Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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One Afternoon

Posted November 19, 2007
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Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

I'm in a grubby T-shirt and underwear, because I'm going to a fancy poetry reading tonight, and I don't want to dress before I've finished making the pizza-dough skeleton fingers for the kids' school's Halloween Spooky Café. But I'm toying with the idea of pants because the condo work crew is out in full force, blowing acres of leaves and pine needles into colossal piles everywhere. They're up on the roof, they're whooshing out our gutters, they're on our patio, blowing, blowing, blowing through machines that seem to funnel every amp of sound in the universe out of a nozzle the size of a Pringles can. "What?" the children and I keep yelling to each other, even though all the windows are closed. "Did you say thinner or thicker?"

I should put pants on, that much is now clear, since one of the guys just waved to me and smiled. Hi! Yup, just a mom in her white men's briefs, dusted with flour and tugging on a long snake of dough! It is possible that, unbeknownst to myself, I am starring in the most peculiar and depressing pornographic movie that was ever made.

I should put pants on, but I don't because there are still two trays of fingers to roll out and I don't want to have to wash my hands twice because I'm not actually just going to the reading -- I'm coordinating it, as part of my college-secretary job, and I am seriously running out of time. I still need to deal with the flowers and the signs and I still want to check about the mic and fax in the recording release form. Plus, I will need to pick the poet up from her hotel, and I will need time to gather my confidence, since I am such a bad driver that even the two blocks between town and campus stretch in my imagination into a kind of epic pilgrimage of potential horrors.

"Mama!" Ben is yelling to me from in front of the oven, where he's camped out, watching the fingers bake. "Oh my God, Mama, the fingernails are popping off!" Birdy and I rush over to look -- and it's true. As the dough puffs up, the almonds slices are getting pushed out and off of it. "We'll figure it out!" I yell. Is the blower actually inside our house at this point? It sounds like it, but no -- because it's too busy blowing dirty pine needles up onto the windows we just washed. I can see that the rosemary and poppy seeds are also sliding off of the fingers -- should we try brushing them with water instead of oil? I'm considering this and also noticing that the fingernail-less fingers have baked themselves crustily -- and permanently -- onto the pan, when the phone rings. It's the poet's agent, whom I can hardly hear, though I take the phone into a closet. The car service is late. The car is stuck on the MassPike. The poet doesn't want to come late, may now not want to come at all. We need to arrange an emergency limo pickup. I would Google this information -- if our Internet were not mysteriously down for the afternoon. I am in my underwear in a closet, while the leaf blower roars and the reading falls apart and the children yell from outside the closet, "What should we do? Can we glue them on?"

No. We can't glue them on. But we can press the almonds on harder in this next batch and hope the rosemary (which we are running out of) adheres better to the water, because what are dough fingers without hairy rosemary knuckles? "What are the poppy seeds even supposed to be?" Ben wonders yellingly, and I put up one finger which means, That is an excellent question but I am busy reserving an emergency limo for the hugest reading I've ever been in serious danger of completely biffing. What are the poppy seeds for? Now I'm on hold. "Freckles?" I yell, and the dispatcher says, "What?" and I yell, "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't talking to you."

The pickup has happened; the poet is on her way; the agent calls to warn me that the poet is upset and may act upset when she arrives, if she arrives at all. But the leaf blowers are moving away, the sound fading, and this second batch of fingers is looking better. The children are gamely rolling more dough fingers, though they remain anxious about the first batch: "What if all the fingernails pop off?" "Honeys," I say. "Honeys. We're making dough fingers for a Halloween snack, okay? We're not exactly preparing a feast for the queen." We eat the entire batch of ruined fingers, salty and delicious and still warm from the oven.

The poet has arrived at her hotel and she is upset. There will be no showering, though I do finally pull on my brown skirt and boots and put on lipstick, and the children go huge-eyed, as if I have transformed myself into Glinda the Good Witch before their very eyes. "Wow, Mama!" Birdy says, and Ben says, "You look so fancy!" And this will be the best moment of my night. Even though the reading will be a tremendous success, and I will drive the poet without incident, and I will sit in the audience, willing my heart to quiet down and listening to her beautiful poems about long sunsets and lost youth and the serenity of twilight. And I will not know how to feel.

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One Afternoon

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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