While ferreting around in the fridge one day among the plastic containers and nearly empty bottles of mustard and pickles and jam in search of something for supper that didn’t smell like late summer road kill I suddenly had a vision of meals enjoyed in distant times and places. Memorable meals. Joyful meals. Like that wonderful duck back in 1978.
It was a soft sunny late summer late afternoon in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. I had promised my sweety that I would cook a duck and there it was in the oven already smelling pretty nice. The rice was on and the salad ready to go. We were kicked back on deck chairs out in front of the kitchen door blinking like lizards on a rock while the chickens pecked at the driveway.
He had come straight from work, a talking to clients day, and was still wearing a tie and a shirt that had been recently pressed. Pants with a crease. Shoes.
I’m not sure how it happened exactly. I think we had originally planned on a picnic under the sprawling apple tree, but the apples had already begun to fall and attract wasps, and besides here was this duck, so as a compromise we spread out the picnic blanket in the living room, put the duck in the middle of it flanked by the other stuff, and then added plates and forks and such and then hunkered down ourselves.
I started cutting chunks off the duck, an awkward project from floor level, producing little splats of duck fat flying off in all directions. He looked down at his client tie, fingered it thoughtfully for a moment before getting up again and putting it at a safe distance from The Feast.
He had very nearly sat down again but was now looking down at those fine client pants with the creases. “There’s going to be duck fat everywhere isn’t there?” he mumbled.
“Take them off,” I suggested salaciously.
“You first,” he rejoined after a millisecond’s reflection.
So I did and then he did, and one thing led to another and before you knew it there we were dressed only in the clothes God gave us, hunched over the rapidly cooling duck trying not to spill our wine.
We tried using plates and forks like fine folks, but if you have never tried this sitting on the floor in your altogether, then I can only assure you that you can get seriously distracted when you drop food in places foodstuffs are just not supposed to be, not to mention the surprising difficulty of manipulating food on a plate that is slithering around on bare thighs increasingly lubricated with duck fat.
It was not long before we had abandoned all pretense of standard dining customs and were tearing the duck apart with our fingers, eating rice using the three-finger-scoop method, taking up salad in bite-sized pinches. We had duck fat running down our chins, down our bellies. Rice and bits of scallions and lettuce stuck here and there. The wine glasses were so slippery we had to hold them by the stem. We ate and laughed and laughed and ate until the duck was gone, and the rice had started to creep off the blanket. This we gathered up in a bundle and threw out the door before getting on with the rest of our evening, which was not a public event.
Years passed before the next meal rears up out of the tangled stew of events leading across the years and the continent. I was at a loose end one Saturday and dropped in on friends looking for maybe a beer and a laugh. The house was filled with the mouthwatering smell of roast lamb. I thought maybe I had wandered in just when everybody was sitting down for dinner, but discovered only Bora whose wife, Deane, had cooked up a leg of lamb and then left for the afternoon.
“Get a plate and sit down,” said Bora.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch. I’ll come back some other time,” I responded, never taking my eyes off the lamb.
“Get a plate and sit down,” said Bora carving off a chunk of lamb.
“Well, OK, just a little bit then,” I agreed, got a plate, and sat.
The chunk was quickly gone, and another magically appeared. This too was devoured in silence, maybe not quite so fast.
“More?” said Bora, dangling another slab.
“Sure, thanks,” I replied unnecessarily.
We managed to get through this latest piece in a genteel manner, partaking of idle conversation between bites, funny stories about provincial politicians, gossip about co-workers, speculation about the weather and so forth.
We had worked our way down to the end of the roast where it was tricky winkling out the nuggets with a knife so while we nattered on about this and that we were picking little scraps off the bone and gnawing the tendons and gristle.
By the time we had completed our analysis of the political scene and solved most of the world’s problems, there was nothing left of the lamb but a polished bone and some gristly scraps.
It was with sad reluctance that I returned to the reality that was my fridge. Supper that night, something retrieved from the freezer, was a pale ghost of those glorious memories.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Burden of Reminiscence
I am shivering in front of the wood stove, looking around my living room and trying to assign a reminiscent value to something in here. I have lived here off and on for 46 years. There should be something.
Of the 10 things hanging on the walls there are 2 pictures I like. One is a stylized clipper ship in an oval mat that has hung right where it is forever; the other is a painting of a lighthouse I bought in Nova Scotia. Or maybe Newfoundland. I have no measurable sentimental attachment to either.
