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What’s for supper? Vol. 276: Why not make sushi for New Years Eve?

Merry Christmas, lovely everybody! Merry Christmas to you. I love yez all.

Before we do What’s for Supper, I wanted to do a quick plug for a New Year’s Eve sushi party, which we’re getting ready to do for the I think 5th year in a row. 

Sushi parties are so much fun. As long as you’re not a perfectionist, sushi is actually pretty easy to make; and if you are, all you have to do is eat it real fast so you don’t have to look at it. You don’t have to make rolls, either. You can make individual sushi cones or even just little goblin bundles.  I usually make a few basic rolls for anyone to try, and then people can come up with their own combinations. There’s something for everyone, and it’s great fun to buzz around the table, picking out different exciting combinations. If you do make rolls, there’s something like the suspense of cutting a paper snowflake and opening it up to see how it turned out.

This is not going to be a place for you to learn how to make authentic sushi (or nigiri, or maki). We just set out a bunch of ingredients that taste good, and people combine them as they like and have fun with them. If you live in a more cosmopolitan area, no doubt you can get more interesting ingredients than we did! 

Here’s some of the things we’ve assembled in previous years:

sushi rice, obviously
nori (seaweed)
tuna, mahi, and/or salmon steaks that were frozen at sea, (freezing is how you kill parasites in raw fish)
seared and seasoned tuna 
sautéed calamari rings
small sautéed shrimp
canned salmon
imitation crab legs
soy sauce
wasabi sauce
ponzu sauce (citrus dipping sauce)
mayo with sriracha in it
pickled ginger
caviar or other roe
toasted sesame seeds
avocados
mangos
scallions
pineapple
pea shoots
pickled carrot matchsticks
cucumber in thin slices
toasted panko crumbs 
 

The rice part is, obviously, pretty important. I always spring for a sack of good sushi rice, which is just a gorgeous tactile experience in itself. It looks like polished little wedges of mother of pearl. I cook it in the Instant Pot (rinse the rice thoroughly, put equal amounts of rice and water in the pot, close the valve, press the rice button) then make the sushi rice, which is a bit of a production.

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Sushi rice

I use my Instant Pot to get well-cooked rice, and I enlist a second person to help me with the second part. If you have a small child with a fan, that's ideal.

Ingredients

  • 6 cups raw sushi rice
  • 1 cup rice vinegar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp salt

Instructions

  1. Rinse the rice thoroughly and cook it.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt, and cook, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Put the rice in a large bowl. Slowly pour the vinegar mixture over it while using a wooden spoon or paddle to fold or divide up the cooked rice to distribute the vinegar mixture throughout. You don't want the rice to get gummy or too sticky, so keep it moving, but be careful not to mash it. I enlist a child to stand there fanning it to dry it out as I incorporate the vinegar. Cover the rice until you're ready to use it.

The rest of it is just a matter of chopping and slicing and maybe a little toasting or sautéeing, and then of course assembling. 

I have a rolling mat, but you could also make sushi rolls by putting plastic wrap over a dishtowel. Basically you want to lay down a rectangle of rice, leave a horizontal margin of an inch or so, add a horizontal stripe of fillings, and carefully roll it up as tightly as you can, then carefully take the mat or towel off the roll and slice it into little disks with a sharp knife. Try putting a sheet of nori down and spreading the rice over that, to hold it together; but once you get the hang of it (and if you’ve made your rice sticky enough) the nori won’t be necessary.

Not that I took a picture. But I swear, I’m a moron, and I managed to make sushi without nori on the outside! But I like nori on the outside.

You can also make individual sushi cones. Take a sheet or a half sheet of nori, lay it point down, spread the rice and fillings on one side, and roll it up diagonally. 

These are less dainty, but there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Or just take a sheet of nori, throw some rice on,  pile on whatever looks tasty, bunch it up, and devour.

We also tried a Hawaiian thing, spam musubi, which is thin slices of spam simmered in a sauce and then cooked until crisp and caramelized

and then you strap it to a scoop of sushi rice with a strip of nori

I had my doubts about this, because the caramelized spam had a very harsh taste; but combined with the sweet, mild rice and the umami of the nori, it was great, and so stylish. 

***

Okay! Just wanted to get that off my chest because it would make me immensely happy if you started a sushi tradition on New Year’s Eve, too. We usually throw in some eggnog and some Marx Brothers and, to be perfectly honest, usually a roast leg of lamb, because What If There’s Not Enough Food?

We use Tom Nichol’s grandmother’s leg of lamb recipe, which is tastier and easier than reason permits, and never again will I spend an afternoon cutting garlic into slivers and jamming them into meat slits, pleasant though that may be. This recipe is just better.

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Looook at the laaaaaaamb.

And we just serve it with a sliced baguette and maybe some horseradish and cheese. Okay, now let’s do a little catching up from last week. Christmas Week. 

MONDAY
Chicken burgers, veg and dip

Nothing to report, foodwise.

Monday we also made applesauce and cinnamon ornaments. Equal parts applesauce and cinnamon mixed together into a kind of clay, pressed into cookie cutter shapes and set out to dry.

We pressed star anise into some of the shapes. We had so much clay left over, I made it into beads, which took a very long time to dry and smell great but look somewhat turdly. 

(I think I promised like 18 months ago to share pictures of my new backsplash! It’s no longer new, but there it is!) If I had made them sooner, I would have strung them in among the citrus garlands, but it didn’t occur to me. Now THIS was a completely successful project, for once. I just cut oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, and grapefruit into thin slices and put them on paper towels on cookie sheets 

and left them in a 170 oven pretty much all day.They still weren’t dry by bedtime, so I moved them to racks and let them continue drying, then eventually threaded them in two spots on hemp twine. Every 6-7 slices, I doubled back with the twine to anchor the citrus. 

They are gorgeous. Really just like home grown stained glass. 

I tried interspersing some cinnamon sticks and tying on some star anise, but eventually just stuck with citrus. The lemons went pretty colorless, but the rest of the fruit kept good color. Several people asked about the smell, wondering if it exudes a wonderful citrusy scent. In fact it smells faintly of hot orange juice, which is not great, but it’s very faint, and fading.

TUESDAY
Italian wedding soup, breadsticks

Tuesday was the last day of school for all but one kid. We had been doing distance schooling for just over a week and it is . . . not my favorite. It is nobody’s favorite. But Tuesday was the last day, and I made a lovely soup to celebrate. 

I had bought some ground pork on sale, so I made some little meatballs with it, adding in plenty of freshly-grated parmesan and Italian parsley, and fried them up in butter. 

Then I removed the meatballs and fried up some carrots and onions and garlic in the butter, then put the meatballs back, and added chicken broth and white wine, plenty of pepper, some chopped kale and ditalini. More parmesan and some fresh Italian parsley on top.

Here’s the details:

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It was just delightful. Friendliest, most nourishing soup I’ve had in ages. A very good way to round out the year. I made some frozen breadsticks so the soup haters would have something to sop up their tears with. 

Tuesday we also made the cookies for the cookie tree I rashly promised we would make.

It wasn’t exactly a hard project, but, I don’t know, we made it hard. It’s just a set of star cookie cutters that comes in — there’s a word for this, but I mean that they come in small and work their way up to coming in big. Guys, I’m so tired. Everyone is so tired. Anyway, this set also comes with decorating tips and bags and instructions, but we lost those immediately. 

We made a double recipe of my 100% reliable, no-chill, keeps-its-shape-in-the-pan sugar cookie dough

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and cut out two (or occasionally one, or three) of each size star, and baked them. You would think the cookies would bake at various rates, because they were such different sizes, but they all finished up at about the same time, go figure. 

Then, we left the baked cookies hanging around on racks in my tiny kitchen, balanced on top of packages waiting to be mailed, and the dog ate one, and the tips fell off some, and people needed the pans for Lego projects, and we had to move them around so we could find the papers for the student loan thing, and people put them on top of the clean laundry, and people put five pound bags of flour on top of them because we were planning to make more cookies, and so on. You know, Christmas. 

WEDNESDAY
I have no idea.  Oh wait, we decided to go run out right before dinner and buy a few last presents, and also the stocking candy, and stocking stuffers, and food for Christmas breakfast and Christmas dinner, tights, wrapping paper, and presents for the dog, cat, bird, and lizard, and in retrospect, that may not have been our finest plan. Most of the stores in town only had Valentine’s Candy, or Easter Candy, or Halloween candy, or just actual literal stuffing, like Stouffer’s stuffing with country herbs. Goodness gracious. It also turns out everyone was out of the canned cinnamon buns I decided would be good enough this year. We got about half the stuff and then stopped at Domino’s, and nobody complained. 

THURSDAY
Shredded pepper beef sandwiches, veg and dip

This was supposed to be pepperoncini beef, which you make by putting a hunk of beef in the slow cooker with some pepperoncini and its juice, and then shredding it when it’s done; but I forgot to buy pepperoncini. I forgot repeatedly, because I went to the store 327 times this week, and each time returned home with things like a stuffed shark or a Dungeons and Dragons dice box or YET MORE WRAPPING PAPER, but no pepperoncini. Instead, I added some banana peppers and some jalapeños, and the juices therefrom, and also a can of beer

and let it cook for several hours. Shredded it up, served it on rolls with cheese, and it was pretty good. 

A little dry, so I used the cooking juice as a spicy dip. 

FRIDAY, CHRISTMAS EVE
Quesadillas

Damien made these and they were delicious. 

We finished wrapping, stuffed stockings, and put together our first Barbie Dream House, and decorated the tree. And of course we iced and put together that fershlugginer cookie tree.

It turned out really cute! 

But we all aged eleven years in the process and there was definitely threats, drama, crying, and apologies.

Even the kids didn’t suggest we make this an annual tradition. But look at this friggin cookie tree.

Then the middle girls decided to make their own cookie tree, so I made the more dough, and they baked and decorated a BTS tree, with some baffling details. 

Oh, and I detangled about 70% of Corrie’s hair. I was doing so well, but it got away from me this last month, argh.

