Being A Mum . Cooking
Cooking like Mummyji – I Wish!!
On January 9, 2016 by Speranza
One of my key ways of cheering myself up involves eating, making or reading about Indian food. (Often, all at the same time).
I also enjoy a nice outing to the Indian grocery store; I do my best when I’m there, trying respectfully to use the right words (atta instead of flour and never referencing a ‘curry’ since this is a crass Anglo-misnomer) but I’m also cringingly aware that they may think I’m pulling a “Food Channel-Poseur” and will be holding themselves up at the counter, screaming with laughter behind the Bollywood dvds as I leave …
(I do prefer to believe that my sincerity is not in question as I have been the recipient of more than a few whispered best-ways-to-do-this during my visits …)
Indian mothers throughout the world – Mummyjis, if you will – you have my utmost respect and admiration! I applaud the sheer time and love it takes to make just one Indian meal and the skill that is involved in making everything come together at the right time. We often joke at home that it takes two days notice just to make a proper Indian lunch – never mind dinner! (And to Son #2, no I still don’t think it’s necessary to rub the chickpeas through a sieve to remove their skins and this will not be happening in my world …)
Poetry . Winter
January
On January 7, 2016 by Speranza Again I reply to the triple winds running chromatic fifths of derision outside my window: Play louder You will not succeed. I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you. And the wind, as before, fingers perfectly its derisive music. William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963 From Sour Grapes (The Four
Anxiety . Christmas . Divorce . Grey Divorce . The General
Christmas Past and Present
On January 7, 2016 by Speranza
I was really rattled this Christmas when I suddenly realized that I could scale back the baking considerably. I was also more suspicious than relieved. The need for a pyramid of mincemeat tarts, hamper-sized bags of potato chips and a massive raft of San Pellegrino usually associated with the weeks leading up to the holidays would just not be required this year; worse still, even though I have had neither of my boys living at home for more than a year now, I have somehow been unconsciously assuming that the situation was temporary and that soon everything would revert to its Normal State.
Whatever that is.
Christmas is a bit tricky too because there’s no one at home and then everyone returns home for a day or two, here and there, maybe dropping in for a dinner just long enough to reignite all the same maternal brain-patterns as before: sock donuts may be left tucked into the couch, fancy Christmas hand towels are hung up with the pattern on the inside or not hung up at all and why doesn’t someone text if they won’t be back till 3:30am when they are staying over …
Introspection . Nostalgia . Writers . Writing
The Other Martha
On January 3, 2016 by Speranza
I just finished listening to an archived interview with hard-boiled wartime writer and activist Martha Gellhorn on the radio and hearing her cultured, richly intellectual way of speaking casually expand on the exciting yet pugilistic life she led has made me feel equal parts impressed, intrigued and unsettled.
Impressed and intrigued because she led such a fascinating, unpredictable and often dangerous life and unsettled because this is a heady cocktail of everything I am not.
I have none of her wanderlust, her confidence or that driving need to be combative (most recently I couldn’t even play a competitive board game at Christmas lest I offend the land occupiers who were good friends!) yet I continue to pretend that had my life turned out differently, I might have been a kick-arse journalist.
Really. Really? I need to shut this fantasy down and resolve to confine myself to writing at least half-way regularly at my middle-class desk where I can safely blog to an audience that rarely exceeds 2 digits … what the heck would Martha say about that …?
I cannot bear to think of it.
Strangely, it’s a truism about myself that I’m often extremely attracted to clever outspokenness as a trait in other people – Noel Gallagher, Denis Leary, Richard Dawkins, The General – but I abhor it in myself; of course, I should also clarify that boorish, uncalled for outspokenness can veer very closely to let’s just say something else, and I have never found someone being a complete asshole even remotely attractive.