Thursday, October 1, 2009

Sunbeam Mixmaster

My mother inherited
an old stand mixer.
The kind
that swirls
and grinds
and blends
seemingly unrelated matter into
warm scones and soda bread.
It was not her mother's
but my father's mother's---
it was white and black and chrome
and, aged at least 40 years it would still groan
churning
turning
on yet another kitchen countertop.

It is some nonspecific day
in the specific 1940s
and there is a war
and there are ration cards
and there is not enough to eat
when there was already not enough to eat since the 1920s
(before they stopped roaring).
My father has a number pinned inside his clothes.
If the Germans
or the Japanese
or the Italians
invade, this number will help account for my father.
All children have a number.
It is eerily similar to children
in concentration camps.
But instead of wooden, flea-infested bunks
no food
no clothes,
my father sleeps on a cleaner bed---
not clean, but cleaner, as clean as can be managed---
behind blackout curtains
his stomach is mostly quiet
and he has clothes. But they are embarrassing.
His mother spends hours
throwing things into pots and pans
and the mixer
and hoping that whatever comes of the blend
will be enough to feed her family.
She is glad for potatoes and their heartiness.
The mixer also cradles seaweeds,
sent to her illegally from Ireland
so she might make some sort of living.
She makes toothpaste and other apothecary items.
She is the midwife in their small New Jersey Irish community.
Balms and candles
soothing women as they bring another being
to soothe and number
into this unreal world.
I often wonder if my Irish Catholic grandmother
made abortifacients
not because she was "pro-choice"
but because she knew her world
and because she knew the hardships of relying on a
stand mixer
to pay the rent
to feed the children
to be.

It is a specific day in
a specific time
in a specific suburban kitchen of my youth.
1995. My first Communion.
My father is already dead
my mother is thinking about that today,
she wishes he could have seen this milestone
which makes me regretful now,
the adult atheist daughter,
that day meant so much to her.
We spent the morning baking.
The tradition in her family,
a cake shaped like a lamb,
is failing like my Catholicism eventually would.
The head falls off
we prop it up with tooth picks and
use icing as glue
and we try desperately to hide our
desperate efforts
which
of course
makes it look all the more desperate.
Yet this mixer has seen desperation before
and if it were to personify
would likely explain to my mother
myself, and my godmother
that desperation does not come on days
that also see expensive white dresses
clean, flowing curls on
little girls
and a buffet spread out on an oak dining table.
These are not desperate times.
I,
my grandmother's stand mixer would say,
have seen desperate times.

But this is me.
I am this queer amalgamation
of a desperate woman
grinding seaweed so she might buy clothes for her son
in which she will pin his identification number
in case evil men on another continent---
her home continent---
get it in their minds to blow his limbs across the Hudson;
I am also
of a desperate woman
grinding flour and eggs
grinding an axe,
as it were,
with her god.
"I am desperate. This is desperation,"
she might reply to the personified mixer.
"I have a little girl
who has no father.
I have love
and no lover.
Don't let the oak dining table
or the crisp white dress this May morning
fool you.
This is desperate."

The amalgamation,
Myself,
I sit in yet another specific time
and specifically recall the way
I came
to be,
through the women in my life.
And I think about the man
my father
who bridged the gap between those
differing desperations,
three women, all desperate
all tightly wound and all
regrets.
A stand mixer;
the common thread.
Maggie, desperate to make a living
Carol Ann, desperate to find a way to keep living
Mary-Margaret, desperate for that stand mixer that no longer works.
Finally.
After about a 50 year run.
And I am desperate to display it on a shelf
to tell it's story and be near it
to remember it in the well-appointed suburban homes of my youth
and to imagine it in the ascetic tenements of my father's youth
and to cling to it,
desperately,
as those who have touched it age
leave
and live only through
my poetic personifications.