When my mom didn’t call, or
send a card, on my birthday last August (said the Leo), it was clear something
was up. She had a decades-long track record of on-time birthday cards, so the
next day I called to see whether her normally remarkable memory was failing
her, or whether it was something I’d said…but she confessed, she just hadn’t
had the energy--she didn’t want to worry me, but she was experiencing a bit of
a health condition.
Every time (I realize that
sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not) my mom and I get ready to hang up the phone, from
the early 80’s until practically the other day, she mentions food. I’d say,
“I’ve got to go…” and she’d say, “I thought I’d make a lasagna, so I’m
defrosting a pound of ground beef,” or “I wish you could have been here for
breakfast. I made hash browns from last night’s potatoes.” When I pointed her
habit out, about 20 years ago, she said, surprised, “I do?” which was amusing
in the way that two other remarks of hers had been amusing: one, at dinner with
my dad in 1981, when the waiter asked for clarification on my mom’s order, and
she replied, “Just bring me whatever you want. I’m not fussy.” My dad and I both said, amused, “But you’re the fussiest person we know!” And that was true. At
least around food. She was very food-fussy. And her other amusing remark,
also directed to me and my dad, at some other time and some other restaurant, was “Oh, you know how much I hate to talk on the phone.” And my dad and I both
said, amused, “But you're always on the phone!”
Introspection and self-reflection were not two of my mom’s passions. Food, and
talking on the phone, however, were.
So she didn’t call me on my
birthday, and of course I could have called her on my own birthday, but that
seemed confrontational, accusational, and on my call the following day I put
her on speaker so my daughter Lily, the great generational buffer, could
generationally buffer us. My mom mentioned casually that she felt so weak
from her unnamed health condition that she would “probably never cook again,” which
(though it turned out to be true) was quite frankly unthinkable, so I whispered
to Lily, “What about pesto?!”
“Not even pesto?” my
often-obedient daughter inquired. My mom hesitated, then said quietly that
she’d try to make Lily some pesto. She had been sending my daughter a few jars
of pesto a year since she was two years old--and had sent it to me for years,
before Lily was born. Twenty-seven years of pesto, in Mason jars. We'd bought
pesto at Whole Foods, we ordered it at restaurants, we tried boutique
food shops, but my mom’s pesto was quite simply better. Because the necessary
volume of basil was becoming cost prohibitive, her husband had planted basil in their garden. (Parmesan
was expensive too, not to mention pine nuts, but apparently there was no hack for them.)
A couple weeks later, a large
box from Amazon arrived, addressed to Lily, quite surely an accident because
the several packages a week we receive from Amazon are always small. It seemed
like a big-ass hassle to return whatever it accidentally was, so the box sat
near our front door for several days until the next time I spoke to my mom. We
exchanged news, and I said that I had to hang up, when my mom said
(because this is when she discusses all things food), “Tell Lily that she can
always substitute walnuts for the pine nuts, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for
her to consider growing her own basil,” and I had an epiphany: My mom had sent Lily a food processor
because she thinks she’s going to DIE! And what is her first thought? “Who's going to make Lily’s pesto?” Food is love.
So, like the scratch on Barrett’s car that he really didn’t care about, my
mom sending Lily a food processor was actually a random clue to the Universe,
and to her smaller universe that was the two of us, that her life was nearing its
end.
The week after my mom died, I
was relieved, numb, and a bit guilty…for not feeling sadder. I had to convince
people that I was ok—because I was ok. My mom’s death fit into the order of the
universe (as opposed to when Lily’s dad died, and we were shattered, because it so did not fit into the order of the
universe). Lily had felt guilty about her feelings: “Mom, when I’m happy, I feel like I
should be sad, and when I’m sad, I feel like my dad would want me to be happy,”
she’d said, at the time, and my best advice was just feel what you feel when
you feel it and know that each feeling is temporary—and that was my best advice
to myself, too: just feel what you feel; you don’t have to feel worse than you
feel. “Everyone grieves in their own way,” Lily told me, wise in the way that a
kid whose universe was shattered when she was 15 can be.
The second week after my mom
died, the week after I felt relieved and numb, I had a craving…was it for the sublime ginger chocolate chip cookies from the gluten free bakery? Was it for
pretzels? Popcorn from the Music Box? Was it for curried lentil soup? I even wondered: was it for pesto? My mind
scanned the food world on and off for two days, but I simply had a vague food-itch
that just couldn’t be scratched. Maybe
a Jade Oolong tea, or a Bourbon County beer, or Aztec hot chocolate?
On the third day, I had an
epiphany. The vague emptiness inside me wasn’t actually a food craving; it was
a vague emptiness where my mother once was, and of course no food, no person or
situation or event, could or would ever fill that space. But the fact that it was a food craving, or
expressed itself as a food craving, even though it had nothing to do with actual
food, was crazy-noteworthy, since my mother had always expressed her love through food--like
most mothers, of course, but even more so than most because 1. she had also
been a caterer and wrote a food column in her local newspaper, and 2. she
really didn’t express love in the usual non-food ways. She wasn’t crazy about
being touched, or making declarations of affection; she was all about cooking—I
mentioned that in her obituary.
On Thanksgiving, two
months after my mom forgot my birthday (said the Leo), I was assigned a very
specific traditional cranberry relish that my foodie friend gave me the very specific recipe for. Another friend was
over, and we were going to make cranberry relish with Lily’s new pesto-processor…because
we could, because we had one now. The recipe called for orange pieces to be put
in the food processor—but is peeling implied, in a recipe? It didn’t say to
peel them first. But did the recipe really call for oranges with the peels on?
