Pillow Talk

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“With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows;
so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest,
while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.”

– Herman Melville, Moby Dick

 I’m very particular about where I lay my head when it’s time to sleep.  So many pillows have felt uncomfortable, inadequate, or inferior that a untallied number of nights away from home have passed in restless distress, moments of doze fractured by bouts of waking to stare at walls or ceiling shrouded in shadow.

It’s difficult to find a comfortable middle ground.  Preferences in pillows are as diverse as opinions on anything else.  One person chooses goose-down over synthetic foam.  Another likes their pillow tortilla-flat rather than skyscraper high.  Still another prefers concrete hardness above a softness that cradles ones head like an egg in a cup.  Me, I like thick over thin, firm over soft.  I was  raised with feather pillows, whose stuffing I gradually plucked free as the quills worked through the striped covering to prick my cheeks.  A good solid drubbing was the only thing that would lend them some loft before bed, and they were consequently flattened by morning.

It took me years to get used to foam pillows.  The early one felt funny beneath my head and smelled strange when I attempted to nestle into them.  More than once, I cast them aside and slept with my arm beneath my head or substituted a folded towel or blanket.  They’ve improved with time.  Either that, or I’ve grown tolerant.

When it comes to a daytime nap, I’m less picky.  I’m not sure why that is, unless it has something to do with the conscious knowledge that it’s only for an hour or two.  I can easily fall asleep with my head cocked up on the arm of the couch, on my bent elbow, or nestled against one of the cats.  I can drowse without any pillow at all or with just a swatch of blanket folded against my cheek.  Unless I’m sick, of course, and then I want my regular pillow.

Is it the comfort of familiarity, I wonder?  When I’m ill, I seek out favorite foods or pajamas, blankets or movies.  As much as I enjoy travel (for the most part), when I’m  away I crave a comfort that reminds me of home.  It’s gotten so I travel with my pillow, if it can be easily accommodated.  With that beneath my head, I can sleep anywhere, even on a hard floor with a Boxer (the dog, not the person) snoring in my ear.  (Been there.)

Having spoke to friends about this, I know I’m not the only one out there with a pillow preference.  What about you?  What’s yours?

Strap Those Puppies Down!

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Guys be forewarned, we’re talking breasts here.  Boobs.  Knockers.  Tits.  Ta-tas.  Headlamps.  Udders.  Hooters.  Jugs.  Pick your stupid male-originated euphemism.

When I was little, I didn’t give much thought to breasts.  The women I knew had them and I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I assumed I would someday have them as well, but I didn’t actually dwell on the subject.

Then puberty hit.  Seemingly overnight, my body turned traitor.  Zit-producing, blackhead-adhering oil oozed from my face.  Sweat dampened my armpits with a new, wholly unexpected and unrecognizable odor.  (This is ME?)  And blood appeared…well, you KNOW where blood appeared.  Even men know that.

My chest, paper-flat and happy to stay that way, suddenly…well, I can’t say blossomed (not even the most generous person on the planet could ever describe what happened to me in those terms), but sprouted might work.  A slight swelling and a hefty share of discomfort.  I didn’t like it — who does? — but it seemed to be something I was going to have to withstand.  That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad except that the beginning growth of ones breasts also brings with it the dreaded…

TRAINING BRA!

Whoever came up with that stupid name ought to be drawn and quartered.  It’s a freaking undergarment fer Pete’s sake!  It doesn’t train your breasts to do anything!  Even if it did, what on earth would it train them to do?  Open the refrigerator?

(In fairness, I don’t suppose men have it much better.  Pick your euphemism:  Athletic Supporter (which sounds like someone in a beanie and a striped shirt waving a pennant) or Jock Strap (for strapping your…jock?  Do you suppose it was once called a cock strap but someone got their bloomers in a wedge and they changed it?)

Anyway.

