Quirky turkey

Joy Clough6 Comments

Turkey Day. If it was up to me, Thanksgiving would be nicknamed for the towering pillar of mashed potatoes with a giblet gravy moat I erect at the center of my plate. I know Helen would agree. And her sister, Becky, would rename the day in honor of the huge trough of green bean casserole she dives into first. Tom, on the other hand, would be more focused on the pie smorgasbord he’d be having for dessert than the protein course. But I guess saying “Happy Mashed Tater Day” or “How was your Plentiful Pie Day?” doesn’t have the right ring to it. People, understandably, pay more homage to the turkey than any big-as-a- boat crock of green beans or other side dishes.

It’s not surprising that Thanksgiving is synonymous with the bountiful, succulent bird at the center of our holiday table. After all, it’s been a Native American symbol of abundance and generosity since way before the Pilgrims invited themselves over for dinner. Besides, we’d be gathered together with our plates half empty if the king of poultry didn’t show up for the party.

“What are your plans for Thanksgiving this year?” folks ask. What they really want to know, especially if they’re women, is: Do I have to cook a turkey and all the trimmings or have I been invited to sit admiringly at the other end of the table while someone else stands behind the iconic platter of Butterball? “Meeting up with the girls out at Tom’s brother Jon’s in Idaho this year,” I report back—which is, apparently, interesting and unexpected enough to stop the conversation right then and there. What folks might not know (besides my preference for mashed taters and giblets) is that I already have a pretty amazing turkey feast under my belt this year.

“Wow…what a nice fat gobbler,” Tom remarked when our friend Keith’s son, Fletcher, first showed off the turkey he was raising in his back yard.

“Thanks,” Fletcher said. “We call him MC.”

“MC?” Tom pondered the name. Fletcher was too young and too down to earth to be an MC Hammer fan. He couldn’t help but wonder if the kid was getting so attached to the bird that he didn’t remember why he was making it so fat.

“It stands for Main Course,” Fletcher said as he threw out more feed.

MC grew to a whopping 35 pounds last month when, covered in bacon, oven basted and then grilled, he fulfilled his name at Keith’s annual Rangeley Beast Feast barbecue. “Best turkey I ever had!” I raved, forgoing the mashed taters and gravy in favor of another slice. “Good ol’ MC is setting the bar pretty high for Thanksgiving from now on.”

But I’ll bet Jon and his wife, Nancy, with their Big Green Egg outdoor cooker/smoker, are fixing to out-do MC this year. They’ll plop a turkey in the giant ceramic egg first thing in the morning and presto…out will come mouth-watering perfection. Heck, once they combine Helen’s chef training and Becky’s flair with open-flame cuisine with their Big Green Egg prowress—while the rest of us sprinkle on spices and wine-infused cooking tips—the Idaho turkey is bound to be a culinary creation rivaling all Beast Feasts far and wide.

I’m figuring they may even shatter Yankee magazine’s assertion from back in my just-married years that Great New England Cook William Blackburn was king of the Thanksgiving barbecue. Blackburn, whose specialty was whole beasts on the
barbecue, loved to cook outdoors because “there’s something primordial about
it” and the process involves a lot of “show” for his guests.

I still remember the article, picturing the flamboyant chef in his fire-retardant apron, ready to demonstrate to the ladies at Better Homes and Gardens the real origins of flame broiling. He was going to take them back—way back before long-handled forks, red and white tablecloths, and covering over the grill in September—by preparing his favorite main dish…Turseduckencornail. (For those of you familiar with my Christmas Turducken of last year’s “A Moving Feast” fame, this creation adds three more birds to the turkey-duck-chicken composite.)

“Gather together the following,” the Yankee article instructs, “a quail, a Cornish game hen, a chicken, a duck, a goose and a turkey. Make a large batch of your favorite stuffing. Or, if you have several favorites, make them all!” After that intro, I suspected I was in for a taste adventure a little bit more complicated than mixing up the Stove Top stuffing and waiting for the little pop-up turkey timer to surface. Reading further, I wondered if I should start heading for Tom’s hunting gear instead of the grocery store.

“To make a Turseduckencornail, you must debone each of the birds without cutting any of the skin.” The chef explains this process, advising that I start with the quail to gain knife skills experience for the bigger birds. He’s already way out of my realm, though. I have trouble separating drumsticks from thigh bones, primarily because the entire contents of my knife drawer can barely saw through an onion.

For years I’ve wondered if any single, brave cook successfully completed Chef Blackburn’s instructions, emerging from the kitchen with a quail inside of a Cornish hen inside of a chicken inside of a duck inside of a goose inside of a turkey. Was this sextuplet of a bird fitting to serve as the main course and, if so, did the host or hostess have any fingers left with which to serve and plate?

According to the article, you actually begin the whole stuffing hierarchy by placing a hard boiled egg inside the quail. After properly fastening the Turseduckencornail, you put it over the fire for “about 9 hours.” If you have any trouble turning the bird midway, don’t force it, advises Blackburn.  (Believe me, I wouldn’t. To me, a spatula is a precision instrument!)

To serve, you cut the Turseduckencornail lengthwise. “If done perfectly,” Blackburn notes,
“you’ll slice the hard boiled egg into halves.”  Then you slice it again crossway, giving each
guest a portion of all the meats. Serves 20.” (Yeah, the Flintstones and the Rubbles, with plenty of leftovers…)

Seriously, I would love to have the perseverance and precision necessary to make Turseduckencornail—not to mention one of those knives that simultaneously cuts paper, tin cans and old shoes. I imagine the resulting flavors are well worth the effort and the giblet gravy must be sinful. But the last time I experimented with anything bigger than a burger on the barbecue, I ended up with “Chernobyl Chicken.” I can only imagine my results with 40 pounds (and 20 hours worth of deboned poultry) perched atop the grill. “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this but I burned the Turseduckencornail…”

So, with MC still tickling my taste buds and Chef Blackburn’s over abundance of  poultry tucked in my “not in this lifetime” memory banks, I’ll thankfully watch my brother and sister-in-law put the turkey inside the outdoor egg while I’m inside mashing the taters.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! (For last year’s message, see “Portraits of Thanksgiving.”)

Nice day for a Halloween wedding

Joy CloughLeave a comment

A good kind of weird. In a few words if, heaven forbid, I had to be succinct in describing my side of the family, that’s what I’d say. Compared to my husband’s calm composure, anyone with blood ties to my side of the family circle is definitely just a little off center.

“Weird?” my Nana would say when we’d make fun of her. “I’m not sure I like that word. But I guess I’d rather be a nice kind of weird rather than a strange kind of weird.” And then she’d go off to wrap an empty box for Christmas or stand in another room and chuckle at herself. Her good kind of weirdness loudly expressed itself in my dad (AKA “Mac”), the poster child for boisterous, non-politically correct behavior. Then, by the time his DNA met up with my mom’s love for slapstick and spoonerisms (Once apon a time, in a coreign fountry, there lived a very geautiful birl; her name was Rindercella…), the twisted die had been cast for my sister and me.

