Jumpstart

A couple years ago I took a class called Jumpstart Your Writing.

I posted two writings from that class on my previous blog. The first which I gave the title Words are Too Good for Me is only about a paragraph long. I wrote it in class in response to a writing prompt.

When I read it, I still wonder who the narrator is and whether he is already dead or not:

This is my story and I can promise only two things: it will be short and you can walk away from it and come back anytime. I'll be here waiting because without you, I can't move. I'll start at the end-- you need to understand how it all ends, for the beginning to have any meaning.

They buried me in an oblong box in the oppressing heat of July.  Cedar.  I know because it smelled like fresh shavings from Grandpa's whittling wood and cedar is the best for that, he always said.  Eight people were in attendance that day but only seven spoke. I lay still, so still.  My eyes staring vacantly at the back of my lids, sun shadows causing shapes and images to dance across the stage of my mind.

The Priest stood and my parents' heads bowed in sorrow. I know they did, even if it looked to others like prayer. Sorrow for...



The second, Grocery Store Grandma, is a completed work with, in my opinion, a dissatisfying ending (a bit cliché) that is nonetheless true according to my recall.



Grocery Store Grandma

That culinary mystery, the kitchen, had never been an area of expertise for me. I seemed to learn about domestic duties the hard way: Pouring every available powder and liquid into my first independent load of laundry, only to pull my favorite sage green blouse out an hour later with large while gaps, looking like a tie-dye in reverse, reinforced the concept that bleach is only for whites.   "Do not microwave foil," a rule that every 5 year-old, pop-tart eating, microwave-operating child should know, came to me much later and after a small incident involving fire.  For years I had been the recipient of regular 5 o'clock phone calls that my mother made on her way home from work, giving me step-by-step instructions on how to get a certain dish started for her so that dinner could be served promptly at her husband's demand, whatever time that might be.

Without ever having cracked a cookbook, I was confident in my ability to prepare a healthy, tasty meal. After all, I could monitor a grilling burger at Dairy Queen and I could toast bread and scramble eggs. I knew that when you put frozen vegetables in the microwave you were supposed to add enough water to cover them, but just barely.  Measurement conversions, temperatures and cooking times never crossed my threshold of awareness.  After all, I started dinner several times per week and an hour or so later, I ate it.  What could Mother possibly have done in the interim that I wouldn't instinctively know how to do, after following her step-by-step directions for so many years?

So when, as a Freshmen in college, I complained that it was too difficult to come home and cook for one after a full day of classes and waiting on customers at the Dairy Queen, my mother suggested that I purchase a crock pot.  Noting that you could throw all of the ingredients in together, saving on dishes, that it could cook all day and be ready when you came home at night, saving on time, and that it was an inexpensive kitchen tool, a primary factor in my decision, my mother quickly sold me on the idea of crock-potting my next meal.  She even suggested chicken as a starting place.

Feeling an unwarranted confidence in my culinary abilities, as only an 18 year-old living on her own for the first time can, I set off to the grocery store, an entirely different experience when I was the one making selections off of the shelves instead of trudging along behind the cart, hoping the bakery still had some good cookies left in the free sample jar and that I could convince Mother to buy my favorite cereal.  No sooner had I reached the meat aisle than a startling realization hit me: nothing in the display cases remotely resembled the chicken-on-a-stick I ate at home, nor the soft white flesh cross-hatched with black charcoal marks that epitomized the breast meat my parents preferred. I was not to be deterred, however.  I simply scanned the shelves and, seeing a tightly wrapped bundle of white plastic and orange netting that slightly resembled the shape of a fowl, I picked it up and held it in my hands for examination.  It seemed, well, small.  Glancing once more over the selection in the refrigerated cases, however, gave way to no further discoveries of familiarity in shape, color or size. In the next breath I determined to ask a store employee, if one was in sight.  Having thus decided upon a course of action, I wheeled my cart up and down the aisle, making a U-turn at the dairy section and picking up a couple of yogurts from the center display- how convenient for the next morning's breakfast.  Still no employee. Very well then, I'd just look for someone else to ask, someone.... approachable.

A harried young mother hurried by with a screaming toddler in the child seat. Not her. I kept searching. A man, tall and gruff looking, picked up a package of something red and bloody then turned on his heel and sauntered off.  Whatever he was having for dinner, I didn't think I'd like it.  Then a shorter woman, gray at the temples and wrinkled in the face and neck, pushed her cart slowly in my direction.  I paused, adjusted my cart. Picked up the small bird by its netting and cleared my throat. "Excuse me?"