Then I got the cinnamon bun dough started. I decided to try Alton Brown’s recipe, rather than the Pioneer Woman one I usually use. Great choice. I didn’t have buttermilk, so I added some lemon juice to milk, and the dough came together great. I set it to rise and forgot all about it until about 10:20 PM, while I was sitting in the pew at the Christmas Eve Mass at Night and realized it was probably good and risen by now.

We did make it through Mass, which was lovely. We cleaned up really well this year!

But about those cinnamon rolls. You’re supposed to brush the dough with melted butter and the sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on before rolling it up, but I misunderstood and mixed the melted butter and cinnamon and sugar together. So I had to spread that on the dough and . . . I think I’m a genius. It worked out great, and it way so much easier and tidier then trying to roll up dough with melted butter on it. I made 24 rolls, threw them in the fridge while Damien shlepped 9 stockings and 36 presents out of our room and under the tree, and we were in bed shortly after 1.

SATURDAY, CHRISTMAS
Breakfast: Bacon, cinnamon rolls, fruit, OJ, eggnog
Dinner: Chinese food, steak, and a sandwich

Cinnamon rolls continued! You warm up the rolls by putting them in the oven and putting a pan in the rack under them, and pouring boiling water into that pan, and letting it warm up for 30 minutes. Worked just fine. The rolls were just great. The glaze is made with cream cheese, milk, and vanilla, and it tastes a little bland. It’s richer than just a sugary glaze, but I think I will search for something a little more interesting next year. But overall, this recipe is absolutely everything I wanted for Christmas. Easy, no exotic ingredients or maneuvers, and the rolls were puffy and tender, sweet and rich. Absolutely ideal.

No great food photos, but it was a very happy morning. You can see some photos of the morning mayhem here. 

Then we spent the day in a pleasant haze of games, candy, and napping. There had been so much drama around our traditional Chinese take-out Christmas dinner, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing something stress-free. So instead, Damien cooked a bunch of magnificent steaks. He salts and peppers them, heats up a ton of butter and garlic cloves in a cast iron pan. He has some kind of method that involves olive oil as well as butter. I don’t know, man. The steak was amazing. You could cut it with a fork. I didn’t get a great picture because I was in a hurry to eat it, but there’s this:

The meat noticer has entered the room.

Then of course we also ordered some Chinese food because What If There’s Not Enough Food? And Irene got a sandwich from Jersey Mike’s, because one time she had Chinese food and got sick, and Christmas has always been a bit of a trial for her, and this year we decided to finally do something about that. 

SUNDAY
Spiral ham, shrimp cocktail, various cheeses with crackers and spreads and salamis, pomegranates, baked brie with cranberries, and roasted mushrooms

This meal is a combination of food we were supposed to have for Christmas because we are ridiculous and we shopped thinking What If There’s Not Enough Food, and a ham that one of Damien’s editors sent because she is awesome. 

And Damien made a big tray of wonderful roasted mushrooms using this Deadspin recipe. We haven’t had these for some time, and they are so tasty. 

You get the rich, earthy buttery mushroom flavor and the sharp lemon and caper and the fresh herbs all frolicking together. Once you chop up all those mushrooms, it comes together really fast. 

We got one of those sets of jams that’s supposed to pair with specific cheeses, but I immediately lost track of which was which, so I was forced to just eat everything. 

And now it is Monday and there is so much food in the house. I am going to go out and see what I can rustle up for sushi, though, I guess (except for the actual fish). Also we have a birthday coming up, because we are 24/7 party people. I also ordered some flooring for my dining room. Because I am a 24/7 flooring person. I promise pictures. I promise. 

Oh, one last thing. I was looking at our Christmas pictures, and I couldn’t resist a little comparison. Here is Christmas 2019, and Christmas this year.

Look at that! Damien has lost close to 80 pounds, and I’ve lost over 40 (I’m  focusing on maintenance at the moment, because everything else is pretty overwhelming), and we’re both way, way stronger. As you can see, we’re still enjoying lots of yummy food. Just less of it. Yay us! It feels good. 

And here are the recipe cards, whew. I think this was the longest What’s for Supper in this history of What’s for suppers.  Hope you find something good! I really do love yez. 

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Tom Nichols' Grandmother's Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

  • boneless leg of lamb
  • olive oil
  • garlic powder
  • garlic salt
  • oregano

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 325.

  2. Slash the meat several times, about an inch deep.

  3. Fill the cuts with plenty of garlic powder.

  4. Slather olive oil all over the meat.

  5. Crust it with garlic salt. Sprinkle with all the oregano you own.

  6. Cover meat loosely with tinfoil and cook three hours. Uncover and cook for another 30 minutes.

 

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Italian Wedding Soup with pork meatballs

Lots of variations to this pleasant, nourishing soup with little meatballs.

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

  • 4-5 lbs ground pork (can mix in some ground beef or turkey)
  • 5 eggs
  • 2-1/2 cups bread crumbs
  • 4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1 Tbsp oregano
  • 1 bunch fresh Italian parsley, chopped fine
  • 1 to 1-1/2 cups freshly-shredded parmesan
  • 1/2 cup butter for frying

For the soup:

  • 3 lg carrots, diced
  • 1 lg onion, diced
  • 8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 16 cups chicken broth
  • 3 cups white wine
  • 3-4 cups raw kale, torn into pieces
  • 2 cups uncooked small pasta like ditalini
  • pepper
  • more parmesan and Italian parsley for garnish

Instructions

To make the meatballs:

  1. Thoroughly combine all the ingredients (except the butter) with your hands. Form them into small meatballs. In a large, heavy pot, melt the butter and lightly brown the meatballs in batches. They do not need to be cooked all the way through, as they will continue cooking in the soup.

To make the soup:

  1. Remove the meatballs from the pot. Put the onions and carrots into the butter and cook until they're slightly soft. Add in the garlic and continue cooking until the garlic is fragrant but not too browned.

  2. Add the meatballs back in. Add the broth and white wine, the kale, and the pepper to taste. Simmer for several hours.

  3. About half an hour before serving, add the uncooked pasta and turn up the heat to cook.

  4. Serve with shredded or grated parmesan and coarsely chopped Italian parsley for a garnish.

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No-fail no-chill sugar cookies

Basic "blank canvas"sugar cookies that hold their shape for cutting and decorating. No refrigeration necessary. They don't puff up when you bake them, and they stay soft under the icing. You can ice them with a very basic icing of confectioner's sugar and milk. Let decorated cookies dry for several hours, and they will be firm enough to stack.

Servings 24 large cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla and/or almond extract. (You could also make these into lemon cookies)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups flour

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar in mixer until smooth.

  3. Add egg and extracts.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix until smooth.

  6. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch. Cut cookies.

  7. Bake on ungreased baking sheets for 6-8 minutes. Don't let them brown. They may look slightly underbaked, but they firm up after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit in the pan for a bit before transferring to a cooling rack.

  8. Let them cool completely before decorating!

 

 

Thomas Aquinas doesn’t teach you how to have a holly jolly Christmas, and other insights from the AMDG Jesuit podcast

Had a very enjoyable pre-Christmas conversation with Mike Jordan Laskey, the host of the Jesuit podcast for Canada and the US. It was a pretty wide-ranging chat, covering having adult children, dealing with materialism and other Christmas-related anxieties, managing and building traditions, my favorite Christmas carol that I couldn’t quite remember at the moment, CAKE OR PIE, and recognizing Jesus, or not.  Have a listen! 

 

The painful, grace-filled and (potentially) healing process of seeking an annulment

Four weddings, but only one sacramental marriage. That was the tally by the time Rob and Shannon made their vows to each other 18 years ago.

Rob and Shannon are not their real names. The couple is not ashamed of their story, but they do not like to dwell on it, either; and it is complex enough that they have not told their own children all the details. It is a story about mistakes, pride, fear and hope, growth and grace, and love and canon law. It is a story, in short, about what makes a valid marriage in the eyes of the church, and how church leaders and structures respond when a marriage is not valid.

For such a theologically dense topic, annulments are a perennially popular topic of discussion and debate among Catholics. They are also perennially misunderstood. Many Americans speak of “getting an annulment” as if it were just the Catholic version of divorce, and many Catholics leave the church when they discover that there is more to it than that. There are persistent stories of rich or famous Catholics who supposedly bought their way out of undesirable marriages; and armchair theologians are quick to offer their pronouncement on whether or not a stranger’s marriage is valid based on a few online comments.

But the problems surrounding petitioning for decrees of nullity go deeper than rumors and misunderstandings. In 2015, Pope Francis made some reforms, aimed at lowering the costs and expediting the process. He opined in January 2021 that these efforts were being stymied by the desire for money.

But some canon lawyers believe a different kind of reform is necessary, anyway—the kind that takes place on a more personal level, where couples begin their lives together with a better understanding of what the church means by marriage, and are supported during inevitable times of struggle.

What does the church really teach about this widely misunderstood process, and how does it play out in the lives of ordinary Catholics? What does it do to their emotional and spiritual lives to encounter a doctrine that works in the space where law meets love?

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Image via Pixabay (Creative Commons)

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 275: It’s “tah-ZHEEN”

Happy Friday! Or whatever! Tell me it’s any day at all, and I’ll believe you. Tell me it’s the 34th Throosday in Blorgvent and I’ll believe you. It’s been the kind of week where I’m literally dreaming about sleeping. I seem to have two weeks of What’s For Suppers to catch up on, so I’ll just hit the highlights of last week: 

Two Fridays ago was ramen with shrimp, broccoli, and soft boiled eggs. I’m sharing a pic because I so infrequently manage to actually soft boil eggs. I always go hard. 

The shrimp was tasty. I think Damien sauteed it in sesame oil and garlic and then squeezed lemon over it, or something along those lines. 