There’s a banjo clock that originated with one set of grandparents or another. It hasn’t worked since The Duchess packed it to bring up from Pennsylvania. One day I plan to dust it.
There are three faded prints that somebody cut out of a calendar or a magazine and stuck into cheap frames.
There is a porcelain hummingbird hanging behind the door that a cousin gave me the Christmas after she came to visit the Duchess. I think the idea was to pretend that she was reconnecting with long lost relatives and not just making sure the Duchess had her name spelled right in her will.
There’s a genuine hand-crafted Newfoundland rug that is only there because there was no other free wall space available somewhere else and apart from all these, all that remains is a pair of candlesticks that look like a pair of cowled and constipated monks. They hang on either side of the woodstove. On guard. I think my father probably brought them back from Mexico or Peru or somesuch. I have no psychic link to them and they trigger no cascade of fond memories.
Having exhausted the catalog of hanging candidates, the attention strays to the furniture. There’s quite a bit. There are nine tables, for example, mostly plastic things acquired from CostCo or Staples. But there is also an old wobbly one that folds down that I have always liked. Who knows? Maybe it’s an antique. Apart from all those tables there isn’t so very much. The elephant in the room is the couch.
This once-proud furnishing was chosen, at Sears, by my father in 1966. He went to the furniture department personally and lay down on all the couches they had in the place to find the one that was, first, of sufficient length, and second, of sufficient comfort, for a satisfactory snooze. Then he told them he would buy it if they would give him a catalog – one of the Manhatten-phonebook-sized ones – not just one of those bacon drainers that come in the mail. They agreed and the very fine couch was soon delivered and may be the only new stick of furniture that has ever crossed the threshold of this old house.
Throughout its early life it sustained many naps by many people. At mid-life, unfortunately, there was a fire which deposited soot everywhere, but it was successfully cleaned and still respectable until 1993 when the first of the cats were introduced.
The first feline wave took a fancy to the region of the understructure that ran parallel to the floor and about a kittens-width above it. They pulled their way along it on their backs while sharpening their tiny needle-like toenails on the upholstery which resulted, after a while, in a whimsical fringed effect. This subtle redecoration was slowed when one of them was struck by a car and the other turned his attention to an upstairs railing.
Soon after this the second wave began as a gentle swell with the introduction of a hyperactive little calico who first drove the first cat into a state of PTSD and then started shredding all the furniture, including moldings, carpets, and, inevitably, the couch. Fortunately, at about this time, the manic little trollop dashed off into the woods and returned in the family way. When the happy day arrived, she broke into my linen cupboard, made a nest in my towels, and filled it full of kittens. In hopes of discouraging this as a permanent arrangement I got a nice box of a perfect size, lined with the finest rags in greater Shoreham, and personally relocated the squealing little packages into it. Then I put the towels in the wash with a lot of bleach and securely fastened the linen cupboard door.
Needless to say my box was rejected and the little family disappeared without a trace for several days until I noticed the mom sneaking around the back of the couch. Close inspection revealed that she had found a hole in the muslin cover that separated the springs and stuffing under the couch from the world at large. She had methodically carried each of her 5 children, one by one, up through this hole and down the full length of the couch to the other end where she had made a nest among whatever she found there.
Evicting the little family was not a trivial matter, short of tearing the couch apart. I would have left them there but for vivid nightmares of somebody strolling in with a beer in hand and flopping down on the wrong end of the couch to a sound like opening a lobster. In the end I lifted up the family end of the couch higher and higher until I could hear squeals of protest and the soft thumps of tiny bodies rolling down the muslin covering. Then I reached in through the hole and fetched them out, one by one.
The astonished and indignant mom just stood there and stared at them like a ninny while they squealed and squirmed on the rug and I sealed up the hole with tacks. But the drama was not over. She knew there used to be a hole there and saw no reason why there shouldn’t be again. So it came to pass that the minute I left the house for a minute she set to work and clawed a hole right back where it belonged and set up the nursery again down at the other end of the couch.
Not to be outdone, when I returned and discovered the status quo ante redux I shook the infants out again and this time left the couch on its end with a suitcase full of books in front of the hole. By this time the chorus of high-pitched squeals was loud enough not only to send the PTSD cat upstairs under a bed but also to inspire the mom to find a mutually satisfactory nest under the piano where they grew, unmolested, to large enough beings that they could be locked outside.
