Moves Like Jagger

The 2011 party train pulled out of the Jones' station a few months ago, groaning under the weight of too many party platters, holiday dinners and impromptu cocktail hours.

Note the plural on cocktail hour.

There's a darn good reason why it's a singular noun.

And should stay that way.

I tend to host the big family holiday dinners because cooking for 20 doesn't torque my panties. I have a 'saddle up" policy during the holidays-the more elbows resting on my sagging table, the better. I work best under crushing boulders of stress, when  my stomach is uncharacteristically flat against the floor because King Kong is sitting on my shoulders pounding me with the hard cover of the Joy of Cooking.

I've got my beloved Swiffer in one hand, a food splattered cookbook in the other, with my cell sandwiched between my neck and hunched shoulder, chatting to Sissy, wondering if I have time to buzz up to Home Goods because I now must simply have the extra napkins  I fished out of my shopping cart and chucked into the accessory  department the other day. (That's called my psychological shop-up-packing my cart with eleven foot rugs, clearance casserole dishes, and serving platters taking them for a spin round the store and depositing said items on the opposite end of the store when I assess my goods and wallet and decide I really don't need an another white serving dish.)

I used to make out grocery lists for my dinner parties, but I'd either race out the door leaving the list on the counter, along with my wallet, or it would disappear in the big black hole at the bottom of my handbag.

this is why I never find anything in my handbag

Besides, I'd take one look at my messy shorthand writing and couldn't figure out if I had written litter or  lettuce. Instead, I loiter in the meat department, desperately trying to recall half grazed recipes, putting the neurons on turbocharge so I can pull up those  recipes whose ingredients I'd failed to commit to memory.

And this happens every time I have a dinner party, holiday or not.

Big Sissy makes out grocery lists.  She knows weeks ahead what's she cooking. There's no last minute running around for her: she dodged that muscular Cade Procrastination gene, the flame retardant DNA that makes us impervious to the pain of having a blowtorch aimed at our asses while still being able to resist those chores, deadlines, or decisions that we'd rather not do. 

But for me, half the fun is seeing how much I can cram into the day before my guests wander in.  And although the  husband says he wouldn't change a single thing about me (wink, wink), he starts squawking and fretting because if there's one trait that he'd rather not see expressed in the next generation of Joneses, its my "It'll only take five minutes," gorilla of a gene.  I've painted chairs hours before my guests lowered their bottoms onto the seats, touched up walls with minutes to spare, and had my mother in law tethered to an ancient sewing machine, zigzagging curtains seconds before the doorbell rang.

"Oh, darling, I just don't understand how you can do this," she tutted in her delightful British accent, her tiny feet tapping the pedal, sounding very much like an SOS call.

Between whirling around the house on my Swifter, heading to Home Goods, the grocery store, and repainting the kitchen, I don't eat. And I usually don't make it to the gym.

And that's not a good pairing. 

So, it's only natural that I unwind and enjoy the cocktail hour with my guests. But one hour turns into two and before I know it, my apron's off, I'm moving like Jagger and dinner is simmering on the stove, abandoned like the white serving dish and 8 by 11 rug in bath section at Home Goods.

See, my office morphs into a dancing den and I'll be damned if I'm cutting onions while my guests are cutting the rug so I throw down my santoku and slide across the kitchen floor into the real party room. Grooving with a bunch of middle aged mums, my teen aged son, who glides across the dance floor with a "unique" sense of rhythm,  is as almost as satisfying as sitting down to an overflowing plate of pasta and meatballs.

And while we're bopping on the creaky wood floors, the pan-generational music  bouncing off the walls, big Sissy always slips into the kitchen, making sure nothing has  gone up in flames. If there's one gal you want in charge during a suburban mosh pit maelstrom in the middle of a dinner party, it's Sissy, who stealthy weaves around the kitchen, ensuring we'll sit down to dinner before midnight.

I've decided that I'll set the oven timer for my next dinner party. Cocktail hour-one hour- max- and that includes boogie time. I just hope Sissy hears the timer.  

Mind the Gap

What do you say to a father you haven't spoken to  in over twenty two years?