We grew up thinking humorlessness was a fate worse than death, taking lessons from our patriarch of practical jokes on how to rationalize our irreverent behavior. It was OK if people looked at us askance, as long as they laughed afterward. “Wow…she’s not much fun!” Mac would point out about someone he thought must be “a stick in the mud.” We’d be in church or some other socially constrained place, and he’d zero in on the one or two staid, self-possessed individuals he felt sorry for because they didn’t bust a gut routinely in the course of their day.

Funerals, weddings and similar gatherings where people were supposed to act or speak a certain way really sparked Mac’s desire to be different. “Look at all those people lining up to say exactly what everybody expects them to say,” he’d observe while waiting in a wedding receiving line. “You watch, I’m gonna go up, shake the mother of the bride’s hand and say ‘Too bad your daughter looks like a line backer.’ And without even blinking, she’ll say ‘Oh, thank you…yes, thank you for coming.'” Part of me cringed. But a bigger part of me wanted him to do it so I could watch.

Funerals weren’t sacred for us either. “When my time comes, don’t play this awful sad music,” he’d whisper in the church pew as the grieving procession filed by. “Play The Entertainer! And don’t put me in an open casket where people have to walk past me and say ‘Oh, he looks good’…’cause I won’t look good. I’ll look dead!”

Mac’s time came way too soon. When it did, we were too caught off guard to play The Entertainer at his service. (I’m pretty sure he noticed because, ever since, he’s been blaring that song from every ice cream truck far and wide that’s passed me on its way to sell Good Humor bars.) Slowly, my sister, Jan, and I came to cope without him in the only way we knew how—stifling our sorrow with sarcasm and silliness. It helped a tiny bit, retelling all his old jokes, mimicking his mannerisms. But it was a sad substitute for Mac and how much we missed him bursting into a room, dressed in his trademark red and black hunting shirt, suspenders and khakis, peering over the top of his drugstore glasses and blurting out wise cracks.

Jan and I were six months into our laughing-crying-laughing grieving process when Dr. Smith—old family friend and physician straight out of a Norman Rockewell painting—invited us to his Halloween party. Of course we’d go, we said, despite our mood swings, but what would we wear? After 20 years of gathering in his barn, we had so many special Halloween memories, like the time our parents dressed up as doctor and nurse. Mum was the doctor, complete with chest hair peeking out of her scrub top and Mac was the nurse, wearing a white cap and uniform and the biggest pair of panty hose possible. Since then, we’d shown up at Dr. Smith’s as everything from the Great Pumpkin to Bullwinkle and were now recycling some of those costumes on our own girls. We had bags of silly clothes we could have thrown on just to get in the spirit but, that year, nothing felt quite right.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jan asked over the phone a couple days before the party. She had the half hesitant, half bubbling over tone I’d come to translate as twisted sister relief. She was about to say and/or do something that only I, her oldest surviving quirky relative, would understand. “Yep,” I admitted, “I think I know what we can be this year for Halloween.”

Our red and black checkered shirts, suspenders and khakis must have looked pretty believable, especially on Jan, who was the spitting image of Mac as she burst into Dr. Smith’s barn, blurting out wise cracks and peering over her drugstore glasses. So what if nothing like that had ever been done before, even on the strangest holiday of the year, Mac would have loved it! He would have gotten a big kick out of the look on everyone’s faces, particularly on poor Edna Smith who looked like she’d seen a ghost. She almost fainted, I think, just before she broke out laughing.

Fast forward 15 years. It’s Halloween weekend and Tom and I are heading down the mountain to go to a wedding. “Well, we know this won’t be the oddest thing I’ve done for Halloween,” I remark. Tom nods with the wisdom of someone who married into my family antics long ago. He might not be able to instigate at the same level, but he plays along the best that he can. Plus he did, of course, have something to do with us having daughters who inherited an unorthodox appreciation  for life’s lighter moments. We were  attending with Helen—our first-born, named after my Mum—who wears her whackiness like a badge of honor. (She wanted her Aunt Jan to make her a duct tape dress for the prom and, when that didn’t work out, made up for it by wearing a four-foot Goofy hat around Disney World on her senior class trip.) Even dressed up as pirates dripping with booty, we still didn’t out do the bride—Jan’s daughter, Rachael—who sashayed down the aisle in brazen scullery maiden garb to meet her swash buckling new husband, Dave.

I couldn’t help but get sentimental, remembering all those mother-daughter moments my sister and I had shared with our girls—how we’d all giggled together in church and blurted out inappropriate comments at inappropriate times. And the summer Rachael came to camp and won the Rangeley Fuzzy Bunny championship seemed like it was just yesterday. (The title went to the girl who could cram the most marshmallows in her mouth and still say “Fuzzy Bunny.” To this day, she holds the record at 14, and loves to brag about it.)

“You look wonderful,” I told her after the ceremony. “Thank you, Auntie Joy,” she said. “I figured I’d feel ridiculous in a white frilly dress, so I might as well get really ridiculous and have fun with it.” Jan, mother of the bride, was glowing. It wasn’t Rachael’s first time getting married, she pointed out, but this time she’d found a real treasure of a guy who loved her and her good kind of weirdness.

“And she made me promise to bring Grandpa Mac to the wedding,” Jan said, giving a little love pat near her heart where a sprinkling of Mac’s ashes hung from a locket. Yup, he was still with us, all right. We could feel him there as we looked proudly at our Halloween bride and Lady Gaga got the wedding party started. Born this way, I was born this way….I’m on the right track baby, I was born this way!

The other PMS

Joy Clough1 Comment

It’s one thing your mother didn’t mention when she explained what makes a woman a
woman and a man a man. Even later, during the “when two people love each other…” talk when you thought she’d spilled her guts, she really only glazed over the subject. “Just close your eyes, relax, and pretend it’s not happening,” was my mom’s advice.

“Eeeewwwww! Sounds awful!” I said. “But Dad doesn’t do that, does he?”

“Yes, most men do, some worse than others,” she replied delicately. “You have to focus on the good parts of your marriage and learn to live with it.”

I still couldn’t imagine my father doing such a loathsome thing to my mother. Then I remembered hearing him once when I was old enough to know what I was listening to, but too young still to know I shouldn’t stick around to hear more: “Haaaaawk …phew…. haaaaawk…” Yup, he was snoring, for sure. But did he do that every night? Yuck!

In time, I grew accustomed to the whole idea and figured if I loved my husband very much I could cope with regular assaults on my ear drums. How naive I was! I’ve been married for more than 30 years now and, in that time, I’ve learned how to stand by my man, bless his heart, no matter what. But I still for the life of me cannot lie passively beside him while he violates my peace and quiet. I’ve become a desperate victim of the “other knd” of PMS: Persistent Male Snoring. Turns out, it shares many physical and mental symptoms with the monthly feminine “syndrome” that’s been so widely publicized with one big exception: For this PMS, there’s no handy pill I can take the minute I feel it coming on—no magic medicine that transforms me into a sociable, witty and well-adjusted morning person from the axe murderess I almost was the night before.

