Next Chapter in a Life

My mother's husband announced on a mid-spring Saturday that once school let out, Mother and I would be moving out. He'd deliver us to my uncle, who lived in New Jersey. Mother did not dispute this pronouncement, but failed to understand why her husband was neither willing to accept her as she was, nor willing to help her change into someone better. He'd simply given up. It was not a happy time for her. I perceived it, for even though I think she did her best to remain attentive, her mind was clearly elsewhere. I'm sure it was the meds that kept her alive.

The man was biding his time. Mother tried, sometimes desolately, sometimes desperately, but always futilely, to convince the man she loved that there was much worth saving in the marriage. Her temper, her madness, could be controlled, either through sheer will or through medication.

He followed his instincts instead of being swayed by his heart. Our days on the farm were numbered.

I'd grown accustomed to our all-but-monochromatic cats, whom we named CowCow and Spice. I think they grew to like us, too, especially Spice, to whom Mum would call upon returning from her Bridge days. He'd gambol down the curved driveway to greet her, occasionally bringing her a vole, dead or alive. He often napped next to her as she read books, either in the porch or in the garden when it was sunny.

The trailer arrived in June. It would be available for packing for three days before the movers would come to take it. The permanent resident of the farm helped Mother pack our belongings into the trailer. She had purchased twelve lineal feet of space, and so everything had to be made to fit into that volume: 100”x108”x144” = 900 cubic feet. After pressing in the furniture, boxes of books, and what kitchen supplies Mother decided she wanted to keep, there was little space left. Mother went through all of her possessions and decided that a lot of it – probably as much as we'd be taking with us – would be left behind, either to be used by her soon-to-be ex-husband, or thrown out.

Sports equipment, like her tennis racquet, were left behind. “ I'll buy a new one if I ever play tennis again,” she whispered, mostly to herself. Discarded were many of her keepsakes, like her high school and college yearbooks, dozens and dozens of printed photographs before there Mother had available technology to scan and preserve the images, and every letter ever written to her by every boyfriend she'd ever had. I watched her reread a lot of the letters, her eyes soft with emotion and memory. She showed me her autograph book from elementary school. Even though she still kept in touch with many of the people she knew then online, she'd lost touch with many others. “Well, that's the past, isn't it?” she said, “And it's really just all stuff.” There sure was a lot of stuff destined for the recycling bin or, more likely, the wood-burning stove.

She did pack my keepsakes. She looked wistfully at my first medical record books from our visits to my first paediatrician, the bit of cord that had dried and subsequently sloughed off after my first few days of life, and story and poetry books that she had read with me when I was an infant and toddler. “These might hold sentimental value to you someday,” she said, placing the books carefully in a cardboard box labelled with my name in her careful architect's writing.

When the trailer was packed, we looked at cube of our earthly belongings, all rammed and stacked carefully at the rearmost portion of the trailer. Then the movers took it and drove it westward, probably on the I-80 as far as Youngstown before heading south to zigzag through as many states as they had stuff to carry from and to.

The drive to Uncle David's took about five hours. The first three and a half hours, across Pennsylvania, were long and quiet. We followed the 80 to the Delaware Water Gap, where Uncle David met us at a rest area at the side of the highway. It was dark already when we got arrived. Mother gave her husband a last embrace. He seemed troubled by the affection. As he turned back to his truck, he said, “Good luck.”

He climbed into his truck, and started his engine. He drove away westward, never to reappear in our lives.

We'd packed a couple suitcases to see us through the few weeks we'd be staying with Uncle David and his partner. We stopped at a roadside restaurant where we ate some nondescript food, then drove the rest of the way to his home in Towaco.

Mother and I stayed with Uncle David and his sweetheart, Aunt Theresa, for a few weeks. We visited a neighbourhood park. We took a commuter train to Hoboken, then rode the PATH under the Hudson River into Manhattan to sightsee and to watch a show one evening. I enjoyed the show but I'm not sure Mother did, though she smiled at the end of the performance, anyway. Perhaps she did not like the happy ending. That sowed the seed of cynicism in my heart though it would take years for the seed to take root and flower into doubtfulness regarding the entire romantic enterprise.

