might be one of my biggest expression challenges to date. But who am I to judge? I recently threatened Jose, in earnest, with buying a tiny mariachi costume I saw a while ago at Alcala’s for the boy. He informed me he would leave me promptly if I did so, but was strangely on board with the idea of using our cat’s tiny yarmulke on the baby for his first Hanukkah. At some point, I have to believe we’ll meet in the middle. I’ll keep you posted.

Nostalgia-of-the-Day:  The Drivers Ed simulator machine

I was recently having a great catch-up with my best friend and we somehow got on the topic of Drivers Ed.  We both went to the same high school and got to reminiscing about the god-awful driving simulators we were forced to clock-in time with.  Hysterical laughter ensued.  I pointed out that there was something eerie about the fact that the film they used was always from the early seventies – causing you to take a faux drive past restaurants that no longer existed, and to be on the road with cars you hadn’t seen since kindergarten.  It was a weird act of forced pop culture history. Sitting there in the dark, my Doc Martens hesitantly on the “gas” pedal, I would try with great intensity to not mow down innocent bystanders in Sansabelt slacks and polyester shift dresses.  Everything was imbued with a grainy hue of ochre, and if there had been a soundtrack, it might have been provided by Gilbert O’Sullivan.  Does anyone else smell Loves Baby Soft?

* * *

I grew up in a house where both parents worked and, even after my father died when I was ten, my mother still made an effort to cook dinner every night for just the two of us.  There was nothing Janet couldn’t do with a can of Campbell’s cream-of-something soup or a bottle of Wishbone dressing. There is an entire collection of index cards with her squirrely handwriting – recipes passed down from relatives, or copied herself from the newspaper over the years.  Since I was little, there was a concerted effort on my mother’s behalf to mix-up the menu during the week and make sure we all sat the hells down for at least thirty minutes together.  That meant putting to great use the idea of “theme” nights.  Taco night, spaghetti night, hamburger night, etc.  It was how she made sense of the grocery shopping, and kept us from eating Stouffer’s in front of the TV and slowly devolving into chaos.  Sitting down to dinner and talking about our day was how we kept it together and remained accountable to one another, how we understood the weird little lives we led outside of the house – my latest wipe-out in tap class; my mother’s adventures on the “L” train; or how my father once sold a Hi-Fi system to Huey Lewis and the News.  Or just Huey, I can’t remember if The News chipped in. In any case, it was what we did to keep fed and keep informed.  Consequently, I’m a strong believer that “normal” just doesn’t  happen, you have to work at it and make sure you include a starch and veg.

The idea of Dinnertime is something of an anomaly to my husband, whose closest experience to the concept probably came from watching Family Ties while eating a pizza puff on the living room floor.  Dinnertime, in Jose’s world is “what white people do.”  He finds the whole thing kind of bizarre and foreign.  I remember when we first started dating when we were in culinary school, asking him what kind of dinners his mom would make when he was growing up.

“What do you mean ‘kind’ of dinners?  There’s a ‘kind’ of dinner?  She just made food. He was perplexed, if not totally amused.

“Yeah,” I said. “You know, did you have hamburger night, or spaghetti night or,um…taco night?”

“Taco night?  Hahahaaaaa!  That’s hilarious.  Baby, we’re Mexican, we don’t do ‘taco night’.”

“So, she never made spaghetti or hamburgers?”  Now I was the one who was perplexed.

“Hell no.  Why would she?  She just cooked, you know, rice and beans – which I would have for breakfast too – and, I don’t know, carne and caldo de rez.  You know, food.” He smiled at me like I was slightly touched.  It became very clear that I was raised on recipes while he was raised on, well….food.  

Fast forward fourteen years.  Jose finally has a chef job that actually has him (most of the time) home for dinner.  It’s been an adjustment – trying to get him to sit down instead of eating over the counter like he does at work. Working/living in a professional kitchen trains you to eat like a starving hyena, and makes you a bit socially retarded at the dinner table. I get it, I used to live like that for a little while myself. However, home is home and there has been much effort put into driving that point across.  I have tried to make it clear that home is a safe place to sit and have a relaxed dinner, not some mealtime version of Clan of the Cavebear. Sometimes the dining room table is just for having dinner. Hence, here are some commonly heard things around Dinnertime at our house:

“I can’t see your face when your laptop is in front of it.”

