Friday, August 31, 2018

HEY MA! What's for SUPPAH?


"There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and
won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will."  ~Robert Frost

Ok, if I could, I'd edit out the "wife" part of this. But who am I to correct Robert Frost? I am an English major, and he remains my poetry icon in good times and bad. "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a favorite, and, if I'm honest, that poem contains words to live by. We are almost done with summer; that's proof that these golden days are limited.  While the fall and back to school is the best part of the year for me, this summer has been fantastic. Hot days, beach waves, happy kids, scooter adventures, paddling at Riverhead and so much else. It's been a treat. Lazy days also mean less work in the kitchen.  



Sandwiches, hot dogs, a rare lobster roll treat at Little Harbor and of course burgers on the grill whenever possible. Soon though, that will not be an option, and the daily dinner debate will begin. Friends of mine know that I am not a cook. I can assemble a sandwich, boil some pasta, and, on rare occasions, make some beast, usually some poor unsuspecting chicken or doomed cow, into a holiday meal. That's the extent of my foodie prowess. I'm lucky my children are still alive, but I guess I owe that to Cheerios, Velveeta, and Chef Boyardee.



Sure, there are technological advances and microwaves and all sorts of delivery options. But then I'd have to deal with the shame of "OMG, you can't even figure out dinner? What kind of mother are you?" Well, that's a question for another day. Right now, I'm trying to answer another question, the perennial, "Mum! What's for suppah?" I've reconciled myself to the fact that "How the hell should I know" is not the answer my kids want. They are picky; in food choices and in every other way possible, and I'm left wondering how this became my job.  Sure, OK, my kids, my responsibility, but they are almost full-size humans now. There's only one left living at home, but the older boys come by on a regular basis. I'd like to think it's because they love me and miss me, but no. It's because I usually have cold cuts, bread, chips, Oreos and milk on hand and now that they are fully "adulting" they realize how much food costs. Who's your Mommy now boys? You might have flown the nest, but you're like bats; you can sense where the food is.


That's OK though, any day that includes my kids around a table is a good day. I simply must get better at this planning thing. Especially since I have started making my own dog food. Perhaps it's a function of having two kids out on their own, that I've turned my focus to Penny, the Smug Pug, but she's having some issues. Allergies, as it turns out, so now I'm making her food. Literally, I am scouring the internet for recipes that won't exacerbate her skin issues, but still sound yummy. This irony is not lost on my children. "Really Mum? I'm making my own Ramen noodles, but the dog has a custom, portion-controlled meal?" Yes, dear, that's precisely it. Because the dog doesn't give me any back talk.



So feeding these wandering offspring is my job, sure, no problem. It's not like I haven't been at it for decades. Still, I wonder why, after all these years, I still don't have it down. What gene am I missing? Why is it so hard to figure out food? Well, guilt is probably part of it. Back in the day, when my mother was in charge of keeping us fed, I do not ever remember getting takeout. A ride to Bianchi's Pizza in Revere was a rare treat, but most nights it was flank steak, mac and cheese, or "sketti and meatballs." The ever-present, "Finnan Haddie" made an appearance every Friday night,  because…Catholic. While I am grateful to my mother for many things, I suspect that my culinary frustration comes from her. She could not pass on her kitchen secrets, because none of them were food related. Yes, I learned from her the importance of having a cash stash in what should have been a cookie jar. Yes, she taught me how to put out a grease fire, but other than that, nada. No secret recipes, no helpful hints. I'm on my own here.


So what though? Have my children starved to death? Nope, not even close. Anyone who knows me can tell I haven't missed a meal in a while. So, is it a big fat hairy deal that I'm not passing out platters of food every night? As we head into fall, dinner will be served, eventually, and no one will die from hunger. They will just act like it. It's all good though. It's been a great summer, and now that it's almost (but not entirely) over, I supposed I will figure it out. I'd ask you all over for dinner, but there's a reason I only throw cocktail parties.


 


Wednesday, August 22, 2018

USE YOUR WORDS


"All slang is metaphor and all metaphor is poetry." -- G. K. Chesterton

You can't go to college and earn an English degree without a love of words. Words are currency to English majors. They can create good or evil, move civilization forward, foster love or hatred, and tell amazing stories and so much more. Whether spoken or read, the right words can literally change lives, and to some, there is nothing sadder than having the words to express a thought or feeling and being unable to say them or have them heard. A friend said once, “Words mean things” and he was right. The best collection of words I've ever seen are in Fitzgerald's book "The Great Gatsby" when Nick describes the Buchanan estate on East Egg Long Island

“We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall"



Growing up in an Irish family,  our words were never chosen too carefully, but rather ceaselessly put forth with lots of color and imagery that was as natural as breathing. Thick accents aside, there is never a question of how an Irishman feels about something, give it a minute, he'll tell you. It gets difficult, however, when the words we choose mean one thing to us and quite another to someone else. Slang, for all its poetic value, can screw up the communication process.

I am lucky enough to have friends from all over the country, but my southern friends have been the ones that bring language to life more than anyone else, but also confuse me more than anyone else. No one but a down-home Mississippi girl could say, "Well the trouble with that one, bless her heart, is that she walks around most of the time like she's got a goat in the garden." A "goat in the garden" is what we up here call a "wedgie." If she hadn't then explained what it was, I might have believed that this poor soul she was talking about was plagued with runaway farm animals destroying her flowers, kind of like the turkeys we have that wander around town, in and out of everyone's yards.

