This morning, republishing an essay from the archives. A friend of mine mentioned yesterday that she’d re-read it recently and that it had made her laugh out loud in her office (high praise!), but as I skimmed it, I realized how important and timely the message was during this week leading up to Christmas. I found myself relaxing into the thought that “the everyday can upstage the dramatic.” For children, the small thing — the weird song you sing while your son is brushing their teeth; the misshapen, over-sprinkled, slightly underbaked sugar cookies you make — can matter just as much as the enormous overtures. Let me press that sentiment into my arms this week, and remember to read the story books by the fire with my son, and play another round of Uno, and say yes to all those tiny normal family things that in the end become the fabric of a love-filled childhood. (Attention is the same thing as love –)
*****
A Magpie recently left a comment on my post on holiday traditions:
“Have you read Jenny Rosenstrach’s How to Celebrate Everything: Recipes and Rituals for Birthdays, Holidays, Family Dinners, and Every Day In Between? It’s part cook book, part memoir of her own family’s traditions, but I love how she frames the conversation–it doesn’t have to be elaborate to have a lasting impact on your child. I also love her question, “What food can transport you to your childhood dining room table?” For me, it’s my mom’s spinach enchiladas which she always made on Christmas eve. Is there something for you?”
I loved the provocation and was immediately transported back, much to my surprise, to the rare winter evenings my mother would serve “cheese fondue.” This nearly always transpired when my father was out of town, as he was more of a meat-and-potatoes-for-dinner guy. Writing that out also reminds me of the dreaded “liver” nights, when my mother would serve pan-fried liver topped with bacon crumbles — a tepid attempt to disguise its signature gaminess — and we would pick the bacon off the top and hide scraps of organ meat in our napkins or milk cups, covertly retching at the smell. My mother did not tolerate dinnertime complaints. She was vastly generous and supportive in 99% of the phenomena of our childhood lives, but meal preferences were not up for discussion, and were seemingly beneath her interest. I can still remember the shrugging impassiveness in her eyes: “Oh, OK. I guess you’re not hungry then.” As though I had mentioned the weather in the window. She was also uncharacteristically warden-like after dinner: “The kitchen is closed,” she’d announce, as though flipping a restaurant sign in a window. And that was that, unless we connived to inveigle my youngest sister into tiptoeing into the kitchen while my mother’s back was turned to filch crackers or dried cereal from the snack cupboard. (“You’re so good at it,” we would condescend, bluntly using well-worn flattery to grease the wheels, and this eventually became a mock trigger for her, to the extent that we now, still, as grown adults, will ask her: “Elle, can you get me a glass of water? You’re so good at it.”)
Anyhow, I now know, too-intimately, the maneuvering negotiations that birthed my mother’s mealtime jadedness. With my own children, I am desperately tired of the nighttime strain over what is being served, how much they must eat, etc. I have adopted several of the suggestions from your comments on this post, titled, “How Do You Get Your Children to Eat?”, and there have been some wins, but we are still very much in the trenches. I swear my son eats dinner every third night. My daughter will eat what is served, but not without requisite caviling. It is enough to set my even-keeled Mr. Magpie afire. His eyes flash with frustration as they cry, moan, and hiss over the $60 ribeye steak he’s lovingly prepared.
At any rate —
To the provocation at hand:
Cheese fondue. My mother would cube and toast sourdough bread and arrange it alongside crudite around a vintage fondue pot. We’d spear the items (mainly the bread) with long, thin bamboo skewers, our elbows pressed against the tabletop. It felt delightfully off-brand for my mother, who was typically formal at mealtimes. No hats permitted; collared shirts at the table. The table was always dressed with linens and candles, and for awhile, she had this antique silver “crumber” she would deploy one of us to use after dinner. We always found the task absurd, and would mock the assignment by speaking in faux English accents (“oh, master Tom, I’m just nearly done with this, your lordship”). On cheese fondue nights, though, we’d huddle in the breakfast room, kneeling in our seats, dipping into the meal with uncharacteristic casualness. I think back now and see that this was yet another way my mother practiced magic on a regular basis. She must have been so tired, and busy, with my father traveling as much as he did in those days (one year, 50 out of 52 weeks!), and five children to tend to, and yet she’d tender-heartedly make the trek to the grocery at some point while half of us were ensconced in school and the other half were clinging to her skirts in the aisles of the market to assemble all the ingredients for this unconventional meal — just to offer us a small moment of midweek joy.