God, I hated that training bra, but what I hated most was the manner in which my mother introduced me to it.  There was no genteel “Melissa, meet Training Bra.  Training Bra, this is Melissa.”  There was no discussion, no getting me used to the idea, no finesse.  Oh, no.  Here I am in all my pre-pubescent glory (ugh) following my mother into the department store, dragging my feet because I know where we’re headed and I don’t want to go, when Mom (the soul of tact) whips a training bra out of some anonymous bin and forces it on me in the middle of the store!  There was no going into a dressing room where I could try it on in private agony.  Nope, she yanked it on right over my clothing.  (Yeah, that’ll make sure it’s a good fit.)  Worse (yes, it gets worse) she did it right in front of some of my friends.

Mortified?  There are no words to describe the depth.  Any wonder I began to look toward adulthood with dread?  I mean, what other horrors did she have planned for me?

So the hated bra became part of my life.  Those of you who have grown up in an age of sports bras and soft, lovely material don’t understand what I’m talking about.  The bras of yesteryear were freaking armor, stiff and itchy.  When you don’t have more than a couple of ‘buds’ to keep it in place, well, the damned thing had a tendency to ride up under your armpits.  Try fixing that in the middle of math class!

Then, of course, there was the attention that these ‘growths’ precipitated in the boys at school.  You have to feel sorry for men, really.  They’re such darling and adorable things when they’re small, then puberty strikes and they turn into pigs, a state from which most of them never recover.  If they weren’t making remarks and trying to brush up against you, they were snapping your bra strap as you went by.  (Even now I wish I’d had the nerve to turn around just once and deliver a round-house wallop to someone’s tender jock just to see how they liked it.)

I don’t know how things progressed for the girls who developed large breasts, although they probably endured their own brand of abuse.  When it became clear that I was not going to have the proportions of an Angelina Jolie, the true nastiness began.  Bad enough to be called names (Flatty, Flat-as-a-board, Flat-as-a-pancake), to be told I had a concave chest, or asked if I’d been catching bowling balls (both remarks from a friend’s boyfriend; no wonder I hated him), but far worse was the sense of disregard, the feeling that I was worthless because I didn’t have fleshy sacks of a particular size hanging off the front of my body.  (Too bad men aren’t required to wear clothing that brings their “fleshy sacks” into harsh relief.  I wonder how they’d fare then in the court of women?)

I’m afraid things did not improve as I entered my adult years.  Relatives made rude comments.  (My own mother once told me, “You’d have a perfect shape if it wasn’t for the size of your breasts.”  Thanks, Ma.)  A guy I dated for a while tried to get me to get breast implants to make him happy.  (Him?  What’s he have to do with anything?)  Increasingly, I came up against the attitude that there was something lacking in me as a person because of the size of my breasts, as if breast size had anything to do with brains or kindness or sensitivity or, well, anything.

It took me a long time to get over the stigma of being small-breasted.  In fact, for a long while (too long) I envied the well-endowed women of my acquaintance until one friend said to me, “God, I envy your small breasts.”

What??  “Why?” I said, totally bamboozled.

She pointed at her own curvy figure with distaste.  “You don’t have to carry around all this extra weight.  You don’t get back aches.  You can go without a bra without drawing the attention of every asshole around.”  She laughed.  “And you could jog without a bra and not give yourself a black eye.”

I laughed too.  She was a good friend.  (Still is.)

Somewhere along the line, I finally figured out that the size of my breasts doesn’t matter.  They are what they are.  I’m not going to maim them for fashion or society.  I have a husband who likes them just fine, but even if I didn’t, they’d be okay with me.  Middle age is something of a gift in that regard.  If you’re lucky enough to make it this far, you learn what matters and what doesn’t, what to worry about and what to set aside.  I can’t let my self-image be wrapped up in breast proportions — not when so many women (including some of my friends and relatives) have endured the ravages of cancer and full or partial mastectomy and lived to tell the tale.  Are there those out there who will judge those women on their lack of breasts?  I’m certain there are.

And I’ll bet you know what I have to say about that.

Holy !*@&#%$!!!

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I learned the word ‘whore’ because of a cow.

