Tet Shots and Other Horror Stories, the Reprisal

I've never fully understood why people liked this post so much, but it continues even now to get pageviews. I whipped it out so quickly, too, that I'm surprised it turned out. At any rate, I'm afraid to edit it, for fear I'll ruin it. So here it is, a week before my 1st blogger anniversary - my most popular post.

One day I told my kids not to do something. I said in a stern voice, "Don't play that way, because if you do one of you will slip and fall and hit your head. Then you'll pass out, and you'll be bleeding profusely. I'll have to take you to the hospital, and we'll be waiting three hours. No money for the vending machine, and a strange old man with an unpleasant odor will be sitting by us trying to give you candy. But you won't get it, because you never know! And that's why Mama always checks your candy on Halloween!"

At the end of this speech, Matthew, my husband, is shaking his head and giving me the familiar look that says, where did I get you - Mars?, and my children are staring at me in a daze, terrified of they don't know what, because they've forgotten what I've told them not to do in the first place.

They do have one question, though.

"What's passing out?" asks Ana.

"Well..." I begin, but Matthew practically burns me with a look that reminds me I've already done my motherly duty. So I just smile at them and say, "Never mind. Now run along and play, you little monkeys!"

Then I turn to Matthew and shrug as I tell him, "I know, I know. I always say too much."

But maybe that's because I think too much. For instance, if I find a pair of scissors on the floor, I don't just think, Ooooh, that's not safe. Better put those away. No, a whole scene of the tragedy that might occur if my preschooler got a hold of those plays out in my mind. I can see her discovering them while I'm, say, in the bathroom reading the newspaper or something. "What nice sharp blades you have, scissors!" she might say before she runs around with them, laughing maniacally, opening and closing the blades with gusto like some midget Edward Scissorhands.

No pens, pencils, knives or scissors, I think as I pick up the scissors, passing my hand before my eyes, and put them away with a shudder.

Matthew, of course, is the one who left them on the floor in the first place. There are no mini-tragedies playing in his head. And he can simply say to the kids when necessary, "No, you're not doing that." or "No, you can't play with that. It's dangerous!" If they ask him why, he simply responds with the classic, "Because I told you so!"

But I don't know where to stop. And if they ask me why, I'm likely to give them a gruesome, full-bodied answer, and this doesn't just apply to questions concerning their own safety.

Not long ago, Berto brought me my book on ancient Egypt and pointed to a picture of a mummy.

"How did they make mummies?' he asked.

I stared at the picture. I understand his fascination. But what to say, what to say? It never occurs to me to lie and say, "I really don't know son. I believe it was a complicated and mysterious process - which nobody does nowadays, so don't you worry!"

"You really don't want to know," I say instead, feeding his appetite.

"Oh, come on. Tell me, Mama. Come on!"

"Well...alright then." I laugh and make room for him on the couch so we can enjoy a long cozy chat about mummification. "Okay, first they took a long metal hook which they inserted into the nose of the dearly departed, and then......"

The other day I saw the kids playing with a splintery old board. They had it propped on their playset, using it as a see-saw. Then they leaned it on the slide, so they could scamper up to the fort.

I walked outside. "Hey, hey, hey!" I yelled. "You get that board off there right now!"

"Why?" said Berto. "It doesn't have any nails."

"Yes, it does," I answered. "And they're old and rusty, too. Do you want a tetanus shot?"

"What's a tetanus shot?" he asked nervously.

"It's a shot, and it hurts," I said in brilliant explanation. "You have to get it when a rusty old nail goes through your foot, and the needle they give it with is, like, a quarter inch thick. Last time I got one, I passed out. Then I went home, and I passed out again. My arm hurt for days. I ran a fever, too."

Berto looked at the board, finally spotted the nails, and pitched it over the slide as if it were on fire.

I nodded my head in approval and went back inside. Another successful warning given, another tragedy averted. But next time I should think about cautioning them with a story that doesn't involve passing out in excruciating pain. I should tell them about stitches, perhaps.

Pie Pastry - Bah! (anniversary repost)

I'm taking this opportunity to say that these pies, the ones in this story that caused me such grief, turned out to be some of the best Thanksgiving pies I ever made.

The past two days I've been in a hot place with pie pastry...and I don't mean the kitchen.