Uncle David used to work as an electrical engineer, but had quit. He'd started teaching yoga. We attended Uncle's classes, at a couple of yoga studios. Mother seemed to appreciate these more than any other activity we engaged in. Aunt Theresa, a slightly portly figure with long, light brown hair, did not go to the yoga classes with us. I remember Uncle David looking more fit than when we'd seen him, several months earlier, after he started his practice but before he became an instructor.

The yoga was doing him good. Aunt Theresa spent most of her day in her home office, working on her computer, though she would take occasional breaks and come into the living room to talk with Mother and me. She did not appear to resent Uncle David's improving health and fitness, but rather, she appeared to always be trying to catch up without wanting to do very much physically in order to reach that goal.

Uncle David would take Mother to the beginners' yoga classes with him because, he said, it would help her to get some exercise and relax. It was true. Mother's mood improved as the days passed; her demeanour became more peaceful and her voice, softer. It reminded me of how she used to speak to me before the blonde Daddy came into our lives. She slept longer, and I think, better.

After three weeks, Uncle brought Mother to Newark Airport, where she boarded a plane that took her to Albuquerque, to Antique Alice and Uncle Rick's.

Mum decided that she would try living with her only sister. Previously, she had lived with Antique Alice when she, Antique Alice, was stationed in Japan several years ago, while Mother was still in school. That was before either of them had married, before I was born. At the time, Antique Alice worked on an American military base on Honshu Island, in a settlement named Misawa.

Unlike Misawa, where the snow becomes feet deep in the wintertime, there was only just a dusting of snow in the mountains above her current city. Albuquerque, like Denver, though not as vocal about it, lies 5000 feet above sea level. The clear air would cause us to misjudge distances. We'd think that a walk down the street would take only ten minutes when in reality, it would be at least a mile, taking us at least half an hour, with the sun beating down on us.

After the first few days of living there, Mum bought hats for herself and me. They were lightweight synthetic shade hats, with a rigid bill in front and a soft cape on the back. We wore those hats everywhere during the day, for the sun was not only high, but the day long. Not a whole lot of shade to be found at that elevation. There was also a lot less atmosphere through which the sun's radiation needed to pass before landing on one's head. Having dark hair didn't help.

Even though there were occasional wind-driven sandstorms, the air was, predominantly, still, dry, and hot. Very hot in the sun. By that same token, nights were clear and cold, since there wasn't much moisture in the air to trap the heat. On those cold clear nights, we'd look up at the moon, in the company of a gazillion stars. Mother pointed out the Milky Way to me. It's a wide, glowing stripe crossing the vast skyscape, and made me feel at once small an insignificant, but also connected, part of the larger universe that contains everything known and possible. My world, and my mind, expanded, and my horizons grew wide.

"Buttf*ck Nowhere"

Within two years, I'd lived in three states, all with different ecological and social environments. Each had, associated with them, distinct developmental stages of my life.

Virginia was my first home. There, I was an infant and learned to tread carefully on the uneven brick sidewalks of Old Town Alexandria. It was there that I had my first taste of chocolate ice cream in a private daycare centre. I attended nursery school and Kindergarten at the daycare centre as Mother returned to work. My birth father was only a central figure in my life when I was very young. He was a caring, affectionate man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard though his hair remained brown. I liked to rub with my hands on the short hair that covered his pockmarked cheeks and chin.

Mother and Daddy took me into Washington, DC, to the National Mall during the Cherry Blossom Festival, during which delicate pink flowers decorated the trees around the Tidal Basin. Mother pushed the stroller and Daddy walked beside us, often with his arm around Mother's shoulders. I don't remember actually very much from that time, so most of my memories were formed from old photographs. There is one picture of me in an infant swing with Daddy behind, having just pushed me forward. There is a black and white photograph of Mother, wearing a dark swimsuit, holding me in the shallow end of a swimming pool. There are pictures of me, standing on leaf-strewn pavement, wearing a homemade pumpkin costume that Mother had sewn out of felt. I'm wearing a soft floppy green hat and black leggings and shoes in that picture. There's another picture of Mother, holding me, presumably against her hip, smiling at the camera, which I assume Daddy was wielding. But by the time I was forming permanent memories, Daddy was living in Maryland and I was living with Mother in Virginia. The pictures of me with Mother are fewer from that period, for that was then that Daddy ceased to be a regular fixture in our life, or at least he ceased to be someone whom I'd see at the same time as Mother. From my earliest memories, Mother took me to see Daddy, and I'd spend time with him, away from Mother. These visits would only last for the day. Mother would pick me up afterward, bringing me home with her for the night.