Another fine meal was toward the end of Chanukah, when we had
Potato latkes and homemade applesauce, smoked chicken thighs and homemade barbecue sauce

Latkes are easy to make,

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but when you’re making a lot of them, it’s a problem to know how to manage all those potato shreds ahead of time. Normally, peeled potatoes discolor very quickly, and I usually solve this by keeping them in water until I’m ready to use them; but if you’re going to fry several batches of them, it’s a hassle to get all the water off first so the hot oil doesn’t spatter. This year, I tried something new: I shredded the potatoes in the food processor, and then I just rinsed the shreds thoroughly in very cold water, left them in the colander, and covered them with plastic wrap. Guess what happened? THEY STAYED WHITE. 

Amazing. 

Now, the absolute truth is that, when I added the eggs and flour and salt and pepper, the potatoes ended up giving up so much water, they were pretty wet anyway, and I still ended up having to squeeze the mixture pretty vigorously before putting the latkes in the oil. But I still got a little thrill because at least they weren’t brownish purple. 

The latkes turned out well, crisp on the outside and tender and mealy inside. It’s dark as heck and after all these years, I haven’t figure out how to rig up some good indoor lighting to take good food pictures during winter, so here you go:

We had them with sour cream and homemade applesauce, which I made in the Instant Pot. I peeled and cored a few dozen apples and put them in the IP with about a cup of water and cooked them on high for maybe eight minutes, twelve minutes, I don’t know. Then I drained off what turned out to be too much water and added some butter, vanilla, and cinnamon, and gave it a little stir, and that was it. Hot damn, homemade apple sauce is just the best thing in the world. 

I was astonished at what a lovely rose color I got even without the peels. 

I don’t think I added sugar, because these are still local, in-season apples and the flavor shouldn’t be tampered with much.  I used Cortland, Macintosh, and Granny Smith, which are all on the tart end of the scale. 

Damien made his wonderful sugar smoked chicken thighs out on the grill, and he used the same spices to made a homemade barbecue sauce which turned out a little spicier than expected, so he served it for dipping, rather than brushing it on. 

Man, it smelled good in the house, with the smoked chicken, the warm apple sauce, and whatnot. A strange meal, but hearty and tasty. I never know what to make with latkes! The only thing I can think of is chicken soup, which we have at other times, and brisket, which I remember from my childhood with loathing. 

Then I squeaked in a bit batch of rugelach on the very last day of Chanukah. I do love rugelach, and I give you my blessing to make them for Christmas, because they are delicious and not hard to make and they’re adorable. (And you can take advantage of my brilliant ooze rescue method.)

I ended up with four varieties this year: Cinnamon honey walnut, ginger walnut, cherry, and blueberry. Lovely, lovely. They ended up a little fluffier and less flaky than normal this year, for reasons unknown, but I did not mind.  

Last Wednesday was Benny’s birthday and she requested Damien’s delectable basil chicken cutlets with homemade red sauce and provolone. He uses this Deadspin recipe and it has never been anything but excellent. Juicy chicken in a fluffy breading with a basil leaf tucked under a slice of provolone, served with a scoop of hot red sauce over it, so the cheese melts and melds the whole thing together. 

He made so much, we had it the second day, layered into a casserole dish and heated up like a giant chicken lasagna. So good. 

Over the weekend was her birthday party, which we managed to have almost entirely outdoors, because NH is all ate up with Covid again. We had a pallet bonfire, and the kids whooped it up on the trampoline in the dark with glow sticks, and then we came in for presents, went outside to set off fireworks, and came in for cake. Some party photos on Facebook here and here. 

We decided to make bonfire cupcakes, which are very easy to make, but are pretty impressive. Chocolate frosting, broken hazelnut Pirouline wafers for the logs, shredded coconut with green food coloring for the grass. We put a bunch of Jolly Ranchers in a bag and smashed it with a hammer, then spread the chunks in a parchment paper-lined pan in a low oven for a few minutes until the candy melted. Then we let it harden into a sheet, then cracked it into little “flames.” Stick a few in between the logs, sprinkle on some gold sugar for embers, and you have little cupcake campfires. 

 

Top each one with a mini marshmallow on a toothpick, and it’s just cute.

I did toast each one with a butane lighter because my life was ruined anyway.

And that was last week! This week, let’s see. 

MONDAY
Carbonara 

A sweet Facebook friend sent me three pounds of most excellent smoked bacon from Tennessee, with a warning not to attempt to eat it straight like breakfast bacon, because it’s powerful stuff.  My dears, I’ve never had such bacon. Such an intense, earthy, smoky flavor. It was really exciting! I really get the best mail and have the nicest readers. I didn’t get very good pictures because I was in a bit of a hurry to start gobbling it up.

If you’re not familiar with carbonara, it may be the most cheering, flavorful dish you can make with the fewest number of ingredients. Just pasta, bacon, eggs, pepper, and parm. Well, I guess that’s five, and maybe not so surprising that it tastes so good, but it really is wonderful, and you should make it soon. 

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TUESDAY
Vaguely Mediterranean chicken on pita with yogurt sauce; Greek vegetable salad

Not exactly shawarma, but I did throw together several of the ingredients for the marinade

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and put some chicken thighs in it for several hours. Then I broiled it, turning once

and served it with pita pockets and yogurt sauce, and a little salad. Pretty tasty with very little effort. 

I served it with grape tomatoes, baby cucumbers, black olives, red onion, fresh parsley and dill, kosher salt, and olive oil.

We also had some kalamata olives, which I ended up serving on the side, thinking they had pits in them, but they did not, oops. And some hunks of feta cheese. 

It was a really good meal, and I liked it a lot. Fresh squeezed lemon juice in the marinade on a Tuesday! Freshly pressed garlic in the yogurt sauce! Two kinds of fresh herbs! I’m making a fuss because NOBODY ELSE DID, which for some reason still bothers me even at this late date after all these years. Oh well. 

WEDNESDAY
My birthday!

The kids had chicken nuggets and Damien and I ran away to Luca’s, where we haven’t been for many a year. I went ahead and ordered the garlicky escargot, because I’ve never had escargot, and if not when your husband has offered to take you to a Rather Expensive Restaurant, then when? 

They were . . . fine. I don’t know why you would have escargot if you could have seafood, though. They were just kind of chewy and muddy, kind of like if someone was trying to somehow reconstitute mussels or oysters from scratch but had only heard them described. So now I know! 

Then, after surreptitiously looking up how to pronounce “tagine,” I ordered the Moroccan lamb tagine, and that was a good idea.

The lamb was braised tenderly in a lovely, slightly spicy broth, and it had carrots, fingerling potatoes, apricots, and pistachios, and I forget what else, served with a yogurt sauce. Very  pretty, warming, and interesting to eat. I also had a couple of delicious cocktails made with pear vodka, ginger liqueur, and nutmeg on the rim, and the whole meal was extremely pleasant and autumnal. 

Then we saw West Side Story, which Damien and I both loved. The older kids and Damien got me excellent, thoughtful gifts, and the younger kids made me wonderful cards. (The middle kids acted like I was some sort of vaguely familiar insect who was late picking them up, but what are you gonna do.) 

THURSDAY
Korean beef bowl on rice; sugar snap peas

Always tasty, even when you run out of brown sugar and have to use honey, and don’t have red pepper flakes and have to use chili powder. I did put red pepper flakes on the list right away, though. We felt that loss more keenly than the brown sugar part. Although it was a bit dry, because we didn’t have the sugar melting into a sauce. Being hungry helped. Write that down. 

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FRIDAY
Omelettes and hash browns

But I have to buy more eggs! The kids have been doing distance school all week, and apparently that means Egg Time. 

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Potato latkes

Serve with sour cream and/or apple sauce for Hanukkah or ANY TIME. Makes about 25+ latkes

Ingredients

  • 4 lbs potatoes, peeled
  • 6 eggs beaten
  • 6 Tbsp flour (substitute matzoh meal for Passover)
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for frying

Instructions

  1. Grate the potatoes. Let them sit in a colander for a while, if you can, and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. 

  2. Mix together the eggs, salt and pepper, and flour. Stir into the potato mixture and mix well. 

  3. Turn the oven on to 350 and put a paper-lined pan in the oven to receive the latkes and keep them warm while you're frying. 

  4. Put 1/4 to 1/2 and inch of oil in your frying pan and heat it up until a drop of batter will bubble.  

  5. Take a handful of the potato mixture, flatten it slightly, and lay it in the pan, leaving room between latkes. Repeat with the rest of the mixture, making several batches to leave room in between latkes. Fry until golden brown on both sides, turning once. Eat right away or keep warm in oven, but not too long. 

  6. Serve with sour cream and/or applesauce or apple slices. 

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Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups brown sugar
  • .5 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp chili pepper flakes
  • salt and pepper
  • 20 chicken thighs

Instructions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit. 

  2. Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked. 

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Rugelach

These are tender little pastries for Chanukah or any time. Use whatever kind of filling you like: Jams, preserves, cinnamon sugar, nutella, etc. These are time consuming, but don't take much skill, and they freeze well, so they make pretty little gifts.

Servings 80 rugelach

Ingredients

dough

  • half pound butter
  • 8 oz cream cheese
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 cup or more sugar, for rolling

filling

  • 1/4-1/2 cup preserves or other filling
  • 1/4-1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (optional)

Instructions

  1. In a food processor, combine the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Slowly add in the flour and keep mixing until smooth. You can do this by hand, but it will take a while! The dough should be fairly stiff and not sticky when it's done.

  2. Divide the dough into 8 balls. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400.

  4. Prepare a pan by lining it with parchment paper, then spraying a baking rack and putting the rack on the parchment paper. Line a second pan with parchment paper, to which you will remove the rugelach when they come out of the oven.

  5. Use the sugar to cover your work space, and use a rolling pin to roll a ball of dough into a round shape the size of a large plate. It should be thin enough to flap a bit when you give it a shake. If your rolling pin sticks, sprinkle more sugar on. You can turn the dough over to make sure both sides get sugared. It doesn't have to be perfectly round, as it will be cut into pieces.