I find it both strange and distinctly right that the meal that reminds me most of my childhood was its least frequently repeated and its most abnormal. With my own children, too, it’s the non-routine that implants: my daughter still mentions, three years later and about 1000 perfectly executed packed lunches intervening, the one time I forgot her lunch at home and had to buy her a strange assortment of items from the Eataly next door to her Flatiron Montessori. I would venture to guess that when I ask her, in fifteen years, what she remembers about me packing her lunch as a child, it will be: “That time you forgot.” This is, in fact, a dearness in disguise, because what it really means is: “You cared so much that I leaned on your always doing it, and was shocked the one time you didn’t.” (Or, so I tell myself when she decides to proffer this failing in company.)
In a cab from the airport to our hotel last weekend, my best friend told me that her four year old daughter had woken up in tears the two nights following Halloween, wailing: “Halloween is never happening again!” We laughed about this, but also settled on the insight that, for children, the out-of-the-ordinary is wider, and more intense, than we think. Their lives are so narrow, their patterns circumscribed. They can barely see beyond the perimeter of their homes, libraries, and schools — or the handful of places they spend the majority of their time — and so when they catch sight of the expanse beyond, it is thrilling and paradigm-shifting for them. Halloween represented one such glimpse for my friend’s daughter. I’ve seen this play out many times for my own children, including last Friday, when my daughter went on a field trip to Mount Vernon. You would have thought she was being flown to Mars. She talked endlessly about the trip, George Washington’s teeth, something about seeds falling through the slats of the floor, the bus and who she sat with, the chicken strips at the cafeteria. The experience was so expansively new that it sat like a ponderousness in her mind, squeezing out thoughts of all else.
I write this today as preamble for a theme we have been talking about a lot over the years, as a community of mothers and daughters:
How, in the end, the small, special things we cultivate with care often outshine all else. The moment you sit down at eye level with your child and really ask how they feel when they are out of sorts, as though a dear friend rather than a toddler in tantrum. The time you permit your daughter to stay up twenty minutes past bedtime to curl up in your arms in bed watching a TV show together. The little love note you tuck into your son’s backpack on an important test or game day. The holiday cookies you made with your grandmother that you now make with your own children. The cheese fondue.
A Magpie reader wrote earlier this year that she often reminds herself, as a mother, to “do the small thing.” Not the enormous birthday party that requires weeks of planning and dramatic expense, but the small huddle of children around a very average magician. Not the day packed with distraction and activity, but the afternoon unspooled around crayons and legos in the family room. Not the pricey children’s indoor park but the walk outside in the woods, collecting leaves and spotting deer in the foliage. (This, in fact, scared my son, but I digress.)
I know it is easy — perhaps irritating — to romanticize these things, to suggest that the everyday can upstage the dramatic — but as I sit here reflecting on my own experience with motherhood, I find this to be the rule rather than the exception. And as my mother proved so well in the days of cheese fondue, it only takes a small break in routine to accomplish it.
Post-Scripts.
+Would you please share in the comments what “transports you to your childhood dining table”? (Veronica, thank you so much for this beautiful prompt!)
+My Grub Street-style food diary.
+Indoor shrimp BBQ — one of our favorite weeknight meals.
+Motherhood is also a surfeit.
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Shopping Break.
+Julia Amory is offering an extra 25% off her sale collection (code JAVIP25). Some of the items included are at crazy closeout prices, like this patterned Betty dress (under $100 — I LOVE this silhouette and own in three patterns/colors), pareos for as low as $23 (pair with the matching husband shirt for a very chic beach-to-lunch look), this breezy caftan ($89!). Finally, I absolutely love my Jane dress. It is SO beautifully cut and flattering, and that pistachio green is very Grace Kelley!
+Free express shipping at Negative….I think you deserve to wear this set on Christmas morning!
+Magpies are loving this brushed cashmere sweater (currently on sale) this week. J. Crew also launched some new arrivals worth a gander — this zip-up cardigan and this cool heritage terry hoodie!
+This is the jacket I reach for most mornings as I’m dropping my kids. For some reason I’m very drawn to that soft, brushed top layer — feels so cozy and warm vs. standard puffer jacket nylon — and I like that the cinched waist gives me a little shape versus swallowing me whole. (Meanwhile, length covers the rear if I’m wearing leggings.) They also have a cute cropped version in great colors.
+Speaking of leggings: Aligns on sale for under $60 in all sizes in a great color.
