Nostalgia-of-the-day:  V.C. Andrews

Oh come on, you know you read Flowers in the Attic.  It was a mandatory adolescent right of passage.  I think it goes: Judy Blume, V.C. Andrews, Anne Rice.  The perfect foundation for an angst-ridden, goth-girl must be done correctly and this was a great way to begin.

From what I can recall of that time, there weren’t the kind of YA options back in the eighties that there are now.  There wasn’t a smooth transition from childhood to adolescence as far as literature was concerned.  Hence the reason many of us of a certain generation found ourselves, at twelve-years-old, reading about incestuous, semi-albino children locked in an attic. I like to think it made us more prepared for the potential weirdness in the world.  The V.C. Andrew franchise is massive and I don’t think there is another writer who has produced more work from beyond the grave.   I couldn’t even begin to tell you what the intended age group of her series (and there were at least a dozen of them, all equally scandalous) was, only I don’t think I ever saw an adult reading them. They were the kinds of books that demanded to be read in a bedroom where stuffed animals were present and the color palette was provided by Laura Ashley. So, thank you, V.C., for making my formative years more interesting. And a little inappropriate.  I’ll never look at a paper flower the same again.

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It’s been established that I function in a cloud of nostalgia.  It’s where almost all of my writing comes from and how I think I attempt to make sense of the present.  It’s what I do. Everybody has their thing.

One of the things I am forever enchanted and fascinated with is our experiences with girlhood.  It’s such an amorphous time that seems to come out of nowhere and then leave you breathless a few years later.  It’s ugly and beautiful all at once, and it’s something I’m  convinced none of us completely lets go of.

Junior high is kind of where the madness begins. I can remember the first time I went to buy makeup. It was in the summer, right before school started, and a girlfriend and I made the pilgrimage to the local Walgreens to discover my “look.”  With my money rolled up in my new plastic wallet, I imagined what sage advice Seventeen magazine would have for me.  Something fun, yet natural. Except most of the girls in that magazine were blonde.  In fact, most of the girls I went to school with were blonde.  It was the first time in my life I thought about what it might be like to have blue eyes and have the distinct honor of using Sun-In when I went to the beach – what it must be like to turn into a goddess under the sun. The only thing that happened though when I laid out in the sun, was that my skin turned the color of bunt caramel while my hair remained a deep black.  Nothing became golden.  No flaxen streaks in my hair.  Coming back from vacation I always Iooked more like I was visiting on a some kind of Visa from some vast desert land. I was forever the swarthy, square peg.

The colors I was inextricably drawn to had names like “Sea Lily” and “Blue Lagoon.”  Meow.  There was no escaping it: the draw of pastels and palettes that fell under the category of “pearlescent.”  I was going to make my face look like a Now and Later if it killed me. And if the lip gloss tasted like watermelon, all the better. It’s always best to draw attention to your braces and the fact that you only just started bleaching your upper lip. Special Note: Jolen Creme Bleach is the devil.  No, bleaching black hair does not make it disappear, it just makes it sparkle in the sun like an orange tabby cat.

Memory can be unreliable sometimes, but it’s all that I have. It was that glorious time when The Limited Express split into two separate beings: The Limited and Express. I was particularly fond of the  offerings of the Outback Red line. I recall a very carefully chosen outfit for the first day of seventh grade: pink jeans, some kind of button-down shirt that also had a pink thing happening, with a rhinestone pin clipped at the throat.  I believe I finished it off with either white leather huaraches or taupe Mia flats.  My hair….oh sweet lord, my hair.  I had always wanted long hair but our hairdresser and my mother always thought something short and amazingly layered was where it was at. I started growing out my hair right before junior high because, dammit, I was becoming a lady. I had watched Jennifer Connelly in Seven Minutes in Heaven one too many times and was officially inspired. However, I was still left with a head full of shag on the first day of school, and figured a curling iron was the only obvious remedy  to help feather the top of my misshapen mushroom bob. Unfortunately, I hadn’t mastered that fine art yet, and had used the curling iron backwards, creating a jagged mass that I desperately tried to hairspray into submission. Welcome to junior high.  If you’re lucky, you can hide in your locker.

It’s such a weird time, but one that is so ripe with stories.  Never was there a time in your life when things felt so desperate and so full of possibility.  There was an infinite horizon of first experiences and everything seemed to hum a little bit around the edges. Of course, that could just be a side-effect of your hair styling products.

I

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?

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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.

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.

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?

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.