This worked until winter came on again and they had to be let in. Fortunately I was able to hand off three of them so now there were only three remaining. But by this time those three were pretty well grown and right away they started a campaign to reduce the left-hand arm of the couch to dissociated molecules. I didn’t notice this until I happened to spot some of the residue of the padding scattered in clumps around on the floor. They had quarried down through the outer fabric and the padding beneath it and were making good headway on the wood that held it all together. There was clearly no hope of invisible repairs so instead I scouted up a sturdy scrap of canvas and nailed it four deep over the excavation. This lasted for years while the residents clawed their inexorable way through layer after layer.
Meanwhile, time was taking its toll on the fuzzy folks as well as the rest of us and the furniture that surrounds us and one of The Residents first developed a limp and then full-blown paralysis. He could barely get around and spent most of his incontinent final weeks on the couch. I didn’t discover this lamentable condition for some time after he had been leaking into his little corner of the world. As soon as I figured it out I lined the Affected Area with plastic and towels, but the end came soon enough. The travelling vet came and greased the skids into the next world and I scooped up all that soggy stuff and tossed or bleached, and applied some patented Pet Stuff to the couch. It worked miraculously well in eliminating the smell, but still…
Soon, the mom went into mourning which made her feet bleed. Fortunately by this time the couch was perennially covered in old sheets and discarded towels so the bloody footprints were largely confined to these. Happily the condition cleared up quickly and I didn’t have to bleach anything else until the other Resident got a urinary condition and a mercifully brief period of incontinence ensued, followed by another bleaching of the sheets.
I have rearranged the living room since then so that the couch is facing in the other direction, and the remaining cats have started deconstructing the other end of it. I’m not sure why I keep it, apart from the logistical difficulty of getting it out of the house. It’s way too disgusting to sit on. When my brother comes to visit I fold up all the cat bedding and put down a clean cover of some sort, but he usually pushes aside the magazines piled on the end and sits where the cat died instead. Respectable guests are entertained in the kitchen.
And so if any object in that room can be said to bear the burden of heavy reminiscence, I think it would have to be that stolid, long-suffering, disreputable couch, and it would appear that I am pretty well stuck with it until some unborn generation of cats finally tears it down to the last tuft.
Of the 10 things hanging on the walls there are 2 pictures I like. One is a stylized clipper ship in an oval mat that has hung right where it is forever; the other is a painting of a lighthouse I bought in Nova Scotia. Or maybe Newfoundland. I have no measurable sentimental attachment to either.
There’s a banjo clock that originated with one set of grandparents or another. It hasn’t worked since The Duchess packed it to bring up from Pennsylvania. One day I plan to dust it.
There are three faded prints that somebody cut out of a calendar or a magazine and stuck into cheap frames.
There is a porcelain hummingbird hanging behind the door that a cousin gave me the Christmas after she came to visit the Duchess. I think the idea was to pretend that she was reconnecting with long lost relatives and not just making sure the Duchess had her name spelled right in her will.
There’s a genuine hand-crafted Newfoundland rug that is only there because there was no other free wall space available somewhere else and apart from all these, all that remains is a pair of candlesticks that look like a pair of cowled and constipated monks. They hang on either side of the woodstove. On guard. I think my father probably brought them back from Mexico or Peru or somesuch. I have no psychic link to them and they trigger no cascade of fond memories.
Having exhausted the catalog of hanging candidates, the attention strays to the furniture. There’s quite a bit. There are nine tables, for example, mostly plastic things acquired from CostCo or Staples. But there is also an old wobbly one that folds down that I have always liked. Who knows? Maybe it’s an antique. Apart from all those tables there isn’t so very much. The elephant in the room is the couch.
This once-proud furnishing was chosen, at Sears, by my father in 1966. He went to the furniture department personally and lay down on all the couches they had in the place to find the one that was, first, of sufficient length, and second, of sufficient comfort, for a satisfactory snooze. Then he told them he would buy it if they would give him a catalog – one of the Manhatten-phonebook-sized ones – not just one of those bacon drainers that come in the mail. They agreed and the very fine couch was soon delivered and may be the only new stick of furniture that has ever crossed the threshold of this old house.
Throughout its early life it sustained many naps by many people. At mid-life, unfortunately, there was a fire which deposited soot everywhere, but it was successfully cleaned and still respectable until 1993 when the first of the cats were introduced.
The first feline wave took a fancy to the region of the understructure that ran parallel to the floor and about a kittens-width above it. They pulled their way along it on their backs while sharpening their tiny needle-like toenails on the upholstery which resulted, after a while, in a whimsical fringed effect. This subtle redecoration was slowed when one of them was struck by a car and the other turned his attention to an upstairs railing.
