Friday Potpourri: 11 October 2024

Nothing political, and it's not even funny

Oct 11, 2024

First, a tidbit in case you haven’t heard: GEICO has decided to not insure Cybertrucks because they don’t meet their underwriting guidelines. GEICO’s letter. Any blow against anything Elmo does is happy for me…

This has been a very odd week for me.

People have asked me when I write my posts. It takes hours to do the research, find sources, check the sources, write, add snark. I write early in the morning, during my lunch break, and after work, and set publication for the next morning. For some of the data heavy posts, well, they take several days. Since I work from home, I can work my full 8 hours, and still have time to write.

But this week, for the first time since 2019, I was in the office for two days. This meant spending an hour each morning to get ready, and then an hour’s drive each way.

I saw people I have worked with from “before” and met people I have only known via TEAMS. It was AWESOME. I enjoyed it immensely. It was very tiring.

One thing that happened: there are these two incredibly smart tech guys who were conversing over something technical, and the intensity of their conversation was mesmerizing. You could smell the brainpower. REALLY IMPRESSIVE. The one on the left is tall, with dark hair and earrings, well-muscled. He looks nothing like my dad did. But he cocked his head, placed his hand to his face in that familiar way, and had the exact same expression I used to see on my dad when he was engrossed in an intellectual discussion. It was like dad was at the meeting. In spirit. I miss my dad.

Which brings me to my mom, whom I also miss. The other day, I posted about not being able to find a recipe of hers. A number of people have asked me what I was looking for, so here we go.

My mom couldn’t cook. Now, neither could my dad: he limited himself to making peanut butter sandwiches (all properly cut into quarters on the diagonal) and mixing tuna fish salad to the consistency of pulp (not a success). My mom kept trying. My parents both told people that I had learned to cook out of self-defense.

Sample story: a contingent of our family were coming over to visit from Israel, and my mom wanted kosher food that would be “impressive”. She wanted salmon. I offered to make salmon en papillote on the understanding that she wouldn’t come into the kitchen while I was cooking. She couldn’t stop herself from coming to watch, and asked why I was taking the skin off the bottom of the salmon. I explained that I was prepping the salmon and was going to put portions in individual packets. She was shocked, and asked: “What are you doing? The skin’s the part that burns to the pan.” You see the issue. In case anyone wants it, my salmon en papillote recipe is in the footnote.1

Anyway, my mother could make chicken soup, sorta. When she was first married, the story goes, she put too much salt in the soup, and from that day forward, never put a single grain of salt into anything, especially chicken soup. For Passover, she made baked kneidlach (matzoh balls) for the chicken soup. This was something her mother made, and the kneidlach were interesting.

If you’ve never had a matzoh ball, they are little balls primarily made of matzoh meal that are boiled. You can have “floaters” or “sinkers” depending on how dense you like them. Normally, they’re a little bigger than a golf ball.

BUT

My mother and grandmother baked them, somehow, in a Pyrex pan in a bath of onions and chicken shmaltz. They had a bit of a bottom crust, were very dense, and needed to spend a little time in the soup to soften up and you STILL needed a knife a fork to cut them up. When people from outside the family would attend a Seder, they would get perplexed looks on their faces. But our family just loved them. They were a delicacy. It’s all what you’re brought up on.

One year, my ex-brother and I did an experiment. We left one on the counter overnight and the next morning, I threw it, he hit it with a baseball bat, I caught it, and it stayed intact. And it was the size of a baseball. A multi-use food, if you will.

My grandmother claimed she had gotten the recipe from her mother, meaning the recipe is definitely Lithuanian. I have found recipes for Lithuanian kneidlach with meat inside — that’s not it. I’ve found Passover recipes for “rolls” made of matzoh meal - also not that. I’ve tried baking standard matzoh balls in the oven over a bed of onions and chicken shmaltz - no joy. You’d think that either my grandmother or mother would have written down the recipe, but neither believed in recipes, which explains OH! so much.

While my mother didn’t cook, she excelled at other things. At a time when girls were raised to be wives, with maybe something on the side until they married and had kids, my mother told me on a regular basis that I could be anything I wanted to be. That the sky was the limit. She was committed to the idea that I would make my mark on the world, and make the world a better place.

While she was my greatest cheerleader, my mother was also my greatest critic. I disappointed her in so many ways: she was a clothes horse, with a great sense of style. She was tall and willowy, with a swan neck, and long legs. She often dressed elegantly, and also sometimes funky in ethnic clothes from around the world, before such looks were popular. Unless forced, I’m committed to jeans and tee shirts or sweaters.

I have a ton of stories about my mom, but I will leave you today with one about political action. A cousin of mine was doing some genealogic research on the family and mailed me a copy of a microfiche from the NYT, in 1948, showing my mother’s arrest. She was underage, and was arrested at CCNY for protesting so that blacks at CCNY could be students and faculty, and not relegated, as they were at the time, to being maids and porters. She received a suspended sentence. I thought this was spectacular, and had never heard about it before. I immediately called my ex-brother, swore him to secrecy, and told him about it. Then I called everyone else I could think of, swore THEM to secrecy and told them. I made several copies, put the original back in the envelope and carried it around with me for about 5 years until the perfect opportunity presented itself. My mom, who raised me as a flaming liberal, had started becoming reactionary. We didn’t know why at the time.

Anyway.

My parents, the world’s oldest grad student, and I, were at the Cracker Barrel. I was sitting next to my dad, and he was across from mom. She made some insane pro-Republican comment I’m not going to repeat because it was ugly. I said it was so sad that someone who had done something so brave and politically correct as a teenager would have come to this. My dad looked at me, and I knew he knew I knew.

I pulled the envelope out of my purse and handed her the microfiche. My dad studied the envelope. She told me I better never tell anyone, and both my dad and I said “too late”, as he passed her the envelope with his finger on the date stamp. She threatened some more, and I told her it was going to be my lead when I gave her eulogy. She told me if I did that, she’d haunt me the rest of my days and I told her it would be worth it.

We found out the next year that my mom had a brain tumor. We knew she’d started watching Fox, and didn’t know if watching Fox was a result of the tumor, or the cause. The tumor did, however, explain her change in politics.

Logistically, I know how to “do politics” so well because my uncle taught me. But I am a political activist, and all the other things I am, because my mother was a flaming liberal when she raised me, and because she inculcated into me that I could be anything I wanted to be, especially if I worked to make the world a better place.

Love to you in heaven, mom.

Jessica’s Substack

Discussion about this post