When Mom is a memory
When I remember most people in the past, I see them as I last saw them physically. When I think of my mother, and I often do, it is not her face that comes to mind most readily, but it is her laughter that I hear with the clarity of a crystal dinner bell. And then, with the peals still resonant, I detect a whiff of perfume, a light sweet and spicy scent called Crepe de Chine, a fragrance from another era, no longer sold, that no one else I knew wore with such grace. It was a fragrance much like the ’80s hit, Opium, only more genteel as though it floated to the senses through gossamer rather than draped itself like velvet on the mind. It is only when the most archaic portions of my brain have recovered the essence of my mother that I can see her clearly and retell her tales. The stories that surface first are always from my childhood, days when Mother was young and gay.
I used to think the scrambled sequence of maternal memory was something women carried in mitochondrial DNA, an artifact of the genome. I learned last week that we have a lens through which we view every mother we love, our own and others. My mother-in-law passed away last week, peacefully after almost 98 years, my husband and I beside her. Almost instantly as her eyes dimmed, I saw Mary as I first saw her, holding her husband’s hand and laughing with a deep sparkle of delight in eyes as clear and blue as a Santa Ana sky.
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
Based on “The Joy of Cooking”
My earliest kitchen memory has me sitting cross-legged on a red vinyl chair. In my lap, I have a heavy pottery bowl tucked against my tummy and a rubber spatula to scrape the sides. My chubby fingers make a better scoop and a quicker trip from bowl to greedy mouth. Licking the cake bowl was a weekly treat at our house-and when I was old enough to stir with confidence, my mother pulled a step stool next to the counter and taught me the tools of her trade.
Propped between the rolling pin and coffee maker lay a well-spattered, dog-eared book that rested in every household of my youth: the blue-bound version of “The Joy of Cooking.” Every cake, virtually every cookie, and most dinners of my childhood began in the pages of that text. This particular recipe was a mother-child bonding exercise so powerful that I cannot see a cast iron skillet and fail to think of molten-brown sugar bubbling in a bit of butter nor the sharp-sweet aroma of pineapple browning in the oven. I bake the cake with care -pat the rings together and center each cherry before pouring the batter gently so as not to dislodge my patchwork of circles and dots. When you bake this, do it with a child. You’ll be building a memory.
1 stick, plus 1 Tbs. butter, melted and cooled
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup pecan halves (optional)
1 can Dole pineapple, drained
1/2 cup maraschino cherries, drained
1 cup cake flour, sifted with 1 Tbs. baking powder
4 eggs, separated
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sugar
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt the stick of butter in a large ovenproof skillet. Add brown sugar and stir until it just bubbles. Remove from heat. Arrange pineapple rings, cherries and pecan halves – your design.
3. Beat egg yolks with 1 tablespoon melted butter and vanilla.
4. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until fluffy, then beat in sugar until glossy.
5. Fold in the yolks and then, gradually, the flour mixture. Pour gently over the fruit and bake 30 minutes without opening the oven to peek.
6. Remove from the oven when it’s golden brown on top and invert, immediately, on to a cake platter and leave the pan upside down for a minute or two to let all the buttery sugar coat the cake.
* If we were having guests, my mother might poke the cake with a toothpick and sprinkle dark rum over the top before serving. In any event, she always served it with freshly whipped cream sweetened with just a touch of sugar.