My parents and I were up in Maine visiting my mom’s side of the family and staying with my grandparents at their camp on Spaulding Lake.  I was…ten?  Somewhere around there is my best guess — old enough to recognize bad language when I heard it, but so young as to be not quite brave enough to try it on for size.  (As opposed to a younger cousin, who came out of the womb swearing like a longshoreman.)

One of the ways in which I amused myself during our two-week hiatus in The County was to climb the hill behind the camp to visit the dairy farm belonging to my mother’s cousin

A–.  This was a small operation — one barn and somewhere between twenty and thirty Holstein cows.  During the summer, the animals grazed an enormous pasture.  Twice a day, they returned to the barn, found their stalls all on their own (yes, they did; cows have good memories), and were hooked up to the big stainless steel milkers.  (I can hear the chug of those things to this day.)  Soon the milk would begin to pass through the transparent tubes on its way to the big holding tank where it would be heated and sterilized.  (Pasteurized?  I don’t know the details of the milking trade, particularly back in the 1960s.)  The barn would fill with the smell of warm milk, comforting and somewhat heady, and the barn cats would gather for their share.

One day I was hanging out, playing in the farmyard.  In an effort to rotate grazing, the cows had been pastured across the road from the house rather than in the field behind the barn.  Come milking time, they began to line up at the gate, waiting patiently for the moment when A– or one of the farm hands would open the barrier and see them safely across the road into the barn.

However, one cow was having none of it.  I don’t know what her issue was, but cows (like all of us) have their irascible moments and this old girl was determined to have her way.  Maybe she was in labor and wanted to drop her calf somewhere quiet and out of sight, a circumstance not unheard of.  Maybe she was just feeling bitchy.  Some cows are, although in my experience most of them are quite sweet-natured.  At any rate, she hung back and when A– tried to drive her forward, she turned abruptly and crashed into the high undergrowth in a bid for freedom.

He was after her in a flash, flailing through the interlaced brambles and branches.  She moved back and forth, seeking a path away from him, but it was a tight fit in there and she was a big girl.  Her maneuverability wasn’t what she’d hoped.  At any rate, he got ahead of her.  As she veered away from him and started back toward the gate, A– picked up a rock and heaved it against her flank with all his strength.  “Get outta here, you jeezly son of a ho-ah!”  (“Ho-Ah” is how people up in The County say ‘whore.’  I’ll probably catch hell for this from some northern Mainer, and it’ll be pointed out to me that not everyone has that depth of accent, but my mom’s cousin did and so does everyone I personally know in the great State of Maine.  And, just to set the record straight, I’m not poking fun.  I happen to like a Maine accent.)

I felt a rush of anger and embarrassment.  Anger because of the thrown stone.  (I liked the cows more than I liked A–.)  Embarrassment because, although I’d never heard that word before, I instinctively knew it must be a pretty bad one.

I thought about that word all day, trying without success to figure it out.  Toward dinner time, I returned to the camp.  As we sat down to eat (my grandparents, parents and I squeezed together around a little table set smack in the middle of the floor), I said to the world in general, “A–  called one of the cows a bad name today, but I don’t know what it means.”

The adults exchanged looks.  Bad language from that particular cousin was nothing new.  “What did he say?” my mother asked.

I was stricken.  No way was I going to say a potentially bad word aloud in front of my stern and disapproving grandmother.  I stared at my dinner plate.  “I don’t want to say it.”

“Then spell it,” Mom said.

I crooked a finger at her to bend down close so I could whisper in her ear.  “H-O-R.”

She smiled.  “That’s not how you spell it, but you’re right.  It’s a bad word.”  She scooped potatoes onto her plate.

“But what’s it mean?” I asked.

She froze.  My mom’s vocabulary of profanity consisted of few words:  Shit.  Damn.  Son of a bitch.  An occasional “God dammit” when she was particularly vexed.  No F-bombs.  No H-O-R bombs, either.  This woman, who avoided all talk of a personal or — Lord help us! — sexual nature, who in the not-too-distant future would be verbally and emotionally unable and unwilling to explain the facts of life to her child, was being asked to define H-O-R.