When her pregnancy began, the woman who would become my mother tried to stop taking what she would later call “anti-madness” pills. After several weeks, the pregnancy was causing too much emotional strain, so she returned to her “little helper.” As far as I know, she'd only stopped taking the meds twice: once, when she thought that being married to the man with whom she'd fallen in love would cure the sadness; and when she was in the hospital, after her accident, before the hospital staff was informed of her dependency and the meds were restarted before she was released into the care of her husband and her parents, Gong-Gong and Paw-Paw.

Mother never once expressed regret at having become a parent. She would worry about how to extend what money we had once we no longer had the comfort of her salary. She was frugal bordering on cheap, though she was never cheap when it came to the things I needed. She went to thrift shops and inspected clothing carefully to make sure that they'd last a good, long time. She'd buy all of my clothes two sizes too large. Everything was an investment. Early springtime work in the garden was one form of investment. Canning was both an investment and an insurance policy to help us through the winter months. In a lot of ways, it seemed fitting that I was reading the Little House books because we were living a modern equivalent. It was when she was discharged from the hospital in Virginia that Mother and her husband sought a different pharmaceutical regimen to help her avoid the Darkness without leaving her emotionally numb. But like I've said, once she found the right drug, it was the beginning of the end. More to the point, it was the beginning of their end. 

We were staying at Grandmother's and Granddad's house, a two-story farmhouse, temporarily, before moving to the farm next door. Mother's husband built and installed a second staircase. The original stair was an enclosed, windowless winder. Mother slipped once, whilst carrying laundry, down those stairs. The winders' proximity to the kitchen made them more convenient than the new stair, but I don't remember Mother using them again after her fall.

Grandmother ran an insurance agency and Granddad taught at a local college, so Mother was often home, alone, during the day after she was discharged from her outpatient therapies. Her husband worked in his shop in town, and occasionally come home for lunch, though he typically took a brown paper bag lunch with him.

Occasionally, Mother would accompany him when he worked in a smaller shop he kept at home, housed in a small dependency. It opened onto the driveway at right angles to the main house. It probably used to be a large garage with a smaller attached workshop, but a floor had been poured to finish the entire interior space. It was there that he built the second set of stairs for our house. It was under those stairs that I had my craft area. He'd installed full-extension drawers under the stairs, and my table and bench were placed underneath a window there. I kept the drawers in order: drawing pencils, coloured and graphite, and crayons in the top drawer, with accompanying sheets of white and coloured paper; painting supplies in the middle drawer, including a travel watercolour set with a small brush and a palette on its hinged lid. Mother had given it to me for my birthday with some blank watercolour paper greeting cards. She smiled when she presented them to me: “I think you'll enjoy creating things as much as I do.” I could paint my own pictures to give away (or keep).

The bottom drawer held Lego bricks, Lego plates, Lego circles, Lego animals and people, and Lego plants. Lots and lots of Legos, for Mother encouraged my creativity. Her husband was already a Lego lover when they'd met. In fact, it was at a Lego convention that they'd initially become acquainted. He was visiting Washington, DC, for the weekend of the bi-annual Lego Convention, and Mother brought me there to spark my imagination and to appreciate the creations people made.

Being home alone, Mother would scour the local newspaper for nonexistent jobs, then retreat upstairs, where she sat at Grandmother's computer and played Bridge online for hours at a time.

Sometimes she would bake. I think she was, indeed, already bordering on “batshit,” and it was our departure that saved her from eternal, if not lethal, boredom.

I never thought to question whether it was a good idea for Mother to buy a gun. I went along to the sporting goods store with the two of them. They looked at a few different models, and Mother would hold them, getting a feel for their heft and balance. She finally decided to buy a bolt-action .270 rifle. It had a black barrel and a moulded black stock. It was capable of holding three bullets at a time, with one in the chamber, thus allowing the hunter to take three shots before reloading. She'd only once emptied the gun, and that was at a twelve-point whitetail buck who bounded across one of the fields into the wood. The buck escaped, unscathed. Her husband saw the deer when she started firing, and allowed her to take her chance in shooting it, without pulling out his 30-06.

