The word potluck makes me anxious, even now that I am old enough to have scheduling conflicts.
I can still feel the warm weight of paper plates sagging precariously in my hands,
Odd juices running together as I make my way
Across gray, industrial tiles,
Fluorescent lights blazing upon:
Norwegian Chop Suey
Potato salad slathered in Miracle Whip and pickle relish
Jello with grated carrots and cottage cheese
Fruit salad with Cool Whip and marshmallows
Hamburger Helper
Broccoli with Cheez Whiz
“Hot Dish”
Anything involving a can of cream of something soup
Or canned peas
And then, at the end,
Mincemeat pie.
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In case you’re wondering “Wait! What’s wrong with pie?”…let me assure you that real mincemeat pie involves meat. Like rump steak and beef suet. As well as piles of sugar and raisins. Don’t believe me? Click here for a recipe.
Not long ago, an acquaintance walked into my entryway and stared at a photograph I had taken of my daughter holding her pet hamster. “Is that guy dead?” she asked me.
I suddenly felt very, very uncomfortable.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, unsure whether to feel embarrassed or ashamed. I picked both.
She looked at it for a long, uncomfortable moment before announcing: “That is sooooo Scandinavian.”
I had no idea what she meant, but since I’m 100% Norwegian, I figured she might be on to something. It was time to investigate.
I have relatives who swim daily in the ocean off the coast of Oslo, and run around their mountain cabin naked in the middle of winter–no doubt after a good dose of Aquavit. I can assure you that this is not what it was like for me in my childhood home. My parents are the sort that drink a thimble-full of red wine for medicinal reasons, and comport themselves in a dignified manner at all times. I think I’ve heard them raise their voices three or four times in my entire life.
Growing up, I was carted off to Junior Sons of Norway on Saturdays, where I learned the Norwegian national anthem–which I can be easily enticed to sing, with great enthusiasm–and Min Hatt, Den Har Tre Kanter (My Hat, It Has Three Corners, a deep and lyrical song, as you ca imagine). I was fed Lutefisk (fish soaked in lye) once a year, and taught to say grace in Norwegian whenever we excavated the dining room table and broke out the china.
I associate my ethnic roots with a palate-numbing dose of pickled herring, passed like treasure in a tiny, silver-rimmed dish at Christmas dinner. In fact, Christmas arrived with a long list of Scandinavian things I can’t and/or won’t eat: Swedish meatballs, fruit soup, lefse, herring, rice pudding. (Sorry, Mom. I love you.) My mother would hide an almond in the rice pudding, and whoever found it got an extra present on Christmas Eve. I loved this tradition, but despised rice pudding. I would shove a spoonful around on my plate, and if I couldn’t find a nut, try to reorganize it in a polite way which simulated ingesting an honorable amount.
But I think it goes much deeper. Those Norwegian immigrants were unflinching, hardworking, stoic powerhouses in the face of the adversity and desolation of the Plains. In fact, my name was plucked from Ole Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, a chronicle of Norwegian immigrants in the Midwest. I have visited his house multiple times, read articles, and listened attentively to stories about him, but I have never, ever been able to make myself read the book. Here’s why: from Wikipedia, “The novel depicts snow storms, locusts, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, the difficulty of fitting into a new culture, and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land.” What’s more, I heard my namesake has a paralyzing case agoraphobia.
“Is it true Beret goes crazy in the book?” I asked my mother. “Why would you name me after a character like that?”
There was a quiet pause.
“She really pulls it together in the second book,” my mother said, finally.
There are plenty of cultural oddities for a whitey round-eye like me visiting Japan.
For starters:
Japanese Vending Machines.
Did you know Japan is about 500 degrees in the summer? Plus 99% humidity? Me neither. It’s so tidy and cool in the guidebooks. Everyone looks all nifty and suited up and un-sweaty-like. Have they photoshopped all of the melting tourists out of the pictures?
Luckily, every ten yards or so there stands a vending machine of happiness.
I’ve seen vending machines before, obviously, but not like these. They are tempting. They are sassy. And they dispense whatever you might desire: juice, milk, towels, ice cream, sweet iced coffee labeled BOSS. You can say whatever you need to say to that boss for 120 yen. That boss has been canned.
