|
Marriage. Motherhood. Meringue. Otherwise known as The Sweetest Things in a Woman’s Life. At least to my mother, who’s spent most of her life perfecting the art of this holy triumvirate. And the rest of it bemoaning my failure to master any of it.
It started with marriage. My mother comes from the Fifties School of Life, which teaches that finding the right mate is the most important decision a woman can make in her life. My mother married my father in 1954. They’ve been as happy as clams ever since.
Naturally, I got it all wrong. My first husband left me broke with two small children, no college degree, no work experience, and no job prospects. My second husband left me broke with one small child, two teenagers, a roofless house, two dogs, and a small fortune in unpaid taxes. Not to mention a custody battle that cost me my life savings and several months of my life. Did I mention the custody battle that cost me my life savings and several months of my life?
“We never really had any trouble until you started getting married.”
My mother is in my kitchen, up to her elbows in eggs and sugar and baking utensils that get used, uh, once a year. She and my father are here on one of their annual trips East from Las Vegas—which my father spends outside on the dock fishing in the lake and my mother spends baking countless pies, cakes, and cookies for our sweets-starved household.
“That’s not true.” I watch as she separates the egg whites with the spare efficiency of a swordsman. “That can’t possibly be true.”
She ignores me as she slips the bowl of egg whites into the microwave. “The trick to a good meringue foam is temperature. The egg whites must be at room temperature—not too hot or too cold—before you beat them. If you take the eggs right out of the fridge, you’ll need to warm them up a bit first.”
Mom has to be wrong. There must be something that caused more trouble for my folks than my unfortunate marital alliances.
“What about the war in Vietnam?” I smile, triumphant. Dad spent a tour over there during some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict. A lot of sleepless nights for us all until he came back home safe and sound. “Now that was trouble. Big trouble.”
“It didn’t last as long,” she says without missing a beat as she pulls the bowl out of the beeping microwave and places it on the counter.
She had me there. I sigh. “I guess not.”
Armed now with a wire whisk, my mother whips the egg whites with a surprisingly strong seventy-year-old arm.
“Look, Mom, I didn’t mean to cause you and Dad any trouble.” I watch as the egg whites double and redouble under her capable strokes in mounting folds of rich goo.
“Well, of course you didn’t!” Mom whips harder. “It wasn’t your fault!” She whips furiously now, agitated, and the egg whites stand at full attention in tall peaks rising out of the bowl.
“You were never any trouble.” She adds the sugar and whips again, attacking the foam. “It was those . . . those . . . those husbands of yours.”
Overcome, my mother stops short. The whisk in her hand slips and sloppy tufts of meringue soar through the air, landing mostly on my cheeks and chin. She stares at me. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry!”
I laugh. “Look who’s trouble now, Mom.”
Mom laughs, too, once she’s satisfied that she hasn’t blinded me with the makings of her favorite dessert. She puts the whisk down on the counter and dabs at my face with the wet end of a dishtowel.
“I’m fine, Mom.” I laugh again. “Back to the meringues.”
“Of course. Before the foam falls.” Mom rushes back to the bowl and spoons the meringue onto the cookie sheet in perfectly formed swirling dollops of spun-sugared bliss.
“Were they really so bad?” I answer my own question. “Yeah, I guess they were.”
“They were intense.” My mother gives me one of her trademark I love you but don’t understand you looks. “You’ve always fallen for intense men. Not good for the long haul.”
I think about this while I dip my finger in the bowl and lick up the leftover foam. “That’s true. I never really thought about it that way.”
“I would have killed them both,” my mother says with such force that it occurs to me that she may be a little intense herself.
“It’s okay, Mom. The kids are great. I mean they’re not perfect, but—”
“My grandchildren are wonderful. But that has nothing to do with their fathers.”
“What matters is that they turned out fine, Mom. The rest is ancient history.”
“No, it’s not. You raised those kids all on your own.” Mom shakes her head as she pre-heats the oven to 250 degrees. “And you’re still doing it. You’re still doing everything on your own.”
In Mom’s world, men are men and women do not do anything on their own, except shop. Their men pay the bills, discipline the children, and change the oil in the car every 3,000 miles. The women keep perfect homes, raise perfect children, and make perfect meringues. If they work outside the home, it’s because they want to—not because the bank has foreclosed on the house.
“Maybe I’m supposed to, Mom. Maybe my lesson this lifetime is to figure out how to do things on my own.”
“Hmmph!” Mom rolls her eyes at me. “Oh, please!”
I don’t know what annoys her more, the fact that I could believe such a thing or the New-Age psychobabble I use to express it. I’m sure that it’s a toss-up.
She slaps the rest of the meringues into place on the cookie sheet and pops it into the oven. “A woman needs a man around—just like a man needs a woman.” Mom slams the door shut—and I shudder on behalf of the unbaked meringues inside. “If you could just meet the right man . . .”
“A non-intense man?” I tease her at my own risk.
“Yes.” My mother raises one of her perfect Elizabeth Taylor eyebrows. “A non-intense man. Like Pergola Man.”
Pergola Man is family code for Joel, the man Mom thinks I should have married—but didn’t.
“We’re just friends, now, Mom, you know that.”
The truth is that I broke his heart when I reconciled with my ex—a reconciliation that, of course, did not last—and Joel’s never quite trusted me with it again.
“No man builds a woman a pergola unless he’s in love with her.” Mom sets the oven timer for an hour. She points to the sink. “You wash, I’ll dry.”
This is family code for I have something to say and you’re going to listen. We wash up; Mom talks—and I listen.
“A good relationship is like a good meringue,” she says. “None of this intense, crazy love stuff that burns out in a flash. You need to start at room temperature and warm up as you go. You set the oven on low, and over a slow heat the meringue sets.”
“That’s lovely, Mom.” I grin at her. “But I never did learn to make a decent meringue.”
“You had your first lesson today. I hope you were paying attention.”
Dishes done, Mom throws the towel at me to dry my hands. “I took the liberty of inviting Pergola Man over for dinner. He should be here in an hour.”
“I see. Just about the time the meringues are coming out of the oven.” My mother is nothing if not subtle.
“Exactly.” My mother gives me a quick hug. “There’s not a man alive who can resist a good meringue.”
Any more than I can resist my mother.
**Paula Munier's story is just one of the fifty touching and lovely stories in this wonderful tribute to moms. Check out A Cup of Comfort for Mothers today!
If you'd like to hear from Paula Munier, creator of the Cup of Comfort series and author of this funny and touching story, sign up for our next online writing workshop--it's coming up this Tuesday, February 9th!
|