Mother and her husband spent the snowy weekends of November sitting in the tree stand out back, at the edge of the wood and field, occasionally looking out over the stubble, but mostly reading their paperbacks, listening. They wore Day-Glo orange hats they'd sewn for themselves out of synthetic fleece. They occasionally poured themselves and each other a drink from the Thermos and tipped the warm fluid through their cold lips, and make bathroom runs.

They came back into the house, looked at my Lego creations, then sat down to a hot lunch, typically soup that had been simmering on the stove since before daybreak. Homemade tomato-based vegetable soup with our homegrown vegetables, and fresh bread that Mother had made the previous night, was the typical fare. Afterwards, after having warming up and fed themselves, they walked back out, through the snow and up the tree, to the stand.
They'd remain in the tree until after dusk. Grandmother would prepare dinner for us, for she was the only adult who did not hunt. Mother participated in so-called “masculine” activities, it seemed, whereas Grandmother's realm was the “feminine” Interior Domestic. Perhaps she saw the marriage of her son to Mother not as losing a son, but gaining another one...

Once, before we'd moved to Pennsylvania, we visited during Thanksgiving Break and Mother shot a big doe as it ran across the corn stubble. She took careful aim, following the animal with her scope, then pulled the trigger, once. The doe continued to run, and Mother lost sight of it.

Father and son looked for it while she watched from the stand, ready to take another shot if they flushed the deer from hiding. When he found the doe laying in a copse, Granddad ended the deer's suffering with a single shot to her head. His son brought over their red four-wheeler, and together, the three of them picked up the deer and lay it across the front if the small vehicle. Mother's husband drove it to the barn on Granddad and Grandmother's property. When Mother and her husband hung the carcass from a crossbeam, they saw that the deer had already been shot several times. In fact, the left forefoot, or hoof, had been nearly severed at the wrist (or are they ankles?) by the shot of a hunter who had failed to kill her. After they stripped off her skin, Mother's partner made a lengthwise incision, spilling, from the deer's udder, the milk she would never feed to her fawn, who was probably either scared and hiding or dead.

To me, hunting meant that Mother and her husband were able to provide, by their own efforts, food for our table. We were not wanting for anything, as far as I was aware, and had a pretty good life. We had means of producing and/or procuring our food, Daddy worked in his shops, and I read to Mother before going to sleep each night. My childhood idyll would not last.

Next Chapter in a Life

Halloween during our year of living next door to Grandmother and Granddad was memorable. Grandmother sewed, with minimal assistance from Mother and myself, a costume for me. When asked who I wanted to be, I answered immediately, “Laura Ingalls!” I had read most of the Little House books to Mother by then. The costume we chose consisted of a dress, a smock, and a floppy white hat. The colour scheme was red and white, with touches of beige and dots of brown. The red was the kind one associates with country living: a “practical” hue that will not show fading readily by not being brilliant to start. Originally, Mother had intended to sew the costume, but after studying the pattern, she realised that it was much too complex for her to complete in the forty-eight hours between buying the materials and Halloween. One thing she did do, however, was carve our pumpkins. Her husband bought a woodworker's awl and gave her a small woodworking saw from his shop with which she maimed the squashes. The jack o'lanterns were placed on our rarely-used front stoop and the tea-lights within were lit with long fireplace matches. We set off, then, into town, to find me some treats. When we arrived at the first house, I stood at the road's edge, at the end of the concrete walk leading to the front door of the modest residence. The resident opened her door, took one look at me standing in the twilight, and exclaimed, “Laura Ingalls Wilder!” That moment made my night almost before it had even begun. Mother was happy to see how happy it made me. She never failed to express pleasure at my happiness. She obviously wanted me to have a happy childhood. I never had a doubt that Mother loved me, even when she was cross. Not that she was often angry, at least not with me. She would, at times, become enraged at her husband, whose deep green eyes would stare at her uncomprehendingly from beneath the sometimes wild mane of blonde curls that cascaded down his strong, lithe back when not neatly braided. He never fought; he would take hold of her from behind and hold her arms to her sides in a firm embrace. She struggled. Then, after having spent all her physical strength, the anger would pass, and she would wilt. I learned that anger can flare up suddenly and violently, yet die a quiet death that, for her, often led to deep slumber. Her sleep was lengthened, and presumably deepened, by the more sedative medications. Her anger seemed to spring from the same well as the Voice that so often immobilised her with self-loathing and hopelessness. She never spoke to me of the Voice, but I remember times when it was clear she was losing an oft-repeated conversation in her head: her shoulders sagged, her head bowed, and her eyes were hollow, defeated. It was at those times when I wanted to comfort her. She, who had given me life, and who had, at times, I'm sure, wondered whether she'd made the right decision to go through with it - with me - was fighting an internal battle I could not fathom. Not at that age, anyway. It was only later when I'd realise that she needed me in her life as much as I needed her.