“Please don’t put your pants on the table.”

“Is that work calling right now? Don’t those jags know it’s m’fing Dinnertime?”

“I wouldn’t eat that – the cat just sat there.”

“Yes I made that with turkey instead of beef.  You’ll like it and maybe you’ll live longer.”

It’s an act of controlled chaos, that – it we’re lucky – results in a few sustained minutes of conversation and stories of the day. But, we’re getting there, little by little. I don’t even mind if he chooses, more often than not, to eat dinner in boxers and a t-shirt. As long as we’re sitting across from each other. After over a decade of Jose not being home for dinner, we are forging a new chapter in our version of domesticity. We don’t have the “theme” nights of my childhood, rather whatever I get excited about cooking and he has no choice but to eat. He still thinks I make way too big a deal about Dinnertime, but has been gracious enough to indulge me, and try and understand that this is part of what being a family means to me: We sit down together.  We feed each other.  We tell our stories.  And yes, pants are optional.

I have no excuses for my absence.  Well, I do, but I promise they are long and boring and weirdly personal and that is why we all have therapists.  Allow me to start anew? I am flawed and scattered and will be joining a specialized rehab program in the near future for people who watch too much HGTV and Bravo. It’s a very real illness. One of these days you’ll find me curled up in the fetal position with House Hunters International playing on repeat.  I’ll be covered in glue and rocking back and forth, trying to retrace my steps to understand why I attempted to decoupage my washer and dryer using old Hanukkah wrapping paper and cat litter.

So, a new year and a new beginning.  I promise, blog, mama’s going to try and treat you right.  I won’t let you turn into the gym membership I only use once a year. You’re better than that, and far less sweaty and humiliating. Let’s really do this, okay?  Here goes…..

Over the past several months, I’ve been kind of fascinated and overwhelmed with nostalgia.  Okay, in all honesty, I’m just nostalgic by nature. I could be cooking dinner and all of a sudden become misty over how we used to tight-roll our jeans in junior high, or how no one writes handwritten notes anymore. I get caught up in the bizarre minutia of life. Somedays it’s amazing I’m able to make it out the door.  Why is this happening so much lately?  I think I might be close to an answer.  I’m old.  Alright, I realize in the grand scheme of life, I’m still relatively youthful.  I’m not a complete ass, I mean, there are things older than me, like….graham crackers and the wheel.  I have some perspective, however myopic it might be. But it still doesn’t change the fact that for however much I look toward the future, I’m winking over my shoulder to the past.  So, in order to make sense of all this sentimentality, I’m instituting a new feature on this here blog: Nostalgia of the Day. It could be a person, place, or thing, whatever strikes my addled brain at the moment. Stay tuned, I’m going to figure this thing out.  Here’s one to start things off with……

The Iron-on T-shirt

Sigh.  I have a very distinct memory of riffling through my parents change jar in a heated fury when I was around eight, trying to get enough money to buy a super-sweet, one-of-a-kind, iron-on t-shirt. There was some kind of summer street fair going on near our house, and I had to have this particular shirt or all was lost.  With my stolen bag of change, I picked out a classic baseball tee with purple, 3/4 inch sleeves, and the spangliest unicorn design they had. It went perfectly with my Joyce DeWitt shag haircut.  If I close my eyes, I can smell the plastic steam coming off from the t-shirt press. It was pure magic – watching your very own creation get pressed to life in a kind of contraption that very closely resembles the tortilla steamer they use at Chipotle. In just a few short minutes, you would have a warm shirt in your eager hands with a decale that would, if you were lucky, last for about two or three washings before the edges began to peel and curl up. I think a little part of me has been chasing the wonder of that long-lost unicorn t-shirt ever since I grew out of it almost 30 years ago. No Threadless vending machine t-shirt, or hipster vintage tee, will ever recapture the sheer bliss of watching some weird dude with long, stringy hair, at the mall, press a tropical sunset onto a cotton/poly blend t-shirt while your mom waits for you in front of the Wag’s “family restaurant”. Oh, that’s right, I’ve just aged myself all over the place. Enjoy.

