“but isn’t that like saying maybe you shouldn’t think about the baby until it’s born?”
“No,” she says, “I don’t think it is.”
We’re quiet for a moment, then I say, “Did I tell you I have a cat?”
“Really?” Christine says, sounding skeptical.
We aren’t exactly pet people in our family. We once had a gerbil that died after less than twenty-four hours under our care. Looking back, I doubt it was our fault. Shopping mall pet stores are breeding grounds for disease, but it shook our confidence and bolstered Dad’s arguments against our desire for something warm and cuddly in our lives. We never asked for another pet.
It was Christine, in fact, who insisted upon a proper burial for our still-unnamed gerbil, which meant squatting in late-winter rain, digging mud with soupspoons we’d pilfered from the utensils drawer in the kitchen while Mom chatted on the phone in her bedroom. After school, Christine had rescued the dead animal from the trash, where Dad had deposited it the night before, and placed it in her school pencil box, surrounded by pink toilet paper.
When the hole kept puddling with rain, Anne and I gave up. “Come on, Christine,” we begged. “It’s just a gerbil.”
She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, but she was fiercely determined to do the right thing by this creature, and long after Anne and I had retreated to our bedroom, where we kept an eye on her through the window, she worked the ground until the hole was big enough to hold the box; it bobbed and floated as she spooned wet earth back over it. Then we saw her stand and clasp her hands in front of her, speaking solemn words that only she could hear, periodically stomping at the pile of mud that kept rising against her good school shoes.
It’s still early after Christine hangs up, only nine thirty, so I refocus and try to get a jump on what surely will be a tough workweek. I’m avoiding an e-mail from Stefan titled RE: Re: Article??? Instead, I turn my attention to a new assignment from American Family : “Home Cooking: The Comforts of Old Family Favorites.”
Easy. Baked macaroni and cheese with crunchy bread crumbs on top; simple mashed potatoes with no garlic and lots of cream and butter; meatloaf with sage and a sweet tomato sauce topping. Not that I experienced these things in my house growing up, but these are the foods everyone thinks of as old family favorites, only improved. If nothing else, my job is to create a dreamlike state for readers in which they feel that everything will be all right if only they find just the right recipe to bring their kids back to the table, seduce their husbands into loving them again, make their friends and neighbors envious.
I’m tapping my keyboard, thinking, what else?, when it hits me like a soft thud in the chest. I want to write about my family’s favorites, the strange foods that comforted us in tense moments around the dinnertable. Mom’s Midwestern “hot dish”: layers of browned hamburger, canned vegetable soup, canned sliced potatoes, topped with canned cream of mushroom soup. I haven’t tasted it in years. Her lime Jell-O salad with cottage cheese, walnuts, and canned pineapple; her potato salad with French dressing instead of mayo.
I have a craving, too, for Dad’s grilling marinade. “Shecret Shauce” he called it in those rare moments of levity when he’d perform the one culinary task he was willing to do. I’d lean shyly against the counter and watch as he poured ingredients into a rectangular cake pan. Vegetable oil, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and then he’d finish it off with the secret ingredient: a can of fruit cocktail. Somehow the sweetness of the syrup was perfect against the salty soy and the biting garlic. Everything he cooked on the grill, save hamburgers and hot dogs, first bathed in this marinade overnight in the refrigerator. Rump roasts, pork chops, chicken legs all seemed more exotic this way, and
“No,” she says, “I don’t think it is.”
We’re quiet for a moment, then I say, “Did I tell you I have a cat?”
“Really?” Christine says, sounding skeptical.
We aren’t exactly pet people in our family. We once had a gerbil that died after less than twenty-four hours under our care. Looking back, I doubt it was our fault. Shopping mall pet stores are breeding grounds for disease, but it shook our confidence and bolstered Dad’s arguments against our desire for something warm and cuddly in our lives. We never asked for another pet.
It was Christine, in fact, who insisted upon a proper burial for our still-unnamed gerbil, which meant squatting in late-winter rain, digging mud with soupspoons we’d pilfered from the utensils drawer in the kitchen while Mom chatted on the phone in her bedroom. After school, Christine had rescued the dead animal from the trash, where Dad had deposited it the night before, and placed it in her school pencil box, surrounded by pink toilet paper.
When the hole kept puddling with rain, Anne and I gave up. “Come on, Christine,” we begged. “It’s just a gerbil.”
She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, but she was fiercely determined to do the right thing by this creature, and long after Anne and I had retreated to our bedroom, where we kept an eye on her through the window, she worked the ground until the hole was big enough to hold the box; it bobbed and floated as she spooned wet earth back over it. Then we saw her stand and clasp her hands in front of her, speaking solemn words that only she could hear, periodically stomping at the pile of mud that kept rising against her good school shoes.
It’s still early after Christine hangs up, only nine thirty, so I refocus and try to get a jump on what surely will be a tough workweek. I’m avoiding an e-mail from Stefan titled RE: Re: Article??? Instead, I turn my attention to a new assignment from American Family : “Home Cooking: The Comforts of Old Family Favorites.”
Easy. Baked macaroni and cheese with crunchy bread crumbs on top; simple mashed potatoes with no garlic and lots of cream and butter; meatloaf with sage and a sweet tomato sauce topping. Not that I experienced these things in my house growing up, but these are the foods everyone thinks of as old family favorites, only improved. If nothing else, my job is to create a dreamlike state for readers in which they feel that everything will be all right if only they find just the right recipe to bring their kids back to the table, seduce their husbands into loving them again, make their friends and neighbors envious.
I’m tapping my keyboard, thinking, what else?, when it hits me like a soft thud in the chest. I want to write about my family’s favorites, the strange foods that comforted us in tense moments around the dinnertable. Mom’s Midwestern “hot dish”: layers of browned hamburger, canned vegetable soup, canned sliced potatoes, topped with canned cream of mushroom soup. I haven’t tasted it in years. Her lime Jell-O salad with cottage cheese, walnuts, and canned pineapple; her potato salad with French dressing instead of mayo.
I have a craving, too, for Dad’s grilling marinade. “Shecret Shauce” he called it in those rare moments of levity when he’d perform the one culinary task he was willing to do. I’d lean shyly against the counter and watch as he poured ingredients into a rectangular cake pan. Vegetable oil, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and then he’d finish it off with the secret ingredient: a can of fruit cocktail. Somehow the sweetness of the syrup was perfect against the salty soy and the biting garlic. Everything he cooked on the grill, save hamburgers and hot dogs, first bathed in this marinade overnight in the refrigerator. Rump roasts, pork chops, chicken legs all seemed more exotic this way, and
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