Post #66 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Today, Kendra Bonnett and I are pleased to publish the first of four Honorable Mention award-winning stories. Our memoir contest urged writers to share a favorite story and recipe from a well-remembered holiday and Tracy Kauffman-Wood’s vignette features Easter.
Before we get to her story, I want to make a comment. Some stories are so vivid in their descriptions that you are sure you have actually seen a photograph. That’s what happened to me with Tracy’s vignette. Last night, when I prepared to enter Tracy’s story into this blog, I easily found the text she had sent, but I couldn’t find the photograph. I even knew exactly where she was in the group photograph — as you’ll learn below. I was just sure that I had neglected to save it from her email. I found the email, but no attachment. Hum. Finally, I found Tracy’s message to me that she thought she still had the photograph of her Easter bonnet but could no longer find it.
I think you’ll enjoy — and see — her Easter bonnet.
-Matilda
[NOTE: For information on our current contest, entries due January 31, click here.]
Easter Bonnet
Tracy Kauffman-Wood
http://whocanstopadream.blogspot.com/
At the Solis-Cohen Elementary School, which I attended in the 1960’s, our annual Easter Parade announced the arrival of spring. From September through March we students yearned for that glorious day when the light of the awaited season streamed down upon us from the high windows of our school auditorium, so we could parade in our own pastel colored creations – our Easter bonnets. There were tall Uncle Sam hats and deep bowls of artificial fruit, tables set for ten and tiny jeweled boxes, tool benches and beauty parlor scenarios all balanced on the heads of a collective student body that was ninety-five percent Jewish. The coveted prize for our creative efforts was that Mrs. Bell for The Chronicle, our school newspaper, would photograph the chosen people, the kids with the best Easter bonnets.
School was an otherwise restrictive place. The creative spirit was subdued in favor of filling our minds with facts. In the classroom, we were required to sit with our hands folded upon our desks. In the hallways we were admonished to, “Keep your hands to yourselves!” But here was a day when we were encouraged to use our hands, to create a bonnet that would display our creative selves. We revered this day, and kept it holy.
For most of the children in our school, Easter and the related festivities, was not about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We didn’t know from this. Sure, we dyed eggs with food coloring and vinegar, made Easter baskets out of construction paper and fake grass and greedily inhaled the delightful aromas of jellybeans and chocolate that canceled out every other classroom smell as we decorated for and celebrated the season. Who wouldn’t adore these rituals? Especially when they culminated in a parade.
The problem was it all happened to coincide with Passover, the Jewish celebration of freedom and renewal observed at home. A ritual of the season was to rid the house of chametz, any leavened bread or food not specifically made for Passover, including the contents of Easter baskets. This heightened my fascination with the world of Easter candy, turning it into a guilty pleasure. For me Jewish suffering meant having to eat the cheap chocolate covered jellies that passed for candy at Passover. Why bother when there was a world of pastel colored designs and candy coatings to explore.
The Easter basket was not hard to relinquish. The flimsy paper didn’t hold together for very long, the grass was messy and hard to contain. The hard-boiled eggs needed to be eaten or they’d rot. So I peeled and dipped them into the salt-water tears of our Passover Seder. I sang Let My People Go, opened the door for the prophet Elijah and asked all who were hungry to come and eat.
But all the courses of the Passover meal could not satisfy the saccharine urges of my springtime flirtation. In this season, my spirit could only be set free by the miraculous arrival of the ‘Marshmallow Peeps’, a local, seasonal product on the shelves of Famous Delicatessen. These soft, sugary pink and yellow peeps chirped a heavenly message to me on Easter Sunday when I was sent on an errand for smoked fish. Squishy and deeply sensual, their birthday cake fragrance was in direct opposition to the briny, deli smell that overcame me as I entered the store. You could press on them through the cellophane and they would succumb to your touch.
Once you had a bird in hand, you could bite off the head, with or without front teeth, clench the sandy sugar between your back molars and allow a moistened glob to slide down your throat. What an escape from the confusion of the season. A taste of paradise, while fleeing Egyptians. But this flight was fraught with guilt. They were definitely not kosher for Passover. To absolve myself and make lemonade from lemons, I decided to create a homeland for the marshmallow chicks and all of their sugar coated descendants in my Easter bonnet. What a great, sanctioned excuse to experience the forbidden sweets.
I chose a straw hat with a deep, scooped out rim that was perfect for a pastoral scene. Feathering my nest with multicolored Easter grasses, I buried the leftover hard-boiled eggs from Passover in layers of pastel grass. I pretended that the eggs hatched into hollow chocolate bunnies, the children of Israel with pink noses. They romped through my hat dodging jellybeans and football eggs wrapped in foil. I taped chocolate, marshmallow bunnies with long ears around the circumference of the rim, as soldiers to protect their homeland. The Peeps, splashing pink and yellow between mounds of chocolate were set free and in their element. So was I.
