I plopped the white paper sack onto our worn wooden countertop in front of my sons. There’s something alive inside there, I told them. And it’s not a puppy, We peeled back the the tape and opened the wet waxy paper to reveal a pile of glossy black mussels stacked in a red and white checkered paper tray. My sons’ eyes sprouted wide. Clams, one shouted. No. LOBSTERS!
I think it’s important to teach our kids how to cook. It’s beautiful to do it together. That night we had prepped ingredients to steam our pile of mussels in garlic, white wine, and butter, coaxing their sealed lips to open so we could loosen their jaws and pluck out their chewy insides. But before we could dump them in the silver pot my son asked me to stop.
Can we keep one for a pet? He plucked a small one out with his thumb and forefinger and it slipped from his hand and onto the floor. He picked it up and gave me Bambi eyes. Of course, I told him. Then I turned on the tap and filled a small worn plastic storage with lukewarm water and saturated it with salt. Let’s name him Bob.
I didn’t tell him that Bob wouldn’t be alive for much longer because sometimes we choose not to tell people we love things that are hard to hear because we don’t want them to feel one breath of hurt. We forget one of the initiations of being alive is to be occasionally pricked with hardship and to alleviate anyone of that guaranteed anguish actually hurts them in the end.
When I was little my mom would host lobster nights for our family. She’d stop at Byerly’s on her way home from work and buy three muddled brown live crustaceans from the meat and seafood guy whose first name she always knew. Then she’d bring them home, wrapped in oversized plastic baggies, their claws bound by wide rubber bands. We’d keep them in the fridge and rotate shifts for lobster duty, which meant whoever was walking through the kitchen at any point in times would open the oak paneled refrigerator and squint their eyes, searching for the sloth like movements that indicated our two and a half pound lobsters were still alive, “The Simpsons” playing in the background.
When it got closer to dinner time my parents and I would take the lobsters out of their cold casket and, using our middle fingers and thumbs, clutch them around their shelled torsos and slide them out of their plastic cages. Then we’d line them all at one end of the kitchen and step back and, thinking they had ears, cheer for them to race. Whoever had the fastest lobster got bragging rights. My mom would smoke a Merit 100 and tap it into an amber ashtray while she watched. Sometimes she’d drink a Sam Adams. My mom would wiggle the bands off her lobster’s claws, but I always kept mine bound. It takes a lobster seven years to grow into full maturation and I had convinced myself one would one day revolt against me.
Once, when my mom was in high school, she released the live lobsters at her neighborhood grocery store. When someone wasn’t looking she reached in, grabbing each one by hand, dropping them on the linoleum floor. Then she ran away, thinking she had freed them from their aquarium-lined death sentence. But the hard truth is this: those lobsters probably died soon after she had left. I bet they didn’t have the heart to tell her that.
Today I surprise my boys with shellfish nights. An homage to my childhood, a love song to my mom. They relish in cracking shells open, digging out gold with tiny forks and fingers. Dunking crusty bread in their juices and sopping them up into a warm butter sponge. One day, when I’m not here anymore, I hope they cook and think of me, just like I think of my mom when I am at my stove. I hope they make something beautiful of something that causes them hurt, whatever their wounding may be. That they create an imprint that breaks their hearts and soothes it at the same time.
I saved our leftover broth from mussel night and used it for lunch that week. Made little piles of brown rice and topped them with chestnut and shiitake mushrooms, hard boiled quail eggs, and toasted and salted walnuts. I thought of how much I missed my mother and noticed that over time, joy and wisdom can actually grow from our deepest hurt.
Love this...I feel like I'm getting to know your precious brood, and your parents, so well. Thanks for sharing them with your readers. xo