I suppose I’d fare better if my husband’s night sounds were of the rhythmical, predictable variety. Breathe in, out…inhale, exhale—the old “haaaaawk….phew” I’d come to expect from my adolescence. I could even have tolerated a few intermittent chirps and snorts now and again. What I got, instead, was a repertoire of rasping and puffing that changes nightly. I mean, if Central Maine Power ever found a way to harness all the wind energy available in my bedroom, they’d be paying me by the megawatt!

Were I a heavy sleeper like my husband (who always emerges from the din rested and refreshed), I would have started moving to the couch years ago. But, considering that my before-bed ritual involves 10 minutes of fluffing and smoothing and blocking out the urge to check under the bed for monsters, I know I’m not a good couch candidate.  Besides, my pride is wrapped up in this, too. What am I made of, I ask myself, that I can’t withstand  the sound of a vibrating palate? It’s just another fact of life, after all, and to retreat would be to deny my very gender.

So, I lie there, trying to be tolerant. As the darkness turns to dawn and my sleeping partner is emitting his 324th round of raucousness, I once again realize why my grandparents had twin beds and why the wives of nobility kept their own sleeping chambers. “Now get the heck away from me before you start snoring,” is how women ended their romantic encounters, I imagine, before building costs forced most couples into one bedroom.

Before my kids were born, I tried every form of ear plug on the market, plus a few homemade devices. My first was a set of pencil erasers, the colorful, removable kind that were a big deal in second grade. Just shove in and rotate and all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. But those were high on volume control, low on comfort. So I soon switched to drug store variety ear “stopples”—a wax product with much the same properties as those fake lips popular when I was a kid because they were the only plaything you could eat after you were done goofing around with them. My stopples provided a perfect solution—right up until the dog ate them off the top of the headboard.

Motherhood eventually put my search for ear plugs on hold and I was left puzzling how to attack the problem at its source. Women’s magazine offered suggestions, but most were good only for a chuckle: “Have your husband change sleeping positions when he starts to snore.” (Duh! This worked for about eight years until he became immune to poking and prodding and turned into an ambidextrous snorer.) “Sew a marble to the back of his pajama top so he can’t sleep on his back.” (That might have worked since, in lieu of a pajama top, I’d have to affix a marble with duct tape. Then, after he lost most of the skin off his back, he really wouldn’t be able to sleep on it!) I also remember a Cosmopolitan ad for an anti-snoring collar that jolted the offender with a high-voltage buzz each time his throat vibrated. (Only Cosmo would recommend electro-shock therapy for the guy who shares your bed. Think he would come back for more?) And don’t even talk to me about Breathe Right strips. Been there, done that. I still lose sleep and, I figure, at least 75 cents a night, while Tom loses the top layers of skin off his nose.

Moving to Rangeley did give me a brief PMS-free period, one that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. I was up here holding down the fort for a few weeks while Tom commuted from NH until the end of his teaching year. During the day, I unpacked and organized, reorganized and unpacked some more. At night I lay there in the deathly stillness of my new bedroom in the woods, listening to an old wind-up alarm clock like an orphaned puppy and promising that, once I had my husband back for good, I would never complain about his snoring ever again.

Two weeks later, he was half way through a new box of nose strips when I sat bolt upright in bed, glared down at him snuffling and snorting through his wide open nasal passages, and demanded: “Why can’t you just learn how to breathe right?”

Most nights I can console myself that I’m not alone. This affliction has been dragging women down for years, good women who would be fantastic women if they could just get some sleep. I drift off when I can, dreaming of all my sisters-in-suffering who would be winning beauty contests, Pulitzer prizes and Olympic medals–and probably running for president–if only there was a cure for this other PMS.

Everything…and the kitchen sink

Joy Clough1 Comment

I do a lot of reminiscing this time of year. And, like any good cabin wife, I do a lot of it right where I should: standing behind my kitchen sink. From there I can look out the window and up the driveway, keeping track of any comings or goings, observing Nature’s ebb and flow while washing and rinsing. It’s my other water view—the one that lets me gawk and ponder the passing of the seasons while being way more useful than when I’m swiveled toward the front yard just staring at the lake.

“Vacation is just another sink,” a friend of mine used to gripe at the end of every summer. She was a mother of six grown children, two of them twins, and our office secretary back before we had to call her an administrator for political correctness. Mostly, though, she was a grumble puss, a glass-half-empty person looking for opportunities to bemoan what she saw as her fixed station in life.

At the time I wondered if she’d ever found herself standing doing dishes in some of the primo spots I knew and appreciated. Had she heard loons calling over her shoulder while Rangeley balsam wafted over her soapy hands? Was there ever a beagle beside her circling for crumbs, softening her heart more than her two-legged beggars? Did she ever vacation where she had to do dishes without a sink and swear if, by some act of grace she got a sink, she’d never complain again?

Back when I first heard the vacation-sink observation, I thought having a camp by the lake–plus having a working sink in the camp by the lake—would be the vacation of my dreams. I had the camp part, a rustic A-frame on the northern tip of Moosehead. I sort of had the sink part, too. I’d recently graduated from perching a large Rubbermaid Roughneck dish tub on my kitchen counter to an actual sink installed in the counter. Except for the drip bucket under the drain pipe that often became a cenote for sacrificial mice, the arrangement was a much better alternative for holding water. But, when it came to running water, the mechanics of getting it into the sink by way of the faucet, my first camp setup left a little to be desired. The only running water I had was the kind I got (or hoped my husband would get) by running down to the lake with a bucket.

Fast forward a few years to my newly-built but still rough Rangeley cabin. So thrilled was I by the promise of indoor plumbing, I didn’t really mind reverting back to the old Roughneck tub for a bit. It was way before the time the girls would want to live in the shower, so they didn’t care that I swabbed Spaghetti-Os off them with giant wads of  Wet Wipes. I, however, was psyched beyond belief. Water, warm wet flowing water over my hands and my crusty dishes, was looming closer and closer like an oasis.

“You’re getting hot running water at camp?” my mother-in-law asked in astonishment. “All those years on Great East Lake, I only had cold water coming out in the kitchen sink. Had to heat it on the stove.”

Yup, back in 1988, I was as spoiled as I thought a remote cabin wife could be. Not only did I have lakefront property, I was going to have the luxury of bringing some of that lake water into my basement, heating it up, and gushing it into my brand new sink on demand! Seems like just yesterday I stood by the Sears “almost-the-best” stainless steel sink sitting inside my plywood pre-countertop next to the Coleman stove that was about to be put into hibernation. I was holding my breath, praying for water to pour forth. Thanks to my husband and the wizardry of hydraulics he was overseeing outside–where a hundred feet of hose came up out of the lake, through the cellar window and into the pump tank–we were ready and waiting. Finally, on his third try priming the pump, the spigot let forth all its pent up air and whoooosh sent a glorious torrent splashing and sputtering inside the sink.