"Hi!"

 "Father,  it's been a while."

 "Wow, you've aged!"

Sissy and I, along with my nephew's then finance, Erica,  volleyed answers back and forth over the  four hour journey, our voices punctuated with anxiety, our stomachs percolating  like the old Farberware electric coffee pot that pumped out tongue scorching java for years until Mr. Coffee walked in.


None of these felt quite right and as we approached the old man's 50 acre spread in upstate New York,  we decided to name the mission. 

The Gates of Heaven or Hell?

What about "Storming the Gates," I suggested after seeing photographs of the impressive wrought iron gates that stood guard at the two entrance ways to his property.

"Showdown at the Gates."

"The Gates of Hell."

We stopped at the nearest bar and I downed two bracing vodka and tonics and knocked back an Ativan. Sissy had two goblets of red wine and we figured the world would be closer to a utopia if along with morning coffee and tea, we all popped an Ativan.

"I'll have a skim milk latte with a two milligram chaser of Ativan, please."

No wonder why so many housewives, including mom, were so placid  in the 70's. They didn't give a hoot if their popovers didn't rise, they were floating along life's turbulent waters on a Valium raft.

But we wondered how we would react seeing a man who had once been our father. Had he aged? What did he look like? Had his voice changed? Was he in good health? Would he yell at us? (That booming voice used to stop us in our tracks) Dismiss us like naughty children? Tell  his German Shepard's to attack? (Wear your sneakers, Sissy, in case we have to sprint out the door) Or simply just keel over at the first sight of his now middle aged daughters? ( I don't suppose we're in the will)

He'd always been an impressive and  imposing man, standing over  6 feet tall with hazel eyes, and wavy black hair that refused to lay flat on his head unless it was clipped every couple of weeks at the local barber's shop.  He even tried having it straightened but the solution burned his scalp, leaving red, weepy sores on his head for days.

Dressed in bespoke suits and crisp white shirts,  he made his fortune in the courtroom, his good looks, rehearsed posturing and deep voice won over jury after jury. And ladies, too. Lots of them.

The drive to earn more, to win more, all stemmed from his childhood days where he spent years battling an alcoholic father who provided little for his family. We remember Papa as a gentle man, with eyes as blue as a Cape hydrangea, who'd drive us to the penny candy store on Partridge Street and let us stuff bit-o-honey, bubblegum cigarettes and yards of dots into those little paper bags. 

Worn clothing, holes in his shoes, a stutter, Dad was our very own Horatio Alger who lifted himself from poverty and abuse by putting himself through college and law school while working full time and supporting a wife and three kids. He managed the local paper's distribution route, taught English at our community college, built several houses during law school. He moved us to Atlanta while he took graduate courses at Emory and we came back with enough y'all's to rattle our Yankee grandparents for months.

"My, my" our grandmother tutted. She'd been against us heading south. And we suspect against her only daughter marrying the scrappy kid who barely made it out of high school. He married my mother because he had to. He never loved her. 

We remember those early days with some fondness- a mischievous father who was always up for a water fight with the neighborhood kids, who climbed up on the roof one snowy Christmas Eve and rang sleigh bells, who taught us to ski by snowplowing backwards down the slope, who took us for ice cream at Ross' where the smell of french fries, cheeseburgers,  and onions rings punctuated the thick summer air with their salty, greasy scent.

But painful memories have a way of darkening even the happiest ones, eclipsing smiles and laughs, leaving gaping black holes where sunny recollections once shined, and  as we drove through his property, on a frigid January day, I slipped down into the car seat, wishing I could dissolve into the soft cloth and disappear.

Yet sissy surged ahead, her bravery fueled by Cabernet and more than 50 years of wisdom and strength.

"You're strong sister," she said. "Besides, no one fucks with the Cade sisters."

She was right. We'd been living without parents for over two decades. Had our worlds turned upside down, with little left to salvage. Been rejected once before. But we survived.

Could a second one be anymore painful? 