Yesterday it was bad, very bad. Daniel, my baby, was crying from the playpen and I was wrestling with the devil dough on the counter, trying for the love of heaven to get it to roll out smoothly. Finally, as Daniel continued to fuss ever more loudly, and the cold pastry cracked and split beneath my frustrated hands, I sang out maniacally for my husband to, "COME HOME! Just...COME...home! Get yourself HOME...RIGHT NOOOOW!"

The kids were outside, and they came to the door, "Where's Papa? Is he home?" Then they saw my wild eyes, the pastry stuck to the rolling pin, and the flour monsoon in the kitchen and retreated, giggling and keeping a good distance.

By the time Matthew got home, it was all over. The pies, for better or for worse, were in the oven. And they weren't even the Thanksgiving pies. They were my test dummies for the real pies.

I was trying this new pastry recipe that's called Foolproof Pie Pastry. I wanted to compare it with my usual nightmare butter dough - that demon dough that tastes like heaven but gives you hell to roll it out. Well, this foolproof recipe called for part butter/part shortening and, of all things, vodka! You use the vodka in place of part of the water - makes the dough moist so you can smooth it out into a perfect geometric circle, but then the alcohol evaporates in the oven and voila! Flaky yet tender pie dough.

Well, that recipe ain't foolproof, and I'm the fool that proved it.

Because as I was rolling it out, I was still muttering at it and insulting it and threatening all kinds of demises for it that didn't involve a sweet filling and a nice warm visit to the oven. Yes, yes...it was technically easier than the butter pastry, but the dang dough still flaked and chipped, cracked and ripped. Stupid thing!

In light of the foolproof recipe defeat, I began looking for excuses: It's this dang desert climate - too dry! I said. I don't have a food processor like all my friends! I whined. My kitchen's too small! I cried.

But then I thought I knew the problem: I hadn't cut the butter small enough with the pastry cutter. I'd rectify it, and the dough for my pies would be perfect. Just perfect, I vowed.

Today was another day. I combined the ingredients, cut the butter just so, and tried to flatten them gently into the perfect "four-inch diameter" discs the recipe calls for before I placed them in the fridge to cool. An hour or so later I drew them out, and I knew with my first glance the battle would be the same as the day before. And if I wasn't careful, this time the pastry would win.

The mumblings began anew as I blanketed the dough with parchment paper, caressed the dough with floured fingers, and did my best to placate the dough with the careful push-push of the rolling pin. But, no - NO! The stupid thing couldn't be reasoned with, and I had to take it and literally plop it off the parchment into its pie pan, shoving tattered bits and pieces into the holes that mocked me. I didn't want to overwork it. Heaven help me, I know the bitter revenge of overworked dough.

Thank God Matthew was home today. Still the kids tried to bug me during the process, and many times I cried out in desperation, "Don't come in here! Don't talk to me! Can't you see I'm battling with pie dough?"

Berto commiserated.

"Wow, Mama. That does look hard!" he said, as I huffed and puffed over the monster I had created. "It is hard!" I wailed. "It's the hardest thing in the world! And it's stressful, so stressful..."

"Don't encourage her!" Matthew said sharply, bouncing Daniel in his arms. "Nobody encourage Mama in her tirade!"

After a litany of sighs and grunts, I did finally get the fresh pies in the oven, laying the top crust on in chunks. But, hey, the dough wasn't overworked (I think), and I covered its many imperfections with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar. I also remembered to put all the ingredients in the filling. Too bad I baked them at the wrong temperature, though. Nothing like flaky crust and undercooked fruit in a Thanksgiving pie!

Why does she bother? you ask. Don't they have prepared pie crust in the grocery store? you say. Okay, so they do, but I want to be the Pie Lady, the Pastry Queen. I want my sons to propose to their girlfriends someday on bent knee, and say, "Before I give you the ring, there's something you should know: my mom makes the best pie. Just the best. Yours can never compare. Not ever. And mom says you can't have the recipe. But I love you anyway, and we'll go to my parents' for Thanksgiving."

Alright, so that's not right of me. Maybe that's why every time I go to make a pie, I find myself eating the humble variety. But I still want a solid pastry recipe and technique to pass down to my daughters. My mom made the best pies, you see, and I want to, too. This Thanksgiving, I'm just hoping they're decent.