She opted for the easy route.  “It means a not very nice lady,” she said, and passed the potatoes to my father.

I felt a flare of dissatisfaction.  I could tell by her tone of voice and her body language that this was not an accurate definition, that something integral was being left out on purpose, but I had no idea what.  It took getting home to New York and unearthing our dictionary before I discovered the truth.  Ah!

With that juicy nugget lodged firmly in my mind (and in my growing vocabulary), I went out to face the world.

 

Can’t Go Back

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One of the great regrets of my life is not having children.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have been singularly blessed by the presence of children in my life:  my nieces and nephews, their children, my three step-kids, all of my Coast Guard “kids” (and now their kids), and the children of friends, but I can’t deny that there’s an old ache under my heart and never really goes away.

I’m drawn to little kids like the old moth to a flame.  It’s probably a bit disconcerting to parents who don’t know me, as I have a penchant to be one of those women who talks to babies out in public, but I can’t seem to help myself.  I’m not a stalker, I’m no danger to the children, I’m not going to snatch-and-run, I just like kids.  I appreciate their viewpoint on the world and their often quite open willingness to share their perspective.  I like that they take you as you are, warts and all, counting you first as a friend rather than anticipating you to be an enemy.

 On the other hand, I fully understand their parents’ reticence.  There are too many dangerous people out there in the world for a child to live long without having survival skills drummed into them.

There’s no one to blame for my lack of children but me.  I’d like to say that time and circumstance conspired against me (and they did, to a degree), but the responsibility was mine.  My first marriage was to an irresponsible dweeb.  After a certain amount of time I knew we were headed for divorce and that made children out of the question.  I didn’t want to be a single parent, and I certainly didn’t want him getting his hands on any kid of mine.  I guess I foolishly thought there would always be time enough to have a kid or two, that somehow the miraculous would present itself at the correct moment and the stars would align.

 It took a long time for me to realize that stars never align.  There is no “perfect” moment…not for anything.  No matter how good the timing looks, there’ll always be something that can put a clinker in the mix.  One must understand that and either run with it…

Or not.  Sometimes there’s no going back, no picking up the pieces.  And no band-aid big enough for that sense of loss.

Spud

Mashed Potatoes!!! (Photo credit: Manuel Alarcón)

I’m alive today because of mashed potatoes.

I was born in the late 50′s at the whopping weight of six pounds, one ounce.  Not big, by any means, but not particularly small for the time.  Firmly average, you might say, except for one thing.  I wouldn’t eat.

My mother either did not or could not breast feed me (there’s some controversy on that topic to this day) and so she turned to baby bottles — tall, glass, sterilized in a hot water bath and topped with those ghastly rubber nipples.  I don’t know if she filled them with plain cow’s milk or some sort of pre-made or home-concocted formula, the contents heated on the stove and the heat tested on the tender flesh of her inner elbow.  Despite all her labor, I would not eat.  Oh, I was hungry.  I’d fuss, she prepare a bottle, cuddle me into the crook of her arm, and offer the nipple.  I’d suckle long enough to swallow a half-ounce of milk and then promptly fall asleep.  Hard as she tried, she could not get me to drink more than that at any one sitting.  If something were not done, I’d wither like a young plant.

Common belief then as now was that infants should not receive solid food before the age of four-to-six months.  Until then, formula or breast milk provides all the necessary nutrients.  In my case, however, my disinterest in food was such that it put me at risk.  What did Mom do?

Taking a page from her own mother, she fell back on that wholesome and complete food which my widowed grandmother had used to feed a houseful of hungry children during the depression.

Potatoes.

In my case, she cooked them soft and mashed them to a soupy consistency with plenty of milk and butter.   Fingers crossed, she held me on her lap at the dinner table and offered me my first spoonful.  To her delight and amazement, I took to it like the proverbial fish to water, declaring myself (to her mind) as a true child of Maine.