Sing Walter Sing

He died in a small rural hospital in western Massachusetts with his small family holding his hands, gently singing the old gospel hymn "In the Garden," http://bit.ly/kHLI0u one of his favorite songs learned decades ago from a Christian missionary, even though he and his wife Mary were Catholic. I'm not sure Walter even believed in a higher power but he knew it was best to go along with Mary, a headstrong gal who Walter doted on until he died. 

Lexi in Walter's kitchen. Note the cherries and chocolate!

Walter J. Fleming was 93 years old and lived across the street from us for 16 years. We met Walter even before we signed the purchase and  sale agreement when he came shuffling over using a metal cane, looking both ways before he crossed our relatively quiet street, holding a stack of photos he had taken while the house was being built.

He'd been a photographer in the air force and flew across the continent during WWII taking photographs on reconnaissance missions and thought we'd want to know where our septic tank was just in case.  He handed us a stack of photos showing the progression of our septic tank installation, each photo with Walter's hesitant writing marking the date. A survivor of polio, his hands shook, his gait unsteady and his voice sometimes muffled by his excitement that  neighbors had finally moved in.

Walter chatted with us just about every day, from a simple wave while he picked up his mail to an extended visit in his garage, listening to patriotic songs blasting from an old record player. He'd join in, his shaky voice struggling to reach the high notes, but by God, he remembered every word and sang with conviction and pride.



And once our kids came along, Walter and Mary became surrogate grandparents, dispensing some interesting advice along the way with plenty of hugs, kisses and one hell of an improvised zip line that tempted safety and raised a few eyebrows because if the kids didn't stop, they'd run the risk of smacking into a big old oak tree that Walter covered with a thin seat cushion to soften any blows.

The kids would scale the wobbly ladder, grab the  plastic handle and jump off, zipping along the nylon cord, yelling and screaming until they reached the seat cushion.

Lexi and neighborhood Pal, Jake in front of the fridge!

He let the kids push each other in an old fashioned office chair, the kind with big wheels that moved across the pavement like skates on ice and the kids would spend hours pushing each other around Walter's semi-circular drive.

He'd lower himself into an old green lawn chair, rest his cane across his lap and smile as he watched the kids play for hours with his handmade rigged up toys.


 One of their favorite toys was a garbage can that Walter had strapped to a dolly. While one kid was pushing the garbage-can dolly, the other one was inside, holding on tightly, their head just cresting above the rim. Waves of screams and laughter would roll down the street as the pusher of the garbage-can dolly would break into a sprint. It tipped over a few times so it was a good thing Walter had an never ending supply of band-aids and freeze pops.

When the kids grew tired of the dolly, Walter nailed four wheels on a small platform, put on two handles and tied on a long rope on the front. The kids would fasten the rope around their waists and race down the street, and around Walter's curvy driveway, gaining so much momentum that often the passenger wouldn't stay on for very long; they'd fly off when the platform rounded a corner, rolling into the Rhododendrons.  

He'd shepherd the wounded  into his garage, dispensing fudge pops and  popsicles followed by bottomless cans of Dr. Bob, Stop and Shop's equivalent of Dr. Pepper, and Archway and Lorna Doone cookies. Walter's old pink freezer was filled with treats for the kids, and the rusted old exterior masked by dozens of their photos and three cans of pink spray paint.

The kids were always welcome

The kids spent years at Walter's house, gradually seeing him less as they all grew older. He'd wave to the kids; they'd wave back, but the days filled with laughter and joy had come to an end. The kids had schoolwork, after school sports and activities, but Walter still kept his freezer stocked with treats, his pantry filled with cookies, the remnants of the old zipline overgrown with moss, the garbage-can dolly on its side collecting stagnant water. The basketball hoop rusted, the outside table and chairs were covered with vines.

Then he fell and became too unsteady on his feet. Mary showed signs of dementia. They moved out to western Mass to be closer to their daughter.

We cried when he left.


When Walter died, he was buried in the military cemetery with taps playing softy in the background. A small crowd gathered from the neighborhood at our local clubhouse where his family had poster boards board filled with the kids' pictures, from their days as toddlers to barely teens, their faces sticky with ice pops and chocolate, their smiles so wide and pure. 