More food adventures in Holiday Tales of Horror - Stuffed Couches and Stolen Chocolates

Twisters and Monsoons (revised version)

Monsoon storms have rolled through our desert valley since Thursday. (I don't understand why they are called monsoons, since I live nowhere near an ocean or sea, but they are continually acknowledged as such by meteorologists, and so...there you go.)

They were forecasted for this whole week. As the cloud cover and humidity built up, so did my anticipation, and with each day that I saw no rain, I became more and more virulent as I talked to the clouds. And my children became concerned that Mama thought she could have a conversation with the sky.

Just when I had given up on the ability of these clouds to deposit moisture in the desert, the wind began to whip our eucalyptus trees around and drove the rain with such force that it slanted through our main air-conditioning vent and drenched the hall carpet.

By early Friday morning it was a calmer drizzle as my children and I enjoyed it from the patio. I sat in a chair with the baby, watching the birds line the branches of our African Sumac tree. My older three were happy to stand and collect the rain in buckets as it streamed from the roof, because to them rain is almost as wondrous as snow. To me it is a good friend too little seen nowadays.

In Tennessee rain was expected, but there was always the possibility that a storm system could bring tornadoes with the rain in spring and summer. True, we did not technically live in Tornado Alley, but I recall hearing tornado watches come on the television quite often, and we had a few warnings.

As soon as the television began its irritating warning beep, Dad listened intently for the message. When our county was included, he quickly abandoned his chair for the porch. I joined him there a few times. As I stood beside him in my cowboy boots, he would gaze at the sky with such intensity it was as if he expected to receive a secret communication from it, one which I hoped to interpret by carefully watching his face.

A couple times when I was small the television went static while the tornado warning was trailing across its screen. Dad did not hesitate at that point; we were told to grab a stuffed animal and blanket and head for the basement. We would navigate the narrow, rickety stairs and wait for the storm to pass in that musty cellar lit by its one feeble bulb. As we squeezed our teddy bears, we tried not to think about the spiders and various other creepy-crawlies that would not take kindly to our intrusion.

But during one of the scariest incidents of my childhood, we were not at home and therefore had no basement to scurry to.

Mom and Dad worked in the woods, rolling wreaths and digging valuable roots for a living. On this particular summer day, we kids had gone with them to explore a new stretch of wilderness while they worked. Mom and Dad quit early; there was a bad storm brewing.

We kids were hustled into the car. Dad had the radio on soon after we left the woods. The winds picked up, and the sky deepened to an unusual hue of slate blue. As we turned down Spann Road, the last leg to home, Dad was watching the sky, glancing in the car's side and rear mirror more and more frantically as the car's speed increased. I knew he was no longer examining the possibilities; he was searching for the reality of what we could hear building from that strangely-colored sky.

Because a noise which was more than that of a gale had grown out of the storm as Dad sped along the rutted dirt road. I didn't see the twister, though I remember turning in terror to look out the back window as the roar of it amplified. Suddenly, Dad swerved off the road and braked violently by a decrepit barn near the fence line.

"We won't outrun it," he said. Then he turned. "Kids get down on the floor and start praying."

Annie, Nate and I huddled down quickly. Vinca held Mom and Dad's hands in the front seat. We three in the backseat were praying aloud; one often does when desperate, I suppose. As I prayed I longed to be in the front seat with my parents. I thought about climbing the seat, because if I had to die, I wanted at least to be with Mommy and Daddy when it happened.

But in the midst of our supplications, the strange growling suddenly died. The tornado was gone, sucked back up into the clouds that began to lose their angry color shortly thereafter. The twister must have been of the fickle kind that touches ground for a few miles on a lonely piece of earth, thankfully leaving little indication of its passage before vanishing like smoke. In the eerie calm that followed, Dad started the engine, we kids climbed back onto the bench seats in that old car, and we drove the last couple miles home in silence. When I looked back I saw nothing but the rain falling on the fields, stands of trees and fence line behind. The barn which had witnessed our terror stood indifferent and untouched.

I can't help finding tornadoes fascinating because of their power. Perhaps that is because I am removed from their reality here in the Southwest where they are practically nonexistent. It has been a long time since I stood on a porch and gazed with my Daddy at the threat of an angry southern sky.