Cats in the Cradle

There are times when that song from my childhood, Cats in the Cradle, just streams through my head:

Cats in the Cradle and a Silver Spoon,
Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon,
When're you coming home Dad, I don't know when,
But we'll get together then son,
you know we'll have a good time then....

I suppose in many ways I'm living my life accordingly. Sensitive to the theme of this song, that the father who prioritized his work and had little time for his son, reaps his just rewards in that his son has little time for him in his old age, and hoping to avoid its message in my own family entourage.

Life is a cycle, or at least, I believe it is so. What goes around comes around. What we put into motion ever so unconsciously, can come back to catch us.

I felt this cycle in a strange way during these holidays. I went for a walk with my mother, and for the first time perhaps ever, she walked more slowly than I, frightened of slipping and falling in the icy snow. Mostly, I was able to slow down and walk at her speed, but I felt myself resisting, frustrated, and yes, a bit resentful. Why?

Scenes of my childhood when she was always in a hurry, out the door before me, honking the car, ahead of me by a few yards, urging impatiently for me to catch up, rarely waiting till I was actually ready... No, it wasn't all the time, but enough that the impression has stuck.

I see as well my grandmother ten yards (or ten minutes) ahead of my grandfather, abandoning him as she strode strongly along while he trailed behind hobbled by weak legs. Was it so important to arrive minutes before the other?

I want to stop this. I don't want to be the impatient mom always urging her kids along.

And yet, I have been thus. I remember countless times zooming across Arles with Leo in tow -- thankfully, he was able to keep up most of the time, especially with his hand in mine. But when we had a friend of his with us, one who was far more dreamy and slow, inspecting every crack in the sidewalk, every piece of paper on the ground (no matter the cars that nearly toppled him over!), I would go, admittedly, rather batty. I have even thanked the stars that I've a son like Leo who can keep up. If I'd had a child like his poor friend no doubt it would have been torture for us both.

And so, how to stop this? Well, I'm trying. I'm making moves in this direction. We walk hand in hand, or if not, I look back when they dawdle, and stop when I sense they've fallen behind. Then simply, during those precious times when the clock isn't weighing upon me, I stand and smile as I wait for them to catch up -- rather than urging and berating and tapping a foot, or worse, heading off alone expecting them to keep up ...

It will come.

Halloween, or the Eve of the Toussaint

Soon it will be Halloween. I have memories of being a child in NY, dressing up as a princess, or a can of TAB, not to mention a clown or a ghost. A large shopping bag in hand I scoured the neighborhood. My mother would confiscate most all my stash of candy, and certainly anything that wasn't wrapped -- all those worries of razor blades in the apples, or poisoned caramels, or whatever. I'd have my UNICEF box in hand, and Trick or Treat from home to home with my clutch of friends. Losing the candy wasn't that big a deal. It was the evening outing that was the most memorable and important part of the day.

Having children in France, as they came of a certain age, I attempted to Trick or Treat with them. After all, the local stores (this is seven years' ago) were selling Woolworth style plastic pumpkin containers for candy, witches' hats, ghost costumes, and fake blood and vampire teeth galore. The French commercial industry grasped at another opportunity to sell cheap China-made stuff at a time when normally, only the flower industry earns anything.

You see, the French do celebrate le Toussaint, or All-Saints' Day. It is a family day to gather, visit the graves of your ancestors, clean the grave stones, and put fresh flowers there. It is a chance to share family memories with the children, and to think of your long-gone loved ones.

And so there was an attempt to bring Halloween to France. This was most often greeted by harumphing folk sensing yet a further invasion of American culture. Now our English and Scottish friends also celebrate Halloween, and do so more in the style that the French attempted to borrow it -- all scary costumes of ghouls and vampires and witches, nothing fantastic like what you might see in Georgetown this October 31st. But of course, if someone is going to get the bad rap, it is the Americans.

Valiantly, I attempted to communicate the origins of this night of festivities. That in reality it is an ancient Celtic festival, closely linked to All Saints' Day (remember, All Hallow's Eve?) and as Arles is in fact identified with its Celtic history (Arlate is the Celtic name for city in the marshes), how appropriate that we celebrate this aspect of this ancient rite. I simply got blank stares.

Nonetheless, twice, I went out with my boys and a couple of their friends, costumes donned, and bags at the ready, and we Trick or Treated (Bonbons ou Betises is the closest I can come to this in French). At some doors, we were greeted graciously. The inhabitant smiled, rather amused, and found a little something for us. At others, old women looked fearfully through a curtain and shooed us away, and than at others, they looked at us rather quizzically and found a cookie or an apple or some such to toss into our bag. They tried, as did we, but truly, it just didn't catch on.

And so, years later, Halloween is a bit of a joke here. The occasional night club will have a theme party, and if you really must purchase paraphernalia in orange and black, one shop in town just might have some.

And for dress-up and costumes? Well the French celebrate Carnival before Lent, and there, costumes are encouraged, silly games and more. With that, who needs Halloween?

In fact, I've been berated as to the scary and negative nature of this holiday. In Alsace and areas north, they celebrate the St. Martin, by walking into the woods at night with lanterns in hand, bringing warmth and light to Nature as she signals her time of sleep and hibernation. A very different way to greet the end of autumn and the beginning of winter.

I'm trying to adapt, and have been trying for years now. But old habits persist.