A heavenly aroma descended upon me as my mother and brother lowered my Easter bonnet onto my head on the morning of the parade. They spotted my trial stroll around our living room to make sure I could manage such a large hat. They attached strings with clothespins on each side for me to hold, so I could keep its weight centered. There was a palpable air of excitement in my classroom that morning. My classmates and teacher knew that my Easter bonnet would be a contender.
With shoulders back and heads high with hats of every kind, we ascended to the auditorium. It was a sunny day and the dappled light from the windows seemed to be singling out not the brightest or the most beautiful people, but the art kids, the most creative children in school. I and my fragrant, bounteous, and heavy pastoral scene was chosen, along with nineteen others.
Mrs. Bell placed me in the front row, center of her photographic composition. Even the chosen kids were admiring the scenario on my head and smacking their lips as we held our positions on stage. Mrs. Bell, looking through her camera and not quite satisfied asked me to move slightly to my left. I was sitting on my sleeping calves dreaming of fame next year in Jerusalem. She became impatient with my slow progress, put down her camera, placed her hands on my shoulders and in one jerking motion moved me to the left. Except only the top half of my body moved. My legs stayed where they were, my neck twisted and my hands were not gripping the clothespins of my bonnet. My peeps and all their descendants were cast about in a sudden and violent diaspora spreading across the stage and down the slippery, sloping aisles of the auditorium.
A collective “Oh my G-d!” swept the room. Children lunged for chocolate and chased jellybeans, which were fleeing, in search of dark and dusty places. Teachers were forced back into control mode on a day they assumed they could rest. My sugar coated promised land went fallow. The more benevolent souls began gathering and returning my candy. Mrs. Bell moved me to the second row, left corner of the picture. I made it into the pages of The Chronicle looking startled. I’d been cast out of the land of milk chocolate and Bit o’ Honey to a border settlement. I ate the scant remains of my hat in the girls’ bathroom at recess.
The following year I wore a white lampshade on my head with a single strand of black jellybeans strung around its middle. Simple yet elegant, and very popular with the Agnostics.
Homemade Marshmallow Peeps
Vegetable oil (for the pan)
Powdered (confectioner’s) sugar
2/3 cup cold water, divided
2 envelopes (2 tablespoons) unflavored gelatin
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Colored sugar for decorating
Tiny amount of melted chocolate for decorating
Chick-shaped cookie cutter
Line the bottom and sides of a 13- by 9-inch baking pan with plastic wrap; oil and then generously dust bottom and sides with some powdered sugar.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, place 1/3 cup cold water; sprinkle the gelatin over the surface.
In a heavy saucepan with a tight fitting lid, add sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining 1/3 cup water; stir to dissolve sugar. Cover the pan and place over moderately low heat. Remove the cover after 4 to 5 minutes. The steam will have caused any sugar crystals to dissolve and the syrup will be bubbling lightly. Increase the heat to high, insert a candy thermometer, and boil the syrup, without stirring, until it reaches 240 degrees F. Immediately remove from the heat.
Fit your electric mixer with the whisk attachment. Slowly and carefully pour the hot syrup into the gelatin while the mixer is beating constantly at medium speed. When all of the syrup has been added, increase the speed to high and whip for approximately 10 minutes until the mixture is lukewarm and very white, and the consistency of marshmallow cream. Add the vanilla extract toward the end of mixing.
Pour the marshmallow mixture into the prepared pan; smooth the top and sprinkle liberally with colored sugar of your choice. Let the pan stand, uncovered, at room temperature to dry out.
NOTE: Depending on the humidity, this may happen in several hours or take up to 8 hours. Generally speaking the longer you let it set up, the easier the marshmallow sheet will be to cut.
When ready to cut, invert the pan of marshmallow onto a clean cutting surface; remove the plastic wrap and coat the top with colored sugar (it should adhere easily).
Use cookie cutters to stamp out your peeps (or bunnies) and toss them in a bowl of sugar to coat the edges. If you find your cookie cutter getting sticky, wash it and lightly coat with vegetable oil. With a toothpick apply a dot of chocolate to form each eye.
Store the marshmallow peeps in an airtight container.
Makes about 80 marshmallows.
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REMEMBER: Our January memoir writing contest ends January 31. Be sure to submit your story. Here’s the link for details on all 11 of our memoir writing contests for 2011.