  6. Spread the jam or other filling over the dough, leaving an open space in the middle. If you're adding nuts, sprinkle them over the filling.

  7. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 16-20 triangles.

  8. Roll each triangle up from the outside in. Place each rolled rugelach on the sprayed baking rack on the pan, with the skinny point down. They puff up a bit, so leave the space of one rugelach in between.

  9. Repeat for each ball of dough.

  10. Bake for ten minutes. If the dough isn't golden brown, give it another two minutes. These go from perfect to burnt very quickly, so be alert.

  11. When they bake, the filling will ooze out and pool and burn on the parchment paper, but the rugelach will not burn.

  12. When the rugelach come out of the oven, immediately use a butter knife to transfer them to another pan or rack to cool.

  13. Once they are cool, they can be wrapped in plastic and kept in the freezer for weeks without harm.

 

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Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

 

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Chicken shawarma

Ingredients

  • 8 lbs boned, skinned chicken thighs
  • 4-5 red onions
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 2 cups olive oil
  • 4 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp pepper
  • 2 Tbs, 2 tsp cumin
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes OR Aleppo pepper
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 entire head garlic, crushed OR bashed into pieces

Instructions

  1. Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 425.

  3. Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more. 

  4. Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.

  5. Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.

 

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Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

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Korean Beef Bowl

A very quick and satisfying meal with lots of flavor and only a few ingredients. Serve over rice, with sesame seeds and chopped scallions on the top if you like. You can use garlic powder and powdered ginger, but fresh is better. The proportions are flexible, and you can easily add more of any sauce ingredient at the end of cooking to adjust to your taste.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar (or less if you're not crazy about sweetness)
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
  • 3-4 inches fresh ginger, minced
  • 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3-4 lb2 ground beef
  • scallions, chopped, for garnish
  • sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions

  1. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, breaking it into bits, until the meat is nearly browned. Drain most of the fat and add the fresh ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the meat is all cooked.

  2. Add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes the ground beef and stir to combine. Cook a little longer until everything is hot and saucy.

  3. Serve over rice and garnish with scallions and sesame seeds. 

 

Spielberg’s West Side Story is better than the original

Last night, we saw Steven Spielberg’s new West Side Story. I grew up listening to the soundtrack of the 1961 movie repeatedly. My sister and I would put the LP on just for fun and dance around the living room. I know every second of the score by heart (and it took me many years to realize “Krup you!” is not an actual insult). I’ve seen the original movie countless times and the stage version at least twice.

So yes, I was a little nervous about how the new movie would hold up. I won’t keep you in suspense: I loved it. If you’ve never seen another production of West Side Story but you’ve seen the new movie, you have seen West Side Story. That’s how well they did. In many ways, they did better.

It’s not a slavish recreation, but it’s also not a daring new take or reinvention. What Spielberg did was make sufficient changes and adjustments and yes, improvements, so that a modern audience could understand and appreciate the show for what it always has been.

A warning: Plot spoilers here. (Guys, the show is 60 years old. You’ve had your chance.)

If you’re looking for some kind of incisive comment on racial tension that’s especially apropos for 2021 America, this isn’t it — unless maybe you’re an optimist who’s had your heart broken, and you’d like to see that portrayed on screen.

That’s what happened to Anita, played by Ariana DeBose, whose performance, sorry, has so much more depth than the beloved original Rita Moreno’s. She’s not just a fiery and sultry Latina; she’s someone who is working through conflict in her head. You see on her face and in her posture the struggle between the old and new, between tenderness and ambition. She starts out defiantly singing “I like to be in America” but ends up seeing who America has really been to her, and when she spits out the lie about Maria’s death, it feels like it’s been a long time coming. She’s suffered a lot and has stuffed down so much to try to make her new life work, and when she’s finally cornered, the least she can do is protect Maria and inflict a little pain. That was always there in the script, but in this performance, and in her betrayal in particular, you feel the deep tragedy of what has played out in these few blocks. 

But speaking of Rita Moreno, let’s turn to one of the most startling changes in the new movie: The short song “There’s a place for us” gets sung not by Tony and Maria, but by Tony’s mentor, the Valentina, who, in this production is a Latina woman who long ago married a white man — and she’s played by Moreno. They’ve added some dialogue to flesh out the idea that such couples will always struggle.

What’s the effect of putting the doomed/hopeful song in the mouth of someone who has already lost? It adds another layer of real pathos, because her husband is long dead, and things have only gotten worse since her time (and there’s also the pathos, for those familiar with the old film, of seeing Moreno still beautiful but so very old. This is a tricky maneuver, but I think they pulled it off.)

Changing this song from a romantic duet to a tragic solo also does the service of making the show slightly less sticky.  Musicals are always a little bit sticky, by which I mean there is going to be a certain amount of . . . well, couples standing side by side, staring up into the stars singing a duet about how much they love each other. This exact thing recently happened when Tony and Maria sang “Tonight,” and you wouldn’t want them not to sing it. That’s the show: It’s about gangs and stabbing and racism and attempted rape, and also ballet and rhythmic snapping and a lot of extremely graceful choreography on crumbling brick walls. People burst into song with trained voices and cleverly rhymed lyrics to express how they feel. If this is something that’s going to bother you, then please don’t watch a musical! Nevertheless, they engineered tweaks and tightenings here and there that modified how artificial the show felt, and made the whole thing make more sense emotionally. One such tightening was to have Valentina, in a reflective mood, musing on the past and the future, rather than having Tony and Maria interrupt their drama and sing about it.  

Another change that I believe was intended to de-stickify the show: They moved “I Feel Pretty” back, so it happens after Bernardo kills Riff and Tony kills Bernardo, but Maria doesn’t know it yet. I’m pretty proud of myself for noticing they did this and figuring out why: The song was always a little too cute and clever, especially for someone who doesn’t speak English well, and it’s an adorable song, but it’s hard to reconcile it with Maria as a tragic figure. By shoving it right in the middle of the action, it takes your discomfort with Maria’s inane giggling and prancing and uses it. You feel slightly ill, watching the number, because you know there are two bodies on the ground. (I was gratified to see that this L.A. Times article backs my theory up.)

I love this change not only because it works, but because it’s completely in character with the show. There has always been a desperate shred of hope in every tragic song, and a heavy shadow of dread in every hopeful song. That’s the show; always has been. So this change is an improvement. Amazing. 

The one change they made that I didn’t like was relocating “One Hand, One Heart” to the Cloisters. In the original, the couples improvise a bridal scene, and it’s very clear that, in their minds, they are in a church and are exchanging vows before God. It’s always been one of my favorite parts of the movie. The new movie locates them in a literal convent, and it’s just heavy-handed, which disappointed me. A small quibble.

One more improvement: “Cool” (the song that starts “Boy, boy, crazy boy”) makes so much mores sense in the new movie. In the new movie, Tony is going to Riff to try to retrieve the gun he’s bought, and stop the rumble. It takes place on some kind of ramshackle pier with gaping holes in it, giving Tony and Riff plenty of chances to leap precariously over and around the edges, daring and threatening and sweating and menacing each other. It emphasizes the tension and peril so much better than . . . whatever was in the original, which I can’t remember, which is telling. 

I liked the casting overall. Everyone sang well. It seems foolish to have to say that; and yet we’ve all seen our share of musicals cast with people who seem to have been hired for reasons other than their voice. Maria (Rachel Zegler) is young and fresh and lovely and impatient to start her life.

Tony (Ansel Elgort) is a vast improvement over 1961 Richard Beymer, who essentially showed up and had big shoulders and hit his notes, and that was it.

Elgort’s Tony is a good actor with a fine voice and a slightly odd, interesting face, and you feel like he’s got something going on in his skull.

He and Maria come across more like a real couple and less like a couple of movie stars. This new Tony has a lot more to work with, because they rather daringly added significant backstory: He very nearly killed someone, only avoiding it by luck, and just got out of jail. He spent his jail time thinking, and wants to change his life. Voilà, a motive, other than a vague “he’s different from the rest.” 

They also provided a bit more motive for why the gangs are so territorial in general, other than that one is white and one is Puerto Rican. There is some kind of urban renewal project going on in the neighborhood, which involves wrecking balls tearing down all the buildings these young men have grown up with. So it’s not just a slum, but a pretty explicit war zone, and so we understand better their fierce, furious desperation to hold on to the little scrap of something that that belongs to them. 

An interesting point: The character of Anybodys has become not just a goofy tomboy, but an actual trans character who really suffers at the thought of being perceived as a girl. It’s not inordinately magnified; it’s just another character rescued from being a caricature in the new version. 

To my relief, they don’t appear to have altered the choreography much (or if they have, they preserved the character of it very well). The dancers are wonderful, weightless.

The music was performed faithfully, which is another thing I was worried about. (In a few previews, they movified the music, for some reason; but they didn’t do that in the actual film.) The score is some of the greatest American music of any kind ever written. 

The only scene I didn’t like was “Gee, Office Krupke,” and I don’t know why I didn’t like it. Maybe it just had so many dated references, it was harder to work with. As my husband said, it suffers from the same problems as “I Feel Pretty,” but it’s harder to know how to fix it. You definitely can’t take it out of the show, but it just doesn’t land right. 

But oh my friends, this movie is gorgeously shot, every moment. The long views of the city streets with the crumbling bricks, just magnificent. The dance before the rumble is opulently heightened, the white students in blues and greens, the Puerto Ricans in reds and purples. When the two gangs approach each other for the rumble, there’s an overhead shot of their shadows mingling that’s pure abstract expressionism, just breathtaking.

And then later the shadows of the cops are shot from a different angle as they come upon the two bodies, and they’re so stubby and ineffective. There’s a little scene where Anita and Bernardo are making out in the morning sun behind some hanging curtains, and it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. 

Beautiful, beautiful work. But it stays true to the era. It doesn’t feel like an update or a reboot; it feels like you’ve returned to the original, but with new powers. 

If you have a chance, do watch it in the theater so you can see it as big and hear it as big as possible. Bring tissues. BRING TISSUES. 