Here is my Scottish friend's Pumpkin soup made from the scoopings of her kids' Jack-o-Lanterns. At least in her house, Halloween still has some meaning:

Pumpkin soup:


One chopped onion – butter and olive oil (flavor)
Pepper, salt and garlic
Optional: smoked bacon

Cook till browned, add three cups of pumpkin scoopings (what you’ve scooped out when you make your Jack-o-Lantern), a chopped apple and sweat.

Add 2 cups of chicken stock, one bottle of dry cider (bubbly), and grate a good nob of fresh ginger root.

Cook till tender, then blend with an immersion blender.

Happy children eat the soup of their labor.

Ratatouille from the potager

Ratatouille. It's rather Proustian for me. Childhood memories of visiting France with my family, in the heavy summer heat of 1976, going from one friend's house in Garche (outside of Paris) to another's in Biot (Côte d'Azur, by Antibes), and on to Marseille, ending up at my godmother's in Rennes. In each home we were welcomed with that week's fresh (or day-old) batch of ratatouille. As my mother (the French professor) worked on my pronunciation of the French gutteral Rrrr and the quite particular ouille (oooiya), we enjoyed this most colorful and traditional dish (post discovery of the new world, but hey, traditions are made over a short few centuries, right?).



My brother and I, like mimicking apes or cuckoo birds, laughed and played with the marvelous sounds of this word. It truly is a marvel of linguistic beauty. rrra ta tooiya. And the French do care so much about getting the proper accent of their language. My brother had the best accent of we three, Mom always remarked. Though these days, we rarely hear it. He made some valiant efforts to communicate with Erick, the time or two we overlapped in Michigan these past years. And he certainly still has a strong vocabulary. He was teaching his sons the word libellule just the other day (dragonfly).



Every night, and often at lunch as well (if we were there and not off doing some touristy things ourselves, leaving our hosts a bit of peace and quiet during our brief invasion), we were served the ratatouille, till there was no more in the pot. One night we would have it warmed up, with pasta or rice alongside. Another day it might be served cold, with ham, pâté and good country bread as accompaniment, the latter to soak up all those good juices. Likely the best of them all was prepared in Biot with marvelous and fully ripe vegetables from their garden, or possibly from the little market stalls down in the village. Sweet, tart, dense, textured, savory, garlicky... I can see and taste it now.



Happily, by the age of ten I'd gotten past some of my worst food phobias, and would now eat strange things like eggplant and zucchini when cooked in such a dish. I'd been rather awful at the age of five, the time of my first French voyage. If I remember right, I'd even had a random and strange trick of biting and breaking any glass I was served. This only lasted a week, but I have this memory of being unable to drink without biting down. Rather akin to my son, Jonas, during his ninth month of nursing...



This morning after a leisurely wake up time (which truly, isn't appropriate in this land of mid-morning beastly heat, but I'm still just a touch in my Northern Michigan habits), I cleaned up and headed out to the vegetable patch. After tying up many a tomato plant, I collected a dozen gorgeous tomatoes, six or seven good sized zucchini and eggplant each, a handful of tiny orange bell peppers (not sure how hot these are, I only dared put one into the pot. For the moment, the others are highly decorative). There are still plenty of tomatoes ready to ripen on the vines, though due to a run-in with mildew their leaves are rather scraggly, which could prevent full ripening. We shall see. I remain ignorantly optimistic.

And to work on the ratatouille. Since living with Erick, I've opted for cooking the vegetables in three batches: the eggplant and zucchini are chopped up in even sized chunks, and put, the former in a casserole, the latter in a large deep-dish frying pan, with some olive oil and just enough water so they don't burn and will soften a bit (barely a half cup), a couple bay leaves, and a sprinkle of salt. I cover the pans to maximize the softening period. When the water evaporates--15 to 20 minutes or so later -- I let the now softened vegetables brown in the oil which has reappeared now the water is gone, stirring just enough so they don't stick. I then remove them from the heat and put aside.

Meantime, I sliced the onions and pepper, putting them in a deep casserole with olive oil to sweat, added in my tomatoes (their arrival stops the onions from browning), 3 or 4 more bay leaves, 6 cloves of garlic (at least) and another sprinkle of salt. The tomatoes, ideally, I'd let simmer for hours till they reduce and reduce and reduce to their sweetest potential. However, having already heated up the house (a sin on such a hot day), I turned off the heat beneath the tomatoes, to put it back on this evening once the windows are open again, letting in cool air to balance the heat put out by the flames beneath my pot. Thus, our lunchtime version was not the apex of flavor potential that I believe tomorrow's will be.

The first serving of the dish is thus a marriage of three distinct flavors. However, as the week progresses (always make enough to have lots of left-overs), the flavors merge and concentrate into a marvelous unity. And then, it could top a pizza, or crostini, be baked with cheese on top, or added to a lasagna. I had one au pair who even passed it through a vegetable mill and put it atop some spaghetti, persuading my son that he was only eating tomatoes (she was a bright one she was).



Ingredients: 5 eggplant, 5 zucchini, 10 or more good sized tomatoes (the extra can always be saved as sauce), 3 onions, 6 cloves of garlic, one bell pepper, plus sea salt, a cayenne pepper (if you like) many bay leaves.

Cooking time: two hours plus plus (if you count your slowly simmering tomato sauce on the back burner).