Years ago, when my children were still very young, my newly widowed mom moved from North Carolina to Fort Worth. She lived just a couple of blocks from us, and she ate dinner with us almost every night. She and I team cooked. Since I learned to cook from my mom, I’m sure I learned a lot more during those sessions, though the thing I most remember is that she could not, would not throw away even the tiniest bit of leftovers. It did no good to remind her that two tablespoons of something wouldn’t go far in a family of six. Her solution was to put it in the soup pot.
Now it’s
Jordan’s turn. We all eat together maybe three to five nights a week, and we
cook in my tiny kitchen. Jordan never really cooked with me when she was young,
and she is a good cook with a limited repertoire, so she, too, is learning. Last
night we were making steak fingers, but there was more meat than frying pan space,
so we cooked in batches. I suggested she fry the first batch, while I coated
the second with flour, salt and pepper. It was an exercise in frustration for
her.
“How
hot?”
“Oh,”
I said, “you know. Hot enough to get a crust but not too hot.”
“How long?”
“I don’t
know. Until the pieces have a nice crust.”
Me, a
little bit later, “Smells like it’s done to me.” Wonder why she gave me that sarcastic
look (if looks can be sarcastic).
Dinner
was good. The steak pieces just right. I serve them with lemon, which Jordan
remembers from her childhood. I asked if she’d prefer pan gravy, but she said
she liked the lemon.
I’m
still following stories about educational gag orders. These are the places now
in the news for classroom restrictions: All of Florida, and particularly
Sarasota County; Bucks County, Pennsylvania, once the home of intellectuals; Keller,
Texas, where administration seems to be stepping back on an ill-advised, knee-jerk
reaction, which proves negative publicity and public outrage are effective;
Jamestown township in Michigan where a small group loudly protested LGBTQ books
in the library—they are about .001% of the collection—and defeated a tax proposal
to support the library so now, with 85% of its funding gone, the library may have
to close. Voter turnout was small, and citizens are fighting back in support of
the library.
The
day started as cloudy, and I was so encouraged. It was nice not to have the sun
beating down. Reminded me of a old Reader’s Digest joke about the man
who was vacationing in Florida, woke up, looked out the window, and said, “Another
damn sunny day!” But now the sun is shining, and the temperature climbing
though it’s not supposed to go over a hundred. One of my Austin friends,
writing of the rain and sudden cool weather, said it felt like a fever had
broken. I thought it was a perfect description. They are getting rain in
Central Texas, and we up north have hopes for the coming week.
That
old joke prompts me to ask how many remember Reader’s Digest and its
wealth of jokes? When I was young, we had a book that was a compilation of
those jokes—oh boy, I almost had that thing memorized. Older and fancying
myself a writer, that was one market I really wanted to hit, but it was a tough
one. I came close because an established author introduced me to an editor. But
I never quite made it. My story was about a teenage girl, the daughter of
friends, who was getting in trouble at home, keeping company with the wrong
crowd, and was sent to live with us, with our blessing. When her boyfriend got
out of prison in another state and came for her, she ran away with him. I had
to go to the police station, retrieve her, and send her back home. For a few
nights there, my then-husband slept with an iron pipe by the bed. Today, I’m sure
it would have been a gun, and the boyfriend would have had a gun. I can’t help thinking today’s proliferation of guns
might have meant a totally different and disastrous outcome. Occasionally, an
out-of-the-ordinary episode like that jumps into my mind. Maybe I should write
that memoir.
And
maybe I’m rambling.
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