+I shared some great last-minute gift ideas if you’re still in a pinch; you will need to upgrade to expedited/rush shipping for some of these items, like the Rhoback q-zips we all bought our men. One other idea that occurred to me after hitting publish: buy a couple of those fabulous hand creams I’ve been raving about. I bought for my best friend and one of my sisters. They come in a beautiful box that you just need to tie a ribbon around. Easy, chic, and trust me — your MIL, mother, sister, bestie, SIL — will love it. You’ll need to do express shipping but if you buy a few together (toss one in for yourself) it sort of neutralizes the sting. Or order these adorable boxed sets of exfoliating bar minis! How charming!? I love these — I always feel like a Vermeer painting after I’ve used. Skin is pearlescent, romantic, glowy!
+Ordered these fab earrings to wear on NYE. While we’re talking statement jewelry, we’re down to our final few of the beaded necklace I designed with my friend Erin McDermott!
+Tuckernuck launched a really cute alpine-Americana capsule in time for the winter olympics. I love this sweater, this 80s-coded quarter zip (I feel like I had a sweatshirt with this exact motif but promoting NASA’s space program when I was 6), and these mittens!
+My son loves when I tuck these little notes into his lunchbox.
+Has anyone tried these foundation drops? They are $$$ but I keep hearing people rave about them…
+Doen launched its “hand me doen” sale (pre-loved items), so if there is a past-season style you’ve been hunting for, this is a great change to snag! I find I get a lot of mileage out of their featherweight blouses. Soft on the skin and so easy to tuck into jeans for a cute but casual look. Also love the idea of this dress with a simple brown leather sandal (<<I wear these season after season) and a big straw tote for a winter getaway.
+Chic scalloped rattan mirror at a great price.
+Donni restocked its viral taffeta pants! I know many of you are big fans.
+Some really cool pieces on sale at Goop, including this Nili Lotan denim jacket and this charming red Doen dress!
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This essay really reminds me of my favourite kids book ‘The tiger who came to tea’ It’s an absolute classic children’s book in the UK. In it a girl and her mother are going about their day when a tiger randomly comes for tea. He eats them out of house and home and they have nothing left for dinner. When Dad gets back from work he suggests, seeing as they have no food left, that they all go to a cafe for dinner. The illustration of them heading out in the rain for a normal (yet special) dinner in a cafe always sticks with me and brings me back to all those times (as you mention in your essay) where things have gone awry and an alternative slightly out of the ordinary path must be taken. My kids always get excited if I suggest we go out for dinner. It doesn’t happen too often and is special (yet normal)
I love these insights, and the book is a perfect accompaniment to them!! xx
Oh. my gosh, this essay. But especially the piece about your daughter and the forgotten lunch. When I was in elementary school, my mother was an avid baker and I always had homemade cookies and brownies in my lunch which was lovely except all of my friends had store-bought cookies and I wanted some. After months of begging for Oreos, my mother was so insulted that she bought a 2 lb. box of them at Costco and refused to provide anything else until I had eaten every single (by then stale) cookie. I’m 44 years old and she still reminds me of how ungrateful I was for her yummy homemade treats.
OMG! What a story, and a lesson!!! xx
Sunday night supper was always buttered, salted popcorn and apples sliced and dipped in peanut butter. And maybe a glass of milk. As an adult, I learned from my mother that this meal was a financial necessity. But to us kids it felt like great fun.
I love this, Kristin — “it felt like great fun.” xx
My dad makes Bernard Clayton’s sugar cube bread Christmas Eve, a massive batch, and delivers to all our neighbors and loved ones. A big slab of soft yeasted white bread with sticky cinnamon sugar pockets, crystallized like jewels and slathered in cold butter is my ideal Christmas breakfast while opening presents, before the later formality of brunch. I haven’t had it in years, but he’s visiting me this holiday season and will mix up a gluten free batch.
I love our family’s celebration foods. I remember my dad frying crunchy Swiss German fastnachts for Fat Tuesday, making delicate linzers and insanely buttery molasses cookies for Christmas. No one’s molasses cookies are quite like his because he massively heaps the spices. I had to have him do it over the scale one year in order to replicate the effect he achieves by muscle memory. He made popovers nearly every Sunday, slathered in honey butter, and when he didn’t, my mom made orange currant scones. We went through pounds and pounds of bacon on Sundays, and the ease and comfort of those weekends made up for all the stoic mornings my parents rose before 4 to eat their Special K cereal in silence before a long commute.
