Lies

I lied to my grandmother today.

I told her that I had personally cooked the hospital soup and that it was split pea, her very favorite.   When she asked where everybody else was, I lied and told her that they - her long-deceased father, mother and siblings - were all downstairs eating the rest of the soup I had prepared.  She asked me if they were doing fine and I lied again.

She worried about wearing a hospital gown that was not hers and about having to pay for her meal since she had no money.

On the other side of the bed, my grandfather held the bowl in one hand and wipedthe dribbles of soup with the other.  My grandmother worried the presence of this man she could not recognize, she kept asking why I had brought this strange boyfriend home, so much older than I was.  We spoonfed her tiny bites of mashed potatoes and ground meat.  She choked on the bread, refused the apple sauce, declared herself  too full to go on, ordered us to leave.

I coaxed her the way she did when I was sick and she was strong, long ago, when our roles were reversed and she saw me into life the way I am seeing her drifting away from it.

Before we left, we bound her hands with the leather cuffs at the side of the bed, told her they were bracelets and that we were just heading downstairs to eat with the others.  If she just closed her eyes and slept a little  we would be right back.   She blinked and said "yes" and we left without looking back.

In the elevator we consoled ourselves with the thought that she had eaten her first meal since coming out of the coma and did not seem to mind the restraints.  We said nothing else during the trip back home where my aunt was waiting, having made soup, seating in my grandmother's chair, wearing one of her old aprons.

The power of words.

Once in a while the washing machine will stop.  Cold.  Dead. 

The first time it happened, the children and I loaded two full pails of sloshing towels into the back of the car and drove to the Mexican laundromat accross the bridge, after slaughtering our yellow plastic piggie-bank with a serrated kitchen knife to retrieve the oh-so-necessary quarters.  We ate cheeseburgers and fried rice at the Chinese joint next door while waiting for the laundry to dry.  We  came back to a washerful of dirty grey water which we scooped using the large mixing bowl and my mother's silver soup-spoon.  Then I placed a phone call to the Sear's repairman and waited for him all of Saturday morning while making pancakes. 

$90 and twenty minutes after his arrival, the repairman departed, leaving us with a functioning washer and words of wisdom about not overloading on towels.  We no longer overload on towels.  Or sheets, or blankets, or whole drawers of cotton sweatershirts for that matter.  No siree.  We now watch the washing machine with the efficiency of a SWAT team.  As soon as the thing spins out of control, one of us appears out of nowhere, flings the lid open and rebalances the load with the efficiency of a civil engineer re-calculating a bridge load. 

Still, the waher will occasionally stall for no apparent reason.  When that happens, we let it sit for a while and then talk to it.  We cajole ("Come on, you can do it."), we threaten ("You piece of junk, we'll scrap you !"), we shame ("No now!  Not when I need my T-shirt for the party!  Don't let me down."), we question ("Why? Why are YOU doing THIS?") but sometimes we simply pray: Dear God, please let it work, one more time, pleaaase...we can't spend another $90.  Not now.  Pleaaase...

It works.   After some pouting and unexplained series of mysterious clicking sounds, the laundry cycle will restart and when it does, the one of us who is standing in front of the machine relaxes, breathes, smiles, and walks away, relieved, happy.  There is a God out there, a God of small things, a God of washing machines, clogged toilets, lost keys, stuck garage doors and cranky water heaters.  We've just learned to talk to it, that's all.   We've learned to believe. 

Johnny's Gold

Every winter, my ninety-two year old grandfather spends time alone in the cellar with a dish rag and a tin of beeswax.  He waxes his apples .   He planted the fruit trees in the early sixties when Dunkirk was still under reconstruction from the devastation of world war II and he had managed to scrape just enough money for a down payment on a row house with a garden.    After forty years of care the oldest tree is bent and worn, the heaviest branch propped up with a piece of wood, inches from the ground.   Every Spring, my grandfather pinches out the excess buds so he can be assured of a good crop of plump apples.  He repairs injured limbs with tape and glue.   He keeps an eye on the birds and on the neighbors cats.

 When September comes around, he gathers all he can and gives most of his crop to the neighbors. 

But not his favorites: the Jonagold. 

