KitchenScraps: Painful Memories of a Father Lost

Post #21 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Guest Blog by Marilyn Waite

Dear Grandma Nomie:

I remember the first time I looked into your eyes and called you Grandmother. There we were, two people grieving, you for a beloved son and me for a beloved father. Mother and I had just returned from Bogota, Columbia, where an act of sabotage caused a fatal airplane crash in the South American jungles, inadvertently sabotaging my entire life. The captain of that Pan American Airlines flight was my father. I always think of him as “my dad.” But, of course, you think of him as Clifford, your son.

I was only six that day we first met in Santa Cruz. I craved love and understanding after suffering such traumatizing pain and anguish. Even in the midst of your own immense loss, you somehow gave me love that reached deeply to me and soothed my aching heart.

“Marilyn, look at this beautiful rock,” you said. It was sunset, and you’d taken me to Twin Lakes Beach. You held my hand as we walked, stopping to pick up surf-tumbled, sandstone pebbles. You showed me the beauty of rocks, their smoothness, veins, and natural color variation. I like to think that as the sun slipped into the ocean that evening, your gift to me was a passion and love of stone that urged me ever forward to become the sculptor I am today. Standing with you that evening, as we watched the sky turn from blue to pink to orange to black, is a memory tucked in my heart.

A less clear, but equally important, memory is the visit Auntie Vi and I made to your house. This was the only other time we met. By then I was in the third grade and spending several weeks with my aunt. Once more, although my home life was in turmoil, you helped me to find beauty. As we walked together in the garden, you pointed out the flowers in full bloom. “The pink roses have the sweetest scent. Here, smell this one,” you said. Then you guided me through the house that Daddy and his brothers and sister bought for you. I enjoyed being with you and longed for more contact. Your presence in my life would have given me more stability.

But you weren’t entirely absent. It meant so much to me that you persevered in keeping in contact with our family after Daddy’s death, despite my mother’s aloofness to you. You dropped into our lives through cards, books, and especially the fragrant, spiced walnuts you sent to us each Christmas. At the time, I couldn’t understand why we didn’t see you more often, but now I believe I do.

My effort to untangle the emotions, tumult, and abuse present in my childhood household is ongoing. But years of therapy have given me some insights into my mother. The goodness and purity of love that radiated from you, probably because of your spiritual strength, may have intimidated my mother since she had rejected her own religious upbringing. Yours was a practice lived everyday.

How do I know so much about you? During the past fifteen years, I have come to feel very close to you through your diaries, poems, letters, and recipes. I’ve read and reread your words. I’ve dreamed your words. The family photo albums with your notes and comments have given me the family I never got to know and showed me the close relationship you had with my father.

This is a long-belated, thank-you note for loving me, enriching my life, and especially for leaving your words for me to discover.

With sincerest love,
Marilyn

Spiced Walnuts
It was December 1950. I remember coming home from school, entering through the back door into the kitchen and seeing a brown-paper package sitting on the counter. In those final weeks before Christmas, brown-wrapped packages were always exciting. I looked at the return address. It was from Grandma Nomie. I hoped the box contained her wonderful spiced walnuts, which she’d been sending each year since we’d returned from Bogota. Her gifts told me she still cared and loved us.

I loved everything about those walnuts: the dark meat showing through the very thin layer of white icing that looked like snow; the crispiness of the first bite; the light coating of sugar counteracting the bitterness of the walnut.

I don’t know how many family members received the walnuts, but I know we were not the only ones. In Grandma Nomie’s 1943 diary, she wrote on December 6, at the age of seventy-two: “Prepared and mailed a small box to Wally, containing cookies and candied walnuts.”

I know that she also gave the spiced walnuts to her oldest son, Ralph. His daughter, Shirley, after seeing the recipe in a book I created for a family reunion, sent me her revised recipe for “Grandma’s Spiced Walnuts.” Recently, celebrating my cousin, Charmion’s 90th birthday, she also recalled the spiced walnuts arriving in colors of green and red for a lean Christmas in the 1920’s.

I have little information on the history of those walnuts. What I do know is that Grandma Nomie moved onto the Pitman Ranch in Los Nietos, California, in 1902. She was 31. Walnuts were one of the ranch crops, and she started making spiced walnuts shortly after her arrival, which means this recipe has been in our family at least 100 years. She may have begun her preparations for Christmas gifts soon after the nuts were harvested in the fall. I suspect she used all the resources available as they were not wealthy and were constantly giving room and board to family members.

Here is a treasured photo of my father as a boy on the Pitman Ranch. On the back, Grandma Nomie wrote, “Cliff washing the walnuts.”

I, too, have edited the spiced walnut recipe to expand the use of these treasured morsels. I like to use them in salads and make them up fresh, never ahead. I sauté them in a little olive oil for a few minutes, sprinkle a couple of teaspoons of brown sugar over them and cook for several minutes longer, watching and mixing so they don’t burn. Then I add the walnuts to a salad mix of lettuce, arugula (if I have it), pears, goat cheese, or similar cheese with a bite. I toss with olive oil and vinegar, fig vinegar (again, if I have it), and sprinkle with salt and pepper. It’s a hit with family and friends.

From the briefness of the recipe cards I have from Grandma Nomie, I like to believe I am cooking with the same creative spirit and using simple, seasonal foodstuffs that Nomie had.

Sponge Cake
The Pitman Ranch was the hub of the Pitman family. Grandma Nomie always had many mouths to feed. There was a constant flow of children, spouses, nieces, nephews, and friends. Family gatherings were always held at the Pitman Ranch. One or more of the relatives would often come to stay for a day, a week, or several months. Payton Jordan, one of Nomie’s nephews, wrote: “Those always healthy and tasty meals that Aunt Nomie set out every day replenished our bodies as conversation and love filled the meal times.”

Sponge cake was the base for many desserts, as Grandma wrote on the sponge cake recipe:

“This is one of the recipes from which many cakes were made at the ranch–easy to make–bake in moderate oven.”

Recently I made this recipe for visiting cousins. As I prepared it, I thought about its simplicity. Five inexpensive ingredients that were always on hand at the ranch: eggs, gathered from their own hens, water, flour, baking powder, and sugar. As I put the ingredients into my food processor, I thought about the kinds of cooking equipment we have today compared with what Grandma Nomie had back in the early 1900s. I am sure she simply used a wooden spoon and beat the batter a little longer than the 10-second whirl in my processor. Her arms even had a little workout! I can imagine that after the cake was in the oven, she went out to her fruit trees and picked peaches or plums to top the cake. The cake requires some kind of topping and really sponges up the fruit juice, telling me where it got its name. This dessert is delicious and far healthier than the rich desserts we typically eat today.

From Payton, I have this image of my father and family meals with Grandma: “Often, after the meal ended, Cliff would pull out his guitar, and start everyone to sing, or hum around the piano if singing wasn’t your thing! Yes, unforgettable memories that have lasted a lifetime. How grateful we all are to have been part of the Pitman family!”

My Grandmother appears very serious in most of the pictures that were taken of her. I believe she took her role of mother, wife, aunt, daughter, sister, and US citizen very seriously. She worked hard, stayed in touch with family and friends with letters, even wrote to FDR on occasion, studied esoteric philosophical subjects, and raised a garden into her old age. It is a thrill to write this memory in honor of my Grandma Nomie who believed in family.

————————
Marilyn Waite is currently writing her memoir.

Tagged as: Memoir Story of Loss, Memoir Vignette, Treasured Family Recipe