Soon after this the second wave began as a gentle swell with the introduction of a hyperactive little calico who first drove the first cat into a state of PTSD and then started shredding all the furniture, including moldings, carpets, and, inevitably, the couch. Fortunately, at about this time, the manic little trollop dashed off into the woods and returned in the family way. When the happy day arrived, she broke into my linen cupboard, made a nest in my towels, and filled it full of kittens. In hopes of discouraging this as a permanent arrangement I got a nice box of a perfect size, lined with the finest rags in greater Shoreham, and personally relocated the squealing little packages into it. Then I put the towels in the wash with a lot of bleach and securely fastened the linen cupboard door.
Needless to say my box was rejected and the little family disappeared without a trace for several days until I noticed the mom sneaking around the back of the couch. Close inspection revealed that she had found a hole in the muslin cover that separated the springs and stuffing under the couch from the world at large. She had methodically carried each of her 5 children, one by one, up through this hole and down the full length of the couch to the other end where she had made a nest among whatever she found there.
Evicting the little family was not a trivial matter, short of tearing the couch apart. I would have left them there but for vivid nightmares of somebody strolling in with a beer in hand and flopping down on the wrong end of the couch to a sound like opening a lobster. In the end I lifted up the family end of the couch higher and higher until I could hear squeals of protest and the soft thumps of tiny bodies rolling down the muslin covering. Then I reached in through the hole and fetched them out, one by one.
The astonished and indignant mom just stood there and stared at them like a ninny while they squealed and squirmed on the rug and I sealed up the hole with tacks. But the drama was not over. She knew there used to be a hole there and saw no reason why there shouldn’t be again. So it came to pass that the minute I left the house for a minute she set to work and clawed a hole right back where it belonged and set up the nursery again down at the other end of the couch.
Not to be outdone, when I returned and discovered the status quo ante redux I shook the infants out again and this time left the couch on its end with a suitcase full of books in front of the hole. By this time the chorus of high-pitched squeals was loud enough not only to send the PTSD cat upstairs under a bed but also to inspire the mom to find a mutually satisfactory nest under the piano where they grew, unmolested, to large enough beings that they could be locked outside.
This worked until winter came on again and they had to be let in. Fortunately I was able to hand off three of them so now there were only three remaining. But by this time those three were pretty well grown and right away they started a campaign to reduce the left-hand arm of the couch to dissociated molecules. I didn’t notice this until I happened to spot some of the residue of the padding scattered in clumps around on the floor. They had quarried down through the outer fabric and the padding beneath it and were making good headway on the wood that held it all together. There was clearly no hope of invisible repairs so instead I scouted up a sturdy scrap of canvas and nailed it four deep over the excavation. This lasted for years while the residents clawed their inexorable way through layer after layer.
Meanwhile, time was taking its toll on the fuzzy folks as well as the rest of us and the furniture that surrounds us and one of The Residents first developed a limp and then full-blown paralysis. He could barely get around and spent most of his incontinent final weeks on the couch. I didn’t discover this lamentable condition for some time after he had been leaking into his little corner of the world. As soon as I figured it out I lined the Affected Area with plastic and towels, but the end came soon enough. The travelling vet came and greased the skids into the next world and I scooped up all that soggy stuff and tossed or bleached, and applied some patented Pet Stuff to the couch. It worked miraculously well in eliminating the smell, but still…
Soon, the mom went into mourning which made her feet bleed. Fortunately by this time the couch was perennially covered in old sheets and discarded towels so the bloody footprints were largely confined to these. Happily the condition cleared up quickly and I didn’t have to bleach anything else until the other Resident got a urinary condition and a mercifully brief period of incontinence ensued, followed by another bleaching of the sheets.
I have rearranged the living room since then so that the couch is facing in the other direction, and the remaining cats have started deconstructing the other end of it. I’m not sure why I keep it, apart from the logistical difficulty of getting it out of the house. It’s way too disgusting to sit on. When my brother comes to visit I fold up all the cat bedding and put down a clean cover of some sort, but he usually pushes aside the magazines piled on the end and sits where the cat died instead. Respectable guests are entertained in the kitchen.
And so if any object in that room can be said to bear the burden of heavy reminiscence, I think it would have to be that stolid, long-suffering, disreputable couch, and it would appear that I am pretty well stuck with it until some unborn generation of cats finally tears it down to the last tuft.
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