Also, I learned that it's not always a nice thing when someone says, "Bless your heart." That's how my Southern friends are though, even when they might want to ding you a little, they still want to be polite about it.

Of course it's never correct to say that someone speaks "American" because that isn't a language, but really, if you look at some of the words my British friends use versus the words Americans use, a case could be made for calling what we speak here in the States something other than English. The toilet is the loo. If you "knock someone up" in England, no one has to get married at the end of a shotgun, and if a kid is giving someone a little back talk, the Brits call that being a "cheeky monkey" and that sounds kind of cute doesn't it? It seems way better than some of what I may or may not have called my own children in some of my weaker moments.


Go into any grocery store, grab one of those metal things with the wheels, what's that called? Well, it's a "trolley" in Britain, but even we Americans call it something different depending on where we are. I call it a carriage, but my sistah friend Regina from Philadelphia says it's a buggy and that babies ride in carriages, which is also wrong because everyone knows babies ride in strollers. Please, like Philadelphia is an example of how to talk? "Youse" is not a word.

On a hot day in the city of Brotherly Love, what do they do? Go for "water ice." There's some genius, isn't all ice made from water? Wake up and smell the Dunkies my Philly sister---that is slush.


Naturally, some slang terms are best avoided, and they won't be printed here. My rule is that if I have to look it up on the website "Urban Dictionary" it's likely not something I should say in polite company.

There are hundreds of ways people express themselves with words, and we aren't always going to be understood by everyone. Go anywhere outside of Massachusetts and ask for tonic or a frappe and no one will know what you want. Tell them you're going down to the packie and most people won't have a clue. Southerners, Brits, Midwesterners and Massholes, it doesn't matter. People use words that paint a picture of who they are and where they come from. Try to be wicked good at making words your own personal form of poetry; the right ones can make all the difference, even if they are slang. 

Use your words; don't keep them to yourself. Write them, speak them and make sure they are heard. Vague answers and one word replies are not communication. 






Friday, August 10, 2018

Into The Mystic


"We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic."
----Van Morrison

Here we are, deep into another seaside summer. The Arts Festival has wrapped, Race Week has come and gone, and while it's still light out after supper, the days are getting shorter. I have a friend who says it's the "Summer of J" because he's spending it boating, fishing and annoying his children. He might think it's his, but the best part about summer is that we all make it our own.


Summer changes every year too; it's not always the same. The summer my daughter is having is, quite simply, epic. Paddling around the harbor, zipping through the streets on a bright yellow moped, and sucking down iced coffee with friends is how she spends her days. I'm spending too much time in my much appreciated but artificial feeling air conditioning, working, but at her age, I also had an epic summer. Summer evolves each year, or does it just seem that way to me?

When I was five years old, my mother decided I could be at the beach by myself. I know, right? It was 1969; if Neil Armstrong could go to the moon, she figured I was safe at the beach. She'd pack me a lunch and send me down the street. It's not like I was alone, the whole neighborhood was there, that's how it was. The moms showed up later in the day. Looking back, I think they were all in cahoots to get us out of the house. When we weren't at the beach we were riding bikes, or at the park or playing in someone's driveway, with a hose and buckets. It was what some marketing genius now calls a "free range" childhood. It was just another summer though.

As I got older, summer definitely changed. In high school it was all about my babysitting job, which fortunately was only mornings, going to the beach, and joy rides in my boyfriend's truck. There were ice cream runs to Treadwell's, a pool day now and then at the JCC (full disclosure, none of us were members, we would hop the back part of the fence and blend in) and trips to Salem Willows for Skeeball and lousy pizza. It was everything a teenage summer should be, including the inevitable heartbreak and boyfriend drama.

Once I was college, summers became about internships and resume building. I spent every college summer working in Boston, sweating through broken down subways and lunch breaks on the Common. When you're nineteen years old, and you get to sit in on meetings about what will happen in case of national disaster (FEMA has an excellent internship program), and then you spend your weekends going on road trips with friends, zipping around North Conway and swimming in creeks, you start to feel like the world really is your oyster.





What I wouldn't recommend doing in the summer is being 14 months pregnant. OK, it wasn't quite that long, but having a baby in mid-July immediately cancels out any swimwear or, for that matter, sleep. My oldest didn't like air conditioning; only one bedroom had it, and he wouldn't sleep there, so I put his crib in the living room while I slept on the couch. In this context "Slept" refers to the few hours between midnight and dawn that I spent with one eye open while Andy was alternately hangry, wet or generally unpleasant. I took him to the beach that year once, as I drove by it at midnight, with the car windows open, hoping the night air would help with the croup he had.

Summers have come a long way in our house. No more babies unless you count the whiny pug (who is feeling much better, thank you to those who have asked.) There are still beach days with friends, but mostly at sunset, after work, and with a tiny glass of wine, because hydration is essential. No more water balloons and super soaker battles in the yard. No more rushing to catch the boat to Children's Island. One thing hasn't changed though. Each summer, I treat myself to a giant plate of fried clams. Because nothing says summer like a mouth full of sand and clam bellies. There are still a few precious weeks of lazy days and ocean waves. Enjoy them. Let your soul and spirit fly.