Amorphous blob'ism of a week

Y'all, January is hard enough without accusations of "shithole" (or, as it wasn't but was suggested/lied about, "shithouse") countries and assertions of people we do and don't want anytime but sort of especially MERE DAYS BEFORE we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day in the year that IS ALSO the 50th year since his assassination. 

January is cold enough that we can really do without continued sexual impropriety on a grand scale, including multiple and fairly credible tales of porn stars having had affairs with the Evil Yam just after Melania gave birth and then being paid hush money to shut up about it all.

January is screwy enough in terms of snow days and, thusly, parental schedules, that I hardly think we also need a desperate mother paying a large sum to largely untrained Container Store people for a "sleek and Swedish" organizational system that promises to solve a hoarder son's closet issues. Said mother averred that a cyclonically-inspired closet could be tamed in 60-90 minutes on an early-dismissal Tuesday. Said mother was, four hours, no lunch, and extreme body and foot odor later, chastened by said sleek and Swedish org system that is now a permanent part of a closet due to a mallet, chisel, hammer, and wild-eyed determination to make that fucker fit. Do not tell said mother's husband just what lengths she went to via the baseboard just inside the closet doors.

My dear housekeeper, Imelda, ventured in two hours in: "Emily, I am hearing the hammer. Is everything going ok? I want to offer my help."

"Imelda, I will win in this closet. I will make this organizer fit."

"Ok, Emily, it's just, I'm hearing the hammer" -read: "I should not be hearing a hammer," which was an accurate perspective from anyone but especially Imelda who can fix and solve and do anything- "and I want to offer my services."

I'm pretty sure my scent and the state of my hair and eyes caused her quick departure from the room. 

The Container Store is really the devil. No wonder it partners with Real Simple magazine which is the lyingest name of a magazine ever. Real Stressful would be infinitely more accurate. Sweet baby jesus in the skies, RS editors. Back your trains up. No one can cover even 80% of the advice you offer on one page must less on 200 of them. 

Meanwhile, the children appear to be suffering January-induced meltdowns and loss of senses of humor. Mary mother of moody boys. Get it together. Tonight, Tom's 40th birthday incidentally, found me with a brand new Keratin treatment in my hair -which means it's straight as a board and CANNOT, under penalty of death, be tucked in a rubber band, hair band, or even behind an ear- peeling and deveining shrimp, making biscuits, preparing a cocktail, making the kids' dinner, AND alternately tending to and ignoring pitiful whimpering from Oliver because he had to copy previously written persuasive letter text onto a new sheet of paper. The trials of being a privileged youth today.

My eyes just fell out I rolled them so hard.

Have you ever tried to peel and devein shrimp without being able to move your hair out of your face or even really touch it? Such is not an optimal scenario. And the wailing child is the cream. 

But I'm a perseverant gal, and damn you shithole president and persuasive letter writing and Keratin, I will make my husband a delicious meal. And I did.

barbecue shrimp

biscuits!

kale salad

And the boys calmed down and got their homework done, and dinner was good, and then T and I watched Get Out which is hands down the best social commentary film I've seen in a while, and now we're two forty-somethings off to bed. Happy Birthday, honey.

Barbecue shrimp

I am not even kidding, y'all. The hankering I had earlier today for Louisiana barbecue shrimp was off the charts. Luckily I was in the market when this desire struck, so I hurriedly picked up a pound of fresh shrimp and a crusty baguette for sauce-sopping. 

You should always sop good sauce. Do you do that? 

Perhaps you're aware that barbecue shrimp has approximately zero to do with barbecue sauce as you know it. It is, instead, a shrimp-shell stock infused with onion, garlic, bay leaves, Worcestershire, a bit of wine, pepper, salt, and Creole seasoning, reduced to a sauce and mixed with cream and a pat of butter for good measure.

straining the reduced stock

At some point along the way, you quickly cook the shrimp in that ambrosial mess and then serve both in a bowl with a generous hunk of oven-toasted bread.