A great many vending machines are chock full of beer. Due to circumstances beyond my control, such nectar of the gods is strictly verboten. I struggled to avoid eye contact with the Asahi machines that cropped up on every other block. Given the weather, a cold beer looked damned tasty, even through the shower of perspiration raining down my face.
Oh, well. The spouse could always roll his cold can on the back of my neck.
Japanese Toilets.
What to do? From thejapans.files.wordpress.com
It was a little alarming the first time I sat down and perused a toilet control panel, too terrified to push anything. What invasive and embarrassing activity might commence? It is a vulnerable feeling to bare your behind and then submit it to the great unknown.
My two girls were not so tentative. I heard them locked in a stall, screaming and shrieking with laughter. Lord knows what was going on in there, so I retreated to the hallway, cheeks a bit flushed.
One finally emerged, breathless. “Did you push the button with a musical note?” she asked. Turns out, it had played the Star Wars theme. If the line had been shorter, I might have gone back to give it a go.
Sadly, in most restrooms, the music button only makes a loud flushing sound, but now that the note button seemed safe, I decided to step-up my exploration.
What I discovered is that many of the options are surprisingly refreshing. In fact, it was disappointing to arrive back in the States and remember that our lackluster commodes do nothing besides give the ol’ heave-ho to a variety of deposits.
And now…a quick word about the seat heater. It might be a nice feature in certain specific circumstances. Like, in the middle of winter…in your own home. But it was downright lurky to sit on a hot public toilet. It made me think of bacteria multiplying, and about the last pair of bare buttocks that had rested on the very same spot.
You may be imagining the pit on the ground, which would not be so bad. No. On trains, the pits are at commode level. You have to step a couple feet off the ground and clutch the safety rail for dear life, trying to maneuver your pants to the ankle area with your free hand. Alternately, you can use your free hand to tuck your skirt into your armpit.
Who decided it was a good idea to dangle your hind-side over a hole while hurtling through the countryside at 240 miles per hour? Avoid. Trust me.
Toilet Slippers.
Regular slippers, from japan-guide.com
Never step on tatami mats while wearing shoes. You probably know that.
When you get to the restroom, you have to take off those REGULAR slippers and change into your TOILET SLIPPERS. God forbid you get your slippers confused.
When all this takes place in your postage-stamp sized hotel room, absurdity reigns. Imagine opening the door to your teeny tiny room, removing your shoes to put on your regular slippers, shuffling eighteen inches to the bathroom door and changing your footwear yet again.
Also, it felt ridiculous to have the word “toilet” written on my feet. At least dogs can’t read.
Pickles.
Pickles, pickles, pickles.
What is it with pickles?
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. More pickles. Different pickles. Pickles as palate cleanser, as condiment, as garnish, as digestive.
It’s like the Eskimos with their snow, except you have to eat it.
Cat Cafés.
Menu of cats the day we visited.
Traveling with children means you can’t simply do what the grown ups feel like doing all day everyday. In order to prevent a terrible snit–or worse, mutiny–we had to mix in destinations and activities that would amuse our tiny tyrants. Since we were trying to avoid places like Tokyo Disney, however, we tried to find things that were uniquely Japanese.
About two thirds of the way through our trip, the girls got very homesick, and started waxing nostalgic about our beloved, neglected cat at home. Cat Café, here we come.
The first cat café started in Korea, followed shortly thereafter by one in Osaka, but the pet rental phenomenon really took root in Tokyo, where they have about 40 cat cafes. Since most apartments forbid pets, these places feed the need to find furry love and a little zen-like escape from the frenetic, crowded urban life. One can also find bunny bistros, dog cafes, and an occasional goat here and there, but cat lovers head to places like Nekorobi, in Ikebukuro.
This was a lovely respite for all of us, except the spouse, for whom one cat is definitely enough (if only barely tolerable). He amused himself around Ikebukuro, which is an interesting little pocket of Tokyo.
In case you are secretly judging me, this was not just a place for crazy cat ladies. People go there and play with cats, of course, but only when the cats are interested. Otherwise, people read, and sip coffee, and work, and do regular people activities.
