Hailey just knocked into the "study" with a gooey warm bar of buttery raisins....as far as I'm concerned there's nothing better than a six-foot-tall Tim-Hortons loving, Canadian (perhaps that's redundant) flatmate armed with a good ol' North American classic. Banana pancakes and cheap maple syrup, cookies & cappuccinos and sweet cornbread have often given us the little excuses we need to chat for a while and indulge just a bit. Sure they're simple, and generally "just" from the increasingly ragged cookbook her boyfriend conveniently just-so-happened to have left behind, but it's these recipes that have created the greatest treats: Longer-than-intended chats on the counter, lazy weekend mornings and the little knocks at the door followed by a breeze of sweet air, a tasty hot something and a good friend. It is in this way that I have come to better understand and sincerely appreciate the Joy of Cooking.
Please forgive me for saying this, but you are not what I would describe as the best cook I've ever met. That is to say, you are not the most creative, the most impressive, the most outstanding. Oh, mama, I am sorry to offend but I hate your lasagna and your cherished tuna buns. In fact, I despise that fishy casserole "Surprise" you created so much so that I simply am uninterested in so much as a mystery flavored lolly.
I've seen dogs lick your dishes and eaten food off the floor and a restaurant as such would never see my return. But your kitchen counter, your cookie jar, your tupperware and your table are places I romanticize. I dream of Mama's Minestrone and PB&J, of white cookies and orange yogurt. Your treats are more to my taste than the ones I make myself! Years of expense on "the best" formal culinary training and I still make crap Blueberry Muffins. How could that be, Mama? They're "just another recipe" from one of those ragged old American classic cookbooks in your cupboard. Oh, I try, I really do! I follow every step, measure ev-er-y sing-le ingredient and still, they're remarkably ordinary. Mom, I don't know how you do it, I give them tender care but they're not the right shape or the right color or quite the perfect texture they should be. Then again, they dont come with handwritten love notes on napkins and a lucky penny. They're not as "heavenly brown" in such a perfect way (I'm not sure how you do that) and, okay, they're a little light on butter ( I've most certainly got some of that guilt you talk about). They're always "alright", and I suppose they'll tide me over until next I am home but I don't love them when they're made without your love.
My dearest mother, you are my favorite cook and the most influential culinary figure in my life. You are who I strive to feed best, who I hope to wow most and the creator of my palette; my most favorite perspective from which to experience the world.
When I was little, I was absolutely certain that the two classiest, fanciest, most beautifullest women in the world were my Grandma and her sister Eileen. I knew this because they wore beads that sparkled and they had trays of miniature perfumes. Their birthday cakes were completely consumed by overgrown rose gardens of buttercream icing and closets filled with rainbows of shoes that required you take the wooden thingies out of them before you “dressed up” and pretended to be half as fancy as they just….were. They would cheers to the “good girls” with their legs crossed, feet bopping, and sing stories in a string of chatter using words like “just lovely” and “panty-hoes” and “clearance rack”.
I grew up and my grandma grew old. As there were 20 grandchildren before me I learned a lot of what I know about her from the (strangely disproportional number of) women who had been in my family longer than I had. Us little girls would hold her hand as my aunts would ask grandma questions and tell grandma the stories that she had once told them; her body filling in the gaps with sparkles and squeezes and, on occasion, she would throw her head back and just plain laugh. As life goes, eventually we had no one to tell those stories to but each other and more importantly, Aunt Eileen.
She went out in style with perfectly pink nails and ring placed as straight on her finger as the day my grandpa put it there- dressed to the nines in an outfit she borrowed from her sister. We had luncheons with gold-rimmed teacups and Bombay Sapphire in crystal glasses while we told stories using words like “garage sale” and “loving mother” and then fought over all of the things that she once made sparkle. None of us could help but to want to keep her close by.
