Mom & Me Journals Histories: 1999 - 2001

...doesn't that sound good? An old, old gingerbread recipe so spice rich it looks like chocolate cake, baked with loads of fresh, ripe, sweet peach slices buried in the batter mmmmm, topped with lightly sweetened freshly whipped cream, flavored with rum...I tell you, LTF, we barely ate supper knowing we'd be eating what sounded like Ambrosia Cake, later.
    The whipped cream was delicious. I'm glad I thought of flavoring it. The peach/gingerbread, well, thing, was not. The cake stuff itself, I'm not sure what I did wrong but I didn't get it sweet enough, which figures. That's why I don't usually do desserts; I have a continual argument going with sugar. It baked up well; good consistency, wonderful smell; but it tasted flat; sort of like a sorghum cake, which I've only had once and will never eat again. The peaches were so sweet all by themselves I was sure I wouldn't need added sweetening especially with the cup of molasses in the cake batter. Once again, I forgot that formula everyone learns at their first birthday party when someone's mother serves lemonade or Kool-aid with frosted cake; Fructose + Sucrose = Fucking Sour. I guess I should have syruped them up, a bit.
    I still think peaches-and-gingerbread sounds wonderful and I may do something with dried peaches or cooked peaches and gingerbread, I don't know, maybe a rich glaze or something. But I won't try baking fresh peach slices into gingerbread, again. That was stupid.
    We will be able to rescue it with an old trick my grandmother used of which Mom's cousin and Mom reminded me: make bread pudding. When a cake or cookie or bread based dessert turns bad any kind of bad, believe me, I've done it successfully with the worst, break it up into large crouton sized pieces, mix it with milk and eggs (and honey or maple syrup, if necessary; in this case it will probably be necessary) in a baking pan large enough to hold it all and bake it in a moderate oven until an inserted butter knife comes out clean; can be up to an hour. You can add spices, fruit, nuts and luckily my mistake contains all these so it'll be interesting to see what we eat for dessert tomorrow night.
    At least we have four delicious peaches left.

    It is amazing, everyone who comes here to visit loves it, specifically here, the very place where we live and the surrounding area, as though our plot of land and our house are the center of the universe. As my mother once said, "Once someone visits up here, we almost can't keep them away." It's as though this very house, its very positioning, this very piece of land sits on a gurgling convergence of geographical and atmospheric pulse points and people can't get enough of it. Even my mother reluctantly feels it, sitting at the table, projecting into our panoramic view and teasing me, "I know you'll make me regret saying this, but we're awfully lucky to have this house."
    She's right. On both counts.

    I'd better get Mom up. Last night I reminded her that another of her cousins will be here tomorrow, and I think it threw her into a pre-visit rest-up frenzy.

    The peculiar Mom episode...I almost forgot. I mentioned it was sort of complicated, but the retelling of the actual incident is not.
    So, MPNC and I were stretched out together on the futon couch watching some movie, I can't remember what, oh yeah, I remember, Cast Away (the best thing about the movie, I thought, was the crash and splitting the title into two words). Mom was sitting at the table in the dining room to our left. I wasn't sure where MPS and MPNP were; outside somewhere.
    MPNC said to me, "Do you smell something burning?"
    I looked around. I called out to the dining room, "Mom, did you light the filter end of a cigarette?"
    "No."
    The burning smell strengthened. "Did something ignite in your ash tray?"
    "No."
    "Are you heating something up on the stove?"
    "No."
    I finally stood up and looked up into the dining room (the living room is sunken). Mom had a roll of toilet paper to her left. She was tearing off pieces of toilet paper, rolling them into tight little sticks, lighting them with a lighter and watching them burn out in the ashtray. Some of the toilet paper sticks, I noted, must have been longer than the ashtray because there were black ashes trailing away from the ashtray on either side. I also noted that a cigarette was burning in one of the holders in the ashtray.
    I didn't even wait to digest this. I lunged forward, grabbed all the materials I could, whipped them out of her reach and scolded her for playing with fire. I ended with, "Mom, if this happens too many more times I'm going to have to take control of all the lighters in the house and you'll have to come to me every time you want a light." [Of course on later comtemplation I realize this would actually be playing into Mom's rapidly dementing "hands" and I don't want to become a Human Lighter, so maybe she won't remember that pronouncement.]
    The complication in this episode, as I see it, is that she had been under what to her would be considered stress in that MPNC had been asking her repeatedly to either smoke outside, move, or not smoke at all. I did not intervene in this. I knew that making any requests of Mom regarding her smoking or not smoking was a lost cause. I also remember all of us siblings making repeated requests of the same type, some even stronger, of my mother and father throughout our entire lives at home, most of which went unheeded. So I stay out of these types of confrontations. However, Mom had absorbed enough of MPNC's requests that she had become irritated and tense whenever she lit a cigarette and had lit several filter ends throughout the visit.
    Observing all this, it occurs to me that Mom's firebugging was a direct result of the tension she was feeling surrounding smoking during the visit. No one else, no one, said anything to her about smoking. MPS smoked outside. I had a couple of cigarettes with MPS. MPNP never said anything to Mom. MPS never said anything to Mom. I never said anything to Mom. Only MPNC did. And, I think that pushed Mom over the top and she started playing with fire.
    So, I guess when she starts playing with fire again I need to look for causes of stress. That, at least, is good to know. I wasn't sure before why she was occasionally doing these apparently alien, definitely dangerous things. However I think I am going to start an informal monitoring of lighters around here.