Planting Cabbages

east of bordeaux, where france became maman.

you have been very patient and kind while i reflected on the journey of mothers. this intuitve time of the year between easter and mother's day shifts focus from winter's rest into the burst of spring. back in 1995 is when it all began. when france beckoned like a sweet mother, and a home I had long forgotten was found again.  and it was the beginning of how i thought of bread as a character.

i wrote this story shortly afterwards and will post it, serial style, over the next few posts.  

parisian poulet madame

vin de noix, drunken poetry of walnuts. 

“When I said I’d like to drive past the Eiffel Tower I didn’t mean through the belly of Paris.” My husband, Rich, objected to the route I had chosen for us as he careened our summer-sky Peugeot down a long narrow street that hadn't seen the light of day for four hundred years.

            “But everything begins with the appetite in France. " It was my first time as an auto passenger in Paris, during November's IACP conference I was a rider of the Metro. The pile under my feet shifted when we rounded a tight turn and I rolled the window down to hear June bustin out all over the Place de la Concorde. At my feet were our precious Auto Europe papers, postcards, and groggy orangina bottles. And The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris stuffed with maps I had torn out of an atlas to guide us. 

    The Lover's Guide hypnotized me and put me in possible eteranl denial of anything more pressing needing my attention. On page two-forty-six I read that Lionel Poilane had a brother named Max who also baked bread and worked with the same ingredients as he, flour and yeast and water and love, (okay they didn't say love but I knew what he was thinking) and had five huge wood-fired ovens running for twenty-four hours a day but that he was stuck on a bread that was less acidic than his famous brother and took a bag of it with him whenever he went out to eat and in fact ate bread with bread and bread with everything even sorbet and prided himself on the fact that he baked breads like white levain and petits pain aux noix and that he was lean and intense. And poetic.

            The word poetic hit me as we drove past trucks and stocky French men, singing to their crates of lettuce and cauliflower. And parsley. They smelled like salad. Or was it oysters and anchovies? I couldn't ask my husband to turn around. From their voices the men seemed as though they could care less about our being lost, and perhaps Paris was planned this way. Soon, I too forgot about being lost. I waved and dreamed of laitue poems.

    We sailed by the unloading as if in slow motion and I imagined spending the afternoon deciding who and what would dress the lettuce. Just as we turned the corner they heads of a feathery laitue looked like, well, an exotically plumed bird. This was love. Or was the sun blinding me?

Just as Max and Lionel Poilane were obsessed with bread, so I would measure the outcome of June against my memory of the first vin de noix I had tasted in November on a post conference tour to Gascony after IACP's Paris meeting. Once we arrived, if the vin de noix tasted the same as it had, and brought visions of joy and fall's demise then I wouldn't be dissapointed. And I would know and feel content that something was true. If not, then with all the drama I could muster, what then? WHAT THEN?

The maps I had torn out were were sad at best but they would take us East of Bordeaux to Brax, a small village outside Agen, in southwest France. In nine hours, give or take a quick American picnique, we would be sitting with vineyards, foie gras, and vin de noix at our feet instead of maps.

In my bones, I knew we’d be passing many more culinary spectacles. Round tables of people eating and drinking must be everywhere. Their circles radiating out from

Paris, through layers trickled thick with history that I longed to adopt,

as I had been adopted. 

       To live a culinary life. To find a geography where I didn't feel guilty about taking a few

moments to sniff the sun in the ripe tomatoes or enjoy the crackle of long baguettes. 

        As we drove through Porte de Clichy, the air held a delicious palpable anticipation. The veined papers I had so carefully nurtured and carried safely across the Atlantic ruffled loose and flew out the window like leaves wanting to be dressed tenderly ala vinaigrette like all lettuces in Paris. I rolled the window up, turned and smiled. Nothing was wrong.

        Poetry I hoped, was all we needed to find our way.

full moon dancing with four mothers

dear gayle, mom, nana, and jackie, 

 

after 53 years i have come full circle to dance with you; the four mothers in my life.

 

for a period of time, maybe as much as seven years, you were all alive, all at once, and perhaps even in my life in some way. i seriously doubt though, that there was any real meal shared between the four of you.

 

but i have imagined it. what would gayle say to nana? thank you for taking her out of that house? did jackie, my stepmother, ever speak to gayle? was she there when i was born? and mom, aileen. would anyone choose to sit next to her except her own mother, nana. could anyone else tolerate her biting tongue.

 

 

 

at the table i witnessed the danger of secrets. depression and sometimes, open hostility. i also had moments of unbelievable joy. and without a doubt in my heart, i know those moments were shared around preparing food. i am grateful for the chance to see you as separate women. sharing cooking or in mom’s case, dining.

 

the only exception to this is gayle. you were the one female link to my blood. i used to think of your path as my true past. my past. as if the life i had led was not my past. how i longed to find it, and who my father was. this little tiny seed bursting in my imagination was one impetus to writing city of ladies.

 

shared among you is the fact that each one of you gave me an incredible gift. and each of you abandoned me at some point in our relationship. i have pondered my feelings in that regard and am happy to be on the other side of what i used to see as a stone wall. one of the hardest things i ever had to face was being abandoned by more than one mother.

 

on this green and fruitful side of the wall is an understanding of who each of you were, and why you made the choices you did.

