MMM…OUR FAVORITE MEAL…

…GARBAGE SOUP AND BURNED BISCUITS

When I was finally packed and ready to leave for college, one of my biggest celebrations was the thought that I would never have to eat Garbage Soup again for the rest of my life!  My mother served Garbage Soup several times a month.  It always started with the clean-picked bones of a rib roast.  Then she would pull out twenty or more cottage cheese containers hiding small leftover portions of peas, potatoes, carrots, chicken juice, onions…any old garbage still left in the refrigerator that hadn’t sprouted mold.

No matter what the garbage consisted of, Mother held the soup together with one can each of creamed corn, chopped tomatoes, and tomato sauce.  She learned this “recipe” from her Mother, who had finally let us all in on her own secret ingredient years after we had eaten gallons of garbage soup without the secret ingredient…1 tsp of sugar for a large pot of soup.

The best part of the dinner was always the buttermilk biscuits.  We would pull fluffy, steaming biscuits apart and load them with butter and honey or jam, all the while complaining and asking, “Why do we always have to have Garbage Soup?”  Mother would just smile her knowing smile and pass the biscuits.

Some mistakes in life are corrected almost before they begin, but other mistakes live on and on.  No matter how good our intentions, these mistakes seem to have a life of their own, regenerating time and again in front of our very eyes, growing in proportion each time and taunting us with promises to return.  My personal recurring mistake is the granddaddy of them all, the major sin of world religions, the mistake that will be my downfall forever on.  I burned the biscuits.

Actually, the burned biscuits are only the tip of the iceberg.  On Garbage Soup nights Mother would ask my sister or me to make the biscuits.  Biscuits were the only food I knew how to cook when I left for college.  I had the recipe down pat: measure, mix, cut, nibble, and bake.

On that one particular night, I made the biscuits with carefree confidence.  At 400 degrees, they had risen and baked to a golden brown.  I peeked into the oven.  They were ready.  Butter and honey, ready, set, go.  But Mother still had her soup to tend and the table to set.  Just a few minutes before we sat down.  No problem.  I just turned the oven off and left the biscuits inside to stay warm.

My dad came into the kitchen, smelling dinner.  He walked to the oven and peeked in expectantly.  Sure enough, golden biscuits.  He glanced over my way, and in the way of all irritating parents, he suggested that I take the biscuits out.  “They’re done.”

“I know,” I told him in my best expert biscuit baker voice.

“Well, they’re going to burn,” he observed.

Just because he was an engineer didn’t mean he knew anything about baking biscuits!  “No they’re not!  I turned the oven off!!”  I made sure to set him straight.  I was no dummy.  With supreme parental wisdom, he walked over to smell the soup and talk with Mother, leaving me in charge.

We ate Garbage Soup and Burned Biscuits that night.  Daddy never said a word.  He just put on the butter and honey, as usual, and “enjoyed” every bite.  I didn’t have much room for biscuits that night, having eaten more than my share of humble pie.

Humility continues to knock on my door, with regularity.  For instance, would you be surprised to learn what I wanted most for Mother to cook when I came home from college?  Yep, Garbage Soup.  I bet she smiled a few secret smiles over that one.  Then there’s our fix-up house that my husband and I bought ten years later.

We mounted a long, dedicated search throughout all of Phoenix to find a special house, one that would set us apart (and above?) all the normal people.  We didn’t want a ticky, tacky house just like the neighbors down the street.  We were special.  We were meant to have a Tudor house, an antique house, different and unique, showing our own uniquely special personalities.  Luckily, we did find the house of our dreams, a Tudor with hippie-blue painted windows falling off their hinges, a dead yard, and 1000 square feet of wooden floors that needed sanding.  I wasn’t going to be a “suburban princess” picking out carpet and wall paper samples.  Not me.  I was going to be different, unique.

Ten years later, after we had resurrected our “Lazarus Home,” (my father’s name for it) I was shocked to learn that we were part of a national movement of the 1970’s that had spurred the growth of the home remodeling industry.  Thousands of people just like us had bought homes that needed fixing up with glass doorknobs, wooden floors and new plaster.   We were little people, little statistical pieces of data that had been lumped together with the general “huddled masses” to form a mega-trend.  Nothing different, or unique.  Just regular guys.  Much like my Birkenstock sandals.

In the 80’s I began teaching math workshops and had a roommate from Arizona.  She wore these ‘funky’ sandals that looked so comfortable:  Birkenstocks.  She let me try them on, and they felt great.  They were also just a bit offbeat.  Practical.  Down-to-earth leather.  I wanted a pair.

In Tempe, I searched out the only store in the valley to carry a full supply of Birkenstocks, and I chose the ever-adventurous, go-with-everything-including-winter-socks Desert Brown.  My family called them Jesus shoes.  I had ignored Birkenstocks in the 1970’s because I thought you had to have hairy legs and a rose tattoo to wear them.  However, now I knew they went with regular clothes and regular work.  They were different, practical, and unique.  They were conversation pieces.  I was special.

In the 90’s, Birkenstock lookalikes hit all of the stores and became fashion statements for my fifth grade students.  The special, one-of-a-kind $80 uniquely distinct shoes I had loved for ten years were now $15 plum, taupe, and teal teen treasures.  I was one of the crowd, a statistically counted shopper.  Melody, in the classroom next to me, asked, “How are you going to be a non-conformist now, Jane?”  The question haunted me.  Then I caved in to the inevitable.

We bought a bigger house.  We were able to let the kids have different beds, even different rooms.  Our house looked JUST like the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, desert brown stucco with a red tile roof.  We gathered paint chips, wallpaper samples, and carpet and tile–just another suburban princess, driving to work in my mini-van.  What could I do?  I was just like everyone else.

Of course, if I weren’t so filled with pride, I would have known this all along.  I am just like everyone else, I always have been.  These are silly examples of what pride will do to a person.  There are more serious situations, however.

Years ago, when I was under ten years of age, a mother made the news for killing her children.  I remember being in my bedroom working on something with my own mother, and I commented, “I just don’t know how someone could kill their own children.”  Mother knocked my socks off!  “Oh, I do.  It can happen to any of us.  There ARE days…”  I was speechless.  My own mother.  During my entire lifetime, she gave me only one spanking and no more than ten dirty looks.  She was my image of charity and kindness.  How could she understand a mother who had killed her children?  Humility, that’s how.

Years later, her favorite writer Erma Bombeck, wrote a book centered on women who had “failed” under socially and legally dictated guidelines.  But Erma understood them.  She knew…there WERE days…

Strangely, humility comes in odd doses and flees just when we need it most.  I can truly understand Timothy McVeigh, the bomber of the Oklahoma federal building.  That is not a popular thing to write or think.  This is not to say that I think he was right or sane.  But I do understand him.  How could anyone ever be so messed up in their mind?

Well, there ARE days.  I know I have had my mind twisted around its fair share of times.  I was just fortunate not to have it twist so far.  And just as I shock someone with an understanding of a murderer of 168 people, I must admit that I don’t have a full understanding of my sister.  How could she “throw her Mother away” over such “pettiness?”  Once again pride raises its ugly head to claim me as its victim.