My mom never liked camping.
Too much dirt to dispel. Too much
work. Why go camping when cooking and
housecleaning was so much easier at home?
My husband and I can’t resist making ourselves at home when
in a tent. There’s something about the
beauty of the outdoors that I love, whether the silky lakes and the crackling campfire. Wood
smoke is positively rapture-inducing. We
love to figure out ways to make our tent comfortable, to set up our Coleman stove and
create a little kitchen full of comforts.
Mom says hers is already set up, thank you. Her kitchen had all sorts of comforts, like
running water and electricity.
We moved around a lot since Dad was in the Navy, so she
barely got the drawers organized before we upped stakes and moved on, so
getting a kitchen just the way she wanted it was a race. In those days, ladies liked to use shelf paper and line
everything. Cute kitschy curtains were a
must, and I’ve often wondered if the word kitschy had something to do with
kitchens.
Mom delighted in entertaining, and collected cookbooks and
recipes in wild hopes of giving the “party of the season.” She knew she had the best crab dip and the
cutest little shells to serve it in, laid out on perfectly ironed lace
tablecloths. Being a florist’s daughter
as well as an artist in her own right, there were always the beautiful flower
arrangements and artistic centerpieces.
In fact, all three of her sisters were adept at dinner
parties. The sisters lived in Pasadena. Once,
between moves, our family wound up being distributed among the homes of the
three sisters. My mom and dad stayed
with mom’s sister Robin in her condo.
Being unmarried, Robin liked things simple, and her teeny condo kitchen might
have been a challenge to Mom who was used to a family of five and a big
house. I suppose it was like camping to
her.
Robin carpooled into work in downtown LA with another
sister’s husband, Paul. Paul was a
lawyer for oil firms and did a good bit of business in Africa, so travelled
extensively and knew a fascinating array of people.
One afternoon Paul called Mom and explained that he had a
visitor from Africa and would like to bring him home for dinner to entertain him,
as that was the custom in Africa.
Unfortunately, Paul’s wife was out of town, and since Robin was still at
work, could Mom possibly fix dinner for all of them? By the way, the guest is a king.
“A king?”
“Well, more like a chieftain, I suppose, but we call him
King Olowofuyayku. I would consider him
royalty.”
“Well, I’ll do my best.”
I’m sure that Mom was able to whip up some wonderful dinner
in a teensy condo that she was not used to.
I was away at school, but she and my brothers told me that at the
appointed time they saw a tall, be-robed, ebony man in a gigantic purple headdress walk past the window toward the front door.
Behind him was Paul, grinning at his guest.
So that was the day that Mom cooked dinner for the
king. But it was no doubt equal to the
party of the season, or any season. She
could do it, anyplace or anytime. She
could have done it with a Coleman stove.
For that night she did not have had ironed lace tablecloths or crab dip in
shell dishes, but what she had was the real star of all her parties—her charm
and grace, her loving elegance.
Nobody remembers what she served that night, but I’m sure he
felt like a king.
As did all her guests.
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