Bon Appetempt: A Coming-of-Age Story (with Recipes!) (22 page)

O
ur family’s annual beach vacation is a tradition that began with my maternal grandparents taking my mom and her brother to the Jersey Shore each summer, and is one that is currently upheld entirely by my mother. She handles all the arrangements herself, from booking the house to paying for the house to covering all of the travel expenses accrued by her children and their significant others to get to the house. She
lives
for these vacations, typically planning the next one while we’re in the midst of the current one.

However, we no longer go to the Jersey Shore. We bounce around from beach to beach with no loyalties to any one in particular. This year, Mom has chosen Kiawah Island in South Carolina, as it’s an easy drive for my brother to make from Charlotte.

And though Grandma, now ninety-one, has stopped coming along, Mom is channeling her Great Depression roots on her behalf. So much so that it’s almost as if Mom was the one whose pet bunny got sold to the neighbors for dinner and who had to endure days on end unsure of when her next meal might be. Because just like Grandma would, Mom has taken it upon herself to bring as much food as she can from Pittsburgh,
including a cooler full of seafood and meat—once again dodging the overpriced beach grocery store.

Bruce, on the other hand, who, remember, “doesn’t like the beach” and whom I’ve never seen more than ankle-deep in the cool ocean water, comes because it’s what Mom wants and divides his time between flying his kite and riding his bike—two activities that his body can still handle after college football, Vietnam, and the ensuing twenty or so major surgeries.

I think they are two activities that he
enjoys
too, but it’s difficult to say. In my parents’ townhouse, the walls of Bruce’s third-floor office are covered with plaques and certificates marking his many accomplishments and awards, one of which refers to him as, “The Rock,” a title given to him—as told to my college boyfriend David—because throughout his time in the Naval Academy and in Vietnam (and despite what I can only imagine was the most intense kind of peer pressure), he never got drunk
once
. And while I find this commendable, his strict teetotaling ways seem to push him even further to the fringes of our little family.

Through the years, I have watched him try to send off my (twenty-one and older) friends on their way to the airport with the leftover beer that they’d brought as a hostess gift—you know, as one typically does when they are invited to dinner at someone’s house; I have seen him wave off champagne for the champagne toast at weddings, and express wariness of Matt driving home after drinking a glass of wine with a two-hour dinner.

But his nickname extends far beyond alcohol.

His demeanor is rocklike. I’ve never seen him angry. I’ve never seen him yell. But I’ve also never seen him laugh uncontrollably. I’ve never seen him shout at the television in excitement
while watching football (“Get him! Get him!”) like the rest of my family does. I’ve never seen him fawn over a perfectly cooked steak. While watching a live music performance during Mom’s favorite show,
Dancing with the Stars
, he once asked Matt and me why the band felt like they had to “dress that way.” Matt and I took another look at the screen to see what we were missing. The lead singer wore sunglasses, a T-shirt, jeans, a leather jacket, and neon sneakers. “Uhm, well, you know, they’re artists and clothes are just another way to express yourself,” I said after a few awkward moments.

He’s maintained his weight at 180 pounds or less for the past forty-odd years. He lives life according to specific tenets and rules, one of which comes into play every family vacation. It’s the one about unmarried couples not sharing bedrooms—a rule that, although familiar, will pose a particular problem at this year’s gathering.

Matt and I take a red-eye flight from LA to Raleigh; from there, we catch an early morning flight to Charleston, where Bruce picks us up and drives us the forty minutes to Kiawah. Matt doesn’t ever sleep on planes, so by the time we arrive, he’s in dire need of a nap. But Bruce, Mom, my brother, and his newish girlfriend, Katherine, got in yesterday afternoon, and when we walk in the front door, they’re already clad in their swimsuits, gathered in the living room, ready to hit the beach.

It’s my first time meeting Katherine, whom Bill has been dating for about six months now. (Bill and Jenny broke up a few months after Matt’s and my wedding, and though my brother never admitted as much, I’m sure that the wedding planner–related issues I had with her were sadly at least partially to blame.) But I’m distracted by my brother, who’s
pulled Matt aside to bring him up to date on the situation at hand. “We’re not going to be staying long. I’m in the kids’ room. Super tiny beds,” he says, holding his hands six inches apart to illustrate just how tiny.

Mom notices and throws her hands up in the air, exasperated almost to the point of squealing, “I’m sorry! It said it was a four-bedroom.”

There are technically four bedrooms, but two are basically masters, then there’s a modest guest room with a full bed (Katherine’s), and a playroom with two twin beds that do seem tinier than your average twin bed.

Bruce, who has been trained to survive in the jungle without so much as a Swiss Army knife, offers to take the room with the twin beds. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he says, blank-faced.