The woman turned her gaze in my direction and I was rewarded for my patience with a smiling, open face.  Perhaps she would be willing to help; she looked like somebody's grandmother, and not the moth-balls and cough drops kind either, but the cookies and cocoa and story books kind.  A deep breath, "Um, do you think this is a chicken?"

The grandmotherly woman chuckled. "No dear, that's a Cornish game hen."

"Oh."  I had no idea what that meant.  "Do you think I can crock-pot it?"

The Grandmother, excusing  my verbing of the noun crock pot, moved her cart closer, her posture committing to the situation. "Usually you roast them."  Roast. Oh, great. Didn't that require special pans with holes in them for draining juices? And basting? I correlated roasting with Thanksgiving Turkey, an all-day cooking process.  As she started to launch into directions for roasting one of the little birds, I interrupted "I want to crock pot something."

Grandmother smiled at me, an indulgent smile. "First time?"

"Yeah. My mom said chicken would be easy, but..." I trailed off.  Grandmother pushed her cart further down the aisle, in the direction of the vermillion packages I had seen the man make his selection from.  She paused, finger to her lips as if considering, then pushed her cart once more and stopped in front of a small sign proclaiming "Chuck" and a dollar per pound amount that held little meaning for me.

As I came up behind her she picked up a Styrofoam tray with some sort of reddish animal's flesh on it, streaked with veins of white that here thickened and there thinned, intersecting and spreading like a map across the Saran-wrapped surface. "I used to feed a family of 8," she told me, "and chuck roast is one of the most best things to put in a crock pot because it goes far and costs little."

I swallowed. It didn't have too much blood. And it didn't look like steak-- I didn't like steak-- but neither did it look like chicken.  Oh well, I'd take a risk, have a new taste experience.  Grandmother put the tray in my hands; cold, heavy.  Her crooked finger began to trace the veinous map, indenting the meat under the plastic wrap as she explained that the white parts were fat and gave me instructions on where to cut.  "Do you know what else to put in," she asked.

"Um, not really."  So much for appearing competent. Here was a person who was willing to assist me and I'd accept all of the help I could get.  She rattled off a list of vegetables and spices, half of which I didn't recognize and the other half of which I didn't particularly care for, ending with instructions about some kind of tomato sauce.

I thanked the kindly grandmother lady and headed toward the produce area where I bagged any sort of vegetable I recognized, namely potatoes, carrots and celery, then went in search of the tomato product.  It was while I was staring at the shelves contemplating whether there was a difference between tomato sauce, tomato paste and tomato concentrate that my would-be benefactress turned from her place in the check out line and noticed my befuddlement.  Leaving her cart in line, she deftly selected a few cans from the shelf and dropped them into my cart, then advised me that I'd better give her my phone number so that she could give me instructions on how to cook all of this.

Later that same afternoon, my cell phone rang with an unfamiliar number. "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Duffy?"

"This is she."  The phrase always felt awkward on my tongue, not unlike the way ma'am settled uncomfortably across my shoulders, the language of adulthood that I modeled after my mother but was not yet ready to have fit me.

"Its Nada, from the grocery store?"

"Oh! Oh yes, thanks for calling! And for your help today."

"Do you have something to write with? I'll give you cooking directions."  Nada held the line while I went in search of a writing stick and paper.  Settling back on a barstool at my apartment's small breakfast bar, I proceeded to take copious notes on cooking the chuck roast with accompanying vegetables. At the conclusion of the call, I again thanked Nada and, upon her request, supplied my address.

A week passed and a I invited friends over for my special crock pot meal, taking pleasure in their enjoyment and the "home-cooked" feel of it all. Of course I gave credit to Nada for her time and care, and my friends were awed at the experience as I recounted it, but even more so when a manila envelope arrived in the mail with her name in the return address.  Opening it, I found a scrawled noted with several photocopies of recipes, complete with cooking instructions, for crock pot meals.

Together with my roommate, we made the first of a series of meals from the new recipes and, remembering Nada's advice on presentation, I took the first serving and laid it out decoratively on a white etched plate against a soft blue place setting and snapped a Polaroid for Nada.