The Green Room of My Mind

My  mother’s college roommate called last week. She is 80 years old and, in a wavy voice, she brightly recounted the parties that her mother and my grandmother created for the youth of their community. “Your grandmother’s house was the destination and oh, did they cook for us. We had such fun,” she says, the emotion in her voice compelling.

The scene of the crime was a 1920 ivy-covered cottage on a canalled street in a Mississippi Delta town. Though it has now fallen into disrepair, it still shines for me in its manicured glory. Dreams appear regularly via that setting. I close my eyes and pull open a kitchen drawer knowing exactly what it holds. I feel the comfort of blazing orange gas heaters warming the chilled breakfast room and view the compost bowl awaiting a trip to the garden.

I am on sensory overload with featured culinary aromas, tastes, and conversations. Such visions are readily available to those who have lived a half-century. Vibrations from another decade recall that before the advent of convenience, we were a people who were intimate with the birth of our food, culminating in stellar debuts on our table. Craving those dishes, I often gather the ingredients for foods of my childhood in like manner of the time: direct from their sources. In preparation, I breathe in the voices that waft from my past.

“Today, we are making custard, and you will stir,” says my grandmother as she wraps one of her giant housecoats around my tiny frame. As customary of housewives of that time, women often wore a distinctly uniform-like dress for domestic work and later changed into street clothes for errands or receiving guests.

I know the drill: eggs, sugar, and milk, stirred with a wooden spoon. I hover before a Chambers gas oven, teetering on the decrepit footstool that my grandfather dragged across the black-and-white tiled floor. I hope for the best. My grandmother raises an eyebrow, “I’m not sure you’re cut out for this.”

If she was alluding to the fact that I, just as she, would have to juggle work and family while providing the most nurturing of the domestic arts — a good meal — then she was prophetic. For my personality, her self-doubt served as a challenge. Nonetheless, the taste memory of days in that house has been a specter, instructing me to snub convenience and nourish myself and those I love by creating food ... the old-fashioned way.

Everyone in the drama of that day is now gone, but I revel in the fact that their reward hasn’t interfered with our conversation. Talk of gardening, egg production, recipes, and endless chatter of the table and “what should we serve?” echo for me with assurance.
I see them all gathered loosely for my benefit in the green room of my mind. They are restless and hungry. It’s oh-so-important, this conversation of eternal long distance, a perspective that I’ve gained living 20-plus years without them. Still I know that their conversations about food will bring an emotional flood, and I brace myself.

Fetching their conversations from the long, vacant hallway next to the kitchen, I detect that they are waiting their turn to speak with me. The communication method hearkens back to a large, heavy telephone that is anchored to the wall and resting on a telephone table. My dutiful mother’s mother will place the call. Grandmother rests her impressive girth on a tiny stool and addresses me as the others wait in line. 

With an eventual reunion in mind, she says, “They’re bringing food, each a personal favorite.”  I savor the tenderness of their collective gifts and flaws and the foods that they loved best.

My maternal grandmother, a repetitive talker, sits wearing a blue flowered dress and sensible shoes. She pushes her silver-tipped eyeglasses up along the bridge of her nose. With absent-minded focus, she makes a grocery list and thinks: Piggly Wiggly. She is now retired and reports to me that before a vegetable lunch, she and my grandfather made a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and eggs; washed clothes and folded some from the line; tended the garden and the hen house; and picked up books from the library. “The pear tree will provide ample supply for preserves this year,” she insists as she slaps her knee in anticipation of the coming bonanza serving ice cream or toast. “Next!” she abruptly exclaims.

My very stylish and younger fraternal grandmother transmits her nervous nature, and I intuit her tiny body, shifting from high-heeled foot to high-heeled foot.

She is sporting a twin set, coordinating skirt and ever-present pin and pearls. Now that the other grandmother has relinquished the phone, she lights up and pats her freshly cast hairdo. “We’ll have that delicious corned beef and cabbage that you love with a green bean casserole — crispy onions on top — and rice, squash, and pecan pie,” she rejoices. “Don’t tell your Daddy, but we had a pre-lunch cocktail of corn whiskey to calm our nerves … love you, dahling girl!”

Pappy, my father’s dad, reluctantly moves into place for just a word. He sports a smoking jacket and cradles a pipe, anticipating a post-meal nap. He shakes up and down with feigned laughter as he previews upcoming dinnertime topics: current slippery social morals, poor design, untapped brains, and religious piety. “Do you have anything to contribute in these areas?” he challenges. Distracted, he turns to my grandmother and says, “Edwina, make sure you bring all my condiments to the table.”

My great aunt, identical twin sister to my fraternal grandmother, is annoying Pappy. She has had enough of this waiting game. “Dahling, I miss you, please see to it that you come for a visit … we’ll have a highball and a savory hors d’oeuvre.”  While speaking, she examines her four-inch heels supporting the shortened tendons of a life-long fashionista. “I’ll be waiting with a much improved crab dip. We’ll catch up … here’s your mother.”

She is smoking a Viceroy with some disdain. The family is not on schedule. I always talk, she always listens. My stories are shaded by her moods. The cigarette is no longer sexy at 56, but she is still a beautifully mysterious woman and a fabulous cook. “I have some chicken spaghetti in the freezer,” she quips. Thin pasta coated with cheese sauce, and large, succulent pieces of vegetables and chicken supply the memories of motherhood. A casserole was in the freezer when she left, supper from beyond. “Have you taken something to Mrs. Selby? She is suffering ... pimento cheese is always helpful. Do it today, because when your number is up ... it is up. Talk to Daddy.”

I smile. Daddy is my mother’s father, and he is 97. Mother was born to him late in life amidst the Great Depression, after he had made and lost a fortune. Before her death, she propped up his proud appearance of singularity. Transformed by life lessons and being a man of few words, he advises, “It all comes down to sharing a good meal with family.” I tell him that I dream of the turkey, lamb, or roast beef that he raised and carved for us at the dining room table. He says with a twinkle in his eye, “Gal, where you been?” I say, “Missing all y’all, Grandaddy. Missing y’all.”

“Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are,” once said French epicurean Brillat-Savarin. If I choose to lift my life to project-like status, considering the variety of resources, I’ll say that I am getting somewhere. Cosmic lessons are always available, and the motivation is irresistible: young ones are watching. 

Roben Mounger develops relationships with area farmers and cooks year-round with the bounty of CSAs and farmers’ markets. At 55, an internship venture at Arugula Star Farm on Leiper’s Creek Road awakened her to life. She writes in celebration of food and people at mscookstable.com.