 

All images are screenshots from embedded video, above. 
Correction: In an earlier version of this essay, I repeatedly referred to Bernardo as “Roberto.” The reason for this is that I am an idiot, sorry. 

In which nobody reached me about my extended warranty

Today, I am be 47, which is fine. I’m sitting cross-legged on the loveseat next to a first grader doing phonics via Zoom, because school has come home for covid again. Every few minutes, I throw something at the dog to make him stop licking himself. Licking himself isn’t wrong or bad, but it’s my house, and I want him to stop, but I also don’t want to get up off the loveseat. I am 47 years old, and it’s my house!

Someone once described me as a typical American mom who doesn’t have any real problems, and is just discontented enough to invent stuff to write about. I imagine he also thinks the Paradisaea apoda is a bird that has no feet, because every time someone delivered one to his laboratory, they had removed the feet first. Silly bird, what a lovely life, wafting around on its pretty mom feathers. No feet, no problems. 

I self-indulgently Googled “is 47 middle aged” and the internet told me a study has found that adults only become middle aged at age 47, and also that middle-aged misery peaks at 47 years of age. I skimmed, I skimmed. I gather that, statistically speaking, I’m right at the peak of some kind of happiness curve. I would not take a bet about which way I’m headed once I pass the peak. Up or down? Not sure. 

I do have problems, but my feet aren’t one (well, bunions, but those Dr. Scholl’s cushions work fine). My physical therapist says I’m so much stronger than I was even five weeks ago, and I know I’m stronger than I was a year ago, or five years ago, twenty years ago. Part of this is because I have a giant heap of pallets out in my driveway, and whenever I feel like I’m going to go crazy and kill someone, I move pallets around instead, and those mofos are heavy. The other part is yoga. Go ahead and laugh. Yoga gave me the core strength to paint the ceiling and walls of the dining room, which I needed to do so I wouldn’t kill anyone. 

My muscles are strong, but my other equipment is just plain wearing out. Don’t worry, I’m not going to complain about my ovaries. (They’re still working great, which is great. Just what I wanted at age 47, with a six-year-old doing phonics on the loveseat. Moar eggs!) It’s my eyes. My poor old eyes.

I spent a few years lamenting the lunacy of the publishing industry, and how they insisted on printing books in pale, wispy, uneven print these days. Unreadable! Insane! I lamented this trend as I stood beside a kiosk of reading glasses in Walmart, and then a startling thought entered my brain. Reading . . . glasses . . .

$4.88 later, and I could see everything again. What do you know about that. 

The eye doctor says it’s very common for your up-close vision to fall apart almost overnight at this age. But that’s not all. Feeling very foolish, I had them check me out thoroughly, and they said I did have an unusual number of floaters, but they weren’t dangerous, and there wasn’t much to be done but get used to them. Then I took a nap and woke up with a floater so big and dark and central, I saw it before I even opened my eyes. So, feeling even more foolish, I went back again, and was checked out thoroughly again. I was right to come in, they said, and they said it was a bit unusual, but again, not dangerous. This squat, brown bug sitting in the middle of my world was just mine to have and to hold from now on. 

I’m not sure whom to lament to about this. I am an old lady who swallowed a fly, and the fly won’t go away, but just sits there, buzzing silently around my field of vision, leaving a fly smear, a blear, a soil in the middle of everything. It’s like I’ve driven through a mud puddle and there are no windshield wipers. The equipment, as I say, is running down. It’s a good thing I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting, or I might go crazy and kill someone. 

I’m just a flightless little American mom with my yoga and my zoom meetings and my birthday campfires, and it’s just a little drifting blob of collagen, but I’m taking it pretty hard.

You know I’m mad about it because it’s something I can safely get mad about, unlike all the other things that have dislodged this year and are floating around with nowhere to go, and have gone so very wrong they are like a mountainside that suddenly let go and collapsed on top of me. And I can’t tell you about it, and I don’t know what to do, but do yoga and move pallets around.

All the moms I know have unspeakable troubles, things that almost nobody knows about, things that nobody can solve. Landslides. And we keep setting our alarms and scrambling eggs and pulling hair out of the drain and writing what’s for dinner on the blackboard and remembering to buy more push pins. It’s a good thing we believe in life everlasting in our middle age, halfway through the happiness dip. I go to the adoration chapel, and kneel down, and I pray, “Well . . . ” and that’s as far as I get, all hour long. 

We had a bonfire last week, with some of those pallets I’ve collected, which is when my husband snapped this rather dramatic photo of me. When it’s night, with sparks and cinders flying everywhere under the stars, and the air is bent with heat and nails are bending in the embers, it really doesn’t matter how your eyeballs are holding up. We are going to the movies for my birthday, and we have made reservations at a nice Italian restaurant. Lots of people love me, which not everybody gets to say. Most likely I can just get used to that landslide feeling. But still, I think I might also have a small fire. I would like to set a small fire for my birthday. 

Game review: Ransom Notes

New game! New game! Over Thanksgiving weekend, we tried out Ransom Notes: The Ridiculous Word Magnet Party Game. 

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Very simple concept. Someone reads a prompt from a card, and everyone (including the reader) has to pick words from their collection of word magnets to express what is on the card. Then everyone reads their entry aloud.

I dearly wish I had taken more pictures, but here are two entries for the prompt “Summarize the Star Wars movies:”

and

I mean . . . yup, that’s Star Wars!

Once everyone has read their entry, a judge for the round is randomly chosen, and he decides whose entry is funniest and best, and that person wins the round. Everyone replenishes their word magnets and they play another round. Whoever wins five rounds wins the game.

What I liked about the game:

It’s simple and flexible. Very much designed to be played by a bunch of people who are laughing and shouting and possibly drinking, and who aren’t going to get hung up on counting or nitpicking or other minutiae; but it could also easily be played by a more sober, thoughtful crowd. The play moves along quickly, and there are lots of ways to adapt it. It’s a game that’s designed to be flexible.

The magnets seem reasonably sturdy, and the little metal boards on which you arrange your thoughts are pleasing. They are like miniature baking sheets and I just liked them. You can also add in your own collection of word magnets, if you happen to have some. The whole game comes compactly stored in a small, deep box.

Every round was amusing, and some were hilarious. Some of the answers were downright brilliant, and it was so entertaining to see different players’ personalities expressed in their answers as they read out them out. Delivery also played an important part in how the responses were received. 

The game is structured so there’s not one person who’s “it” and has to sit out the fun. They also stipulated that whoever is judge of the round may chose his own answer as the winner, but it had better be awfully good; and the other players can unanimously overrule him, if necessary. Some of the funniest answers were just a word or two.

Overall, it’s very obvious that they tested this game thoroughly with lots of players, and crafted it well for real people to play. They even thought of details like reminding you to stick your word magnets to the side of the tray without a lip, so it will be easier to scrape them off into the pot when the round is over. 

What I didn’t like:

The suggested time limit of 90 seconds per round is too dang short! We ended up just giving everyone as much time as they needed to come up with an answer. And by “everyone” I mean “me,” because I am old and have lost my brain sparkle. Although I think I wasn’t giving myself enough magnets. Here is what the recommended number of magnets for a round looks like (“three pinches,” or about 75 magnets):

There are also some prefixes and suffixes in the mix, that didn’t happen to make it into this collection. 

The major quibble I had was that they were trying a little too hard to steer you toward a naughty game experience (and yes, it does say it’s for ages 17+.) We didn’t come across any really R-rated words (I think we found “boob,” “genital,” “panties,” and “bitchy” and a few others at that level), but there were a lot of words like “secrete” and “bedroom” and “flesh” which are not inherently sexy, but it felt like the word selection overall was weighted in that direction.

Regular readers will know I don’t have a problem with racy humor! There was just a slightly forced, smirky feel to it, and I wish they had just chosen more neutral words, and let the double entendres arise more naturally, because they’re funnier that way. I like deciding when I want to make a dirty joke, rather than getting buffaloed into it because we’re at a party and that’s how you have to act. Possibly I am overstating this issue, because I am a mom who was playing a game with several teenage daughters, and I may have been on high alert. 

A few of the cards pretty explicit (“Walk us through the masturbation process,” for instance, and “Ask your boss for a promotion in exchange for sexual favors”). It’s easy enough to just toss any cards and magnets you don’t want in your game (the FAQs say about 15-30% of the cards are not PG), but it’s something to know about ahead of time, depending on who’s going to play. 

Here’s a selection of cards I drew randomly, to give you an idea of what kind of prompts you might encounter:

So you can see it’s kind of edgy, but by no means always sexy. 

In general: 

We played with kids ages 12 and up (younger than the suggested age). In theory, you could play with younger kids, but even though the play is simple, it can be surprisingly mentally taxing (unless some inspiration jumps out at you), and I don’t think younger kids would have understood the point, or had fun with it. 

It comes with six little trays for words, and says it’s for 3-6 players. I suppose you could play with more people, and just find something else to stick the magnets to, but it might get cumbersome if you add too many players. 

Overall, a clever, funny, successfully-conceived game, and we laughed a lot, and we played a full game in under an hour. We’ll definitely be playing again. It has lots and lots of cards, so you won’t be repeating phrases anytime soon; and there are enough magnets that you should keep coming up with fresh combinations. I anticipate expansion packs. 

If you come up with an especially clever answer, you can hashtag it #RansomNotesGame on social media, and they may add it to their Hall of Fame on their site. You can order directly from their site or from Amazon (affiliate link) It is currently listed at $39.99.

