Light-skinned-ed Girl

Aebleskiver: the Danish delicacy that doesn't make this mixed chick a weirdo

Much of my multicultural/multiracial humilation as a child resulted from my love of "weird" (meaning not American) food.  I packed leverpostej (liverpaste) sandwiches with me to school--sometimes on rugbrod (the hearty, solid brown bread akin to pumpernickel).  I loved frikadeller (a Danish meatball patty for lack of a better description--to me it spells love!).  For a special treat when a friend would spend the night (which was not often), I'd request kod boller i kai (meatballs in curry sauce) over rice.  That was a particular hit for humilation: it was a green sauce ("snot" in kid parlance) and meatballs (kids would call them boogers seen in this concoction).  Yeah, it was a tough childhood loving the foods that were the foods my mother had always eaten--the only ones in her arsenal of recipes--and the ones that still speak to me of my mother and home. 

BUT the holiday season always ushers in a popularity for things Danish.  There are of course the ubiquitous Danish cookies in blue tins at every grocery store and drugstore (do you remember when the cookies were a delicacy?) -- but the most delectable of the Danish holiday treats is AEBLESKIVER.  That's a-e stuck together (a Danish letter of the alphabet)-b-l-e-s-k-i-v-e-r  : literally the word means apple slices.  But what they are --as you can probably tell from the above photo--are pancake balls.  They're fried in a special pan akin to something like an egg poacher.  Traditionally, apple slices were put inside before turning the little ball over to seal them in.  In my family, we simply eat aebleskiver with applesauce and sugar.  Lots of them.  In the holiday spirit, I am sharing with you my mother's recipe. (The recipe gets revised a little bit each year--if you want the revisions email me.  I'll be digging out the Christmas stuff on Sunday.)  Remember you need a special pan that wildly can be found many places such as: cooking.com for $9.50, and the Oregon Gourmet for $20.00.  And be careful: these things are addictive.

Mor's Aebleskiver
6 cups buttermilk
6 cups flour
9 eggs
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons of baking soda
6 teaspoons of sugar
touch of cardamom and grated lemon peel

Fry in special pan; use lard or crisco for frying.  Use kebob stick for turning or small knitting needle.

I realize after writing this you might need help with the mechanics of it all.  If so, let me know.  I'm not a very expert recipe writer, but I can walk you through it.  Enjoy!

Bingo results

Despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to fill in even half of my Bingo scorecard.  Amazing!  I don't think it's because it was a relatively dysfunctional-free holiday either.  The family had its moments for sure.  But I think listing all of the things I thought might bug me or send me over the edge kept Me focused.  Or maybe I am becoming more tolerant of the family I have instead of the one I imagine is the ideal family.  Maybe I am growing up!

Thanksgiving: Time for Dysfunctional Family Bingo

The holidays.  That joyous time when we eat good (and too much) food.  Gather together.  And sometimes drive each other crazy.  On the eve of the holiday season, I've broken out my trusty-dusty game of Dysfunctional Family Bingo.  I found the "game" a couple of years ago in a magazine article by Martha Beck (Finding Your Own North Star).  She writes: ". . . gather with friends and provide each person with a [blank] bingo card . . . Each player fills in her bingo squares with dysfunctional phrases or actions that are likely to surface at her particular family party.  For example, if you dread the inevitable 'So when are you going to get married?' that question goes in one square of your bingo card.  If your brother typically shows up crocked to the gills, put "Al is drunk" in another square, and so on.  Take your finished cards to your respective family gatherings.  Whenever you observe something that appears on your bingo card, mark off that square.  The first person to get bingo must sneak off to the nearest telephone, call the other players, and announce her victory.  If no one has a full bingo, the person who has the largest number of filled-out squares wins the game."  I'm filling my card out now.  Anyone want to play with me?  (Remember: the bingo card is five columns across and five rows down.  The middle square is free!)  Let me know how it's going. Happy Thanksgiving.

The White Boys are Off-Limits

I was in the fifth grade.  At the time, my family lived overseas on an American Air Force base.  I was the only "black" girl in class--though I hadn't ever noticed that.  If I had to come-up with a distinguishing identity it was that I could do multiplication tables faster and spell better than anyone in 5th grade.  There was also a black boy in class: Michael Evans.  I hadn't noticed that either until . . . close to the end of the year people started "going together."  My friends told me that even though I liked Eric S. or Jay, I should be Michael Evans' girlfriend because he was black too.  To them, it was the natural course of things.  And I accepted it.  Michael Evans and I started "going together" (the upshot of which was that we passed a lot of notes to each other).

All of this came to mind because of The Spiral's recent post on the new Bond, Daniel Craig.  As I read her post, I thought: why she is fawning over Daniel Craig?  Doesn't she know she's not allowed to do that?  She should be celebrating Denzel or Jamie Foxx.  The white boys are off-limits.

And I realized that was the rule I internalized twenty years ago when I was paired with Michael Evans.  I mean, I even gave up my dream of marrying Andy Gibb or Robert Redford because I had come to understand that white boys don't date "black" girls.  The rule is so internalized that it impacts my thoughts about match-making too.  I have a few friends both male and female who are single.  I have made a couple of feeble (though well-intentioned) introductions.  But I have never tried to set up two folks who are different races.  And if I do in the future, should I mention to them that I have? 