That was more than 20 summers ago. But I still feel the same inner release, the same
liberated feeling over knowing it is possible for me to listen to loons or watch hummingbirds hover inches away white I’m rinsing crusty pots clean down to the
shine. My vacation sink is now my everyday sink, the one I’m glad to come home to, even after taking hiatuses now and again to some pretty sweet condo sinks in the Caribbean.

“All done up there?” I can still hear Tom hollering from his plumbing control center in
the basement. “Can I shut it down?”

It would be this time of year, time to shut down the water, close up camp and head down the mountain till May. “Yeah,” I’d yell back, taking one last swipe at the counter with my sponge. “Done with the water. You can shut ‘er down.” I’d look out at the hummingbird feeder dangling in the wind and hope none would come by first thing in the spring before I’d have a chance to fill it up again.

Now I’m happy to stay put, standing at my newer, shinier sink that fills with well water. I can look for as long as I like—through the yellowing birch branches to where I used to haul a “camp stuff” box out to the car, interrupting the flow of my best possible life for the cold months ahead. ‘Course, what’s not to be happy about, now that I’m living my best possible year-round life in Rangeley AD (After Dishwasher)? I grin each time I grab the box of dishwasher detergent out of the old Roughneck tub in the cupboard and know that, even if I wanted to roam far and wide, I couldn’t find a better place to hang my towel.

Back woods blueberries

Joy Clough1 Comment

Carpenter knee pads for harvesting in the pucker brush: $19.99
Pre-made pie crust good enough to serve to your mother-in-law: $2.50 a box
Picking fresh while still having some of last year’s crop frozen: Priceless

After they blow off the road dust and grill us about our proximity to groceries, medicine and other things they wonder why we’ve left so far behind, folks take one look at our “front yard” and know why we re-rooted ourselves way the heck up here. By the time they reach the dock, they’ve had their “aha” moment, and our mountain-rimmed vast, open lake answers any lingering questions. Nonetheless, while friends from away think they know when they relax into the bench at the water’s edge, they still don’t really get it. They have no idea that a big piece of what lured my husband here—made him want to carve out a new life with me and the beagles—actually lies away from the lake and trout streams. For the whole picture, they need to stay awhile, share some dinner, some wine, and a little more wine. Then, and only then, will they be truly enlightened.

“Pie! Time for pie!” Tom proclaims as soon as possible after the last forkful of main course leaves his plate. And even though I’ve seen him do the dance many, many times, I never get tired of watching. Sheer pleasure transforms him as he goes through the motions of serving and sharing—of savoring his beloved blueberry pie. Then, sometime shortly after their first bite, guests come to fully understand. Back in the woods, tucked away from the postcard views and all the other Rangeley things worth waiting for in August, Tom has found a hidden wild Maine blueberry mother lode.

“Did ya pick your own?” guests want to know. Oh, yeah, most definitely…with so much love and gratitude, I think he actually leaves the patch more fruitful with his mindful
picking presence. Not long ago, he missed prime harvest time, having to head “home”
in time to teach school, leaving the best ever berries hanging. Labor Day weekend, we’d be back to celebrate his birthday, and we’d always bring his customary birthday pie. But it would be baked with berries supposedly from Maine, bought frozen in the grocery store. Tasty and better than no pie…but not fit for a true blueberry pie connoisseur. As a true connoisseur, you see, Tom doesn’t care so much about fudge cake or sundaes, crème brulee, or tiramisu. He shrugs off chocolate as “a girl thing.” Most days, he’d probably even pass on pie, in general. But pie made from his back woods blueberries—picked just about the time he’d be starting his back to school teacher meetings—now that’s a Tom thing…his personal slice of heaven.

Good thing for Tom that, in the giant scheme of things, Mother Nature ripens the berries right after the lake fishing slows down and before it picks up again in the streams. If, for whatever God forsaken reason, Tom had to choose between going fishing and eating wild blueberry pie, I imagine he’d spend a long, mournful moment going back and forth between the two choices. He’d look sort of like our beagle, Toby, the time he teased him by holding his walking leash in one hand and a hunk of steak in the other—hopelessly torn over which one he loved more. Tom would pick the pie, though, I’d bet my life on it. “I guess I’ve had enough fishing in my life,” he’d probably say, “but never enough  blueberry pie.”

I’m really grateful he can have both. And each time he temporarily puts down his fishing pole, hangs his old coffee can berry bucket over his neck with string and duct tape, and heads off to pick, in his mind I know he’s pleased by his own version of beer commercial perfection: “It just doesn’t get any better than this!”

For years I dabbled with blueberry recipes. Being married to the ultimate blueberry boy, I figured I should be able to bake them in everything from cakes to muffins to bread. I should know if buckle was better than crumble, and hear first-hand why the real Maine cooks called a dessert blueberry grunt. But Tom has since assured me that pie, simple, old-fashioned pie with slightly sweetened berries piled as high as the pie plate will hold, is his ultimate favorite. So lately, I’ve given up on grunt and am content with hearing my husband’s soft sighs of delight. And those pre-made crusts in a box I keep stacked in the refrigerator right next to the berries…what a win-win situation for whipping out pie they are! Now that Pillsbury makes them without the telltale creases I used to try to press out
with my thumb, I can have a pie oven ready in about five minutes and never have to  admit I can’t make my mother-in-law’s crust “from scratch” recipe.

“What a nice, flaky crust,” she said the last time she ate pie with us. “Mine never comes out this good.” Luckily, Tom’s head was bent too close to his fork for us to share a knowing glance across the table or she might have guessed I cheated. His birthday fell after Labor Day weekend that year and we were celebrating it back in NH with a Down East feast of lobster and blueberry pie. “I’ll give your mother some to take home,” I said to him as we were cleaning up.

“Go ahead and give her that extra lobster,” he whispered when she went to get her coat. “She can make her own pie.”

With a an over-abundance of filling close at hand, Tom has since learned that manifesting blueberry abundance comes from sharing that abundance with others. He’s learned that hoarding might leave him with more for himself, but those extra coveted  pieces he’s hidden away from family and friends might also get pretty stale or, worse yet, covered with something not so naturally tasty. He’s learned to share. And I’ve learned that he’ll do just about anything to keep himself in pie. If I promise him some, he’ll tackle those bottom of the to-do list chores I either won’t or can’t do—which, in our house, involves anything requiring a ladder.

“Are you sure you don’t mind if I have a piece of your pie for breakfast, too?” Becky asked when she was home recently. The last wedge of Tom’s Father’s Day pie was waiting on the counter for him to indulge in at least two more days of his favorite ritual: eating blueberry pie for breakfast. Tom looked at his beloved daughter with beagle-like confusion for a long moment before deciding. “Sure honey,” he said, “you go right ahead.”