Best of all, Nekorobi had fancy vending machines. They had cubbies and sci-fi toilets. They had regular slippers and bathroom slippers, bean bags, and wifi. And cats.
Plus, no pickles or pit toilets. Perfect.
Couldn’t read the menu, so I called this one Soul Patch. My fave.
I try to be a nice person. I certainly want to be one. Unfortunately, I’m starting to believe I might not be genetically wired for punctuality and thoughtfulness. If I have missed your birthday, it’s not because I don’t care about you; I just plain forgot. Like my brothers, whose birthdays are lost somewhere in the sad, endy bits of summer, the problem is that your birthday doesn’t automatically appear on my calendar. Apologies to all of you.
Fortunately, my father’s birthday falls during the Thanksgiving season, and my sister’s is on or around the first day of spring, so even if I don’t write them down, there is always something on the calendar to magically remind me.
Easiest of all to remember is my mother’s.
My mother turned ten the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
That must have been a memorable birthday, with everyone huddled around the radio, speechless and shaken. Probably not the best one, mind you, but remarkable, nonetheless.
Over the years, my mother has championed everyone else’s special days, but on hers she lays low, no doubt hoping someone might step up and do a little something for her for a change. We have tried.
We learned early on that Dad was good for a Hallmark card and a nice little gifty item, but he was not to be entrusted with the cake. In his defense, he did attempt to make one from a box once, but was so flummoxed by the words “ten-inch tube pan,” that he gave up and drove to Piggly Wiggly.
It’s worth mentioning that in our house, store-bought baked goods were a sign of approaching moral turpitude.
After that mini debacle, we siblings started juggling responsibility for the cake amongst ourselves, usually ironing out the details the morning of December 7.
One year, though, my medium brother decided to make an Angel Food Cake. He even started the project the DAY BEFORE. Impressive. We were all reasonably decent cooks, but we had some respect for his ambition. If you’ve made an angel food cake, you know what I mean.
Out came the ancient Betty Crocker cookbook, heavily thumbed and coated with a light dusting of flour from decades of use.
My brother looked so serious, meticulously pouring over Betty’s good book. We thought everything was under control, and gave him a little space to work his magic.
It’s uncertain exactly what went wrong. The reigning theory is that he must have combined elements from a couple of different tricky recipes arranged on the same page.
All I know is that it looked beautiful when he pulled it out of the oven. Betty said to cool the cake by flipping the whole pan upside down and sliding it onto the neck of a wine bottle. That way, the cake would cool but still stay light and airy. Trust me, if you’ve whipped 12 room temperature egg whites into a heavenly cloud, if you’ve sifted the cake flour four or five times, and spun the superfine sugar, you want that cake to be FLUFFY.
Medium brother flipped the pan, only to have a half-baked cake carcass collapse onto the counter.
Sad.
After a minute or two of reverential silence, he scooped the remains right back into the pan and tossed it into the oven for another thirty minutes or so.
Then, the cake and my brother mysteriously disappeared for several hours.
Nothing more was said about the cake that day. We like to sweep things like this under the rug. I figured he had made the shameful Piggly Wiggly run, and was off somewhere, nursing his culinary wounds.
The next day was a Sunday. Everything proceeded normally: fried eggs for breakfast, followed by church, then dinner in the dining room. Sunday was the one day a week that the mail was cleared off the table. My father presented the card, the gift. It was time to sing.
Medium brother thumped down to the basement and emerged with the most astonishing sweet mess I’ve ever seen.
The cake mass had been roughly sculpted into some sort of landform and half-sunk battle ship. These were situated on a homemade wooden platform, which was covered with Reynold’s wrap and an ungodly amount of blue icing. There were American flags, tiny plastic boats and planes, and little soldiers everywhere.
It was, hands-down, the most impressive birthday cake I’ve ever seen, and to top it off, surprisingly tasty. Not like an angel food cake, perhaps–more like an epic Pearl Harbor Day cake reenactment would taste. But not too shabby.
Hospital Corner how-to stolen from the Art of Manliness
It was April 1st, many years ago. My mother had just left town without us, which never happened. I can’t recall where she was headed or why; I only remember going up to my room and noticing that something felt distinctly out of place.