After the Beginning

I don't know how long they courted before he learned of Mother's medication, but even after finding out, the man who became her husband was not deterred. He was convinced that he could bring forth enough loving passion from her to make the medications either irrelevant or unnecessary. He was wrong. He'd only seen her once, briefly, unmedicated, after she'd decided to stop taking her meds and did so for a few weeks, long enough for the half-life of the drug to wear off. It was a turbulent time, with her mood swings (and “swings” is putting it rather mildly) frequently bringing her to within an inch of her life, so to speak.

After that, he reminded her, often unnecessarily, to take her meds, even going through the trouble of buying her a pill box labeled with days of the week and times of day, labelled AM and PM. I think it irritated her. It's probably part of what led to the demise of their relationship. She hated feeling trapped as a prisoner-housewife. I think she longed to return to a more urban and urbane life. When we moved away from Butt-fuck Nowhere, we moved away from the rural life that had been driving Mother, as she put it, “batshit.” Although she enjoyed playing Bridge with the other women at the Woman's Club, she needed a greater reason to exist; she needed a purpose, goals to work toward, something with which to define herself outside of being a homemaker, since she did not feel like she was much of one, especially when comparing herself with her mother-in-law, who had grown up in the 1950's, eaten middle-American food, and managed not only to make it through college, but to graduate and work up to owning her own business. Mother wanted to make things other than just a single home for a single family, even if it was her own home for her own family. There had to be something greater to make her life meaningful, even if on it would still be on a very small, globally speaking, scale.

She scoured the paltry employment section in the local paper. The economy had entered a downturn, so there was not much building happening. Therefore, no construction management needed. She played Bridge online against other people from all over the world. I think that playing Bridge helped her maintain her sanity because, especially with the weekly games at the Bridge Club and at the Woman's Club, she was, at least, able to interact with others, even if only in a very limited fashion. All of them were retirees who were at least twice her age. She was not only the only non-retiree, but also the only non-Caucasian member of the Woman's Club, save one. Another Asian woman befriended Mother and invited her for games at her home. Unfortunately, most of the game days and evenings were couples' events. Because her husband did not play Bridge, Mother did not feel comfortable accepting. She missed out on those social events. Her husband was a bit of a loner, so he didn't introduce us to others, individuals or families, either. He was like an island unto himself, not even part of an archipelago. Lone.

For family and neighbours, we had Grandmother and Granddad, Great-grandmother, and Great-Grandmother's husband, a man she'd met later in life. This second husband would eventually outlive her.

I liked having Mum at home because she enjoyed baking, and would bake the bread we ate. She'd developed a sourdough starter, keeping a “mother” from which she'd scoop a bit of poolish for each loaf. She only baked pies and cakes for special occasions. She did bake cookies regularly, though, which was fun because I helped her measure, mix, form, sometimes by rolling, and place the cookie batter onto the baking sheets. She would put the cookie sheets into the oven and take them out herself. She wielded the spatula, moving the freshly baked cookies to the cooling racks. I remember eating a lot of homemade cookies. We also had pies that Grandmother would bake and invite us over to eat with her, though of course, she, herself, would refrain from eating the butter- or shortening-saturated crust.