I stood at the stove, gazing way over the top of their heads to the living room window I hadn’t been able to reach since the remodeling. It still had film on it from the new window sticker and, I imagined, a couple inches of sawdust, regular dust and dead cabin flies on the sill. “It’s OK,” I assured my husband. “You don’t have to wait for a special day to have more pie. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

Seventh month itch

Joy CloughLeave a comment

I made the ultimate maternal sacrifice last month. Even though my baby girl is almost 24, I proved that my instincts to do whatever it takes to keep her from pain and suffering still run deep. I gave her my Bug Baffler shirt. Yup, you read right…in June, from my cabin in the Maine woods, I didn’t just lend her my Bug Baffler shirt. I gave it to her to take clear across the country.

For those of you odd ducks out there who happen to be reading a blog about Rangeley but have somehow escaped knowing what a Bug Baffler is—it’s a unique fashion accessory born of dire necessity in these parts. It’s a hat attached to a shirt that seals your upper torso in fine netting. In theory, it keeps mosquitoes,  black flies and the like from finding their way onto your skin surfaces, allowing you to venture outdoors this time of year without getting eaten alive, losing your sanity, or both. For total coverage, you can buy the pants portion, too. But I never met anyone who had to go that far, not around here, anyway. If it’s hot enough to wear shorts and the skeeters are still out but you can’t find a stiff wind to blow them off or a reason to hop back into your DEET-soaked jeans, chances are you don’t live in Rangeley.

“The mosquitoes on my next rafting course are going to be worse than EVER,” Becky told me as she was heading back to Utah from her visit home.

“Worse than here?” I asked in awe.

“Oh, yeah. Clouds of ‘em…swarms!” Her co-instructor friend had just reported back from guiding on the Green River. She was able to dial the call, Becky said, but just barely. Her hands were covered in bites and she had a ring of ‘em along the narrow gap where her pants didn’t quite meet her shirt when she squatted or stretched.

We all listened but didn’t want to believe, trying hard not to squirm in our seats. Even Jerry, her brother-in-law, born in the land where the mosquito is the state bird, had never heard such tales. And even though I was starting to look like a poster promoting measles vaccinations, suddenly my itchy patches weren’t nearly as irritating. How could I whine about a smattering of bug bites when Becky was soon going to be engulfed?

Days earlier, I’d come across my Bug Baffler again, sitting on a shelf in my closet, heaped alongside my bike shorts, my yard work pants and all those other articles of clothing I knew I should actually wear more than once a year. “I wondered if I still had this old
thing!” I said, surprised its netting hadn’t unraveled in all the years I’d refused to put it on. Oh, I could have worn it, should have worn it, but vanity and that strange blend of blind optimism that takes root after decades of Rangeley bug seasons had left me covered mostly in useless cotton.

I’d come across the old bug net shirt back in May, too, when I was shuffling my sweaters and flannel-lined jeans behind my shorts and tee shirts—blindly optimistic I’d be able to swap seasons soon. Coming into my second spring of year-round Rangeley living, the practical part of me was glad to have unearthed my bug netting. But the louder, dumber side of me was still resisting. “Seems like the bugs won’t be too bad this year,” I said, stashing the Bug Baffler back in the corner.  “I’ll be fine without this.” (If, Heaven forbid,
I was ever jostling down the short cut road enroute to the emergency room, bleeding profusely, I imagine I would have told myself I was fine in pretty much the same tone I was using to chat with myself in my closet.)

I was fine, too, relatively speaking, even though my bug forecast was about as accurate as my snowfall prediction.  By the end of May, I was dousing myself in repellant, wearing my Bugs Off bandana around my neck to cover my new necklace of welts, and swearing and swatting like I had a personality disorder. I stayed outside, though, wavering between defiance and near defeat. “I live on a lake in Maine!” I’d mutter. “I’m supposed to be sitting here on my dock in the evening having a wine cooler in the summertime!” I kept on reminding myself as May progressed into June, refusing to retreat inside, till I was nearly convinced the bugs weren’t that bad. But, as June wore on, I had to admit that the drinking jar of homemade wine cooler I carried down to the dock had become way heavier with wine than with spritzer. I was numbing myself into submission–and I was getting itchier by the day.

“I give up! I’m going to start wearing my Bug Baffler,” I announced one late June night. My ears had started to burn under a new swarm of no-see-ums, even though Tom had put out so many tiki torches and smoldering coils our waterfront looked like Survivor
and smelled like a Grateful Dead concert. And I think I was still getting mosquito bitten, too, but it was hard to be sure with my battery-operated Off clip-on buzzing louder than skeeters on steroids. “The bug net will be doubly good for me,” I said, heading for my closet. “No bugs, and less chugging because I’ll have a zipper in front of my mouth. So what if I have to admire the sunset over the lake through a haze of green mesh? This is my new life and, at times, it requires adaptive clothing.”

On my way back outside, Bug Baffler in hand, I went past the bedroom where my sweet, fair skinned baby girl was packing to go back to a wilderness dark with mosquitoes. Instinctively, I shook the dust off and handed my survival shirt over. Better her than me, I realized, and better on the banks of the Green River than Mooselook, Maine. Out there it would give her steady hands and a sane mind as she guided a group of Outward Bound teens safely through Mosquito Misery Canyon—a grander gesture, I figured, than keeping me covered in my drinking chair.

“I’m glad I found that old Bug Baffler in time for Becky’s visit,” I told Tom as we sat on the dock the other night, swatting and sipping. Hopefully, she knew somehow we were talking about her as she navigated her way through the canyon. But, hopefully, her ears weren’t burning as bad as ours.

Real Rangeley bathing suit support

Joy Clough1 Comment

It’s that time of year when we Rangeley women might want to anticipate the need for appropriate swimwear. Somewhere, sometime between now and Labor Day, we will supposedly have a few 80-degree days. And, if we’re really lucky, we might actually be able to intentionally take a dip in the lake rather than floating above it hoping whatever splashes on us doesn’t soak through our waiting-for-summer windbreakers.

Being ready to take that epic plunge, I’ve discovered, takes serious planning and more support than we’re likely to find in available retail. It takes more than figuring the suit you left up at camp as a “spare” is still going to work for you like it did back in the ’80s when it was your best suit ever.

Even the top outdoor outlets with their active women’s straps-that-stay-put suits don’t really measure up for water sportwear in these parts. We need coverage that withstands flying off a float tube or water skiis at 30 miles per hour. We need super resilient Lycra that doesn’t snag when we crab crawl along the rocks enroute to our sandier beach access areas. Requiring function above fashion, we definitely need straps that hold in what God gave us whether we’re breast stroking away from the deer flies, bending half out of the boat to net a salmon, or just wanting to hang out on the dock without really  hanging out. With the right design specs, we could fashion our own line of Mooselook maillots and Toothaker tankinis. The tankini should have a small side pocket sewn inside near the hip, I figure. Those of us who multitask when we take a dip could use it as an optional soap holder, demonstrating why our swimwear is aptly called a bathing suit. And, if we got really daring, we might even dream up a couple Bemis bikinis. For those of us blessed with the right curves and thermal adaptability, they’d be offered in a deep Rangeley green and perhaps a bold South Arm sunset pattern to camouflage our goose bumps.