I love family games, but I’m horrible at learning new rules. Here are a few other games I’ve reviewed:

Mysterium 

Snake Oil 

And of course there’s The Catholic Card Game for which Damien and I contributed some brain cells to the NFP Expansion Pack. 

and then there’s Ten ridiculous family games that need no equipment

 

10 ridiculous family games that need no equipment

This Christmas vacation, all 10 of my kids were are under one roof! I don’t know how many more times this is likely to happen; but while it lasts, we’re going to enjoy it. One thing we like doing is playing games — video games, certainly, and board games, sometimes. But my favorites are the ones we can play without any equipment except our own goofy brains. Here are some of them:

  1. STINKY PINKIES

A rhyming riddle game that you can play at all different levels, with kids who just barely know how to rhyme, to people with complex and mysterious brains. My seven-year-old loves to play this in the car. One person thinks of two words that rhyme and have the same number of syllables, and supplies hints, and everyone else has to guess. Whoever guesses correctly first gets to think of the next riddle. If the words have two syllables each, you say you have a stinky pinky. If they have three syllables each, it’s a stinkity pinkity. Four syllables, a stink-inkity pink-inkity; and so one. One syllable word pairs are a stink pink, of course.

A simple example:  A stink pink that’s a container for an orange animal with a big tail. The answer is: Fox box.

A more complicated one: What’s a wild, irresponsible string of pearls? Answer: a reckless necklace. I asked my son this one, and he guessed “unruly jewelry,” which doesn’t scan right, but is pretty good! I also gave him the hint of something that fastens pants and goes upside down, with “zipper flipper” in mind, but he guessed “suspender up-ender.”

  1. EXCUSES, EXCUSES
 
Charades mashed up with ‘The Office’ can entertain the whole families for hours.

This one involves getting out of your chair, unfortunately. It’s good for ages 6 to adult, and it’s very easy to drop in and out of, and is very entertaining to watch other people play.

The set-up:  one person is the boss, one person is the employee who is late for work, and one person is the co-worker.  The boss faces the employee, and the co-worker stands behind the boss, so the employee can see him, but the boss cannot.

The boss barks at the employee, “Why were you late?”  The employee starts to make his excuses — but he has to describe what the co-worker is miming.  Remember, the boss can’t see him.

So the co-worker is marching, dancing, swatting imaginary flies, being strangled, fighting invisible gorillas, etc., and the employee is narrating it.

Then the boss, at any point he wants to, whips his head around to and yells at the co-worker, “What are you doing?”  And the co-worker has to instantly come up with a plausible, office-appropriate explanation for whatever he was caught doing.  If he was acting out “killing a bear with my teeth,” for instance, he might say, “Oh, I was just eating one of these crullers.  Thanks for the crullers, boss!”

If the boss likes the excuse, he says, “Okay,” and the game resumes.  But if he doesn’t, he says, “You’re fired!” and the next person gets to be the co-worker

  1. FICTIONARY

Okay, just for this one, you do need some equipment, but I had to include it because I love it so. You will need a thick dictionary and a bunch of paper and pens.  It’s best for players at least 8 years old and up, and you need at least four players to make it fun. More is better.

The person who’s “it” finds a word that no one is familiar with, and he writes down the real definition. Everyone else writes down a fake definition. The person who is “it” reads them all out loud, and everyone but “it” has to guess which one is real.

Then “it” reveals the true definition. You get a point if you guess the real one, if someone votes for your fake one, or if you’re “it” and no one guesses the real one. Everyone gets a turn being “it” to complete one round of play.

Proper nouns, foreign language words, acronyms, and abbreviations are out. Spell and pronounce the word for everyone, and say what part of speech it is. If you’re “it,” you can simplify the real definition a bit, as long as you don’t significantly change it. Read all the definitions over silently to make sure you understand and can pronounce everything before reading them aloud. Be sure to shuffle them before reading aloud, so there are no clues about who wrote what.

You can’t vote for your own definition. The person who’s “it” does not vote. If there is one person who is head and shoulders above all the others when it comes to guessing, that person can vote last, so as not to influence the others.

The brilliance of this game is the psychology that goes into it. You have to use your knowledge of the people involved, not just your knowledge of language. And there’s always that one person who doesn’t care about the score and just wants to mess with people.

  1. GHOST

A spelling game, but it’s more fun than it sounds, and also involves more psychology than you’d think. A group of people spells a word out loud together, one letter at a time. The goal is to draw the word out as long as possible without being the one who says the last letter. So the person who starts will say, for instance, “R.” Then the next person will add the next letter — say, “E.” Then the next person will say “S.”

The hard part is, you have to supply a letter that doesn’t spell an entire word; but you have to have a real word in mind, that you’re working on spelling. The idea is to force someone else into ending the word. So if I am thinking of the word “restaurant,” and I supply the “T” when it’s my turn, then the round is over, because I’ve spelled “rest.”

But if someone supplies a letter that doesn’t spell a word — say “A” — and you can’t figure out what word they could possibly be working on (“‘Resa?’ What word starts with ‘resa?’” you’re thinking, because you keep thinking about “reservation,” but of course the word is “resale,” silly) you may challenge that person to reveal what the heck kind of ridiculous word they’re thinking of.

If they’re bluffing and it’s not a word, but they’re just trying to make it difficult for the next person with the letter they’ve chosen, then they’re out; but if they’re actually spelling a word, then they win.

  1. GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT!

This is a game that only works if no one announces that you’re playing it. It replicates the experience of being a member of the secret service whose job it is to protect the president. I know you guys have a prime minister or whatever, but work with me, here. One person begins by holding two fingers up against his ear as if listening intently to some intel coming through an earpiece.

If you notice someone is doing this, you will realize that the game is in session, and you must silently begin to also hold up two fingers against your ear. One by one, everyone in the room begins to realize what is happening, and stifles giggles while exchanging significant looks. When there is only one clueless person remaining who hasn’t noticed what is going on, then that is the president, and everyone else can simultaneously shriek, “GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT!” and tackle that person to the floor.

It’s so much fun, and hardly anyone ever dies of terror. Note: Husbands generally don’t care for this game, so act accordingly.

  1. IN THE MANNER OF THE ADVERB

One person thinks of an adverb, and everyone else has to guess what it is, by watching him do things in the manner of that adverb.

For instance, say I’m thinking about “bitterly.” The other shout, “Make some biscuits in the manner of the adverb!” so you commence muttering resentfully about the stupid butter not being cold enough, and how everybody else has a pastry blender, but you have to get along with two pathetic butter knives, and how you certainly hope they appreciate how much trouble you went to, but it doesn’t seem likely, and so on. And they shout out words like “Resentfully?” or “Angrily?” until someone guesses it. This is a good game for finding out whether or not your kids really know what an adverb is, or how biscuits are made.

  1. JEBRAHAMADIAH AND BALTHAZAR (also called “Master and Servant”)

Another role-playing/narrative game, but you can sit down for this one. I am not sure why my kids call this one “Jebrahamadiah and Balthazar,” except that (a) it has something to do with the Jeb! flyers we kept getting in the mail when Jeb Bush was running for president, and (b) they are weirdos.

One person gives orders, the other person explains why he can’t carry them out. The answer has to be part of a consistent narrative — you can’t just make up a new excuse for each command.

Here is an abbreviated example. The longer you can draw it out, the funnier it gets:

Jebrahamadiah! Go get me a glass of water.
I would, but I just broke the last glass.
Then go get me a cup of water.
I would, but when I broke the glass, I cut my finger, and I can’t use my hand.
Well, use your other hand.
I would, but when I was searching for a Band-aid for my one hand, I slammed the medicine chest door on my finger, and now both hands are useless.
Then call an ambulance.
I can’t, because, if you’ll recall, my hands don’t work.
Then use the speaker phone.
I would, but when I slammed the medicine chest door, some nail polish remover fell on my phone and now the speaker doesn’t work.
Then just shout out the window for help.
I would, but the neighbors saw me wrecking my phone, and he’s a big jerk, and laughed so hard that he drove off the road and now he’s in a coma.
Well, shout out the other window on the other side of the house.
I would, but when the other neighbor drove off the road, he knocked a utility pole down, and a live wire landed on the house on the other side and now it’s on fire, so I don’t want to bother them.
Well . . . okay, fine, I’ll get my own water.

  1. SHATNER!

This one can be played all day long, while cooking, while setting the table, during the meal, and so on, until you put your foot down and tell them to knock it off or you’re going to strangle somebody.

THE RULES: Life goes on as normal, until someone shouts, “Shatner!” — and then everyone has to do what they’re doing as William Shatner.

I actually stink at this game, but my kids are horrifyingly good at it.

8a. Companion game: DUCHOVNY

The opposite of Shatner. You respond in such an understated way that people have to fight the urge to check your vital signs.

  1. PLURALIZE

You sing a song, except everyone in it becomes two people. Thus, Moana’s cri de couer:

We are some girls who love our islands
We are some girls who love the sea
It calls us
We are the daughters of the village chiefs
We are descended from voyagers
Who found their way across the world
They call us
We’ve delivered us to where we are
We have journeyed farther
We are everything we’ve learned and more
Still it calls us
And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside us
It’s like the tide; always falling and rising
We will carry you here in our hearts you’ll remind us
That come what may
We know the way
We are Moanas!

  1. GREG

This one benefits more than others from either having a few glasses of wine in you, or being eleven years old (I cannot recommend both).

THE RULES: You sing songs, but instead of “I,” “me,” or “mine,” you say “Greg.”

There’s “With or Without Greg” by U2; “Amazing Grace” (How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like Greg); and who can forget that sentimental ballad from The Music Man, “Till There Was Greg.”

Extra points if someone in the house is actually named Greg.

 

Image: From Wikihow Play Charades (Creative Commons)

Game review: Snake Oil

Our summer library reading program ended not with a bang, but a howl, then a whimper, then ice cream, and then more howling. It was an unfortunate combination of overtired kids, high expectations, generalized raffle anxiety, and a hideous game which I don’t know who thought was a good idea, where you tie balloons to your ankles and run around getting stomped at by bigger, faster kids. I guess there was a bang and a whimper for that part, come to think of it.

There were also some bad feelings among the other moms when I stepped forward to claim the grand prize (two movie tickets and a pizza dinner) on behalf of my two-year-old, who won fair and square by having some books read to her.  Too bad! The kid has really been looking forward to a night out with her husband, but she just can’t justify it in the budget right now. Fair’s fair.

