Yellowriter

 

I happened to overhear someone talking about comfort foods. It could have been a guest on Oprah or perhaps it was a proclamation from the “stop the insanity” lady. You know the one, the skinny woman with the albino flattop and the squeaky voice. Maybe it was a documentary explaining why so many of us Americans are unhappy and overweight. It doesn’t matter because the term transported me in a time machine of my own making.

I remember taking the pound of ground beef out of the freezer on the morning of Christmas Eve. My wife spied the package defrosting in the sink, but said nothing. She knew what was coming. In the afternoon, I ceremoniously wrap the meat in a plastic bag and place it in the refrigerator. One of my daughters sees the ritual and closes her mouth before the words spill out. She is indeed her mother’s child and her silence speaks of her knowledge of future events.

The festivities of opening presents are winding down and so are we, in preparation for a long winter’s sleep. We always celebrate Christmas on the night before and slumber late, opening stockings in the morning, and then treating ourselves to a breakfast fit for royalty. About midnight when Saint Nick is making his rounds, I head to the cold storage and take out the hamburger. I begin to fry the thawed meat in a frying pan and end up browning the impending meal into a crisp countenance that leans toward charcoal. The ketchup and mustard is added after the remaining grease had been siphoned off and the result is the tastiest sloppy Joe on the planet. My spouse watches from a distance as I load the delightful concoction on sandwich bread and eat until all of the comfort has been devoured.

Recently, my wife asked about the staple meals that my mother routinely prepared. I reminisced about tacos, meatloaf, creamed salmon over crackers, and homemade chicken and noodles. There were about fourteen or fifteen meals in all that could be counted on. Restaurants were not in our lifestyle, nor in our family’s meager budget. It was not an experience that was missed or even discussed. We’d gather at 5:30 every evening in our tiny kitchen and feast on what she had been literally cooking up for us.

The knock on my bedroom door surprised me. It was a cold, Monday morning in April, and I glanced over at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was shortly after four in the A.M. It was the oldest of my four daughters, Natalie.

“Dad, there’s a man ringing the doorbell and walking back and forth in front of our house,” she reported, obviously frightened.

I had turned off my phone on my dresser so I feared something serious was afoot. It was one of those dreaded moments of truth when everything one holds near and dear is hanging in the balance, perhaps between life and death. I went downstairs and opened the front door. It was my father’s best friend, a man named John who lived a mile from my house. He stood in the shadows, but I knew his form in the semi-darkness. He didn’t approach me, but stayed in his half-lit world.

“Your dad asked me to come over. He figured your phone was off,” he began.

I’ve heard that when you are about to die that your whole life flashes before your eyes. For me time had stopped and my mind flew back to when I was sixteen years old. I was riding my motorcycle too fast. A car pulled out of a parking lot and blocked the outside lane of a four-lane divided street. I swerved to the inside lane intent on passing in front of the now stalled vehicle. Just as I put on the acceleration another car coming the opposite direction began an erratic, left hand turn across the front end of the stopped automobile. The turner did not see me and the gap for my escape was growing slimmer by the nano-second. In a flash, I hunkered down, lying flat and opened the throttle. If I slowed there was no way to avoid being hit or laying down my bike. I looked down and saw the speedometer jump past sixty. The narrow gap was quickly closing, the sun to the west shrinking between the two masses of metal. I prayed and cried out while images flooded my mind. Little league. The Pinewood Derby my car had won. The first girl I kissed. Icy mornings delivering newspapers in the dark on my bicycle. My mother. And then I was out of danger. I later estimated that I missed being sandwiched by the two cars by less than two inches on either side. I knew my life was about to change. There was not enough speed in the universe to prevent the collision that was imminent, as if it was set in stone before the foundations of the world. I found some words as I stared into the dark.

“Is it my mom?” I croaked, having seen the future yet to be confirmed.

“I’m afraid so,” he said, his southern drawl more noticeable in this moment than in all the years I’d known him.

The cars had overlapped. The sun had been blotted out. My light was extinguished and gone forever.

“Did she pass?” I asked, the answer already sealed eternally in my breaking heart.

“Yes,” he whispered, retreating back into the darkness, leaving a type of nothingness that I will never forget.

At my father’s house, I sit in the living room numb and waiting for two things. The first anticipated item is the rising of the sun. At a strange subconscious level a tiny voice in my head began to doubt that this routine event would occur. The second event is the arrival of the people who were called to take my mothers body away, to whisk her remains away from the king-sized bed she’d lain on for the last time. The clink of a coffee cup awakens me out of my stupor. My wife had opened the china cabinet and deposited my mother’s jewelry in a teacup I had brought her from one of my exotic trips.