Until then, I’m grateful for Land’s End and how their promise to be “true to size” did, in fact, hold true for me. A couple years ago I let their bathing suit ‘bot—a simulated version of my measurements and other physical characteristics—select my perfect tankini.  Shopping with this perky little cartoon girl model of me was way better than braving the mall dressing room or ordering off the web purely on faith. She showed me enough to know that what I’d try on in my bedroom after ripping into the Land’s End package might actually be a suit I’d come out of the bedroom in and end up wearing in public. She was right…I love my latest suit! But even though it’s withstanding scraping along the dock and hours of churning, stretching and snapping, I know it will become my nostalgic “spare” suit before too long. And before it does, I have a couple program enhancements in mind for my mail order ‘bot.

I’d like to work with the online catalogue engineers to design a super customized Bathing Suit Buddy. Real-time customer support at its finest, she’d pop up to ensure my suit shopping would not leave me crushed and despondent with my virtual shopping cart empty. She’d automatically be programmed to know that I’d been exposed to the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. By default, she’d realize I’d seen the women’s magazines that show “Suits to Suit Your Shape (where the woman illustrating “thick waist” measures about 25 inches at her thickest part). Her data base would not contain fashion designers’ stats for “average.” She’d boot up with real world honest-to-goodness average-bodied women shapes and sizes at her fingertips. And, not only would my Bathing Suit Buddy have a believable build–showing me at first glance that she’d made some effort to stay fit and trim and had achieved moderate success—she’d also have a soft soothing voice.

“Hello! I’m your Bathing Suit Buddy,” she’ll pop up and announce as I sit peering over thumbnails of the latest online selections. She’ll walk me through the process, convincing me I’m not a heap of useless skin, showing that halters are more my style, proving that “boy short” bottoms are built for boys. By the time I click on “add this to my cart,” I’ll be confident, enthusiastically waiting for my Land’s End package to arrive, and hoping summer in Rangeley arrives before it goes out of style.

“Do camp suits ever really go out of style?” I found myself wondering recently when I came across my last mall-purchased suit. It brought back memories of dressing room mirrors stolen from the fun house at the Fryeburg Fair, where I had no one (expect for my own destructive inner selves) to accompany me through the brave world of trying on swimwear. One tiny voice kept mumbling about how I’d done my best with diet and exercise to prepare for that year’s search. “The Abs of Steel video, the good old ‘Never eat unless you’re hungry’ motto, the stairs instead of the elevator…you’ve done your part…” I’d mutter. But then the other tiny voice would insist I’d obviously failed.  “Abs of Steel, what a joke!” it would taunt as I struggled with sheath after sheath of unforgivable spandex. “Next winter, why don’t you try sitting in your typing chair for 12 hours a day instead of just eight? Then you can graduate to the suits with the little skirts on them!”

By the time I emerged from the dressing room, I must have looked emotionally flogged.

“No luck today?” the sales clerk asked.

“No, not unless you’d call it luck to have one of the “mature” styles fit like I’d been thrown into an ice cream cone dispenser.”

I did manage to squeeze into a few of the flimsier styles that made me look like a painted summer squash. And then there were those “cookie cutter” suits—one-piece suits with a big piece missing in the area I personally liked to hide with a one-piece. I tried a couple on and my reflection reminded me of the Pillsbury Dough Woman after an attack by a giant cookie cutter.

“I’m an average size 10 woman!” I remember protesting to my husband half-way through my swimsuit search that year. “If I feel like a squished out marshmallow in most of the suits available, what are fuller figured women left with? How do they feel?”

“Umm…like larger squished out marshmallows,” he stated with all the empathy of someone who tore the legs off his Levis when he needed swimwear.

Fortunately, for me and my silent majority of women who weren’t blessed with mannequin perfection, there was a trend on the market that offered a solution. “Slim  suits,” they called ’em, even though they came in all sizes. (Ever heard of a chubby size 6?) Anyway, if you could  get past the way the manufacturer dangled a tape measure off the price tag, you’d end up with a multitude of styles and colors to choose from.

I didn’t rise to the challenge of measuring myself with and without the slim suit. I just scurried into the dressing room and let the hangers fly. “Please, please, please,” one tiny voice pleaded. I prayed the neon stripes on the front of the suit would go diagonal, like the picture on the tag, without any dips, bulges or zig zags to spoil the effect.

“Any luck this time?” the clerk asked when I  re-emerged.

“Yes, thank you. I found a real pretty one.” But my other tiny voice was still shopping.

“Course it looks pretty. It’s the consistency of an ace bandage!” I hid the dangling tape measure and made my way to the cash register.

Until it got retired to my camp closet sometime in the ’90s, that was my best suit ever. I guess I should just leave it there as my spare, just in case the Land’s End one finally gives up the good fight.

Dining with Dad

Joy Clough3 Comments

When she was just beginning to link objects with labels and functions, one of my girls picked a spatula up off the kitchen counter and declared it a “Dada cooker.” Ever since, I’ve been fascinated with the role of father in the modern kitchen.

Traditionally, men were not linked to any food prep functions. When they did take utensils in hand, it was to “carve” the roast—a ceremonial ritual dating back to when the head of the household had brought the meat to the table an hour earlier from yonder woods or field. Plus, fathers have also always been pretty deft with barbecue implements, a ritual which dates back even earlier to primordial families who never bothered to specify “rare” or “well done.”

In taking their culinary tools closer and closer to the kitchen stove, men seem to have developed extraordinary skill with the common spatula. Originally, I believe that
dexterity was born of necessity and fine-tuned during all-male fishing trips when there was nothing between them, their hunger and the supper still flopping around in the sink, but an iron skillet and plenty of bacon grease.

“Daddy’s cooking supper?” my sister and I would ask on the occasions my mother could not be home to feed us.

“Yes. I told him to heat up some corn chowder.”

When the time came, we watched in silent amazement tinged with trepidation. Had it been our Mum at the stove, we would have questioned the use of cast iron cookery, and said “yuck” when the Worcester Sauce was added. But, when Daddy did it, we kept still. Even if we had to watch him eat most of the chowder himself and load up on crackers afterwards, paternal cooking was an exciting shift from the ordinary.

It’s no wonder my daughters readily associated the spatula with their dad. Especially on camp weekends, he became so proficient in the short order cooking department the frying pan barely cooled between Saturday morning and Sunday evening. And, like most  dads, he never told them “You just ate,” or “You should have some fruit instead.” He was more than willing to take command of any operation resulting in food, especially grilled cheese sandwich construction for his little fishing buddies on a Saturday afternoon.