Granted, my room was a perennial disaster, but my bed was a different story; I made that thing with the precision of a watchmaker. I pulled the sheets and blankets into crisp hospital corners, relentlessly smoothing each layer. I folded the top of the bedspread back and over a perfectly fluffed pillow, so not a single peek of the sheets was visible.
The bedspread itself was covered with the names of tourist destinations I had never visited, arranged in a step and repeat pattern, white on blue. Miami. Palm Beach. Orlando. San Antonio. Miami. Palm Beach. Orlando. You get the idea. For the final touch, I would place a little rectangular pillow at a 45-degree angle, with two opposing corners pointing at a couple of Miamis.
Perhaps this was a byproduct of all the years I had to sleep on the daybed. I’ve softened a little, over the years, but I still remake the bed when my husband is not looking.
On this particular day, however, one corner of the throw pillow did not point to Miami and, glancing at the calendar, I knew there was trouble. Sure enough, someone had short-sheeted my bed. Without a word, I quickly and quietly remade it, waiting eagerly for evening.
When my father tucked me in that night, I made a bit of a show crawling in and stretching my legs with a yawn. He eyed me suspiciously. “Anything wrong?” he asked. No, no. Just happy to be in bed. “Really? Everything is OK?” That’s when I learned that my mother had nearly missed her flight cooking up that little prank. Ah, sweet victory.
The most memorable April Fools’ Day from childhood, however, involved my brother and me tormenting our sister. Thanks to his music pedagogy class, the day started with a harrowing early-morning bassoon solo/wake-up call—is there any other kind?– followed by my offering her breakfast in bed, which I promptly tossed on top of her.
That got her up.
As she began her morning regimen, we headed down to the kitchen.
Lord knows how we came up with the idea, but we decided to make a concoction that resembled dog vomit. We filled the blender with peanut butter, yellow food coloring, raw oats, and a variety of other edible items. The result was surprisingly lifelike. Frankly, we were all unfortunate experts on the appropriate color and consistency, since our dog was prone to eat and upchuck just about anything from inside of a garbage can or under a rock. I have even seen her enthusiastically lap it up and repeat.
Vomiting Dog 00 by eoioje from reverent.org
We put a generous helping of this lumpy, gooey treat on a small piece of saran wrap, and set it on the carpet in my sister’s room.
“Oh, man! That is disgusting! Look what the dog did on your rug!”
We played it up, of course, nice and loud so the entire household was privy to our conversation.
My sister, already more than a little annoyed from the previous incidents, poked her head out of the bathroom, took a good look, and sighed. “Do you think you guys could clean that up? Please?” She sounded a bit desperate, as I remember, and I wish I could say that I felt a twinge of guilt.
“Of course,” I said, ostensibly heading down for some cleaning supplies.
“Just a minute,” my brother said, suddenly serious. “I’ve heard that dog vomit is very nutritious, and surprisingly tasty as well.”
I feigned surprise. “Really? Is that true?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous,” he continued, “but I was just listening to NPR, and a nutritional scientist was on the program discussing potential benefits of eating the regurgitated meals of domesticated animals.”
We debated for a while, after which I acquiesced to try it, and the discussion evolved to determine the proper substrate. We continued to deliberate as we went back down the stairs, rooting through the bread drawer and the corner cupboard of snacks. Finally settling on a hearty slice of homemade whole wheat—not the pickle juice variety, thankfully, that’s a whole other family legend—we brought the bread upstairs with a napkin and a butter knife.
“Mom!” my sister screeched. “Do you KNOW what they are DOING?”
If I recall correctly, this was about the time that the Shaklee saleslady arrived.
You might think that common courtesy would dictate an end to our charade, but the possibility of a larger audience only egged us on.
“Wow. Dog barf is surprisingly delicious!” I fairly yelled. “But seriously, when we finish, which Shaklee product will best remove the stain and odor?”
My only regret is that I missed the expression on the faces in the living room, as Mrs. So and So pretended not to notice and continued to hawk her fine products. I believe my mother did buy a bit more than intended that day, perhaps in an unspoken agreement to keep this story out of our town’s gossip circles.
