Page 49 - WhyAsInY

WHo are tHese PeoPle? (Part 1)
Mom’s phone stool. Frisky was kept locked in his cage because the first time that he was let out, he flew all around the house and deposited some unpleasant materials on living room curtains that for some reason were more important to my mother than was a healthy bird’s need for daily exercise. Frisky, in addition to being able to defecate, actually could talk. Once I discovered that the repetition of words in his pres- ence would make him more entertaining as a companion, I taught Frisky to say, “Let me out,” which he would intone repeatedly when Mom was on the phone and thereby drive her almost as crazy as I did.
The kitchen was one of the places where my mother excelled, at least as far as I was concerned. (My father’s kitchen activities were for the most part confined to fixing a bowl of cornflakes for himself, some- thing that he was content to do for breakfast, for lunch, and for virtually any other time of day; he could also produce scrambled eggs.) Because my father’s evening office hours started at 6:00 p.m., we would eat din- ner as a family at 5:00. No matter that it was early in the day, dinners were almost always cooked or, usually around the weekends, brought in. There were no sandwiches that I recall. Neither were there many baked goods produced by my mom in the house. She might have attempted to produce cakes when I was very young, but at some point, I figured out that if I was to stomp up and down when a cake was in the oven, it would “fall.” For some reason, she did not find a falling cake as amusing as I did.
The hot dishes that were prepared at home that I remember best were Eastern European in origin and, in any event, not overwhelmingly healthful. Some favorites were brisket and barley, stuffed cabbage, chopped liver (hand chopped and ground, sometimes with me helping out), gefilte fish, matzoh ball (“knadl ”) soup, kreplach (Jewish wontons), a casserole of frankfurters, baked beans and brown sugar, and salmon croquettes. Two Eastern European delicacies that I could never quite relate to were shav (a green drink made of sorrel leaves, onion, and var- ious other ingredients) and borscht (beets and sour cream, the odor of which still repels me), both of which my parents thought to be refresh- ing. I’m told that once, when sour cream was placed on our table at a
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