Dads don’t generally waste as much energy as moms worrying about the four food groups, either. To them, food is fuel. And the object is to tank up—preferably without forks and, ideally, without plates—so you can return to what you were doing when hunger struck.

“We made sandwiches with Dad for lunch,” I remember Helen announcing as I’d return home from running errands when she and her sister were small.

I could tell. A knife still stood buried in the peanut butter jar in the middle of the table kitchen table. Surrounding it were all the signs of a motherless feeding frenzy—paper towels, crumbs and huge hunks of cast off crusts.

“Did you have anything to drink?” I’d ask. (I’d learned that dads making dinner got so intent on the dietary bulk of the meal that they’d usually forget the liquid part.)

“Oh, yes,” said Helen. “Red Kool Aid. But we spilled some and Dad wiped it all up so the floors wouldn’t be sticky.”

I could tell. My oak Lazy Susan was glued to the table top and I could see a mound of pink stained paper towels heaped into the wastebasket. “Don’t say anything to your Mom,” he must have instructed as he unraveled a long, billowing expanse off the towel holder at the other side of the room. The sponge next to the sink, however, was dry as a bone.

I always figured this behavior dated back to the time when a guy’s bandana had to suffice for a cleaning cloth and his water was rationed from a canteen. Or, maybe it was the natural result of too many boyhood confrontations with a mom who didn’t understand there was no time to tidy up your trail when the Injuns were after you. Most likely, it stems from a little bit of both. I do know that, somewhere along the line, dads came to rely on “dry” cleaning to cope with spills and splatters.

I had to remind myself that this very same cavalier kitchen attitude had been adding spice and excitement to father-child relationships, mine included, since the first time a woman walked away from her hearth for any amount of time. I’d bite my tongue, wet the sponge, and remember my dad’s special corn chowder out of a can. And I’d especially think of Grandpa.

It was a rare and festive occasion when my grandma would drive off alone to go shopping, and my grandpa would let us take full advantage. (For those of you who read about her in Letting Myself Stay, I’m not talking about my mild-mannered Nana who’d offer us dessert all the time because she thought we were company and she’d probably just served us a meal but couldn’t really remember. This was my other, omnipresent grandma, who once told me she liked to dust. She policed her cookie supply and seemed to think the earth would spin off its axis if you ate more than two a day or, Heaven forbid, consumed your food groups in the wrong order.)

“Is she gone yet?” my grandpa would wonder with boyish impatience as my sister and I watched the big, blue Ford back down the driveway. We’d wait until she was safely on her way and then race into the kitchen straight for the cookie jar.

“Don’t tell your grandmother!” Grandpa always reminded us with a devilish smile as he scooped most of the crumbs into a napkin and double-checked us for Oreo moustaches.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone! May you dine with your dad in your heart and at your table.

Letting myself stay

Joy Clough3 Comments

The first time I remember being concerned about how much older really old folks were, I must have been about four. “How old is Nana?” I asked my parents.

Their answer was way, way out of my arithimetic comfort zone. “Fifty-eight.”

At first, I just frowned and tried to comprehend that number. I knew I had six marbles in my little drawstring pouch and that each Sky Bar came in four sections. Anything beyond that was as bewildering as adding up all the stars in space. Then I got scared and burst out crying. If my grandparents had been around for whatever that forever-sounding number was, I knew they must be ready to die any minute.

Fortunately, I was too busy being a kid to worry myself for very long. After all, my parents weren’t upset that their parents had one foot already in Heaven. And Nana was always smiling. Plus, she had soft, crinkly, Nana skin on her hands and arms that I found oddly comforting. It wasn’t until early grade school had broadened my mathematical reach that I questioned old-age relativity again.

“How many birthdays have you had, Mommy?” I asked.

“Thirty-four,” she answered.

This time I didn’t cry. But I was still pretty darn scared. “Gee,” I said, “that’s even more than the number of days I have to wait between Thanksgiving and Christmas!” Of course, I desperately wanted to be older myself. Not as old as she was or, Heaven help me, my grandparents—just a year or so wiser, taller and worldly enough to hang with the “big” kids.

During middle school, when the desire to age myself out of braces and away from bullies had become a constant daydream, I overheard a conversation that made me ponder the wisdom of wishing away time. “Tammy’s got a tummy!” my mom announced moments after we were driving away from visiting family friends. Not a caddy woman by nature, Mum was delighted to discover that her once skinny college pal now had a mid-life paunch, especially since she could make the observation into a taunting little rhyme. “Yup,” my dad concurred from behind the wheel. “She let herself go.”

“Go where?” I remember wondering from the back seat. Not to the mall or the beach, it didn’t sound like. And with emphasis as much on the letting part as on the going part of his statement, I knew there was a great deal of loss of control implied. “She let herself go,” he said again with authority. Suddenly that other mother went from a cool mom with a great backyard who bought the good kind of chips to Mrs. Tammy Tummy.

“Could she have hung on?” I began to ask myself as a teen when I’d hear my dad make the remark. “And why is it always a she?” I drew a mental picture of a poor woman teetering on the brink of 40, hanging onto a wimpy branch for dear life while nature’s relentless pull raged just beneath her like a waterfall. One moment of weakness, one lapse in concentration and…woosh…away she’d go to the point of no return. I started checking out my mother with a whole different eye. Blessed by genes from the tall, lanky side of the family, she was still a bean pole, but for how long? Would I get some sort of a warning that she was slipping so I could somehow give her a heads up? Or, would Dad just pronounce her gone when she was too far downstream for help? And, when I got to be her age, would I instinctively know how to muckle onto the branch where she let go?

In hindsight, I think it’s a good thing women in my mother’s generation didn’t know what we know now. They hit 40 back before coed gyms, body mass calculators, and good carbs versus bad carbs. Back then, if anybody’s mom said she was “working out,” she meant in the garden, not spotting you on the weight bench. So, they could let gravity and lower metabolism take over without the added torment of Dr. Oz or Dr. Atkins telling them they had only themselves to blame. Healthy eating meant ordering a Fillet o’ Fish with small fries and no shake. There wasn’t Biggest Loser Bob showing you how to take charge of your own proactive lifestyle, how to get up off the couch, elevate your cardio and steel your abs. There was Jack LaLanne doing a few jumping jacks with you in front of the TV. And, if that didn’t do the trick, you couldn’t turn on an infomercial and know that a Spanx body shaper would answer all your prayers. You were just incredibly grateful panty hose had been invented so you didn’t have to squeeze your shape into a real girdle like your mother did.