The sad thing is, I’ve spent so much time reminiscing, I haven’t cooked up a decent prank to play on my own kids this year. And they don’t even have sheets to short under their duvets.
This is the story of abandoning my family for two and a half weeks one summer to do something ridiculously selfish and wonderful. It is also about gelato, meltdowns, memory, and déjà vu. Have I mentioned that already?
Here’s how it started. A photography professor of mine leaned across the aisle during a lecture. She told me that she was taking a group of students to Italy during the summer. “You should come,” she said.
I laughed a little hysterically, to the point where the exchange became awkward, and we tuned back to the lecture.
Up until then, I’d only slept away from my four-year-old two nights of her entire little life, and those were spent on the floor of a friend’s house a couple blocks away–clutching my phone all night, just in case. And I’d never been away from my two-year-old. I had to lay down with her for an hour or two every night to get her to settle and go to sleep. Though I had weaned her at 18 months, she had taken to digging in my belly button as a replacement soothing mechanism. She picked at me with her tiny talons until I bled. Scar tissue, it turns out, is surprisingly sensitive, but I wasn’t sure how to wean a child from belly-digging.
There are probably a few people reading this that will roll their eyes and mutter in that superior way about sleep training. In my defense, I did try it with the first child. After several unsuccessful attempts on my own, after reading a pile of helpful books, I finally hired a sleep consultant, and tried again. My child cried and cried and cried and cried. She did not let up for naps; she did not let up for nights. She would doze off occasionally, only to wake up ten minutes later and start again. I let her cry and cry until there was a hole in my heart the size of Saskatchewan. So after THIRTY DAYS, I gave up. I didn’t even bother to try with kid #2. Now, how was I going to leave my spouse alone with such a mess?
With all of this in mind, I mentioned the Italy trip to my husband, so he could have a good laugh as well.
“Maybe you should go,” he said.
Best not to ask twice.
Strangely, despite the enormity of the impending separation, I didn’t freak out right away. I had childcare issues to resolve, packing crises, film and equipment to procure, and a research paper due upon departure. I worried about all of that instead.
Then I got on the plane…and cried for a couple of hours straight. Not demure little teardrops, either, but swollen, hiccoughing, snotty, sobbing. My apologies to the bewildered man seated beside me. Eventually regaining composure, I spent the rest of the flight listening to language lessons and, undoubtedly, murmuring along with the patient Italian lady in my headphones. Again, apologies.
The first couple of days on the ground were a blur of disoriented jet lag, a breathless march from church after church to museum after museum. Honestly, all I really remember about Florence is the gelato. Limone. Pesca. Caffè. Cioccolato. Shop after shop, fresh fruit piled high atop the frozen tubs, a little melty on the sides from the summer heat. In between scoops, I was having an out of body experience with some really fabulous twenty-year-olds. I was completely untethered.
@2007 Beret Olsen
On day four, we headed off to a monastery in Tuscany, where the landscape did something wholly unexpected: it became familiar.
I had already seen this place, on coffee tables, in ads, in my dreams. It looked exactly like it was supposed to look, and I was unable to see it as a foreign place. Even as I was wandering this countryside for the first time, it was already a memory, part of the landscape of my psyche.
@2007 Beret Olsen
For days, I couldn’t make a picture because all of the photographs had already been made; making another would be superfluous. I focused on the long, lazy dinners–completely unknown to the parents of small children–the carafes of house wine, the late night walks filled with fireflies, frogs, and stars. I focused on the warm camaraderie of young strangers, who asked questions such as, “What is childbirth like?” “What are your irrational fears?” “Who do you secretly, shamefully lust after?” Or, “If you had to eat someone here, who would it be?” Those questions don’t often come up at pre-school potlucks. It felt so good to contemplate anything besides bowel movements, discipline, and sleep deprivation.
Since I would never forgive myself if I went home empty camera’d, I figured it was time to shoot something. And because I couldn’t make a new picture of the landscape, I tried instead to make pictures that looked like what I could see in my head. I attempted to capture on film my memories that were not really memories, that were not really mine.