There was something indescribably delicious about being a child in the countryside. It was only after we left behind our Holstein-patterned cat and her tuxedo brother that I realised what had made it Home. I missed our cats, but I did not miss taking allergy pills in order to interact with them. I missed playing in the snow, but not the ensuing pain that followed the numbness. All these things I associated with Home (with the capital H), and when we left, we left those things behind. Mother would have to either find another or make a new Home for us.

Without realizing it immediately, I would come to understand that I missed listening to the wind in the corn fields, feeling the coolness of the wood after walking through a sun-filled meadow, and the fish-peppered ponds, where Granddad would hold a fishing derby for the kids from their church every summer.

Before Mother's accident, we drove up from Virginia and I'd participated in one of Granddad's fishing derbies, though “participating” is an inaccurate description. Sans fishing pole, I was observing the older children without too much interest, playing and exploring on my own more than interacting with the god-fearing, who all appeared to follow blindly, of not happily, the myth perpetuated by their parents. Mother never lied to me and therefore never taught me a religion. She showed me the world as it was, without the sugarcoat of fantasy or the supernatural.

I missed random encounters with wildlife. Once, when I was about two or three, the family (Great-grandma, Grandmother, Granddad, Stepdad, Mother, and myself) were sitting outside on the patio in the early evening with glasses of iced tea when I came across a fawn who had been hidden under a bush by his mother. When I reached out to pet him, he said “Bahhh,” reared, ran forward, and butted me in the belly with his nonexistent antlers, knocking me back onto my bum to the great laughter of everyone else. The fawn ran off.

Experimental Ice Cream Number Three

I've made a couple of experimental ice creams already, and they all came out, so I'm trying another, based on a conversation that I'd had with Liz in which she mentioned such a combination and it intrigued me:

Clementine-Cardamom Ice Cream

1 ½ c.	heavy cream
6 to 9	clementines, zest and juice, separated (~1 ½ c. juice, 2 T. zest)
1 c.	granulated sugar
1 t	vanilla extract
4	black cardamom pods, seeds only

Bring cream, sugar, and cardamom to a boil. Stir in juice and remove from heat. Cool to room temperature.

Strain mixture through cheesecloth into chilling bowl and allow to chill for several hours or overnight.

Put into ice cream maker and allow to churn until ice cream reaches desired consistency. Remove paddle, cover, and freeze until ready to serve.

At this moment, I'm allowing the mixture to cool on the balcony to room temperature before placing it into the fridge to chill.  I hadn't realized that Kat had eaten the remaining coconut milk-lime ice cream that I'd made last week until I opened the freezer to take something else out and noticed that the freezer bowl was uncovered (I usually keep it covered with plastic wrap).  That ice cream was quite pungent:

Coconut Milk-Lime Ice Cream

7 oz.	Unsweetened Coconut milk
2/3 c.	Heavy Cream
5	limes - juice and zest about ¾ c. juice and 1 ½ T zest
1 c.	granulated sugar
1 t	vanilla extract

Mix & heat in heavy-bottomed pan until simmering. Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

Allow to cool to room temperature before putting in fridge to chill thoroughly.

Churn in ice cream machine until it reaches desired consistency.  Cover and keep in freezer until ready to serve.

The basics of making ice cream (churned frozen desserts in general?) seems to be pretty straightforward:  combine and cook custard, cool, churn, then freeze.

I've been thinking about making something along the lines of either rosemary or basil ice cream, to have an herby flavor.  The cardamom appears to combine well with fruit, as well:

Meyer Lemon Curd-Cardamom Ice Cream with Coconut Milk

4	jumbo egg yolks (or 6 yolks if using large eggs)
1 c.	fresh lemon curd, chilled
½ c.	granulated white sugar (adjust to sweetness of lemon curd)
4 c.	heavy cream
1 c.	unsweetened coconut milk
1 t	vanilla extract
5	black cardamom pods
2 T	fresh Meyer lemon juice from half of one lemon

1. Beat egg yolks with sugar and vanilla extract.
2. Heat cream, coconut milk, and seeds scraped from cardamom pods in large saucepan to almost boiling. Remove from heat until cool, then bring back to simmer for about 5 minutes, until it coats the back of a wooden spoon.
3. Add lemon curd, and mix in thoroughly.
4. Allow custard mixture to cool, covered, overnight in the refrigerator (do not put in freezer).
5. Assemble ice cream maker. Wrap bowl in a couple layers of towels. Allow machine to churn until desired consistency is reached.  Remove paddle and freeze until serving.