 

and so i've chosen a smattering of dishes that best illustrates each of our relationships.

 

gayle

i learned about you from a few letters you wrote, on green hospital stationary, while in the philadelphia hospital, written over a series of months with the last ones about a month before you died from heart complications brought on by a childhood bout with rheumatic fever.  i have always imagined there was much more unwritten than written. 

in the letters you mention pizza and beer. today gayle when i make a fire, make the dough - i think of you whenever i make pizza in the tuscan wood-fired oven in my backyard.

mom

charred steak, rare.

the dessert cart at the waldorf astoria circa 1965

seafare of the aegean, another nyc restaurant

the crystal restaurant, reading pa.

 

nana

ketchup and butter sandwiches 

chicken corn soup

chicken pot pie

potato filling (for thanksgiving)

pennsylvania dutch sand tart cookies

 

 

jackie

spaghetti and meat balls

the bbq

your mom’s house suppers

mrs. hilbert’s labor day picnic’s and her horseshoe birthday cakes

the corner candy store

hello, 53, its a brave new world. here, not there.

i think turning 50 was a cataclysmic event. in retrospect its very nice to arrive at 53. here. not there.

what is life like for you at 50? at 40? at 30 or 20? is is what you expected?

i've gone back to look at the four mom's in my life to see what was happenng for them.

for nana, dorothy, born in 1903 she was 54 when took on the task of caring for my brother, jeremy, and me. here she is circa 1973 with my brother, jeremy, 17. this would be his last christmas.

 

for aileen, she was just extricating herself from a disasterous and painful second marriage. the divorce wouldn't be finalized till 1975.  "mom" was 50 when my brother, jeremy, drowned.

 for jackie (who is now 74) she still had another fifteen years before she could retire from acme markets in reading, pa. as a checker. here she is with my dad, bud, and me on my wedding day.

and for gayle, my biological mom, she only lived till she was 29. she died from heart complications brought on from having childhood rheumatic fever. but she was tended in the hospital by aileen, who was her physician. and a heart specialist.

the quartet

good friday. i must say it seems an important day to post these photos. even as i sat down to write this post - and didn't have gayle's, my biological mom, photo in the pile, i groaned to think i am still not over this. i had to really think where i might find her photo. in the old suitcase? no, there were memorabilia and photos from hawaii's trip in 1998, the year aileen (my adopted mother) died. then maybe in my photo albums in the book case?  no, but i found some petite and darling albums of the iacp conference with julia child at the ritz hotel and napping at the chocolate demo. these were made by a friend, anne, that i met on my first plane to paris and never saw since. 1995. i let her in to the champagen tasting - even though no one knew her, and i barely so!   

ok, so now what?

suddenly i remembered. they were tucked in the folders and zippered pockets of the book, the beautiful book of memories, my dear friend, peg gignoux, had made.

so finally i had them all assembled. let the scanning begin.

gayle, 1952. i'm guessing this was her high school photo. i was born 4 years later.

as i say, none of this makes any sense as i was always told that she (and her sister joan) got pregnant the night of the high school prom. now, not too many girls go to the prom four years after they graduate. and besides that, since i was born in april  - even i can count and not too many proms are held in august. what can i say? even at this point i feel guilty over my birth as if that somehow i was responsible! from what i know, she was a sweet lady. loved pizza and beer. and unfortunatley got mixed up - fell in love - with an italian young man who was destined to marry an italian girl.

so, i am thankful. thankful for one night in august of 1955 - and the sweet mist in the air. it comes to me too, that perhaps i inherited a gram or two of her impetuousness - and love of life.

carrying a torch to st gilles

st. gilles is the patron saint of mothers and while i am not at all religious in an organized sense of the word, there was something about this hermit and his life of quietude that inspired me to make him a central force, goal in my story.

 

in my life i think i've always been a little gypsy. wandering around corners and into rooms roped off with velvet. a little off the cuff, and felt most at home with a bunch of bon vivants mumuring gratitude and spiritual bon appetit. those who have really inspired me enjoy living at the edge of the seams.

now does that have anything to do with mothers? yes, because so did my mother. and no, because i have always said i had four mothers. the first being my biolgocial mom, gail. the second, my adopted mom, aileen. the third being my nana, dorothy. and the fourth being my step-mom, jackie.

i am going to have do include photos of all of them, scanned in, in the next few days.

forgiveness and compassion drove me to light candles on my own pilgrimage to southwest france and provence.  and now i'd really like to thank a bevy of the women - fabulous individuals all - who i've had the bounty of enjoying this journey.

this will be a gradual process over the next few weeks as there are so many!!

here i am with kitty on one of our self-imposed writer's retreats. kitty's novel is about a women's journey of self-reclamation on the AT.

 

below is madeleine, who was a driving force in the research in provence. and her husband erick, who also (though not a woman!) was also a huge gracious influence in exploring healing and healers in provence as well as taking me to the camargue and to st marie de la mer to explore gyspy legends.

 

here, below from left to right is emily wipper, a young lady i've known almost all her life. her perseverance after the loss of her brother, miles, that echoed my loss of my brother, jeremy, to drowning at a similar stage in my own life.

next to her is teresa, who champions adventure and france and examination of the soul.

 

that's a good place to stop for now.