Ice cream and chlorine: These marked the birthdays of my
childhood.
I had one
traditional birthday party, complete with party favors and cake and a circle of
little girls in frilly dresses singing “Happy Birthday,” when I turned
six. I don’t know why I didn’t have
another, although it might have had something to do with the fact that I had
few friends.
Our family
moved to a little town in upstate South Carolina when I was a baby, but we
never quite fit in. We didn’t meet either
of the basic requirements for complete acceptance: Deep ancestral roots---at
least Civil War-deep---in the community or owning a business in town. Maybe things would have gone better for us if
we had been Baptist, but I don’t think even that would have helped much.
But don’t
feel sorry for me. I had my family, I
had my books, I had “Star Trek,” and I had Emily.
Emily lived
out in the country and her family had a swimming pool. No one else I knew had such a thing, but the
pool wasn’t the basis for our friendship because I couldn’t swim. However we had plenty of non-pool activities to
enjoy: Sitting on the top step of the wooden stairs in her family’s old
farmhouse and slipping down to the bottom, one step at a time, giggling all the
way. Covering ourselves with a quilt and
listening for ghosts making their way up those creaky stairs toward her
room. Helping her mother in the
kitchen---my mother’s kitchen was her kingdom and I entered only for mealtime. Selling Girl Scout cookies and earning merit
badges. I think I appreciated the
sweetness of those times even as I was living them.
I called
Emily’s parents Aunt Duffie and Uncle Tom.
My parents taught my sister and me to address family friends as “Aunt”
or “Uncle”---perhaps that was their way of making up for the lack of extended
family nearby. Their sisters and mothers
lived five hours away in North Carolina; how long that journey seemed!
I’m not sure
when the tradition started, but for several years Emily and her parents would
celebrate my July birthday by inviting my parents and me to their home for
swimming (or, in my case, splashing) and homemade ice cream. That ice cream lives in my memory as being
perfect in its simplicity, much like the chocolate cake with chocolate frosting
my mother would bake for me each year. I
wish I could taste that cake one more time, especially the frosting---grainy
with sugar, like fudge that hasn’t quite hardened.
So I am
thankful I can revisit my childhood each summer when I retrieve the card titled
“Eagle Ice Cream” from my rusting “Land ‘O Lakes” recipe box. Aunt Duffie shared it with me when Mr. Pettit
and I got married 35 years ago. Her
penciled letters are fading now but I’m not sure I even need the directions
anymore. Still, it’s not my compulsive
nature alone that compels me to pull out that folded over 3” x 5” card---it’s
the need to see that writing and let those memories wash over me.
It’s the
same feeling I get each Christmas when I pull out Mama’s recipe for sausage
balls recorded in her beautiful script.
Mama didn’t really use recipes, not like I do. I didn’t know how to create anything other
than cookies when I married so I followed the instructions in my Betty Crocker
cookbook with an attention to detail that would impress an accountant. All of Mama’s recipes were in her head,
although she did read cookbooks as others read novels.
Most of
Mama’s recipes went something like this one for pimento cheese---I wrote it
down on a card after pinning her down for details one day.
Pimento
Cheese
Grate 1
pound cheese. (Let it get soft.)
Add: Big jar
pimentos
Sugar
Vinegar
Mayonnaise
Blend with
mixer.
What kind of
cheese? Cheddar, of course. How much sugar, vinegar, and mayonnaise? Until it tastes and looks right. How long do I blend it? Until it looks right. Daddy always had the last word on the
“rightness” of the pimento cheese. I can
still see Mama spreading a bit on a slice of white bread and handing it over
for judgment.
The sausage
ball recipe is precious to me because it was written down by Mama herself. (It even includes detailed directions!) I like to think that 50 years from now a
young lady or young man with a bit of Estelle Segroves Finch’s blood in their
veins will be making that recipe, although they might have to find substitutes
for
the sausage and cheese. Soy? Tofu?
Yogurt pellets?
When I hear
news stories about wildfires bearing down on neighborhoods, causing people to
grab what they can and jump in their cars, I think about what I’d save from the
flames. Photo albums and family videos
always come to mind first, followed by my little jewelry box containing Mama’s
wedding rings.
I’ve decided
to add that little rusted recipe box to the list. It contains more than directions for Rhonda’s cranberry cider, my sister’s "Banana Split Cake" and Nanny’s peach cobbler. It tells my history in tablespoons of
vanilla and cups of flour. Each card is
a note from the past, a gentle nudge to my memory. I’m reminded of the cooks behind the
recipes, women who understood that sustenance involves more than food.