So these are pretty rich recipes (with the possible exception of this morning's recipe, which does not contain any eggs, but still includes heavy cream).  I'm considering making a frozen dessert that will not use cream or eggs, something more like a sorbet, perhaps.  I'll post it if it works out.

Peanut Butter Shortbread

I made this recipe in the mid-afternoon.

Ingredients

1 c.	dried peanut butter (powdered - I bought mine online)
1 c.	whole wheat flour
½ c.	a-p flour
½ c.	granulated sugar
1 c.	vegetable shortening, chilled
6 oz.	semisweet chocolate chips
1 T	agave syrup
	nonstick spray

Directions

Preheat oven to 375ⷪF.

Thoroughly mix peanut butter powder, flours, and sugar.

Cut shortening into dry ingredients well. Press into baking pan.

Bake min. 20 minutes until shortbread begins to brown on top.

Remove from oven. While still warm, cut into serving size cookies.

Cool completely in pan.

Place chocolate chips in microwavable bowl and spray with cooking spray. Stir to coat.

Melt chocolate in microwave, cooking 10 seconds at a time and stirring in between until chocolate becomes liquid. Stir in agave syrup.

Drizzle over shortbread.

Allow chocolate to cool.

Remove shortbread from baking pan with spatula or dull knife.

Store in dry, airtight container, between sheets of waxed paper.

Meyer Lemon Curd Ice Cream with Cardamom

I made the custard earlier this week, then churned it into ice cream with my *new* (used) KRUPS ice cream maker that I found at Goodwill.  It came out really, really rich and tastes really, really delicious (if I do say so myself!):

Meyer Lemon Curd-Cardamom Ice Cream with Coconut Milk

4	jumbo egg yolks (or 6 from large eggs)
1 c.	fresh lemon curd, chilled
½ c.	granulated white sugar (adjust to sweetness of lemon curd)
4 c.	heavy cream
1 c.	unsweetened coconut milk
1 t	vanilla extract
5	black cardamom pods
2 T	fresh Meyer lemon juice from half of one lemon

1. Beat egg yolks with sugar and vanilla extract.
2. Heat cream, coconut milk, and seeds scraped from cardamom pods in large saucepan to almost boiling. Remove from heat until cool, then bring back to simmer for about 5 minutes, until it coats the back of a wooden spoon.
3. Add lemon curd, and mix in thoroughly.
4. Allow custard mixture to cool, covered, overnight in the refrigerator (do not put in freezer).
5. Assemble ice cream maker by attaching lid to bowl and inserting paddle. Wrap bowl in a couple layers of towels. Plug in ice cream maker and start running.
6. Pour in only enough custard to fill the bowl about two-thirds full; otherwise, it may overflow as it churns. There will be enough custard to make at least two full batches of ice cream, or one full quart, probably.

Beginning

[Draft #10 so far]

For as long as I could remember, Mother has been medicated. She was medicated prior to and during her pregnancy. She'd been through a series of medications, and each one brought personality changes that sometimes made the underlying illness seem like it'd be more acceptable than the person she became.

The first drug turned her into a eunuch. Though the medication probably helped at the start, it made the relationship between her and her husband difficult, therefore prompting her to try something else.

The next one zombified her. She wasn't awake most of the time. It made our bedtime routine difficult, for she would fall asleep while I read to her. I loved reading, and would continue until her husband came to take her to their bedroom down the hall. He would say goodnight before closing the door behind him, with her cradled in his arms.

At the time, we lived in a two-story farmhouse. The kitchen and bath were located at the rear of the “shotgun” house.  An added screened-in porch next to the kitchen contained canning supplies on waxed wooden shelves. We canned tomatoes, mostly, but also other vegetation as they came in: okra, green and wax beans, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. I remember being sent into the shrubs to pick berries, for I was small enough to fit underneath. I could pick without becoming covered in tiny and not-so-tiny scratches from the thorny branches. Mother would make jelly. She didn't like seeds, so she always made jelly. I remember the colours on the cheesecloth as she strained the different berries. In the Autumn, her fingertips were often pinkish-purple.