@2007 Beret Olsen
After I returned to the States, I stumbled upon a passage that put this sensation into words:
“The very colors of the place had seeped into my blood: just as Hampden, in subsequent years, would always present itself immediately to my imagination in a confused whirl of white and green and red, so the country house first appeared as a glorious blur of watercolors, of ivory and lapis blue, chestnut and burnt orange and gold, separating only gradually into the boundaries of remembered objects: the house, the sky, the maple trees. Even that day, there on the porch…it had the quality of a memory…” excerpted from The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
@2007 Beret Olsen
A very belated thank you to those of you who made that trip possible. I had a strange and wonderful time.
I just got back from the trip of a lifetime, so you probably won’t feel all that sorry for me, despite the fact that I am waking up every day at 4 a.m. I toss and turn for 45 minutes or so–just long enough to really start annoying the spouse–then drag myself out of bed and stare at the wall, waiting for the kids to wake up. They have jet lag, too, so this doesn’t take nearly as long as one might hope.
Though cranky and somewhat incoherent, I do manage to muddle around somewhat successfully until about 4 p.m, at which point I give up and let the kids watch Project Runway reruns ad nauseum. Meanwhile, I push myself to multitask; I try to think about dinner magically appearing while simultaneously staring at the wall.
In a burst of inspiration, I have decided to try to use the extra comatose hours I now have each day to do a little writing. Staring at a blank computer screen is not that much of a stretch.
Let’s start with Iceland, then.
As you may have gathered from my post title, going there did not suck, and someday I will wow you with amazing stories about the days and nights I spent in Reykjavik and beyond. At the moment, though, I am still mourning my departure. In fact, in order to pry myself out of that country I had to make a list of the things I would NOT miss, which is all I am prepared to share at the moment.
THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT ICELAND
1. The midnight sun is unbelievably awesome but no love will be lost on the 4 a.m. sun. Reykjavik is nestled much closer to the North Pole than anywhere I have ever visited, and I was eagerly awaiting the impossibly long days. But, I did not fully comprehend that there would be no darkness at all, or how that would feel. The sun sets and sets for hours and hours, burning across the horizon line; teasing. There is a buzz of anticipation, like when you throw something up in the air, and you don’t see or hear it hit the ground. You keep looking, stomach in a lurch. Likewise, I kept waiting for the moment when a breath of shadow would bring relief and the capacity to sleep. I had a sleep mask. I had melatonin. I had ambien, but even when I dozed off, I simply could not continue to do so for a reasonable number of hours when all visual indications were counterintuitive. With my temporal clues turned on end, I was actually widest awake at all the wrong times. Of course, now that I am home, I am still a mess. It gets dark here, but I still lie wide awake, waiting for the sun to finally drift out of the Icelandic sky.
2. Taking a shower at our apartment in Reykjavik. Iceland has about 130 volcanoes. Consequently, they use the hot water and steam from geothermal hot springs to heat homes and generate power. There is absolutely no need for water heaters. That is fantastically green and fabulous, and there are some marvelous side effects: the pools, geysers, steaming landscape, and all. Meanwhile, the hot water from the tap smells overwhelmingly like sulphur. Imagine taking a shower in that. Steamy, rotten-eggy nastiness, streaming over your head. Possible upside: whence emerging from the bathroom after a lengthy spell, no one is quite sure if you have taken a particularly malodorous dump or merely washed your hair.
3. Vegetables? What vegetables? There is very little that grows in Iceland. No trees, for example. Or nearly none. This is the source of the only Icelandic joke, according to the internet. (i.e., “what do you do if you are lost in the forest in Iceland?” Stand up.) Visualize stark, stoic, volcanic peaks rising sharply out of lava fields like Scandinavian relatives. Throw in some glaciers. In the other direction, fjords, the ocean. There are sheep–lots of sheep–and a multitude of mullet-sporting horses, but no foliage. A chocolate bar is therefore less expensive–not cheap!–and much easier to find than an apple, for example. I spent $3 on a half-rotten onion. One dinner at a lovely, well-regarded, jaw-droppingly expensive restaurant, I was initially thrilled to find a single mangy-looking strawberry garnishing my plate. It tasted like dust.
Ah, the memories.
As the rest of the world is starting to stir, the remaining list items will have to wait for another day.
Bad Parenting 101 