Candace Walsh's Blog

When I was a little girl, my father used to bring home big, antebellum-opulent heart-shaped valentines boxes for my mother and me. There was nothing fraught about Valentine’s Day back then; I was too young to be concerned with romantic gifts from admirers. I was only my father’s daughter, and his gesture seemed to comfortingly presage future displays of affection. It was also a happy surprise, something I didn’t expect and didn’t need in order to feel loved.

Fast forward to 1986. Picture this: a vast, boomy, subterranean junior-senior high school cafeteria. The air is redolent with the odors of cloyingly mingy mystery meat burgers and Love’s Baby Soft, and Charlie, borne aloft by floofy-haired girls sweeping by, buzzed on their own fleeting social significance. On Valentine’s Day, if you were a sought-after girl, you had armloads of carnations to carry around with you. And they made you stand out. You were wanted. You were desired. And it was quantifiable.

[Continue reading here:]
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/art...

What’s the difference between a croque madame and a croque monsieur? First, let’s establish what a croque monsieur is.

It’s a sandwich…the way Versailles is a house.

Continue reading this post by clicking here: http://lickingthespoonbook.com/2013/02/

This passage shares the experience many of us can relate to: missing an ex around Valentine's Day, even when you know that the breakup was for the best. At the end, I find something to call a Valentine from him, and it proves to be more valuable than chocolate, roses, jewelry, or lingerie. Really.


By February, I had not talked to Jack for four months. He sent me not one but three Christmas cards, filled with slightly manic, jolly, handwritten catch-up chat, but I didn’t call him. I had a big black sketchbook that I used as my catchall for Jack thoughts, images, or anything I wanted to send him or show him, things that reminded me of him with all of the subtlety of a knitting needle to the heart.
Valentine’s Day was difficult. I knew it was a stupid manufactured holiday, about as real as Betty Crocker, but I still felt like a seventh grader again, watching all the pretty, popular girls get roses and carnations. Only this time I was twenty-six, not twelve, and had yet to really have a good experience. My boyfriends never overlapped with February 14, except for Daniel, who handed me a necklace with a heart pendant, grumbling that he had to go to five stores to find it.
It was an easy opportunity to fall into a big, postbreakup, still-pining hole. I was unloved. Everyone else was being fêted, wined, dined, and made sweet love to. Not me. I was going to die an old spinster, in a garret overrun by cats. I was already in a fourth-floor walk-up with three cats. The only thing missing was a slanted ceiling.
I thought making beautiful handmade valentines and heart-shaped linzer torte cookies for all of my friends the week before the big day would karmically head this pity party off at the pass, but no, even though everyone loved them. I called my mother, looking to be cheered up, but she was also crying. I asked her, “Do you think it will ever get better?” She said, “Probably not.” Wow. The woman who had brought me into this world could hold out no hope for me. I ended that phone call rather quickly, as it was doing the opposite of what I had intended, and poured myself a glass of red wine.
My eyes fell on Heartburn, by Nora Ephron, the book Jack had given me months before, with a big red heart on the cover. Yes, it was in a pot over a fire and being stabbed by a devil with a pitchfork, but it was still a heart-decorated paper item from Jack to me, as close to a valentine as I would ever get. I sat down and began to read.

Free Valentines Cookies, baked by me!
Through 2/14, if you buy Licking the Spoon, (a great Valentines gift for literary lovers and friends) I will personally send a dozen heart-shaped chocolate and rose vanilla butter cookies to you or your gift recipient of choice. See the details here: http://www.lickingthespoonbook.com/co...

Recently, when I shared on Facebook that my mother banned me from her birthday after reading my new memoir, Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family and Identity, dozens of friends piped up with variations on this sentiment: "That's why I'm waiting until my mother dies to write my memoir."

As part of my preparation for teaching at the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat (http://www.http://bit.ly/SLis9R) this March, I came up with seven reasons not to wait.

1. You're a grownup -- and yet you're letting your mom send your writer soul to its room, not for an afternoon, but for decades? Seems like it would get in the way of you truly owning your adulthood.

2. Waiting means that a part of you is anticipating her demise. Not pleasant.

3. Mid-life is a powerful checking-in point. My book came out right before my 40th birthday. I'm really glad that I took the time to set down the bits and bobs of those first four decades. I have much more room in my memory suitcase as I embark on the second half.

Read the rest here: http://www.huff.to/W4dBBU

Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family and Identity

Author of Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family and Identity

Becoming a mother is both hard and delightful in all of the expected ways. I expected to sleep less, for my body to change, and when I was pregnant, I even had the distinct feeling that my second baby would hate the 20-minute drive back and forth to town. He did, screaming bloody murder for months, until we stumbled upon the solution of singing "The Wheels on the Bus" to him, with infinite variations (a different kind of torture). Delight was found in waking to see my baby daughter's eyes trained on mine, as she grinned adoringly, or the sensation of my son playing with my hair as gently as if it were a strand of cotton candy he didn't want to break.