Ah!  The Jonagolds, Queens of the orchard:  plump, juicy, fragrant, oversized, overflowing, over the top.  The Jonagolds that he spends hours polishing in the solitude of his cellar, lining them up on shelves like rosy dancers before a show.  He sniffs them like a lover,  counts them like a banker, shows them off like a proud parent and always, always finds the really big one,  the two-pounder, always larger, better,  juicier than the previous year as if, of all trees, the Jonagold could be the one to escape time and produce forever.

 I was shopping for produce at the  Houston farmer's market two weeks ago when I noticed a familiar display of oversized apples with a handwritten sign:  "Johnny's Gold".   I had to pause.  Should I call my grandfather, Jean ("John" in French) and tell him that someone in Houston had put the perfect name on his passion.  Would he care?  Would he understand?  Would he even hear the phone ring from down in the cellar where he was sure to be spending his time, away from the world?  Or should I just go ahead, buy four apples, drive home, immediately put three in the oven (with a pat of butter and some brown sugar) but shine the last one with a dish-rag and set it on the windowsill?

French women do get fat.

At least my grandmother did.   

She ate just the way Ms. Guiliano describes the French diet in her very sensible book: three balanced meals a day, reasonable portions, no snacks or sodas, alcohol in moderation, plenty of fresh fruit and vegetable and an occasional indulgence of pastry.   My grandmother purchased her meat  from a local butcher who kept his animals  in a pasture behind his shop.  She was on a first name basis with the baker and  bought fruit and vegetable only in winter when her own garden was bare.  She drank Perrier long before it was fashionable.  She made her mayonnaise from scratch.

But she could not tolerate leftovers. Even though she cooked only enough to be consumed at any given meal, any leftover - even the tiniest spoonful of veal "blanquette" - would go unto her plate.    She was the grand cleaner of plates.   She slurped the last of the pumpkin soup, made tiny sandwiches of breadcrumbs and cheese ends and ate the blemished pears and apple,  gathered the stray shrimp from the stuffed tomatoes, absent-mindedly gobbled the French fries and finger-licked the last of the strawberries and cream.  She did so with the efficiency of a woman who had survived two wars and knew that food may not always come her way. 

With years, she grew plump and widened her skirts with the same efficiency with which she cleaned plates.  She continueed sprinkling her apple pies with dots of butter and regaled us with sugar sandwiches.   She started to waddle  when she walked but no one  ever  remarked on her appearance.   She was the kind of woman who wore neither makeup nor jewelry,  who becomes invisible to men and ages in blissful ignorance of wrinkle creams and dyed hair.

I envy her.  I envy that  for most of her adult life she owned a single one-piece bathing suit that looked like a Russian-issued uniform.  She put it on three times a year to wade knee-deep in the North Sea.   She made no bones about not liking the beach and preferred retreating under the umbrella where she guarded the gingerbread sandwiches that she would have prepared for our snack.  I hope I can become like her one day: less preoccupied with my own  appearance, schedule, anxieties and ambitions, and more present to the  passing of days and the well being of the people around me.  I hope I get to learn what it is like to slow-cook a beef and carrot stew for an entire winter morning, bring it to the table at noon and eat every last spoonful of it, without guilt, without remorse, without worry, wash to dishes and sit by the window, hands on a full bellythat  expands with every breath.

About turnips.

I belong a very small minority of turnip eaters.  I love the vegetable's adolescent look of overgrown blushing radish.  When cooked, turnips look almost exactly like potatoes except for the slight transparency of their flesh but whereas the potato will bore your tongue with  starchiness the turnip will tease your taste buds with silky delight.

I am incensed at the turnip's  undeserved reputation for blandness.   There is nothing bland about a tuber that  pricks your tongue when raw.  End of story.  This blandness deal  is all a big misunderstanding and it is high time we turn the tide.   There are too many injustices in this world and here is an  easy cause to remedy:
let's right the wrongs of turnips. 

This is a perfect project for beginning activists.  It entails neither political backlash nor religious persecution.  The financial investment is miniscule,  the rewards guaranteed and immediate.  Go ahead!  Unite in the great "Free the turnip campaign".    Buy a pound of the stuff or buy two.  Life is too short not to take an insignificant risk.

 Go home.  Boil your turnips and dress them up: turnip and caviar, turnip and chipotle salsa, turnip comfit, turnip "a la creme", turnip en croute. 

Be  bold and stand for the underdog for God's sake!

 And next time someone calls you a turnip, thank them and give them a jar of your prize-winning turnip compote.  It is never too late make a minuscule statement.