"You give  me a reason to live," he told the kids over and over.


Walter J Fleming was the grandfather they never had and  a little bit of us all died that day, too.

The Great Curtain Fire and the Lady Cave

A backyard burn. Incriminating Evidence? Sissy says so.

I've always had a little thing for fire.   

From my days as a blond haired and woefully under-aged three foot package of energy, I loved those sparklers just as much as my GI Joe's, cap guns and freeze pops.

Those were the days where parents let their kids play with matches, saws, knives,  rope- just about anything so long as they left them to drink their martini's in peace. 

I'd spend hours lighting sparklers, mesmerized by  the white tip of the metal stick as I scrolled my initials into the dark sky.

They made my little pyro toes twinkle.

Though sparklers now fail to ignite those childhood passions, give me a pile of brush, some gasoline and a book of matches and I somehow morph into cave woman. 

I'd like to think I'm getting in touch with my Neanderthal brothers and sisters.

One of the greatest advantages of living on Cape Cod, besides the icy Atlantic Ocean, Wellfleet Oysters and  sweeping vistas, is that you can burn your junk in the backyard. Not cars or trash, but garden debris, like branches, rotten fence posts and the occasional wheelbarrow load of leaves.

I'm a responsible burner, most of the time.  Okay, I do toss in a few leaves here and there. Maybe a pizza box or two. A chair went in one time. And I'm having a flashback of dragging up  a desk from the basement and it ending up on the fire. I can't help it, I get carried away.

Fire is cleansing.

I've got my own little backyard baptismal font.


But if you happen to  mention my passion for backyard burning to Sissy, don't listen to whatever she says because she still blames me for setting her eyelet curtains on fire when we were in high school. She'll tell the mailman, the toll taker, anyone who'll listen that I'd been smoking in her room, had left a match burning on the dresser, which ignited her favorite curtains. A wide open window on a blustery spring day  gave that little match what he needed to incinerate Sissy's curtains.

I swear on Dot's grave  I didn't start that fire.

In fact, Sissy should thank me for my cat like reflexes and quick thinking because I sprinted into action, racing into our bathroom, grabbing the four ounce water tumbler and battling the fire like a trained professional, saving her frilly canopy  from going up in flames.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

But no matter how many times I tell Sissy  it wasn't me, she just opens those big brown eyes, raises an eyebrow and mouths, "Guilty as charged."

"You always wanted my room."

Okay, I admit, when we moved into our new house, she nabbed the best bedroom, a spacious and sunny front of the house room that overlooked our neighborhood, which in those days, was pulsating with teenage hormones, Schwinn Bikes, basketballs and sprouting facial hair.

She spent hours flipping through the sample books, picking out a plush cranberry wall-to-wall carpet so thick, pennies would bounce off it. I got stuck with a yellow scalloped patterned shag  that took on a decidedly mustard glow because I was too busy pulling up my tube socks and dribbling my basketball around the new neighborhood to look through the giant carpet books.

My room overlooked the back yard, a pretty boring place for a nosy tomboy who liked being smack in the  middle of the action. Sissy had the VIP seats in the house; I looked at Mom's new rock garden. She had the double canopy bed; I had the twin. But what I really envied was her closet, a double wide cavernous hideaway because she was able to squeeze a vanity and a Hollywood style lighted mirror inside. She'd spend hours tucked away in the dark mysterious room picking zits, plucking eyebrows and trying to subdue her wildly crazy hair.

She really pioneered the lady cave long before man conquered his subterranean refuge.

Her entire room was off limits, a highly secured big sister vault and she guarded it with ferocious drive. She'd unleash a cacophany of screams even if I touched her carpet with my big toe, or craned my head around the door, hoping to catch a glimmer of her lady cave.

So I'd have to sneak in when she wasn't around being careful not to leave my footmarks on that damn carpet.  My friends and I would tip toe in, slide open the doors to her lady cave and lust over her lighted mirror, the Clairol steam curlers, the Conair blow dryer, the makeup, the magazines. Her lady cave would stay warm long after she'd finished blow drying her hair.