Now, when any few of us are together, it’s all too obvious that she is never far away. My grandmother has infected our family with sense of Mid-Western glamour- the kind that creates miracles armed with nothing but a cloth diaper and a tube of “05-Geranium”. It’s all over Sally’s rose garden of a living room and Susie’s ability to so simply express the most sincerely beautiful things. It’s the garage-shopping luxury Aunt Joanie makes so much fun, our silver tea spoon collections and Maryann’s unbeatable assortment of sparkles. It comes through so clearly in that lipsticky kiss from Aunt Ann and it trails out the door on Friday nights in the expensive perfume that my mom wears like an old pair of jeans and it fills my sister’s shoe closet.
Today I felt “it” in me- I returned from volunteer duty at the resale shop with a treasure: A beautiful pair of handmade leather soft-toed kitten-heel pumps…for eight dollars. They certainly weren’t new but they were perfect, and, in a too-perfect-to-be-earthly-sort-of way, just my size. I smiled the whole way home and then slipped them on at the doorstep- just to make my lunch. And I gave them a click and I gave them a dance. I felt like the classiest, and the fanciest, most beautifulist woman in the world- and I wasn’t pretending- my shoes fit! And there it was- that ability to turn trash to treasure, that very simple something that made it “work”. In some quick miniature coming to age ceremony I grabbed for a teacup and tube of lipstick, hit the button on the kettle, gave my lips the once over and celebrated the thought of being like that woman, like these women, with a little “cheers”, foot-a-boppin, “to the good girls”.
I often lament about feeling a bit up-side-down here in the Southern Hemishphere on the occasions I find myself misunderstood to be somewhat backwards, improper or just plain odd.Oh, yes, my good ol’ American table manners have offended, my enthusiastic expressions have (unknowingly) made me out to be a prostitute and I was shortly convinced that these people I live amongst often, very casually, found themselves completely “naked”. Quite simply, this “English” language that has been pulled outside-in by one immigrant nation and inversely by another has left me baffled and even speechless on occasion (better to say nothing about your roommate from college than risk alluding to a fabricated lesbian one-night-stand in high school).
For example, upon arriving to this pair of Pacific Islands it was apparent that New Zealanders, presumably for lack of revolution, drink a lot of tea. That is, more tea than your average Folgers-slugging Yank. Noting this, responding to a casual kiwi, “What will you be having for tea?” requires a quick assessment of just how much tea you as a North American believe these people down under actually drink? Am I expected to have a pre-conceived notion or a preference regarding flavor? Must I know now if I want “English Breakfast” or “Lady Gray”? What if I want “Lemon Zinger?” what will they say? Do they have that here? Or, should I opt for retorting with a resoundingly obvious, “Ummm… tea?”. No, no, definitely no, that might be rude.
When I find myself in such a situation I often resort to a nearly-foolproof, bright and smiley, “Oh, I don’t know”…a key diagnostic that I am not entirely sure what is happening in an unfamiliar cultural confrontation. Take, for example, the following conversation:
Farmer: “Alex, fancy a spa?”
Alex: “Oh, I don’t know”
Farmer: “Well, do you have your togs?”
Alex: “Oh…I don’t know”
But, in this specific situation, my tactics had backfired (beyond missing out on the hot tub because I didn’t have my suit). It seemed Kiwi’s never really knew what they were having for tea, themselves! Fed up and comfortable taking the piss (Not to be confused with taking a piss or getting on this piss which, I should note, should not be confused with getting your piss on…which “doesn’t make any sense”). I was ready for it, and in the tea room no less!
Tea lady: “So, What are you having for tea?”
Alex: “Tea?”
Tea lady: “Oh, Alex, you can’t have tea for tea!”
Alex: “I can’t?”
Turns out “tea” is actually a relatively tea-less “Dinner”. That is, not to be confused with supper, which most likely does include tea and both follows and excludes dinner all-together. It remains all very confusing and I’m slowly sussing it out and at the same time, beginning to believe in all of those times I have slipped and explained to someone that I speak American. I’m learning to speak Kiwi.