There was one good thing, though: one of my kids won a card game called Snake Oil, and the whole family has been playing it steadily all week. Yay, no glowing screen!

One person is the customer. He chooses a customer card and announces his profession or state in life: nurse, billionaire, cheerleader, zombie, plumber, witch, etc.

All the other players get six word cards each.  So you might get: death, balloon, burp, button, lightning, water; or flag, coffin, glove, cheese, leg, regret. From these, you must pick two words to invent a product that the customer would want to buy. Everyone makes a persuasive sales pitch

photo (48)

 

to the alert, bright-eyed customer

 

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and the customer awards his card to the person with the best product. (Pardon the rubble in the background; I am halfway through painting the living room!)

My kids are good improvisers, and huge hams.

photo (47)

The teenagers like playing, too, and so do I. It says “ages 10+” but it’s pretty easy to let the illiterate ones be “partners,” so really everyone can play this game, and the older ones are so full of ideas that they are willing to help out the little guys.

photo (45)

I can imagine it being fun for all adults, with enough liquor in them.  And you can do a full game in about twenty minutes! And best of all, we now have a new running joke to carry us through the next few months, courtesy of my slightly morbid eight-year-old daughter, who was hawking Water Snakes to a grave robber: “Pop! Out comes the corpse!” (She won that round.)

“One of the lucky ones”: A testimony on the trauma inherent in adoption

November is National Adoption Month.  Last week, I talked to Wendy, a Canadian mental health professional who was adopted in the early 80’s and met her first mother at the age of 29. Wendy is Black, and her adoptive parents are white.
 
Our conversation (which has been edited for length and clarity) began when I first asked her if my perception was accurate, that we’re much more likely to hear the testimony of adoptive parents, than the stories of adoptees. 
 
W: Yes. Among the adoptee community, that is our biggest complaint, esepcially during National Adoption Awareness Month. Did anybody ask us?
 
It’s quite appalling, the extent to which people who are hoping to adopt only want to hear the positive side; they only want to hear the fairy tale. And if you say, “That’s not the whole story,” they don’t want to hear it. We are called names, we’re gaslit, we’re told to get therapy.
 
On certain platforms, whenever I open my mouth to say, “Okay, but adoption is not a fairy tale” at 8:30 in the morning, I put my phone down, and by lunch time there are twenty-five people calling me bitter, angry, and ungrateful. Here we go, another day on social media as an adopted adult. 
 

Why are people so unwilling to hear it?

 

W: Adoption is an industry. The industry has to advertise itself.
 

As an entire society, we have really bought hard into this “adoption is a beautiful option,” especially in pro-life circles. It’s, “If you can’t parent, here’s this almost uncomplicated, beautiful option.” 
 
If I say to an adoptive parents, “No, it’s not beautiful, and it’s very complicated,” what they’re not saying, but what I hear, is, “I thought we were doing a good thing, and you’re telling me we’re not. If you’re telling me all of this is true about adoption, then all of this is true of what my child has experienced. But my child is happy to be adopted, and my child is well-adjusted.”
 
I would have told you the same thing until I was 34 years old. 
 
What happened?
 
W: We have this phrase called “coming out of the fog.” In oversimplified terms, it refers to realizing adoption is not a fairy tale. As an adopted person, you get this narrative growing up: “We chose you from all the other children to be part of our family; isn’t that special?” You have to explain it to children in a way they can digest, and people want to make it a good story for a child. They tell it as a fairy tale, so you grow up thinking, yup, it’s a fairy tale. 
 
The other part of the story for me is, I am a transracial adoptee, which means I’m of a different race from my adoptive parents. My adoption is very visible. I’m a Black woman with a very Irish last name. 
 
Growing up, people ask you, “Are you adopted?” It’s amazing the questions people think they have a right to ask. You’re coached to answer the questions as a fairy tale. Looking back, those were very intrustive questions they had no right to ask, but I was encouraged to answer them, because it’s such a beautiful story. That’s the lens I had for the longest time. 
 
Even while having that lens, there were times, from the age of 11 or 12, that I would have these very negative emotions that didn’t seem to be attached to anything. My life is fine; why am I feeling like this? 
 
I was 20 or 21 and I realized I was not a big fan of my birthday. On the day, I didn’t want anyone to talk to me, I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, and I didn’t understand what that was.
 
Finally, years later, I said to a friend of mine: “As an adopted person, that’s the day I lost my first mother, and I do not feel like celebrating it.” 
 

How did she react?

 

W: She was able to take it on board. Some people really are not. Some adoptive parents can’t get their heads around it. They want to celebrate their child’s life. But whether your child has realized it or not, it’s a day that marks loss. Of course, not every child feels like that; maybe not every adult feels like that. 

Did you know other adoptees? When did you start realizing this was a common experience? 
 
W: Other than three cousins, also adoptees — they are indigenous. The Sixties Scoop  is most likely how they came into our family. I don’t have a lot of contact with them. One is not alive anymore. We’ve never had a conversation about adoption as adults.
 

It was as an adult, and it was on social media, that I had my first honest conversations about adoption. It’s interseting now to see new people come out of the fog, and the response you see over and over is, “I’m not weird; I’m not messed up. Everyone is telling me adoption is this beautiful thing, and I just thought there was something wrong with me.” No, there’s a whole other side to this.

What are some things your parents could have done differently, that would have given you a different experience? Or is it almost a rite of passage that everybody who’s adopted has to come to terms with at a certain age?

 
W: When I’m getting that backlash, the implication is that I should be grateful, and a lot of people want to run to the defense of my parents. They put a roof over my head and treated me like their own.
 
The thing that was missing is the realization that every single child who has been adopted, especially if it was not a kinship adoption [placement with relatives], has been traumatized by the separation from the first mother. The story started with trauma. 
 
The phrase that’s often used is “Adoption is trauma.” Yes, it’s the trauma of separation. The more I think about it, the deeper I realize it goes.
 
People will say, “But you don’t remember. It’s not like you were five and dragged screaming away from your mother. You were a baby.” But if you know trauma, you know about preverbal trauma. You don’t have to be old enough to have a narrative of it, for it to affect you. It shows up in the body. I can’t tell you a story of what’s troubling me, but I’m feeling a certain way. 
 
Then recently I was led to think about the effects of prenatal trauma. If a woman is pregnant and is she is abused, or is experiencing poverty or food insecurity or is homeless … what’s the effect on the child she’s carrying? 
 
It’s not so much what my parents could have done differently, it’s what the agency and adoption professionals could have done differently. I would bet my bottom dollar [my parents] were told, “Love will be enough. Take this child into your family and love her as your own, and everything will be fine.”
 
But if the trauma is there, and it absolutely is, you can’t love it away. But if you’re informed about how trauma works, and what a traumatized child needs, you can parent differently. When that trauma starts showing up, if you know why, maybe you don’t take it personally as parents. 
 
A hopeful adoptive parent recently told me all she hears about adoption lately is trauma.  She asked me if she should adopt. What I said is, If you’re not prepared for your child to look you in the face, a child you did your best to love and provide for, and for that child to say, “You’re not my real mother,” you’re not ready to adopt. If you can’t sit still for that, please don’t adopt.  
 
Are you concerned that this will scare people away? That children who would get homes are not going to get homes, because of your cautions?
 
W: Maybe this is callous, but if my speaking honestly scares you off, you’re not suitable to adopt.
 
And I absolutely believe that. Until we get to a conversation where we can say adopted children carry the trauma of separation, and until this conversation is happening at the industry level, we’re gonna get people who are surprised by this. We’re gonna get people who hear this talk about trauma and are scared away. 
 

So what do we do about that?

This hopeful adoptive parent I was talking to said, “It sounds like you’re saying the whole system is rotten.”

 
I said, “Yeah, it’s rotten to the core.” 
 
I say this because vulnerable women who approach adoption professionals, some health care professionals, some mental health professionals,  are pressured and often shamed to give up their babies for a promise of a “better life” with other parents, instead of having a conversation about whether she wants to parent, what supports she would need in order to parent, whether there is any way to involve family or community so that she can keep her child.
 
There are many cases, more than most people know, and more than “adoption professionals” will admit, where a mother or the mother’s family could have cared for the child if supported to do so.  But instead, we terminate parental rights, change the baby’s name, alter the birth certificate and put the child in someone else’s arms.  It’s rotten to the core. 
 
But until we arrive at adoption reform, this system is what we have. There are children who cannot safely remain with their parents.  There are children who have already endured that trauma of separation, and are in foster care, and right now adoption is the way we provide care and permanency.
 
I don’t think adoption, the way we do it right now, is a good thing. Why do you need to erase someone’s indentity, ancestry, and history to provide them with stability and care? You don’t. But that’s what the adoption industry does.  The unspoken idea is that if you erase a child’s history and identity, they can be easily inserted into a new family, and be “one of them” the way a biological chid is.   But that adopted child already had a family and an ancestral history.   That doesn’t cease to exist because someone altered some paperwork.
 
So for right now, it is what it is. There are kids that need care and permanency, and right now, we do that through the adoption system.
 
That’s my quandary, as a mental health professional. If you can’t recognize and support a traumatized child, you should not be parenting an adopted child. I will die on that hill. So what do we do with these children who are already in care and experiencing this instability? They need a solution. The current way we do adoption is not it.
 
What I hear a lot from foster parents is, “You might think you have to be the perfect parent and know exactly what to do, but you don’t. You just have to do your best, and be there for that child.” Are they wrong? Or is that situation just too different from adoption? 
 
W: It’s in the same broad circle. The idea that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to do the best you can, there is absolutely a lot to that. 
 
You can’t go back and make that separation not happen. I think the best an adoptive parent can do is be willing to learn about the trauma that is inherent in adoption, and be willing to do the work to understand how to support a child who has been traumatized by the process.
 
That’s where the thick skin comes in. Do the work. Go to your own therapy. Talk to adopted adults. There are things you can to.
 