My friend Elizabeth, who has a PhD, and I, the editor of another friend's recipe blog, two people who should know, pondered whether to peel or not to peel and decided that, since it was
Thanksgiving, I should probably call my mom anyway, and that it was best to call
that second.
“Leave the peels on,” said my
mom. “And put a cinnamon stick in,” she added—one of those things she just does, things that are not in a recipe, one of those things she would never tell anyone, if
they asked her for her cranberry relish recipe, because strictly speaking the
cinnamon stick was not part of the recipe per se. She enjoyed the phrase "per se." As I was hanging up, Elizabeth whispered, “Tell her how grateful you are that she has so much cooking
knowledge!” So I did.
“But what is going to become
of it?” my mom lamented—and she really did lament this, with a tear in
her voice, on Thanksgiving, two months after she had sent Lily the food processor. And it was
true: she never cooked anything that wasn’t staggeringly good. It was her gift.
It was how she showed her love. She sniffed.
“I just made your mom cry,”
Elizabeth said, in the background, slightly amused and inappropriately proud. This
was the only worry my mom had expressed aloud about her impending death: what would become of her cooking tips?
What indeed would become of
her cooking tips? She really did have every answer to every cooking question
anyone had ever asked her. I made an effort to reassure her that Lily’s first
attempt at pesto was successful, that Lily embodied every quality of hers that
had skipped a generation: the ability to set a lovely table, interior-design her friends’ rooms, apply makeup, and walk like a model.
A few days after my mom died,
my daughter called me from her new life in L.A.
“I’m going to get a tattoo,
in memory of Grandma Bobbie!” she announced.
“Dude,” I replied, in feeble
protest.
“Help me decide what to get!”
she persisted. I persisted in dissuading her: my mom would absolutely hate that
idea, I said. A tattoo. Just no. She’d hate it!
“I know!” Lily said, “Isn't it ironic?!”
She settled on a basil leaf. I
had lost the tattoo battle long ago, but I’m always honored to be consulted. A
small basil leaf on the back of her arm, above her elbow--could be far worse.
Lily suggested I share the
pesto recipe in my mom’s obituary (an inspired idea, until I saw the price of
obituaries per word), and it is indeed a fantastic recipe, a staple in my
refrigerator for 25 years, a recipe everyone should have…but not so fast. While
my mother loved to hear people raving about her food, and while she would indeed
share a recipe on occasion, I am actually not so certain she would want
everyone in the world to have Bobbie’s Pesto recipe. Because it’s hers. Being her daughter could be
complicated. It still is: how do I do what’s best for the cooks and eaters of
the world, while honoring my mother’s memory, while not allowing the other cooks
to have all the accolades?
Epiphany: I don’t have to honor the
part of my mother that would leave out the cinnamon stick when sharing the
cranberry relish recipe--I can use my own sense of consciousness to polish our lineage with some generosity of
spirit. What a relief to see the human insecurities my mom once embodied gently
dissipating, revealing more and more of who she truly was: “exceptional,” said
my dad, whom she had divorced when she was 64, after 40 years (exceptional in his own way for even being able to see that quality in my mom, who'd left him when he was 72). Indeed she was.
While striving for perfection for all her misguided human reasons, she had indeed been exceptional.
The Divine Mirror that she
is for me now is being polished through the lens of death.
“Why does everyone say only positive
things about someone after they die?” my daughter asked me, ever so long ago, after somebody had died.
I do see how petty grievances
and long-held resentments are irrelevant in the mirror of physical death.
Our minds are free to see the departed Other in the highest light; the
survivors are lit up and reminded of their own humanity and concurrent
divinity, when they think of their dearly departed. My mother is now a soul, so
I see her soul. It’s so simple. It’s so effortless. The challenge is seeing it
while our loved ones are still alive.
So as a tribute to my mom, one
that I think maybe she would like—certainly far more than a basil leaf tattoo—here
is her fantastic pesto recipe. I’m pretty sure these are ALL the ingredients,
but we’ll never know.
Grandma Bobbie’s Pesto
1 cup basil leaves
¼ cup minced parsley
½ cup olive oil
4 Tbs freshly grated parmesan
2 Tbs pine nuts*
3-4 cloves garlic
½ tsp salt, or to taste
¼ tsp white pepper**
Place all ingredients except olive oil in bowl of processor and process till well chopped, then drizzle in the olive oil. Process till fairly smooth. Pour in jar and cover with 1/4 inch oil to preserve. Refrigerate (or freeze).
*Toast pine nuts a bit. Don’t tell my mom I told you.
1 cup basil leaves
¼ cup minced parsley
½ cup olive oil
4 Tbs freshly grated parmesan
2 Tbs pine nuts*
3-4 cloves garlic
½ tsp salt, or to taste
¼ tsp white pepper**
Place all ingredients except olive oil in bowl of processor and process till well chopped, then drizzle in the olive oil. Process till fairly smooth. Pour in jar and cover with 1/4 inch oil to preserve. Refrigerate (or freeze).
*Toast pine nuts a bit. Don’t tell my mom I told you.
**This is the secret ingredient she never divulged.
Pesto Butter: Blend 3 Tbs pesto with 1 stick softened butter. Use on garlic toast, steamed vegetables, or popcorn.
Pesto Salad Dressing: Blend 6 Tbs pesto with 1/3 cup wine vinegar, 2/3 cup olive oil, and an additional clove of crushed garlic. Shake well in covered jar to blend.
Pesto Butter: Blend 3 Tbs pesto with 1 stick softened butter. Use on garlic toast, steamed vegetables, or popcorn.
Pesto Salad Dressing: Blend 6 Tbs pesto with 1/3 cup wine vinegar, 2/3 cup olive oil, and an additional clove of crushed garlic. Shake well in covered jar to blend.