It was like looking into someone's diary or handbag, because once you started, it was impossible to stop. I'd always snoop around in there, jealous that I didn't have my own little lady cave, but I was always on alert because when she caught me in there, she'd pinch me.

The  Cade sisters' are big boned gals and when Sissy pinched me, her big paws squeezed out more pounds per square inch pressure than a croc and left a welt that would hang around for days.

So when her curtains went up in flames, shooting across the room, threatening to ignite her canopy bed, she blamed me. 

I'm certain I didn't start that fire.

I think is was my mother's lucky strike. 

Or it may be been my sister, Debbie.

But it wasn't me. No matter what Sissy says.
















"

Cooking for One Strikes Out

I was chatting with my friend at the gym several months ago and like most days, as we curled our biceps and lowered our  spreading bottoms to squat,  our aging quads groaning like tired old pistons, the conversation drifted to food. She asked me how my "cooking my food" strike was working out.

One of only three dishes that causes the family to revolt.

"Great. I made stuffed cabbage last night," I said.

The "Golumpky" recipe came from my mother's friend Charlotte, a tiny timid gal who reminded me of a Cornish game hen. Her husband, a scientist, fiddled around with more than beakers in his laboratory, his deep blue eyes were like pools of inviting water, so nearly matching the luring Caribbean, that women were quick to plunge into bed with him.

And even though a curtain of brown shaggy bangs and big plastic glasses couldn't mask her sad  eyes, Charlotte found pleasure in the kitchen churning out golumpkies like a machine.

These chubby little torpedoes top the list as the  number one reason for a dinnertime standoff  in our house, inching slightly ahead of roasted pork with sauerkraut and corned beef and cabbage.

See, I went on strike because I'd had enough of cooking only what the kids and the husband liked. I can't help the fact that my palate begs for diversity, for subtle or explosive pleasures. I was raised by a woman who found satisfaction and love in a 5 pound bag of flour, rolling out flaky biscuits or beating choux in the saucepan for cream puffs that were so light, you'd think they'd lift off the baking sheet.

So I wondered what about the cook's hankerings? Chef's choice? Darn it. What about me? I was going to cook all my favorite dishes- like stuffed cabbage, corned beef and cabbage, braised cabbage and buttered cabbage and say to hell with my brood.

I was on a cruciferae  bender and they  were in for a heady ride.

When I told the long faced teens and husband that I'd be cooking "me"  food for the next few days,  they put the local pizza parlor on speed dial and hit send.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "I make your food all the time, you should have to eat mine. Besides, we only have my food once a year and sometimes you have to do things you don't want," I said.

"We're not even Polish so why do we have to eat golumpkies," they asked.

"And yeah, we're not Irish so why do we have to eat corned beef and stupid cabbage," they added..

"Because it will make me  happy," I shouted.

"And when mother is happy, the house is happy," pipped in the husband, who knows that the house either perks along in a gleeful hum or roars off its foundation, depending on, well, me.

Not too long ago, I had a little hissy fit one weekend when Teen Boy and Teen Girl complained about going on a cruise in February. Actually, it wasn't a little tantrum, but a catastrophic meltdown and if you've ever seen a middle aged lady throw a wobbly, it wasn't pretty.

Think Joan Crawford.

On steroids.

It all started when Grandfather Bill, who strolled into their lives a little more than a year ago, said he'd be taking four out of the six grandchildren  on a Caribbean adventure and the offspring didn't  want to sail away.

Now, if someone offered me a free ride all expenses paid vacation, where I didn't have to cook and I could just stuff my face with food and knock back drinks while resting my ample duff on a lounge chair, I'd have my bags packed before they finished the details. But Teen Boy says that he's just as happy visiting him in New York for a few days.

"I feel uncomfortable that he is spending all that money on me. I value his intelligence, not his money."

Wow. I'm raising a communist.  I should have named him Che Jones.

"Well, sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do because it makes other people happy," I said. Grandfather Bill wants to take you. He's making up for missed time.