I thrived on potatoes several times a day.  Within a few weeks, Mom was able to add applesauce, and that is what I lived on for the first nine months of my life.

To this day, I turn to those wonderful foods when feeling ill or out of sorts, and seek them when my mind settles into a funk.  In that way, they comfort and nurture me still.

 

All About Perspective

perspective (Photo credit: huntz)

Humans are self-centered creatures.  Even the most self-sacrificing among us have our moments of total narcisism, those instances when we’re so focused on our own lives that everything else disappears.

And being human, we have a tendency to focus on the bad rather than the good.  Oh, we’ll celebrate our golden moments, sure we will, but we also love to expound on the darkness with which we deal.  The spectrum is broad — elderly parents, sick animals, children of every stripe, divorce, acne, disease, speeding tickets, allergies — and it’s not unusual, from time to time, to think our burdens are the worst.

I’m no different.  I get overwhelmed by the stuff that comes down the pike and feel petulant and whiny.  But not today.  A couple bits of news came my way and you know something?  I have nothing to complain about.

A woman I know, a lovely woman who for some reason attracts hideous situations like honey draws wasps, just found out that her troubled young daughter was slipped a date-rape drug and sexually assaulted multiple times.  And one of my cousins, as nice a woman as you could ever hope to meet, has just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Do you see what I mean?  Compared to those things, my issues fade to nothing.

Tonight, as you’re drifting off to sleep, rather than sigh and focus on all the things wrong in your life, take a moment to seek out the blessings that you might not have acknowledged in some time.  And while you’re at it, say a prayer for the two women I mention above, okay?  They could really use it.

 

The Chocolate Chip Viking Marriage Proposal Cookie

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Anyone who knows me will tell you that, while I like to cook, it’s baking that holds my heart.

Pies, yeast breads, cakes, cookies, quick breads, custards, fruit crisps and pandowdies and slumps…you name it, I love it.  In particular, I enjoy working with all forms of dough, whether it’s the airy flake of a perfect pie crust (I’m pleased to be the recipient of that recipe), the springy aliveness of yeast, or the soft creativity of cookies.

I like to believe that my affinity for baking came down to me from an ancestor.  Edward Limbacher was a younger brother to my great-grandfather, Karl, and ran the Limbacher Bakery in St. Marys, Ohio.  The bakery is long gone, I’m sorry to say (although I think there’s a picture or two tucked away somewhere), but Uncle Ed’s legacy lives on in me.

Dreary days (like today) really awaken the baking bug in me.  Nothing quite soothes the soul on an overcast day than the smell of something luscious in the oven.  Bread is good, if you’ve time to get through two raises, but when you’re in a crunch and want that almost instant gratification of comfort food, cookies are just the thing.

And what’s a cookie without chocolate chips?

What’s a chocolate chip cookie without peanut butter?

What’s a chocolate chip peanut butter cookie without a viking?

After my divorce in 1992, I moved back to my home area near Saratoga, New York to get my life figured out.  In short order, I made friends with the couple that ran the science fiction bookstore, the young guy who owned the comic book shop, and the lovable lout who owned the Irish import store.  Since all three stores were, for a time, inside the same plaza, visiting my new friends was easy-peasy.

In the course of all that hobnobbing, I was introduced to members of a Norse reenactment group who met weekly in the park for arms practice.  Believe me, there’s nothing quite so fine as sitting outdoors on a beautiful day watching a bunch of well-honed young men beat the living snot out of each other.

One day, I decided that all their heroic efforts deserved some sort of refreshment, so I arrived with a huge box of cookies.  To say that it was well-received is the understatement of the century.  At one point, a young fighter named Conner turned to me with a cookie in each hand and one in his mouth.  “Will you marry me?” he asked, spraying crumbs.

I declined, but took the compliment as it was intended.