Note: we did not have enough Worcestershire, so the color of the sauce isn't as richly tinted as usual, but we added some anchovy paste (because umami and also Worcestershire has a fair amount of anchovy in it), and while the depth of flavor wasn't quite as intense as I like, this was still pretty darn good.

shrimp cooking in the hot sauce

Doesn't this look sublime?

It was.

I also saw my friend, Hiwot, and we talked injera. Mine is coming along. Post about that soon!

Looking back, living forward

Christmas felt small this year. It was happy and cozy, festive and full of love, but we were the smallest group I can remember in a long while. Elia and her crew stayed in Florence, Nanny's gone and so is Mike, Dad was on call. Fortunately, my aunt Renee and cousin Jeff flew in, but I was still left with a lingering feeling that my family is shrinking faster than it's growing. Parents age, siblings and cousins move, people have fewer children I grew up with a large extended family, and we spent holidays together, parents driving everyone somewhere central like ants returning to their hive. Such seems not to be for my boys, a bittersweet truth. My brother- and sister-in-law have two darling daughters but we're lucky to see them twice a year; once is much more the norm. El will raise her kids in Italy. And so goes life, but watching the old guards age and pass trips me in moments both anticipated and unexpected.

Today, in the morning-after aura of Christmas' poignancy, Mom asked me to clear out the many keepsake boxes under my bed. Most have been stashed there for nearly twenty years: middle and high school journals; elementary school yearbooks; notes from friends and boyfriends; blackened corsages; my college thesis as it progressed; myriad items that must once have meant something dear but whose meaning has been lost in the waves of bygone decades. Who was that boy who kept writing that he loved me? Why did I save multiple fish-shaped sponges, the kind that emerge from dissolvable capsules in little kids' baths? Just how mountainous did we girls think our bangs needed to be? Why on earth did I wear such high-waisted shorts?

Sorting, tossing and deciding to save was a delightful way to spend several hours. I found some of my school work from age 8½, the same age Jack is now. I read him my very candid essay about being the oldest child and he smiled conspiratorially and said he agreed: it's honest in the way of unadulterated childhood expression. Watching his and Ol's dynamics, I can perfectly imagine how I must have felt then and how Jack sometimes feels now. I'm grateful for this reminder to sometimes let the first child feel like your baby once more. Then I showed him my report on the Trapdoor Spider; he seemed less impressed but said he admired that I wrote it as if the Spider were talking with him.

I condensed six boxes into three, filling four garbage bags with trophies, crumbly Valentines roses, old wrapping paper and boxes, letters from camp friends I no longer recall and every pamphlet about Mary Lou Retton and the Chicago Cubs under the sun.

I thought about the girl I was, the woman I've become and the sometimes enormous gulf between our memories of certain times and the "facts" of those periods as presented by written evidence. I don't remember caring much for high school, I don't remember feeling peaceful or assured during it. But photos, sweet nothings written and folded into origami parcels easily passed hand to hand in school halls, yearbook messages and glittery signs from school dances suggest that there was more happiness and friendship than I tend to recall. Seemingly endless cards from Mom, Dad, Nanny, Renee, aunts, friends, pen pals, mentors remind me of the great crowd on whose support I've often been lucky to depend.

Nothing is perfect, and I've had my share of pits and loss and darkness and worry. But I arrived here, where I am today, and I like this person. I like my family, even with its generous shake of eccentricity and foible. I like the people in my life, even as I've learned that those on whom you can really count and lean are fewer and further between than youthful idealization once led me to believe. I've learned that while grand goals and courage will help you reach achieve great things, grand expectations of others often lead to disappointment. Support is essential but so are a respect for and reliance on self.

Tonight, as Mom, Dad and Renee ate tamales, the boys slurped chili and T and I inhaled barbecue shrimp, I considered how very much easier raising kids would be with all this family around all the time. In the absence of that though, I'm grateful for the relationships we've all forged and maintained across the miles. And I hope that as I encourage the boys to individuate and ultimately live their own lives, they one day sit in a pile of memories and think back over how loved and supported they always were.