I grew up watching Julia Child, and let me tell you, she was an excellent babysitter. When the weather grew blustery, and running around like a maniac outside on a Saturday wasn’t in the cards, I would set up shop on our behemoth, camel-colored velour couch and turn on my best friend: PBS. These are some of my happiest memories. Yes, I was that kind of nerd-alert. Granted I would watch cartoons as well and stay tuned for the switch to Soul Train (I would wait patiently for the tiny asian woman with the Crystal Gale hair to make her groovy way down the dance line), but PBS was where it was at.  Hello love-affair with cooking (and home improvement) shows.  It’s a sickness, I know. This is my story.

So, back to Julia.  I’ve been reading her book My Life in France and it is wonderful – smart and funny and intimate and it makes me miss my childhood Saturdays with her. It was because of her I thought of our oven as a friend, not a foe, experimenting with different kinds of “gourmet” scrambled eggs and new and interesting ways to season Campbell’s soup.  I was amazed by her prowess in the kitchen, watching her pull golden roasts out of her ovens and making fluffy souffles all while chattering away like I was sitting right there at her kitchen island, waiting to join her at the fancy table at the end of the show to gorge ourselves on the fruits of her labor.  Sweet crackers, how I wanted a seat at that table. It was the best.

Magic. Did you see that mortar and pestle she had on the counter? Those amazing copper pots?  I’m speechless. I very much owe my love for cooking to Julia – I know, not terribly original but it’s the truth. Some years back, Jose (the hubby) had the honor of cooking for Julia and Jacques Pepin when he worked as a Sous Chef at the now (sadly) defunct Les Francais. I was foaming at the mouth while he was cool as a cucumber, shrugging it off like any other day in the kitchen. The man loses his composure over nothing. I would have been crazy sauce, like I was 14 again at a Duran Duran concert. Yeesh.

Allow this brief aside.  I think This Old House did some damage to me.  What eight-year-old sits rapt while a bunch of dudes in puffy down vests rearrange the plumbing in an old Massachusetts Victorian?  This girl.  (To this day I suffer from an acute delusion of believing that if I really put some effort into it, I could rebuild a house from the ground up and reupholster all of our furniture, all by using MDF board and kitchen tea towels.) But, in my defense, I’m an only child and that afforded me the luxury to indulge in the weirdness.  More about that some other time. Have you seen what Norm Abrams can do with lumber? Forget Bob Villa, Norm was the captain of that ship. I totally bet he could whittle a ship out of a tree stump by the way.

Ah yes, cooking shows.  I think of The French Chef as my gateway cooking show.  Julia Child was like my first good hit of the good stuff. From there it was a PBS fueled binge: Yan Can Cook with Martin Yan (He threw dumplings, I loved him), The Frugal Gourmet (Oh, Jeff Smith, how I loved thee. I bid you peace, sir.), Justin Wilson’s Louisiana Cookin’ (In my wildest dreams, I get to sit down and drink hootch out of a mason jar with him while he tells me stories on a back porch), Jacques Pepin (with or without Claudine, I’ll take him anyway I can get him) and so many other shows, both big and small, that I will now obsess over finding the rest of them online. This for me was the heyday of cooking shows – the early eighties to the mid-nineties on PBS was a magical and intoxicating time. All of these chefs kept me company and showed me that there was an entire world of flavors out there and I would have to discover them. All of them.

It was a vast and loony array of cuisines, all under one roof. These were my people, my aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. On any typical Saturday afternoon, Uncle Norm was out back nailing together a steam-trunk out of oak, while Grandma Julia was teaching me how to make my own Saucisson Toulouse.  What did you do with your weekend?