One unexpectedly hard thing was noticing how the entire population (except for most other moms) stopped seeing me as an individual, a vector in space. I became a coiled rug, the kind that's oval and spirals inward and outward. When that rug is in a room, it makes the room seem cozier, more homey and comforting--or maybe it just seems dowdy and passé. People saw me--or rather, the silhouette of a woman with a child, and their thoughts turned to their associations of all mothers, their eyes got soft and unfocused, or hard and snide, depending on their issues.

It wasn't just people who didn't know the old me. I was at a wedding when my daughter was six months old, a cute dumpling in a lavender dress. I was around all of these people I used to party with in New York City, and one guy was talking about some edgy sexual practice, trying to turn on a girl much younger than him. I said something offhand and irreverent, and he looked at me balefully. "Okay, mom," he sneered, as if I had as much to contribute to a conversation about sex as a Mary Kay lady would to a room of neurosurgeons.

How did he think I got pregnant?

As my children grew older and more independent, I noticed that I was rebirthed in others' eyes as an individual. I also spent more time with other parents, who didn't cleave the world so neatly into parents/people worth paying attention to. The feeling of being dismissed and unseen faded away.

Until I was waiting in line for the restroom at Trader Joe's. On the wall: a bulletin board with photographs of happy customers. One: a vaguely familiar mother with a baby in a sling, wearing an ugly calico nursing shirt. The baby was pulling her hair. Her toddler was doing her best to fall out of the wagon, as she reached for a glass jar. The woman looked run-down and frumpy, but she was smiling gamely for the camera.

Oh. My. God.

That woman was me.

The memories came flooding back--I'd made sure to come to Trader Joe's on its opening day (despite what I'm about to tell you, I love that place). Without dolling myself up, I finger-combed my short sensible hair, I piled the kids into the car (my son screamed, we sang "The Wheels on the Bus"), pried, plopped my daughter in the shopping cart seat, put on the sling, slid my son into it, grabbed my big, lumpy mom purse, and entered the store, hoping not to run into anyone. As we walked down aisle three, some happy staffer in a Hawaiian shirt told me to smile, because he was taking pictures on their opening day. He caught me mid-pose, my mouth kind of open as it smiled, half a "you've got to be kidding me" grimace.

And now I stood looking at the photo. No one would think we were the same person. My hair was long again, my figure was trim, and my kids were tall and lanky, bounding around the store. There was the ghost of motherhood past, staring back at me with bleary eyes. And then I saw something else. To the right of my face, someone had drawn graffiti on the photo: a big cartoon penis, complete with hairy scrotum, swooping toward my open mouth.

For years, my maternal likeness had been hanging there, visible for all to see, with a crude sketch of a big dong next to my mouth. Not one customer took it down. Not one team member thought to remove the impugned mother of two from the bulletin board. It reminded me of how vulnerable young motherhood is, how it oddly makes you public property, visible, a tableau to judge, a person to advise or criticize, well-meaningly or not. It reminded me of how my formerly predictable life became startlingly unpredictable: my children had minds and bodies of their own, screaming, laughing, sleeping, waking, pooping, regardless of when it was convenient for me. And it reminded me of how submerged I used to feel, as lumpy as my mom purse, breasts swollen with milk, baby weight riding along on my back, my thighs.

It was so shocking that I continued on into the bathroom. My first impulse was to leave the image there on the bulletin board for another five years. I didn't want to claim it, emblazoned with evidence of the lack of respect--beyond lip service, pardon the pun--motherhood is afforded. And then I began to laugh. Vulgar or not, the image was both funny and true. Despite our best intentions and expectations, hopes, dreams, and efforts, between the repetitive drudgeries and society's condescensions, motherhood can really suck.

On the way out, I took the photo down, not sure what I would do with it. But I ended up saving it, along with photos and other mementos (lock of hair, hospital bracelet, first crayoned portraits), a time capsule with items representing the full spectrum of my experience. Along with the sweetness of early motherhood--the kissing of a belly peeking out from a duckie undershirt, the shampoo horns I formed as my son sat in the sink with room to spare, the glee my daughter felt throwing her spoon from the high chair for the umpteenth time--there were the countless bendings down to get it, the dashes of bitter.

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Since this story took place in Trader Joe's, I feel led to include a related recipe. All of the ingredients come from TJ's. The pie is a family favorite. It's low in sugar and only has one crust, and it's so darn easy!

Shameless Short Cut Pie

1 frozen pie crust
1 jar chunky applesauce
1 bag frozen mixed berries
1 box light vanilla almond granola

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Place pie crust in pie plate.
In a bowl, mix together applesauce and unthawed berries.
Transfer mixture to pie plate.
Pour granola over the top until it completely covers the fruit. Pat down a tad.
Bake until done, about 45 minutes.

Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family and Identity