As a mental health professional, I get to have this moment where someone is sitting in front of me, and they’re experiencing depression or anxiety or OCD, and by the time they get to me, someone’s already given them a diagnosis, but no one has talked to them about what it means. I get to say to them: “Here’s what it means. Here’s what you might be experiencng.”
 
The facial expression, the relief in their voices: “You get it. You said it. It’s real. Someone understands.” I didn’t cure your depression; I just told you you weren’t going crazy.   And so, with adoption, you can’t erase the trauna, but you can acknowledge it and support your child through it.
 
Can you tell me some more about your own circumstances, your birth mother? 
 
W: I’m “one of the lucky ones.” I’m in reunion with my first mother. 
 
Sorry, it’s “first mother,” not “birth mother?” How did you land with that term? 
 
W: If I say “birth mother,” that feels like that’s the body I came out of, and then she ceased to matter. Well, she didn’t. Her absence mattered to me, and will matter until the day I die. And my absence mattered to her, from the day I was born, and will contine to matter to her until the day she dies. 
 
“First mother” is like: I have a mother in the mother who raised me. But I had a mother before her, as well. 
 
So you’re in reunion with your first mother? When did that happen?
 
W: I was able to contact her in 2011. I had just turned 28.
 
Did you express any interest in meeting her growing up? 
 
W: Yes, but even when I was a kid, I could sense there was some discomfort around that. When it came out was when I was angry or upset: “You’re not my real family. I’m gonna go find my real family.”
 
But in addition to that, my parents had a very surprise baby when I was ten, and there were all these conversations about who that child looks like and takes after. I didn’t have any of that. I didn’t look like anyone. 
 
I met my first half sister in 2002. We have similar mannarisms and similar brains, but we don’t look like sisters. Whereas my other half sister, I couldn’t stop staring at her. I was 28, and I had to say, “I’m sorry I keep staring at you, but you have my face.”
 

And growing up, what was it like, thinking about your first mother? Was there a longing?

 

W: A longing, and a wondering. I don’t think I uttered the phrase “you’re not my real parents” after the age of about 8, because I realized that it landed, and really landed really hurtfully. In a way an eight-year-old can, I realized that whatever else was going on, don’t say that. 

But until I entered reunion, there was that longing. That’s really what I was feeling on my birthday, before I even realized it. That date brought it home.  

 
How was it, meeting your first mother? It must have been a lot. 
 

W: It was a lot. I don’t think I processed how much it was. I think I’m still processing how much it was.

We met in person in the summer of 2012. It was just so strange. Because so much of it was so normal. But meeting your first mother you’ve never met until the age of 29 is not normal. It’s not a normal thing to do. Yet all that happened was she hopped on a train and came to the city where I lived, and I met her outside this random building. I walked up to this woman, and this city does not have a lot of Black folks, so I knew who it was, even if I hadn’t seen her close enough up to realize she looks exactly like me.
 
I’m trying not to fall apart. We’re in the middle of the public square. I was physically shaking. She was extremely stoic; I was not. I was crying, but trying to hold it together. We embraced.  We didn’t speak in the first moments.  I bought her lunch, after. We just sat there and chatted. It was very strange that we were doing such normal things. I just kept looking at her, like, is this happening? Is this real?
 

It will never not be strange. Here’s the thing about reunion. It’s beautiful, and wonderful, and absolutely terrible, and heartwrenching, all at the same time. The intensity of it. Nothing else I’ve experienced has the strange intensity of being in reunion.

One of my sisters and I didn’t undersand how to be in each other’s lives. We fought, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Fighting with a sibling after being in reunion, it was terrible. We have to be very careful now. 
 
It’s nature and nurture. We are both people who will argue that the grass is blue and the sky is green if we think we can carry it off. We have to be right. When two people like this get in a fight, it’s freaking ugly. And so at a certain point, I said, “I can’t talk to you. I’m in danger of saying something unforgiveable, and if I don’t, you will; so we’re not going to talk right now.” We didn’t talk for a year and a half. 
 
You’ve had this longing for connection, authentic connection and belonging —  the belonging is a really big piece — and then to fight with the person you finally experience it with? No thank you. 
 
When that relationship went wrong, did it make you feel like there was something wrong with you, like maybe you don’t know how to have relationships with people?
 
W: This fighting was happening before I came out of the fog. I got the fairy tale ending with the reunion; how did this go so wrong? Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?
 
I’ve said to my first mother, “You and I, we cannot fight. We have to be able to have a conversation before it turns into a fight.”
 
There have been times when we had a miscommunication or missed contact] and I was having a reaction like, “You’re leaving me again!” and I’m in a panic. And I have said to her, “We can’t have a fight, because I will go out of my mind.
 
 Is your first mother motherly to you? Does she perform the function of a mother, or is it a different kind of relationship?
 
W: This is one of the griefs I carry. When we have those moments when she’s acting in a motherly way, that brings into sharp relief the relationship we lost. Even though we have those moments, we can’t get back what we lost. She is my first mother, but she wasn’t my mother for 28 years. You can’t come into somebody’s life when they’re twenty-eight and be their mother, you just can’t. 
 

This may be a loaded question, but do you call yourself a pro-lifer?

W: I consider myself pro-life. I’m not a huge fan of that term. That has more to do with what comes out of the mouths of other people that associate themselves with that term. One of the arguments pro-lifers come at me with is, “Well, would you rather have been aborted?” No, and if you see those two options in such a black and white dichotomy, you’re not very intellectually flexible, are you? 

I’ll say that, as a Catholic and someone who is pro-life and as an adopted person, and someone who sees this tension and the trauma that is inherent, I find myself in a very precarious position. 
 
The adult adoptee community are vehemently prochoice. I can see exactly why. For some adopted people, they’ve been so affected by this trauma, some will say, “Yeah, it might have been better for me if I had never been born, than to live in this much pain.” And then there’s the concern that if someone does not want to carry a child and give birth, they should not be forced to; they should have that option to terminate. And from a bodily automomy perspective, I can see that. But as a Catholic, I see that new life, that soul.  If I weren’t Catholic, I would probably be pro-choice. I probably wouldn’t have been, until I came out of the fog.  
 
I am the only practicing Catholic in my immediate family, one of two in my extended family. The story of my Catholicism is a whole other story. The bottom line is, by the time I came out of the fog, if I hadn’t been Catholic, that would have been the end of me being prolife.  And though I am, I make a lot of Catholics angry by saying I don’t think legal prohibition of abortion is a good answer.
 
 As vehemently as I am prolife, I can absolutely see the other side. I can see both sides, and when both sides dig in their heels, this is how we don’t make progress. Both sides are busy screaming at each other and vilifying each other. 
 
Wendy, I appreciate you sharing all these personal things with me.
 
W: Well, nobody’s been telling me to get therapy or calling me a horrible ungrateful wretch, so this is new, this is good. The funny thing about the “get therapy” thing is that good therapy is the reason I’m able to have this conversation in this way.
 
That’s one of my things. Adoptive parents, go to therapy. I know you don’t think you need it, but you freaking do. Don’t you dare adopt a child until you’ve been to therapy. 
 
That surprises me. I would kind of assume that people would. 
 
W: I don’t know what the process is like now, when someone approaches an agency to adopt a child. I’m so interested to know if it’s suggested, strongly suggested, required? 
 
When the older of my half sisters and I first connected, before we were allowed to talk to each other, we were supposed to have 4 or 6 separate [therapy] sessions about this reunion experience. Then there was this other option, where they would send you all this reading material, and you had to sign sworn statement that you had read it and don’t have questions. I’m waiving any right to say I was harmed by this process, because I’ve chosen not to do the therapy. 

Who required this?

 

W: Family and Children’s Services. You could ask to be named on the adoption registery, and if someone else who they could trace as being related to you was also named, you would get this official letter that this relative has also registestered. If you‘d  like to have contact, you can. 

There was a social worker assigned to our case. She could talk to my sister and she could talk to me, but we weren’t allowed to talk to each other until either the therapy was complete, or we’d signed that waiver. I called the social worker one time, and my sister was in the office, but it was against the law to talk to each other. It’s against the law for me to talk to my flesh and blood sister.
 

There was another time. I got what’s referred to as “non identifying information about my first mother and her family. It was biographical information without identifying details, and it was like, pastimes and hobbies and how tall they were. No medical information; why would I need that? That’s another fun thing, when you have medical mysteries going on, and you go to the doctor and they say, “Do you have a family history of this?” and you say, “I don’t freaking know.”

The other time this weird gate keeping happened, was I was already in reuinion with my first mother, and I thought, what happens now if I ask for non-identifying information? Because the one I had from when my parents requested was so redacted, whole paragraphs were missing. 

 

So I requested it again in 2011. I called the F and CS office in my hometown and was told, “When you come in and pick it up, we’ll have you sit down with a counsellor. There’s information you might find distressing.”

I told her, “Let me tell you, I have met my first mother, and she told me the story, and yeah, it’s pretty damn distressing. Whatever’s in that document, I already know about it, because she told me. If I have to get therapy, I’ll get therapy. I live five hours away; I’m not coming in to do therapy five hours away.  Mail the documents, please.”

 
Finally I had to write a whole letter saying I understand there’s distressing information in this file, I probably aready know it, and I’m releasing you from any liability if I’m emotionally damaged; now give me my freaking documents.
 
And they were still redacted.
 
It’s your history, and they’re keeping it from you. That must feel so strange.
 

W: You get that growing up. I knew my parents knew more than they were telilng me, because of this non-identifying information.

It’s my information; how am I not ready to have it? Some of it would have been pretty difficult to find an age appropriate way to say that, but by the time I was thirteen or fifteen. Tell me something. 

 
When people say, “Why are you so angry?” I am.  It’s that erasure of history. That erasure of ancestry. That erasure of identity. It’s actually not necessary to provide care and stability to someone. But the adoption industry wouldn’t thrive without it. Because it has to be the fairytale where you live happily ever after with a new family.  No one wants to talk about what you lost, first.
 
 
 
 
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Image via Pxfuel