“You always take off the valuables,” she says softly, “Some of the people actually take things.” I stare at Annie, my wife and wonder how she does it. She is the self-proclaimed crisis manager in the family. Even when her fifty-eight year old father died unexpectedly, she held it together and ministered while everyone else fell apart. Weeks later I found her curled up in a fetal position and weeping. It was the start of a long and dark time. I knew I was already entering that time.

I glanced at a piece of furniture my mom had reupholstered and my mind shot back to the mid- nineteen sixties. My mother was a terrific seamstress and when the series “Batman” premiered it was a signal that it was time to create. That Halloween my brother and I said the words, “my mom made them” as many times as we chimed “trick or treat.” She had sewn replicas of the Batman and Robin costumes from the television show. Other kids had the robes with the cheesy plastic masks, but I had a hood, cape, and a yellow utility belt. Leave to my mom to make the other boys jealous that I was wearing navy blue leotards. Even Adam West would have been impressed. My brother’s vest was a tad fancier than Burt Wards; it was made of red velvet.

I looked into the kitchen and my pride was replaced by another emotion. My mom had been crying and I asked her what was wrong. The day was September third.

“Today was the day that Clem died, Clem Hart,” she began.

“Who is Clem?” I asked in trepidation.

“He was my first husband. He died in an accident. He’s Connie and Vicky’s real father,” she sobbed, dabbing her swollen eyes. She explained that she had gotten pregnant at fifteen, dropped out of high school and married Clem Hart. Finding out that my two oldest sisters were indeed half-sisters was not too great of a blow, but the fact that my mother was having sex at the age of a sophomore made me ashamed and angry. I often thought of that conversation when I sat in one of the same chairs that outlined that same table we had had for thirty or more years.

“That diamond ring you gave her is in the cup too. She was wearing it on her right hand,” Annie informs me, tearing me mentally from the ingredient of judgment and self-righteousness. The ring had been a birthday present one month ago to the day. It seemed ridiculous to buy a diamond for an old woman in failing health, but I did so with a sort of foolish hope that God would let her live a while to enjoy it. When I asked her what she wished for after she blew out the candles she whispered, “more birthdays.” It also made me think of happier times and birthdays that were ever so special because of her skill, love, and planning. She surprised me with a Creeple People when I was ten, the Mattel goop cooker that enabled a ten-year-old to become a pubescent mad scientist. Oh, the creatures I created! She topped herself and got me a dog for my twelfth, black as the night and appropriately named Shadow. I put him to sleep thirteen years later, and the thought of the past loss brought me to my current dose of trouble.

The funeral arrangements are almost finalized and I sit with many family members in a conference room at the mortuary. My sister, Vicky, wants to see the body. She said that she wouldn’t believe she was gone otherwise. Her son wants to see the body as well. I shake my head in the negative, letting them know I don’t want a personal viewing before the cremation. I then see my daughter, Jenna, rise from her seat. I nod my assent and my wife goes with the ghoulish entourage. I sit and think about my mother being alive. I’m firm that I do not want the shell of what used to be her to mar my memories.

The service was well attended and all in all, it was a fine day, or as fine as it could be. The reception is at my house, and as the guests dwindle, I sit by the pond in my Japanese garden on a green sliding bench, sipping good red wine. The afternoon has turned cold, but I ward of that spirit with the content of my cup. My mind turns to all of the memories and all of the kind words that I had spoken and had heard that surreal day. I see three of my four daughters and my son through the sliding glass door. One of my girls is away at school and cannot make it back. I think that barring the natural order of things, these same children along with their absent sibling will one day meet to say goodbye to me when I go the way of all the earth. That phrase is in the Bible and the word “all” comforts me. Another ingredient is added to that metaphysical mixing bowl.

So what are the ingredients in comfort foods? A dash of pride, a smidgen of joy, a dollop of regret, and liberal dose of contemplation make for an interesting recipe. The real discovery is that comfort will come in the form of memories, both positive and the negative. The comfort I have today comes from the realization that I can decide how much of any one bit of the past to put into my bowl. When I mix the ingredients that my mother gave to me I leave out the condemnation in the kitchen and the other bitter memories that I have failed to mention. Or did I fail? All I can say is that when it comes to making comfort food, I am quite a gourmet.