My brother loves squash rolls, a family bread recipe made at thanksgiving that absolutely no one else enjoys, because they’re orange and leathery dry, only good with lots of butter. Their rare inclusion centered them in his mind.
My dad was famous for his rosemary focaccia and made it for every event in town, and it always disappeared while rocket-hot no matter how much he made. The men in my family are the bakers, and I’m so thrilled to see my youngest brother making dad’s recipes or experimenting with sourdough.
When I get homesick I make my dad’s shepherd’s pie, which is really a cottage pie. On top of spiced ground beef and peas and mashed potatoes is a really absurd amount of cheddar and our family’s signature touch, crushed potato chips, a topping my dad learned from the lunch ladies at his catholic school as a kid.
What a lovely prompt! I wonder what meals my son and daughter will remember.
Deeply impressed with your dad’s incredible baking skills. I want to try everything! Rosemary focaccia?! Yum. The way you write about these baked goods, and your father, is so touching — the affection shines right through.
xx
My kids apparently love when I make hot dogs and put together a plate of leftover veggies to accompany it, and they get an extra movie—-because my husband has late meetings and I’m doing bedtime solo!!
Love this. Good upside reminder for those moments where we feel strained / stretched thin and choose the thing that can make our lives easier! xx
This is verrrrry specific- and maybe only resonates if you have Eastern European heritage. But my grandmother lived with us growing up and would make a Polish bread that is both savory and sweet and pure heaven called kolacz. This bread- I tell you, triggers a memory of every sensation. The messy sensation of helping her mix it in a massive bowl with my hands and trying to scrape off the clingy dough. The smell of yeast dough rising and baking. The visual wonder of watching a small dough ball expand to fill the massive bowl. The sound of her singing or praying in Polish or talking while she mixed. Seeing that bread out on the table (she taught us all to make it without a recipe just like she did) and I’m 5 years old again. A time warp in a bite.
Wow – I love this so much. The tactility of these memories shines right through your writing! I’ve never tasted this but it sounds divine!
Thanks for sharing, Jenny.
xx
I told my mom recently that my favorite dinner was her “plate of little things” and she laughed and said those were her most tired, least inspired, most fed-up nights. She would just grab random items in the kitchen, cut them up, put them on a plate. But to me, magic!
This completely underlines my insight — that sometimes the little, out-of-the-ordinary things (occasionally born of shortness-on-time or fatigue!) can be SO special to little ones.
Going to tuck the “plate of small things” idea away for myself on a frenetic night!
xx
I grew up with divorced parents. My sister and I lived with my mom and every Thursday was “girls night” (which looking back makes me chuckle because every night was girls night at our house! Ha!) but on Thursdays we’d venture into town for Chinese takeout and a stroll through the video store to pick out a chick flick. We watched so many wonderful movies over takeout. After finishing dinner, we’d sit on the floor and my mom would paint our toenails. It was the absolute best. My mom had a rule that we always had to have clean/polished toenails and to this day, I get a pedicure if I know I’m going to see her!
I absolutely adore this tradition — !! So incredibly sweet and special. I am now wondering if there’s a way to have a “girls night” maybe once a month with my girl and do something similar, just for us…
xx
I I sent your essay to my grown children and a close friend. It was lovely and spot on! I also went down a rabbit hole on some of your recipes. They sound really delicious. I know this is a big ask, but is there any way to make them pinnable? I’m not smart enough to figure it out for myself. So far I am copying and pasting into an email and sending to myself. You could easily write a food blog on the side!!
Hi Marsha! I’m so glad this resonated, and thank you for sharing with your loved ones! I’m so flattered by that. Thank you also for the great idea on recipes. This is a fantastic idea. I’m going to try to get my ducks in a row to create more pinnable recipes. Will report back when I’ve done that!
xx
Growing up, my dad surprised us every Friday with gas station candy he’d pick out on our behalf for me, my sibling, and mom. I’d often got Sixlets. Mom preferred a Pay Day. We’d wait anxiously for him to walk in the door with the treat. Of all the spoils we had growing up, this Friday evening memory of him walking through the door with cheap sugar stays at the top of my memories. I do it now for my own three kids.
Oh my gosh – how sweet is this? Love this tradition. Such a small but special pick-me-up at the end of the week.
Thanks for sharing.
xx
Just such a sweet, thoughtful and easy gesture! Love this