Hot tamales
Today may have been the last day of warm, sunny weather. It hit close to seventy degrees, and foolishly, I didn't take advantage of the waning Autumn sun. Instead, I folded laundry and washed dishes while my sweet baby napped. During the afternoon nursery school pick-up, the Skokie girls and I discussed going to the park to enjoy the last rays of warmth, but we were called to a higher purpose.
"I have a tree root growing into my kitchen plumbing, and my basement is a disaster." Moaned my official school-mom mentor. This normally upbeat, wry former epidemiologist needed some serious cheering up, and fortunately, I had just the thing for it.
Tamales.
Friendships take work. Laziness and lack of motivation have been the downfall of many wonderful relationships. I am horrible at keeping in touch. Even when I live in the same city as my friends, I am terribly neglectful. Then again, so are they. We're busy with kids, and work, and family. Something about picking up the phone to say, "how's it going?" takes more energy than we can often muster.
It's even harder in a new city. Friendships tend to be established, routines set. It's hard to break into a clique of nursery school moms, but I have been fortunate to fall in with some of the brightest, coolest moms the Jewish day school system has ever produced. They have welcomed me with open arms into their circle.
Being "welcomed" seems like a passive event, as if I showed up one day and was lovingly embraced and invited to tea and given unrestricted access all of their deepest desires and fears. It wasn't quite that easy. After weeks of going straight home after drop-off, I realized something was missing in my life: adult interaction. The next day I began to approach the various moms I had met.
Wanna go for coffee? I asked breezily. After a few rainchecks, I got a taker, and off we went for coffee and bagels. This led to signing up my little one for storytime at the library and Wednesdays at the park, and my circle of friends expanded. What began as a necessity of grown-up conversation for my sanity developed into a playgroup for me and my little girls. Before long we travelled as a pack, six moms and more toddlers than we could count, to museums, libraries, and parks.
And, as inevitably happens when bored housewives congregate, the conversation of what we were making for dinner surfaced like a repressed memory. I happened to be making vegetarian fajitas that night. The woman who once jetted off to exotic locations at short notice to track down scary viruses, looked at me eagerly and asked,
"Do you know how to make tamales?"
The date and time were set for me to come over to her house to teach a very informal class on the art of "tamalestry". I shopped in advance, picking up the corn husks, corn meal, and other vital ingredients. And so it happened, through preparation and good timing, I was ready when called upon to cheer up a friend.
"I have a tree root growing into my kitchen plumbing, and my basement is a disaster." She informed us as we tried to plan an outing for ourselves and our horde of children. It was clear that she didn't have the desire or ability to enjoy the sun.
D'ya wanna make the tamales now? I suggested.
We loosed the pack of wild kids on her thankfully child-friendly home, and set to work in the damaged kitchen, filled with every cool kitchen gadgets you could imagine (except for the kitchen sink, which was out-of-order). We chopped, minced, and sauteed away, gently stirring the yellowish-orangey mash to a perfect consistency of wet sand. We laughed, talked, kept one wary eye on the kids, and folded the concoction into folded corn husks and lowered them into a pot of boiling water and steam.
Twenty minutes later, the tamales emerged a little too dense and a little bland, but they hit the spot. We devoured most of them right there, divvied up the rest for husbands and friends, and finally dragged our tired little ones home.
Friendships take work. The results, like our tamales, may not be perfect, but they do nurture and satisfy our souls.
"I have a tree root growing into my kitchen plumbing, and my basement is a disaster." Moaned my official school-mom mentor. This normally upbeat, wry former epidemiologist needed some serious cheering up, and fortunately, I had just the thing for it.
Tamales.
Friendships take work. Laziness and lack of motivation have been the downfall of many wonderful relationships. I am horrible at keeping in touch. Even when I live in the same city as my friends, I am terribly neglectful. Then again, so are they. We're busy with kids, and work, and family. Something about picking up the phone to say, "how's it going?" takes more energy than we can often muster.
It's even harder in a new city. Friendships tend to be established, routines set. It's hard to break into a clique of nursery school moms, but I have been fortunate to fall in with some of the brightest, coolest moms the Jewish day school system has ever produced. They have welcomed me with open arms into their circle.
Being "welcomed" seems like a passive event, as if I showed up one day and was lovingly embraced and invited to tea and given unrestricted access all of their deepest desires and fears. It wasn't quite that easy. After weeks of going straight home after drop-off, I realized something was missing in my life: adult interaction. The next day I began to approach the various moms I had met.
Wanna go for coffee? I asked breezily. After a few rainchecks, I got a taker, and off we went for coffee and bagels. This led to signing up my little one for storytime at the library and Wednesdays at the park, and my circle of friends expanded. What began as a necessity of grown-up conversation for my sanity developed into a playgroup for me and my little girls. Before long we travelled as a pack, six moms and more toddlers than we could count, to museums, libraries, and parks.
And, as inevitably happens when bored housewives congregate, the conversation of what we were making for dinner surfaced like a repressed memory. I happened to be making vegetarian fajitas that night. The woman who once jetted off to exotic locations at short notice to track down scary viruses, looked at me eagerly and asked,
"Do you know how to make tamales?"
The date and time were set for me to come over to her house to teach a very informal class on the art of "tamalestry". I shopped in advance, picking up the corn husks, corn meal, and other vital ingredients. And so it happened, through preparation and good timing, I was ready when called upon to cheer up a friend.
"I have a tree root growing into my kitchen plumbing, and my basement is a disaster." She informed us as we tried to plan an outing for ourselves and our horde of children. It was clear that she didn't have the desire or ability to enjoy the sun.
D'ya wanna make the tamales now? I suggested.
We loosed the pack of wild kids on her thankfully child-friendly home, and set to work in the damaged kitchen, filled with every cool kitchen gadgets you could imagine (except for the kitchen sink, which was out-of-order). We chopped, minced, and sauteed away, gently stirring the yellowish-orangey mash to a perfect consistency of wet sand. We laughed, talked, kept one wary eye on the kids, and folded the concoction into folded corn husks and lowered them into a pot of boiling water and steam.
Twenty minutes later, the tamales emerged a little too dense and a little bland, but they hit the spot. We devoured most of them right there, divvied up the rest for husbands and friends, and finally dragged our tired little ones home.
Friendships take work. The results, like our tamales, may not be perfect, but they do nurture and satisfy our souls.
posted by law school widow at 9:23 PM
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