“Joy’s keeping herself up real nice,” I overheard my dad telling one of his fishing buddies  when I was almost 40. By then, the remark should have gotten him slapped, sued, or both, but I took it as a supreme compliment. I was forever bemoaning my slant toward the short, stocky side of the family and beginning to wonder if the dryer was shrinking my jeans. Suddenly everyone, including me, was jumping around the gym in their Reeboks and ripping the skin off their baked chicken. Still, it seemed harder and harder to not get sucked under, into the flow of middle-aged complacency. But then I’d think about Mum and lift my real self above those troubles. As it turned out, she didn’t let herself go. Before she had time, she got swept away by an undetected “defect” she’d been born with and would have been powerless to hold in check. She never suffered, though, and left with a smile, a teeny pot belly on her lanky frame, and the very beginnings of Nana skin. Nana herself, on the other hand, ended up living way longer than I originally predicted. While in her seventies, she’d waged war with her short, stockiness and shrunk herself about five dress sizes by eating little but plain yogurt and Melba toast. Even if she had let herself go, though, or had stayed gone, it didn’t matter. Soon after, she forgot where she was completely, how she’d gotten there, who was with her, or what she’d had for breakfast before leaving.

Dad who, ironically, was the patriarch of stockiness (or, as he called it, barrel chestedness)—became a gym rat later in life. When he wasn’t out fishing, he was horsing around weights at the health club, keeping an eye on whether or not the women in Spandex were letting themselves go. He’d puff out his chest, flex his biceps and say, “Not bad for almost 70!” But his coronary arteries did not agree. Eventually, all his pre-Dr. Oz years of letting himself eat whatever he wanted took him down at 68.

Dad watches me, though, I can feel it. And, hopefully, he still brags. Mum was with me, too, as always, when I celebrated a landmark birthday the other day. I’ve now lived ten years longer than she did, as much by hanging on as by letting myself stay in the moment. I remember them when I turn down chocolate in favor of carrot sticks. But I think of them just as vividly when I decide to say yes to a pair of “just because” earrings or to savoring every last bite of cherry cheesecake. They’re my hiking buddies, now that I’ve traded my gym membership for long walks along the lake they brought me back to. “We’re doing just fine,” I tell them as my heart gets pumping and I take deep breaths of Rangeley balsam.

My daughters concur. They’re keeping an eye on me for any signs of slippage and they swear I don’t need pleated pants or a swimsuit skirt. They tell me I “don’t even look scary yet” in my underwear. And, if I promise to not start wearing bright pink lipstick, they promise to warn me when it’s time to give up the hair dye and let myself go grey with dignity. Plus, best of all, they’ve taken the opportunity to keep me young and run wild with it like I never could with my mother. I’ve decided, with their help, that the Nana skin on my hands looks just as wonderful gripping a fishing rod against a West Kennebago sunset as it does wrapped around a roller coaster handle bar at Six Flags, screaming like a 12-year-old, and hanging on for dear life.

Mumma energy

Joy Clough2 Comments

“I got a nice dose of Mumma energy last night,” Becky called to tell me awhile back. She was going through a bit of a rough spot and really needed me in person, but had to settle for one of my cross-country pep talks instead. She’d been to a meditation/healing circle, led by a holistic Moab woman with “Mumma hands,” a giving heart, and wise, empowering words. Once again, my younger daughter had found just the surrogate she needed for that specific moment in her worldly travels.

“Oh, I’m so glad you feel better, honey,” I sighed. “Why don’t you book a couple office visits with her? That would be nice, huh? Think of it as my Mother’s Day present.” 

“Uh, Mom,” Becky said, “you do know that Mother’s Day is when I’m supposed to give you stuff, not when you tell me to give stuff to myself?”

“Right. But I’m telling you this is what I want more than anything. If you give yourself this gift, you will actually be pampering me, making my heart glad.”

“What is it with her?” I imagined Becky saying after we hung up. Every Mother’s Day for as far back as she and her sister could remember, I’d told them not to fuss over me, not to get me anything. As long as my girls were happy and healthy, I assured them, I had everything I needed. I meant it too, wholeheartedly. Of course, they’d still give me plenty of little trinkets and tokens, including their annual hand-drawn coupons for ice cream at the Pine Tree Frosty. I’d stash those in the glove compartment and promise to cash them in as soon as we got “back up to camp.” Last count, I had eight of them stacked under my snow scraper, never redeemed. We still enjoyed our share of Rangeley soft serve, regardless, lapping up the late spring sunshine as we fed the pond ducks even more than ourselves. Fortunately, all my Mother’s Days perfectly coincided with opening up camp, with no formal gifts necessary because the earth was warming up, the road was drying out, and we were returning to Rangeley. And, now that I am home here for good, I know it’s thanks to my three mothers, my beautiful daughters and husband, and all the nurturing, creative “Mumma energy” that works in mysterious ways to give us this life.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t need to give me anything!” I remember my mother telling me as she unwrapped my Mother’s Day gift. I was 17, and had presented her with a set of stoneware salt and pepper shakers I’d proudly bought with some of my $1.80-an-hour paycheck. “All I need is for you to be happy, really,” she insisted, setting them on the dining room table for “special company” and hugging me.

When Mum died suddenly a couple months later, I couldn’t imagine happy being a possibility for me ever again. Smiling was forced torture. And for years laughing was only a release mechanism that left a pain deep in my chest. Happy—as in sitting in the sunshine humming and wanting to hug myself? Well that, I believed, was forever on the other side of the big, dark wall where I’d left my previous life. But then, in spite of myself, slowly but surely Mumma energy began trickling back into my world. It came from Prudy, my step-mom, who helped me love myself as a grown woman while seeing the wonder in all things. It came from my Reiki teacher, Holly, who channeled Mother Earth energy into my heart and hands, empowering me to heal myself and those I love. It came just in time from my mother-in-law, Ruth, when—after holding each other at arm’s length for years—we finally embraced the power of unconditional love. It came from my Mum, who shows me everyday how love lives on in Spirit. (For more of this story, see my Come and Meet Those Dancin’ Feet series.) And, the Mumma energy came full circle in Helen, my mother’s namesake, and her sister, Becky.

“I couldn’t have chosen anyone better to become the mother of my child,” Tom wrote in my first Mother’s Day card. “Really?” I remember thinking, resting the card on my enormous belly. “Will he still feel that way a couple months—and a couple decades—from now?” I was seven months pregnant with Helen, my first-born, and my attitude towards motherhood had just barely switched from “Babies are cute, but keep them away from me,” to “As long as my natural instincts don’t fail me, I think maybe I could be a mom.”

Fast forward past college graduations, a wedding, and mother-daughter memories better than any Hallmark could anticipate. My Mumma energy is pumping just fine, I’m glad to report, triggered just as much by giving birth and from holding my babies as it is by having my daughters mother me back. It’s more ethereal than any biological process, flowing within the laughter that bubbles through the phone line, in long, tearful goodbyes, and those that went unspoken. It’s in the sweet, mysterious grace that keeps me here—alive and well—as a middle-aged mom, riding roller coasters and rapids, or dancing in a concert crowd to the songs that bind us together. Turns out, it’s the gift my mother asked for so many years ago, the one that never needs wrapping. I am grateful I found it, in the kindness of friends and strangers, in the courage to live my legacy, to create my own health and happiness every day. Thank you, Mum. Thank you, everybody. I really don’t need anything more.