"I didn't earn his wealth. I am not entitled to it." said Teen Communist, adding, "Besides, I've never wanted to go on a cruise."

 And that was my trigger point.

And this is where I pulled out of my archives speech number 65- "Do you know how many times I 've done things for you that I didn't want to do?"

"I spent two hours watching a live performance of Thomas the Tank in Providence in a theater filled with thousands of screaming boys and actors dressed up in creepy cardboard cut outs of Thomas, Diesel and  Daisy. 

"I went ......CAMPING and it rained and rained and my sleeping bag felt like I was stuck in a wet compression sock and I didn't get an ounce of sleep because I  have a nighttime bladder condition and every time I walked to the outhouses, I thought I would get stabbed by a snaggled-toothed  campground killer.

"I took you to Old Country Buffet"

"I ate Dominoes Pizza for years"

Both Teen Boy and Teen Girl just looked at me. And that's when my inner Joan sprang to life.

If you could have measured the unbridled rage whirling around the kitchen table, it would have surpassed a Level 5 Hurricane, made a nor'easter look like fluffy flurries, made Hurricane Bob look like a whisper from an aging uncle. 

I am always doing things I don't want to do. Like emptying the dishwasher, fishing turds out of the litter box, peeling potatoes or cooking pasta six days of the week, But I do these things because we need clean plates, my geriatric cat needs a tidy spot to poop,Teen girl loves my scalloped spuds and they both like my pasta.

So when Teen Boy and Teen Girl complained about going on the cruise, I snapped. It was the crack heard round the Jones' household.

I admit, my scrambled eggs may have become airborne (It's amazing how aerodynamic they are when you add plenty of fresh cream and give them a good whip) and a few saucy words may have escaped my lips.  It is one of those family scenes that you wish you could edit and leave on the cutting room floor of family disasters.

But I'm afraid, like a good drama scene, it's forever etched in our memories. 

I'd like to say that the teens and husband dug into the golumpkies with gusto, confessed that they'd wished they had tried them years ago, wanted them packed up in their lunch boxes,  but my "cooking my food" bender was a disaster, a gustatory failure.

They didn't eat them, they ordered pizza instead and I was left with a pan of golumpkies that seemed to multiply in the fridge.

The kids didn't go on their cruise, but headed to Paris instead.

But I realized that although I love to complain about those Thomas the Tank, Camping in the Rain and Old Country Buffet days,  I actually look back on those memories with great fondness.

And  like all good strikes, you have to have a few concessions and overlook a few pizza boxes.

Dot's Yellow Recipe Box

Not Dot's but close

When our Mom, Dot, died suddenly at 49, she left us the usual trinkets that get passed down from one generation to the next;  jewelery, china and plenty of neurotic baggage, but what Sissy and I really wanted was her simple  yellow plastic recipe box that was jammed  with her handwritten recipes for  beef stroganoff, pie crust and  apple kuchen.
 
Yet in the midst of the upheaval of losing our mom and the dysfunctional horrors that followed, Dot's yellow recipe box went missing.

It was a monster of a recipe box, an ugly neon yellow embossed treasure chest that a recipe club sent her as a gift because she got suckered into signing a ten year recipe contract. She tossed out their shiny recipe cards without ever trying them and began to fill that box with decades of  recipes, from German potato salad to French Chou pastry.  

With her large and fancy script, Dot wrote out her recipes with those gloriously scrolled  D's F's and G's, on index cards that were dotted with drips of oil, smudges of Crisco and butter. It wasn't organized in any particular order, just a haphazard collection of our family's culinary genealogy, a road map of hit and miss recipes,  with happy faces marked on the keepers and  frowns inked on the flops.

Dot was a fabulous cook and baker, a rare combination, who could whip up coq au vin and an apple tart without breaking a sweat. She'd roll out fresh pasta and hang them like tinsel over the kitchen chairs and even went through a canning stage (one season was enough for her), running to our local farm stand for boxes of ripe tomatoes. 

We watched Julia and Graham together, with Mom sitting on the couch, sipping eight o'clock coffee, scribbling the recipes as they flashed on the screen.

