Thursday 12 November 2015

Cheese puffs.

I have just made some cheese puffs. I have no idea why. I have never made a cheese puff in my life.

I am practising for my mother’s wake, which is on Saturday. I am in charge of the food. I am doing some old favourites which I can cook in my sleep, but I suddenly wanted something a bit different. So I got the puff pastry and played around with it and filled it with cheese and rolled it and rolled it and cut out little disks using an Edwardian sherry glass (exactly the right size for the puff, it turns out) and presto! – a cheese puff.

I have no concept of why I suddenly decided these would be the very thing for my mother. She never made them when we were little. They were not a tea-time favourite or a Saturday treat. We did not sit around in a pleading chorus, our eyes as yearning as those of Dickensian orphans, shouting: please, please, THE CHEESE PUFFS. I don’t think I’ve ever knowing eaten a cheese puff. I’m not sure I could have told you what they looked like. But that is what we are having.

I find the whole thing most surprising.

Riding and cooking, I think; those are the places where I am all right. In the field and in the kitchen. Do some people get very stout when they lose their mothers? Cooking, cooking, cooking, like a demented Italian mamma (do Italian mothers still think that food is the cure for all ills?), making soup and taking it round in pots so that the dear stepfather can keep up his strength, making something, some good offering.

He said this morning: ‘I still have my appetite. Is that wrong?’

I said: ‘It’s marvellous. You must eat, because it’s so bloody tiring. If we did not eat we would fall over.’

My step-aunt, whom I adore, has arrived, and we all have breakfast together, and it’s all hysterically British. We make little stabs at irony and talk about the news and generally carry on. The said is all in the unsaid. Occasionally, our eyes slide towards each other, acknowledging all the things that are tacit. (These are: it’s bloody awful; the house is so empty without her; everywhere you look there are heart-breaking little reminders.)

Then I stomp off to the field and there are my dear mares, as still and centred and peaceful as two little Zen mistresses, and I mix up their feed and give them their hay and do a little work with them and feel the heavy ache lift. They are both very affectionate by nature. Not all horses are. Some are like cats, and don’t care much for human stroking. These ladies are also getting into their furry stage for winter, despite their aristocratic bloodlines, so they are like two beloved teddy bears. I hug them and rub them and talk to them and they blink their liquid eyes at me and whicker down their velvety noses.

I suddenly thought this morning: this is like being in a foreign country. It’s as if I’ve gone abroad, to somewhere not very nice, where I can’t quite remember the idioms and am not certain of the food and can’t read the road signs. I have been to this doleful country before, but the memory is not sharp. So I drove along the river to anchor myself in my own country and look at my favourite hill and watch the water go by.

And then I went and did some more cooking.

 

Today’s pictures:

The river:

12 Nov 1 5184x3456

12 Nov 3 5184x3456

The teddy bear:

12 Nov 2 5184x3456

5 comments:

  1. Hi Tania, long time blog reader here - just wanted to send some good wishes your way. We did exactly this after deaths in our family - the instinct to nest and hold each other close is very strong. And it is draining, exhausting wading through things. Your mum sounds lovely, and the fact that there are so many happy and positive memories to look back on is a gift (even if it seems like those memories will ambush you at unexpected times.) Wishing you fortitude and moments of grace. No need to respond: I just wanted you to know that you're in my thoughts.

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  2. In south Florida, checking out isolated stretches of beach for our mother's Viking funeral, most likely Friday (the 13th, "she'd LOVE that," says my second sister who just flew in from Wyoming). The older of two younger brothers is en route with a replica model of a Viking ship he has painstakingly constructed in balsa wood with a Scottish terrier painted on its sail (my mother's nickname was Scotty). In the meantime I & my next sister have been wading through boxes of "stuff". (I think Mom saved every single piece of paper she ever saw.) The "bonus" is that we're uncovering a half century of our letters & cards and even older photos (grandmother as a child in the 1800's) AND diaries! It IS exhausting AND exhilarating at the same time. Tears AND laughter.
    Stay strong and soft...
    XXXX Pat

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  3. Hi Tania,
    Just to say, hang in there... You are doing wonderfully, and still writing so beautifully, and I am so glad you have your family and the teddy bears. No risk of getting fat - you will burn it off on the horses, Rachel

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  4. "Like being in a foreign country" - yes, yes, yes! That's exactly what's it like. I'm trying not to be shouty, but yes.

    Love to you x

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  5. Cheese puffs sound spot on to me. Best wishes.x

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