In one of life’s ironies we moved to an even nicer part of town when my father fell ill. Our new house, set on a hill, had an enormous backyard and an adjoining wood lot wildly overgrown with flowering shrubs, abandoned rock gardens and a crumbling stone wall. One side was steeply graded and seemed to me a mountain’s slope. All was shaded by a thick canopy of towering maples that would dwarf Jack’s beanstalk, I was sure. It was here as a little girl I wrote myself into the fairy tales and legends that were the staples of my childhood reading.

In Summer I might climb up into one of the smaller trees and wait for Prince Charming to arrive with my glass slipper, at least until lunchtime. Again in a tree, I might be the dazzling, long-tressed Rapunzel in her tower, saved from the evil witch by a different prince and her/my own wits. There were so many trolls under the bridge, so many Grimm misadventures to survive to a happy ending. My brothers were off somewhere becoming older brothers, and that was O.K. They would not understand.

Some days I might switch sex, jump “ship” (the wall) and, brandishing a tablespoon grabbed from the kitchen drawer, become a pirate digging for gold doubloons in the fragrant dark earth. In yet another scenario I might be on the trail of an Indian brave, searching for arrowheads, my fantasy fulfilled when I found one.

In Fall’s waning light I waded rapturously through thigh-high mounds of crisp golden leaves in my own Enchanted Forest. It was a race against time until The Brothers dutifully raked up the gold and broke the spell.

In Winter I gazed out the window upon my frozen kingdom and wished for Spring. Until then I settled in with my storybook favorites and Aesop’s morality tales.

It was from a fairy tale, The Fisherman and His Wife, that I came to believe that wishes could come true, if they were noble ones. It was via fairy tales that I worked out my young feelings in dreams both romantic and dark. Hansel and Gretel and The Pied Piper of Hamlin terrified me, but I suspect these stories had their purpose.

This is in fact the premise of child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. In it he argues for the importance of fairy tales in a child’s journey from immaturity to maturity. The cruelties and cruel characters in these stories, he suggests, serve as a “reflection of a child’s necessary “killing off” of successive phases of development and initiation.”

Fascinating stuff to consider. But all I can say for certain is how very much I miss that backyard, and the magic it held for me.

When I saw the original classic Disney cartoon (1950) of Cinderella as a child, I totally bought into her song of "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes."
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We continue to get lots of catalogs these days, enticing us to buy everything from fancy cruises to kitchenware to clothing. The deforestation caused by these is disheartening. Being so small, it is difficult for me to shop from a catalog, but I do have tried-and-true brands that suit me well.

Through the years, I’ve bought all my bathing suits from the Land’s End catalog. I have this style in multiple colors. I like the fit and it doesn’t fall off my narrow shoulders.

Lots of stores where we do business will send us catalogs announcing sales, like Bloomingdales, which has a brick and mortar store around the corner from us, but may not have everything listed in the catalog. But this will entice me to go check things out.

Sometimes, I’ve never heard of the outfit sending us the catalog. It quickly gets tossed.

 

Dan looks at all the fancy trips and cruise offers, since we’ve done business with a few of these companies before. Given the current state of our finances (along with everyone else’s), we are not likely to splurge on anything like these in the short term, so they, also, are quickly tossed, as are all the home goods catalogs.

I have a brick and mortar Anthropologie a mile from me and like to try things on before I buy, but when on Martha’s Vineyard, that isn’t possible, so I am more apt to catalog shop when on Martha’s Vineyard.

Amazon has become our go-to spot for everything while on Martha’s Vineyard because there is such limited local inventory, whether it be replacement magnets for the shutters on our windows, printer ink, or any other item one might think of. Rents are very high and more and more interesting stores are going out of business. They can’t afford their rent, or sadly, their landlords are greedy and want to turn the stores into housing, thinking they will get more money from the constant shuffle of tourists than from their long-time tenants. That puts the whole local economy into turmoil and we have to look elsewhere for everything. Unfortunately, frequently, it means browsing Amazon for what we need. Those smiley-faced boxes clog up our trash, but bring everything from shoes to books to bedding to kitchenware. Amazon has become America’s marketplace, like the Sear’s catalog of yesteryear.

My grandmother had given up cooking by the time my mother lived at home with her parents after her year studying dance in New York in 1935, so she didn’t learn to cook from her own mother. After she married at age 32, she learned a few basic recipes from her oldest sister’s housekeeper. That sister also didn’t know how to cook.

As a result, she didn’t like to cook, claimed that having me around her in the kitchen made her nervous, so I had only basic skills when I married at the age of 21 in 1974. I had taken Home Ec rather than being in the 8th grade choir, understanding that I wouldn’t learn anything from my own mother. I could follow a basic recipe. I enjoyed baking brownies from scratch from the recipe on the Baker’s Chocolate box. Those are still in my repertoire.

My father, being the youngest in a large household and, like my mother, also single until the age of 32, enjoyed cooking, even making his own mayonnaise at times. He taught me the famous “Sarason family pancake” recipe (add syrup and vanilla to the batter), which is what I’m making in our first apartment in the Featured photo, and he always made them for me whenever we were together, as in his last visit with us in Oct, 1989. He died four months later.

I received many cookbooks as wedding gifts; here is one shelf’s worth (I have several more). I rarely use them.

My mother wrote me letters with her recipes; I used some. Her brisket was dry, but I make a good spaghetti sauce from scratch. Dan always liked my meatloaf. I used my mother-in-law’s recipe for macaroni and cheese, which of course used Velveeta. Dan wouldn’t have it any other way.

I talked to a cousin who had been in the Boston area during my four years at Brandeis. She typed up lots of 3×5 cards with various recipes and I tried many. My in-laws moved away when we had been married only three years, but I always make her Thanksgiving dinner, using her exact recipes. Thanksgiving Forever. She lent me her recipe box in 1984; I took it to work and copied the entire collection, which I still have. The sweet and sour meatballs were a big hit. She used to say she wished she had more time with me; she could have “done something with me”.

There was a fantastic meat shop up the street from us when we moved to Newton in 1986. Not only did they sell the best meat and poultry, they also provided recipes on how to cook everything. They expanded and became a gourmet shop, but no longer exist. Their rack of lamb was my go-to company meal.

I had long ago assembled my own looseleaf of menus, collected through the years, broken out by meat, poultry, dessert, salad, Thanksgiving; everything is neatly taped inside for easy reference.

And random articles that I find and clip might just be slipped into the front. I am amazed at what I found.

While visiting Patti in Palo Alto (she is a fantastic cook), I watched her work and learned to make carbonara, which became a favorite of Dan’s, but it took a lot of prep work. I often made it when we had others over for dinner.

Too bad Dan has such a limited palate. When he retired, more than 20 years ago now, he had so little to occupy himself that going out to eat (not fancy, just neighborhood restaurants) gave him something to look forward to, to break up the day, so we eat out almost every night. It is his daily entertainment. Plus, he does not help with the shopping, food prep, cooking or cleanup, so if he is retired, I thought it was time for me to as well. And that is why I no longer do much cooking.