"How much mushrooms did they call for?" she'd yell.

We loved the Galloping Gourmet, his lilting accent, his infectious grin, his joy of cooking, plus it was so darn  novel for us to see a man actually cooking because the head of our household could only pour a bowl of Cheerios. 

Mom was  stoic stick figured gal who, during the slow and steamy summer which seemed to stretch for months, would cook in her one piece swimsuit and heels, with a glass of homemade iced tea and a Lucky Strike balanced on her Ruby Red lips. Come winter,  she'd be wrapped up in sweaters and slippers, with a mug of coffee or a whiskey sour as she padded through the kitchen, her glasses perched on her head, the recipes spread out over the counter, like she was orchestrating a battle.


Mom's apple pie was legendary, a six inch high  golden dome of flaky pastry bursting with syrupy apples and cinnamon. Her recipe was simple, just a few ingredients, some flour, Crisco and vinegar and salt, but it was a tricky bugger that didn't like to be fussed with.  She'd roll that dough into a perfect circle, gently picking it up and draping it over the glass pie plate, holding her breath. More often than not, the crust would crack and Mom would mutter and sigh and say she was going to find a new dough recipe but she never did. She'd fire up another Lucky, and start all over again. She'd make pinwheels out of the leftover pastry, sugary bite-sized gems that we'd pop down as fast as they'd come off the cookie sheet, burning our fingers and mouths as we raced to get our share. 

My Recipes

This recipe is a lost  treasure, along with hundreds of dishes that came to our table every night. I've tried dozens of pie crust recipes, even my Mom's namesake, Dorothy, from the Boston Globe, but they're never quite right. Never as light, never as flaky. And they always fall apart.

Though I wasn't a big fan of apple kuchen when I was a toe headed tot terrorizing the kitchen as my mother tried to cook dinner,  I've developed an obsession with it now and long for her recipe, a golden brown cake, smothered in a custard apple topping. Like my quest for my Mom's pie crust, I have trolled through cyberspace looking for a similar kuchen recipe, trying dozens of recipes, only to be disappointed.
 
I'd like to think that Mom's yellow recipe box found a new home somewhere, found a family that needed her recipes.  But if you happen to find a big yellow recipe box at a yard sale, take a peak inside. If you see a recipe for Dot's Pie Crust with a smiley face on the upper right corner, let me know.

We'd like to bring a bit of Mom home.

Don't Wake the Cade Sisters'

Three of the Four Cade Sisters

Sissy and I stood in front  of McVeigh's Funeral Home and eyed each other.

 "After you, Sissy," I said, waving her ahead.

 I figured she'd get the initial  blast of funeral parlor smell, that familiar but unsettling odor that curls up your nose, triggering for us, an avalanche of atypical funeral home memories.
And like all of the family wakes we've attended, we headed straight to the restroom to freshen up and do the pre-wake pow-wow.

Sissy lowered her head; her big brown eyes peeked over her funky glasses and warned me like only a big sister can.

"You'd better not laugh,” she said. "I'll kill you."

See Sissy and I have a little problem when it come to burying people.

We laugh.

It started with Great Uncle Snook Stangel and his cowboy hat.

Great Uncle Snook was married to Myrtle, a lively wide faced freckled woman three times his size. Her raucous laugh could crack a hundred double pained windows. The more Manhattans she downed, the louder she grew. Her infectious laugh would blow through the room like a giant gust of wind. And she made the best lip licking shrimp remoulade this side of Louisiana.

Like most people, Snook shrunk as he aged; losing what seemed like a good foot during the last few decades. Or maybe he was always that small. We Cade's are big boned can-do gals so we felt like Amazon wrestlers next to him. Snook was so tiny that he needed a booster seat when he motored round the city in his big three-ton tank of a Buick. He would sit on a tufted pillow, his little white head looking like the rising moon over the dashboard.

So when we got the call that Snook had passed on, there was a big "to do" because Snook was cremated and the Stangel's get buried, not scattered. But Snook was a white haired renegade and did what he damn well pleased and when we walked into the funeral home, Snook was resting inside an elegant and stately vase, fit for a giant.