My stepfather was a garlic aficionado, so we had a significant garlic patch, something like three rows of about thirty feet each. Nearly a hundred lineal feet of garlic! A clove was planted every four inches. That's a lot of garlic. I was not a garlic lover. I learned to tolerate garlic. We grew cabbages, broccoli, white potatoes and orange yams, red beets, kale (before it became fashionable), okra, and, oh, did I mention garlic?

In the wintertime, the canning process moved on to meat, for we did not have a separate freezer to help preserve game. Venison was packed into quart-sized Ball jars, the lids held on with rings, and then the jars were canned, both cooking the meat and sealing the jar. Sometimes Mother would feel creative an insert something with the meat to flavour it: whole cloves of garlic much of the time, but also thyme, oregano, rosemary. When canned, the venison becomes the texture of well-done roast beef. We were kind of a meat-and-potatoes family, eating a lot of dishes learned from Grandmother, which she, in turn, learned during her school days before she met Granddad in college. Though the food was of a different nature, and, some would say quality, from what Mother had grown up with, she learned the new cuisine well enough to create her own version of it, often with improvements to taste, texture, and appearance. Improvising, she added touches of more pungent flavour to the bland diet of the Midwest, although one thing she did learn to appreciate was the art of pie-making, which Grandmother excelled at. To the annual pie dance, held in the cleaned-up barn of a neighbour, Mother prepared a single-crust tapioca-pumpkin pie, whereas Daddy baked a classical apple pie with apples from our own trees. Grandmother prepared a blueberry pie. I helped Mother prepare the filling for our pumpkin pie, and watched it bake the morning before the dance, at which few people danced and more people stood around talking and eating.

It always seemed strange to me that while she would go through the trouble of making pie crusts from scratch, Grandmother rarely ate her own. Now, when I think about it, I guess she must have been watching her waistline, which was probably close to what it was when she was quite young, for although she definitely had a woman's figure, she was quite slender. Mother, on the other hand, used to buy pre-made frozen pie crusts from the supermarket for pies and quiches. She enjoyed making savouries, and I liked the way she filled them until the crust was absolutely brimming with vegetables and cheese before pouring in just enough custard to hold it all together. I especially liked her spinach quiche with feta and the broccoli quiche with cheddar.

Mother took her meds religiously every morning. It was just about the only thing she did religiously, being an atheist. Her husband was an atheist, as well. His parents were both devout christians. One of their children, their younger daughter, was killed in a plane crash. Freak accidents cause some people to completely lose faith in a benevolent deity, but it only deepened their conviction that there was some Higher Purpose for which their daughter had been “called home.” I don't know how they felt about having an atheist for a daughter-in-law, much less their own son, but they treated me well enough. Grandmother would take me to church with her occasionally, and Mother and her husband did not seem to mind. I think they enjoyed sleeping in those Sunday mornings.

We lived next door to Mother's parents-in-law, on a farm adjacent to their own. We were in the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania, where there is no easy access to either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. The way my mother put it, we lived in the middle of “Butt-fuck Nowhere.” The claim to fame of the nearest city was that it was the founding place for Little League Baseball. Neither Mother nor her husband were sports fans. Just another form of religion, as far as they were concerned.

It wasn't until after she changed meds again that things went badly for Mother and her husband. She was finally on a regimen that allowed her to think straight. I think it was seeing things as they really were that prompted her to seek, in vain, nontrivial employment. When they'd met, Mother was a project manager for a construction company, with projects in northern Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Maryland. She was earning a good salary that had allowed us to live in Alexandria, Virginia. After they married, Mother continued the work. She really liked, if not loved, working in the construction industry. She loved putting things together, making them work, and then presenting them to gleeful clients. Stepfather found work as a furniture maker and subcontractor for different firms, including Mum's. He built the cabinets in his shop, then drove them down to install into the homes of the company's clients.

After her accident, Mother did not return to work. She needed time to recover, and ended up leaving her job. I don't know if she ever tried to contact her old company. We were contacted by one of her better friends from college, as well as one of her professors, who wished her well, though I suspect they were really just bidding her farewell.