It all turned out okay for me: Andy Gibb died young of a drug overdose (obviously not a suitable match)--and now it is clear that Robert Redford is too old for me (but still those eyes).  I definitely picked right in the end.  But what if I had even thought about crossing the color line?

Thank you Spiral for getting me to think about this: and giving me permission to publicly admit to my crushes on Jude Law and Matthew McConaghey! 

old grapes, and new foolishness

just a couple of days in buenos aires over the long weekend.  it's a second visit to this very beautiful city.  i'm actually trying to use that very rusty spanish that i left behind after my salamanca experience almost 15 years ago! -- then, i remember feeling so constricted by my inability to be as articulate in spanish as i was in english.  by the end of three months studying at the university and living the colegio, i understood most of the spanish i heard, but when it came to speaking: i was stymied.  i didn't like to speak so haltingly.  i hated that my accent wasn't perfect.  i didn't have all the words.  one day in salamanca, i was desperate for some kind of "comfort" --i decided it would be with chocolate-covered raisins.  in the chocolate store, i suddenly realized i didn't know the word for raisin--i asked for uvas viejas con chocolate --oh, and the storekeeper laughed and laughed.  (she did figure out what i meant--she didn't have any.)  i had more ego then, less sense of humor--i didn't laugh.  i became silent.  now, older, and more foolish--i just say a bunch of words until i am understood.  my spanish sounds terrible, and sometimes i don't even conjugate verbs.  but i am speaking.  and i'm even being heard.

more to come from buenos aires . . .

I was a Sandinista.

For years this has been one of my best cocktail party stories--No, really, I was a Sandinista, I say, and explain how despite my very middle-class trappings, and bourgeois education and work experience: I was a radical Marxist Sandinista and traveled to Nicaragua in 1985 to protest U.S. involvement in Central America in front of the U.S. embassy.

It's true.  I spent two weeks there with a youth group to promote cultural exchange and information.  Now, I'm not really sure why my mother let me go--Nicaragua was in the throes of a civil war.  The week before we arrived American? nuns had been taken hostage.  There was regular gunfire in the small towns of Leon and Esteli where we visited.  And now, I'm not really sure why I wanted to go.  Thinking about it I know that I was 15 and didn't believe in danger.  And also, I believed in the ideals as I understood them of the Sandinistas.  I believed that society should help the poor, that inequality and injustice should be eradicated.  I believed that as a society we shouldn't tolerate such great disparity between the haves and have nots.

I'm not sure when I started telling people the story of my trip to Nicaragua as if it were a joke--a youthful fling with the far Left.  Was it in college when I wanted so much to fit in with the rich (and everyone was rich compared to me--a scholarship student who worked sometimes two jobs through school) students?  Was it when I was introduced to corporate New York--the luxury of town cars driving you home, summer parties in the Hamptons?  Was it in law school when I chose to do corporate rather than public interest law because I was simply tired of being poor?  When I started telling people about my Nicaragua trip as a joke it was like I was laughing at that idealistic, solidly striving and hopeful young woman I was at fifteen.

Today, Daniel Ortega, former Marxist Sandinista Nicaraguan president, is president of the country again.  He is promising to work with the business community to create alliances and economic stability.  He has abandoned his Marxist plan.

I've abandoned mine too.  But today is Election Day.  And I'm going to vote in a couple of hours.  And it just makes me think: why am I not as passionate as I was about my vision of the world as I was at fifteen?  Do I know what I really believe in any longer?  Or do I mostly believe in my own comfort?

the anatomy of a perceived racial slight

at bed, bath & beyond.  it's the fourth of several hours of furious cleaning and errands.  my hair is in a frizzy afro poof, untamed.  i'm wearing workout clothes because--damnit i'm going to have more to show for my day than a clean floor & bathrooms & seven loads of clean laundry--i am going to get to the gym today!

there is some confusion about which register is open.  registers are open to the far right and far left of the line.  and there are many people in line.  when i am at at the line's front, i am vigilant--looking from right to left as if at a tennis match--to see which cashier will call me.  i don't want to delay the line or myself.  "next," the cashier to my far left says.  but i have already seen her and i am headed over.  but then a woman, a white woman, places her items on the counter that i am about to step up to.

"excuse me," i say articulating each word.  "i am next.  that is the end of the line over there."  complete sentences.  no contractions.  and i look directly at her thinking, i must speak to her like this because otherwise she won't hear me.  she already imagines that i am some young uneducated worker; she thinks that i have no money and i am just buying this five-dollar scrub brush so that i can go back and clean the apartment i clean each week for some professional couple for under-the-table pay.  she thinks i'm stupid.  i hate her.  she thinks she's better than me because she's white!

WHAT?

WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

the woman never said anything to me.  she didn't protest when i sent her to the end of the line.  but i was certain that what i was dealing with was a racial slight.  had i not been a little brown girl and she a white woman, she would have SEEN me. 

now, i could chalk this up to: 1. it must have been a touchy day for me if i was doing deep cleaning like that; or  2. i was manufacturing a racial drama in my mind that didn't exist.  and i guess 3.  it really was a racial slight--intended or not intended.  i don't know the answer.

what i'm interested in most is what happened to me the moment i thought someone saw me as lesser.  i bristled.  i articulated.  i became my best, most composed, educated self.  and i became angry at "that white woman."  not "that woman."  and it told me that there is some imaginary "white woman" who haunts me, who i perceive is ready to make me feel small.  "that white woman" in my mind has power over me and we don't even know each other.  i'm ready to let her go.  can i? and how?