I keep having these flashbacks of my grandmothers kitchen.  Looking back, it was kind of the thing crazy made.

This is my father’s mother, Tamar, or as we all called her Ima, which means mother in Hebrew.  She was this rotund, pear-shaped woman who was always clammy and who had a life-long love-affair with housecoats and polyester. She had a heavy accent, influenced by Hungarian and Hebrew, and cut her own bangs with cuticle scissors.  We had a love/hate relationship. One moment she would be calling me yeldashali (my beautiful girl), and then she would ask me when I was getting a nose-job.  Love and light she was.

I spent countless weekends at her tiny apartment in Oak Park when I was little and my grandfather, Pinchas, was still alive. He, I will have you know, was a saint. Abba (Hebrew for father, pronounced Ah-Bah, not like the the Swedish disco band) was the buffer between Ima and I, the voice of reason and the person who blew on my soup for me at every dinner so I wouldn’t burn my mouth. That was a love/love relationship.

Ima was, how shall I put this, not entirely a good cook.  Though she did have her savant abilities, like being able to make amazing soup out of a can of Campbell’s Creamofsomething soup and bits of leftovers, like an immigrant MacGuyver. Trust me, it was good. Also, she made these great pan-fried hamburgers studded with onions and garlic that honestly, make me a little weepy when I think about them.  She would always serve them alongside fried potatoes, which also had onions and garlic and a shake of Hungarian paprika.  Without fail, a few of the potatoes, though tasty, would still be crunchy.  These were some of the good things. She was unbelievably resourceful, a result of coming to this country from Israel poor and having to feed my father and grandfather (and many times, my mother) from almost nothing.

Now for the bad.  Please forgive me for this. Ima never met a piece of meat she couldn’t turn into a shoe.  Her pride and joy for “special” dinners, was cooking a piece of chuck steak (no joke) in the oven at 450 degrees for at least an hour.  If you’re lucky, you haven’t had to live through this.  The edges would curl up, almost creating a kind of distorted meat cup, that no cutlery stood a chance against.  If she was feeling jaunty, she would smother it in tomato sauce.  You had no choice but to pick it up in your hands and chew at it relentlessly like a badger. This makes me weepy in a whole different way. She was also good at potentially poisoning me on several occasions, like making me eat the pith from oranges and tangerines, or the tiny nut inside of a plum or nectarine pit, and the one time she made homemade “mayonnaise” from raw egg yolks and lemon juice. These were the things memories are made of. However, my favorite is the time she made a very special Haroset for Rosh Hashanah dinner one year.  (For those not familiar with the ubiquitous Jewish dish, Haroset is a kind of relish served at holidays made traditionally from chopped apples, nuts, cinnamon, sugar and a sweet wine. When made well, it can be delicious, with all kinds of variations available. Serve with matzo and enjoy.) Being the resourceful kind of lady she was, Ima decided to improvise that year when she forgot to buy the sweet wine to cook with.  After having a look-see in the tiny broom closet in the kitchen, she discovered their collection of tiny airplane bottles of booze they had gathered over their trips back home to Israel.  Since the 1960′s. After much consideration, she made the obvious choice: scotch, and a lot of it. We all took one bite and gagged, not a good start to celebrating the Jewish New Year. That might have been my first good buzz to speak of.

I can’t help but joke about Ima’s mishaps in the kitchen and how, for the most part, they were all well-intentioned. She was a quirky one, who made sure that she always packed an already peeled orange wrapped in Kleenex in her purse for long car rides, and who was deathly afraid of fuzzy peaches and ice cubes. But, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with some of the things that make me happiest in this world: sardines on rye bread, avocados with lemon and salt, pickled herring and every kind of smoked fish, and the wonders of a simple Israeli salad of tomatoes, green onions and cucumbers with a drizzle of oil and lemon juice.  And though I don’t drink scotch, I like to think that first taste of whiskey paved the way for a deep and devout love of all things bourbon. So thank you, Ima, for your crazy kitchen.