At any rate, on behalf of Connor and in memory of those fine days in Congress Park, may I share:

CHOCOLATE CHIP VIKING MARRIAGE PROPOSAL COOKIES

2 and 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup UNSALTED butter, softened (2 sticks)
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla (real, please, not artificial)
1/2 teaspoon water
2 eggs
1/2 package bittersweet chocolate chips (the darker the better, I think)
1/2 package peanut butter chips

Heat oven to 375 degrees.  In a small bowl, mix flour, soda and salt.  In a large bowl, cream butter with both sugars until smooth.  Add vanilla and water and mix.  Add eggs one at a time and mix well.  Add flour mixture and mix well.  Add both kinds of chips and combine.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake 10-12 minutes and cool on wire rack.  (This also works well if you bake it in a single large pan like a brownie.  If you do it that way, be sure to serve them warm with vanilla ice cream melting over the top.)

Okay, that’s it!  I’m headed to the kitchen!

 

 

First Time

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Life is made up of firsts:  first step, first word.  First kiss.  First pet.  First slow dance.  First snowfall.  First heartbreak.  First time you (fill in the blank).  It’s largely impossible to categorize those firsts, placing one above another.  Sure, you might rate that first heartache well below everything else, but how can you place meeting your love for the first time against the birth of your first child?  No can do.

Among my memorable firsts is the first time I tasted kiwi fruit.

I was living in New York City at the time, in Manhattan, in a poor neighborhood right on the edge of the Bronx.  (It wasn’t as scary as it sounds, believe me.  I had more problems with obnoxious men on the streets of mid-town Manhattan than I ever did riding the subway back and forth from the Bronx.  Our neighborhood was poor, but they were mostly friendly and they looked out for one another.)

I’d been living with friends in Queens, but they were a fairly newlywed couple and I felt a bit like a fifth wheel.  I’d made a couple of female friends through a writing group and they were looking for a third roommate, so I went in with them.  Buzzy and Stookie (okay, yes, obviously not their real names) were Heavy Metal headbangers with an unhealthy fixation on Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS.  They were also vegetarians, something I’d never encountered before, and it opened a whole new world to me.

Stookie was chief cook (Buzzy and I the bottle washers) and she produced some amazing meals in the course of the few months I was with them (until I found a place of my own in Brooklyn).  I was introduced to the wide pallet of Indian and Asian food, as well as a fine twist on many so-called American dishes.  But one afternoon, sitting around talking and listening to music (I think it was Van Halen, back when David Lee Roth was still their front man), Stookie excused herself for a moment and came back with a plate, a knife, and this fuzzy green/brown thing about the size of a hamster.

“What the heck’s that?” I said.

They exchanged a look.  “You’ve never eaten kiwi?” Buzzy was incredulous.

With a single deft stroke of the knife, Stookie pared a slice and handed it to me, a circle of jewel-like green studded with tiny black seeds.  I stared at it, pondering the risk.  See, I’d been tricked like this before.  Years earlier, while dining at a Chinese restaurant, a cousin had assured me that wasabi was extremely mild and I should give it a try.  (I don’t do hot foods.)  Me, being the trusting sort (a situation that came to a rapid end where that particular cousin was concerned), I scooped a healthy gob of the stuff onto one finger and put it in my mouth.  A tenth of a second later I dove for the water-glass as my cousin howled with laughter.)

I glanced from Buzzy to Stookie and back again.  Same earnest, guileless expression as my cousin.  Oh, what the heck.  The worst that would happen is that I’d hate it and have to make a run to the bathroom to spit it out.  I placed the slice of kiwi in my mouth and bit down.

My taste buds exploded, my saliva glands squeezing with an intense pleasure/pain that was both sweet and tart.  The texture was firm, yet pulpy.  Not crisp like a pear or apple, not soft like a plum or peach.  It was, in short, like nothing I had ever experienced.  Buzzy and Stookie laughed at my expression and, in a show of immense generosity, let me consume the entire thing.

Since then, I’ve eaten my share of that scrumptuous fruit.  Familiar as I now am with it, I’m always taken half-unaware by the burst of flavor, the unexpected piquancy.  For me, it was (and remains) a first.