But the trouble started when Sissy and I walked up to pay our respects to Great Uncle Snook. On the pedestal, next to Snook in the Vase, was a picture of him with a giant cowboy hat on. That damn hat just about swallowed Snook and if you know our family, we do not have an ounce of cowboy blood in our bodies.

And we don't wear cowboy hats.

That's when the Cade Sisters' lost control. Something about that big cowboy hat and Great Uncle Snook in the Vase triggered something primal.

And it wasn't pretty. 

We're not proud of our juvenile behavior that day. In fact, we were downright embarrassed, but since the Cade Sisters' have an aberrant acting gene floating around in our DNA pool, and while the rest of the Stangel's were overcome with grief, or catching up on the latest church gossip, no one seemed to notice that the we were howling as we stood in front of Great Uncle Snook's remains.

It's a good thing the Stangel's have bad hearing and eyesight.

Snook's cowboy hat started a pattern of bad burial behavior that continues to this day. And always begins with a stern warning from Sissy who seems to have very selective funeral home memories.

There was the Great Aunt Rally Debacle where my nephew, who may be following in his Aunty's giant footsteps, joined me as we walked up to pay our respects. As we knelt  down before Rally, I felt it coming, like a runaway train, building speed as my knees made contact with the prayer bench. Once it begins, it is simply unstoppable. Our eyes met in a cockeyed sideways glance. And it started. As I buried my head in my hands, my impressive shoulders shook. I begged Rally for help. Even Snook. Called upon God, Buddha, Allah, and Zeus.

But no one answered my distress call.

Sissy wouldn't pair up with me because she knew I'd jump over that thin line that separates grief from laughter. She was relieved that it was me this time, not her.

We recently returned from New York where we buried the last of the Greats- Uncle Len. Bless him, at 88, he was the baby of the family, and was our favorite Uncle. And throughout the four hour car journey Sissy reminded me that I had better not laugh.

"Behave yourself," Sissy warned.

"Hey, it's not always me," I sassed back.

"You started at Snook's," I reminded her.

"You did at Rally's," she said.

So as usual, we made a beeline straight to the ladies room for the pre wake pep talk. The Stangel's previous funeral home, Frederick’s ,was much nicer, plus they gave away those plastic nail files that you could push up and down, making a wonderfully addictive zipper-like noise. We still can't figure out why those skin color nail files were the funeral parlor rage, particularly since the metal tip was so damn sharp and who wants to pull out a file with a funeral home's logo plastered all over?

We paid our respects to Len, standing over the open casket, without any hints of laughter. No smiles, no side glances, no funny breathing sounds,no shaking shoulders. We didn't say he looked good, because well, he didn't and whoever caked on his makeup has a lot to answer for when they meet up with Marge Stangel.

Had we matured since the last family funeral? Had we finally outgrown the wicked bereavement behaviors? Cracked the Cade Curse? Would we finally be able to get through a wake or funeral without falling apart?

But then the priest walked in.

And all hell broke loose.

The thickly accented Priest called him Leo instead of Len. If their outrage was measurable, that side of the family would be multimillionaires. Heads turned, tongues clucked, but the little priest carried on with a wide smile stumbling over the virtues of a guy named Leo.

And that's when Sissy bowed her head, and her shoulders started to shake, like the rumblings of a great volcano.  Mount St. Sissy. Her face wasn't red; it was aubergine.  She was suppressing the monster of all laughs. Luckily, we Cade Sisters' realize our limitations and always park our behinds in the back row so Sissy got up, head bowed, her hands covering her eyes and walked out.

I knew Sissy wasn't grieving. In fact, I thought I heard the faint echo of a gasping laugh coming from the restroom.

Don't get me wrong. We love our extended family and these funerals are difficult for us particularly since we've lost the Greats in our family, a wildly eclectic, kooky bunch of  Stangel's. And we hate that we break out in laughter. But somehow, I think, the Greats are looking down at us, shaking their collective white heads, their soft blue eyes twinkling with delight. Because if there was one thing the Stangels' appreciated most, it was a good laugh.