Mom shrugs, defeated.

It should be noted that Mom and Bruce don’t sleep in the same bed anyway. Since Bruce goes to sleep promptly at ten p.m., and Mom likes to stay up and fall asleep watching television, they’ve long slept separately at home—Bruce in the bedroom and Mom taking the downstairs couch. And even though I understand that just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have similar sleep patterns, it’s also not something we openly discuss as a family. Thus, neither Bill nor I can point this out as a viable fix.

Plus, the minute my brother and I occupy the same space, our childhood rivalry comes alive. So while part of me understands his frustration, that it’s not just about sleeping in an uncomfortable bed, it’s about wanting to be treated like a grown-up. It’s about the fact that while, yes, he may have struggled in the past with unemployment, debt, and a failed
six-year relationship, the truth is he’s doing quite well now. At thirty-one, he has a full-time, tenure-track job with health benefits as a lecturer in the English department at a large community college in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has students and colleagues who respect him, a girlfriend who adores him, and, in fact, he’s looking to buy a house.

And yet, despite all of these accomplishments, in this rented beach house, his unmarried status relegates him to a child’s room with a child-size bed surrounded by children’s toys. All of this coupled with the never-mentioned fact that because I lived with Mom and Bruce for three years in high school, while Bill stayed the (depressing) course in Saegertown, Bill must feel at least some twinge of outsiderdom when we all get together.

All of this I get. Or, at least I try to. But at the same time, the other part of me, the little sister who grew up in his constant shadow and who just arrived after a day of traveling, wants him to chill out and suck it up.

Besides, I have my own things to prove to my family. I want them to see that I’m also doing well. I’m happily married; I’m pursuing my dreams; and, in the past year, I’ve created a food blog people seem to actually read. And what better way to show all of this than for Matt and me to cook dinner for everyone?

Much to Mom’s chagrin, she realizes she’s forgotten a few ingredients for the evening meal and needs to run to the store. Matt and I decide to tag along in order to gather what we’ll need for the dinner we’re going to make: what has become (at least between the two of us) his famous lemon pasta, and to go with it, an arugula salad.

Once at the store, the three of us split up; Matt’s in charge
of grabbing the pasta ingredients and I’m in charge of the ones for the salad.

I’m just about finished when Mom finds me.

“What do you need the olive oil for?” she asks—her eyes squinting with suspicion.

“Oh, I was gonna ask you. Do we already have some at the house?”

“No, but I have canola.”

“This is for the salad dressing. We can’t use canola for salad dressing.”

“Why not?”

I can feel my head cock slightly to the side. “Well,” I start to say, knowing what I’d
like
to say: We can’t use canola for salad dressing because no recipe I’ve ever read has called for canola in a salad dressing. If anything, the recipes I’ve read call for “good olive oil,” and the brand I have in my cart is definitely already a step down from
good
. But I know my mother, and I can see her jaw is already tightening.

“So, you want to get a whole thing of olive oil for
one
week at the beach?” she says.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to pay for all of this myself.”

She shakes her head and walks away.

I find Matt, who has a full basket of his own, and soon enough, we’re in the checkout line behind my mom.

“Fancy meeting you here!” I say, smiling.

She rolls her eyes at me, but reaches for my basket of supplies. “Just give it to me.”

“Mom, we seriously don’t mind paying for this.”

But she is already placing our items on the conveyor belt. “No, no. I’m not going to let you—coffee filters!” she says, interrupting herself, almost choking on the words.

On the drive home, Matt and I are told that we would
not
have made it through the Great Depression. “I mean, coffee filters?”

Mom makes Bill’s favorite meal (steak and mashed potatoes) for dinner, and by the end of the night, after we four kids have finished a six-pack of beer and most of the white wine as well, Bill agrees to stick around until Wednesday, which was how long he had originally planned to stay.

The next afternoon, Bill and Katherine make a beer run.

“More beer! My goodness,” Bruce says when he sees them transferring it to the refrigerator.

“Hey, we’re on vacation, mon!” I say, holding up a bottle of Red Stripe.

But my joke doesn’t even get a smile.

“Tough crowd,” Matt whispers.

The lemon pasta Matt and I make everyone for dinner the following night is one of those dishes that really gilds the lily. I, for one, would be supremely happy with pasta coated in some lemon juice and olive oil with a nice handful of parsley and Parmesan, but this version adds white wine, grated Gruyère, and heavy cream, and it’s always a crowd pleaser.

But as much as I’d like it to be, dinner is never much of an event with my family. And though everyone seems to like our meal, within fifteen minutes we’re clearing the table.

“Well, Ame, that was pretty good,” Bruce says to me. “I thank you for your efforts.”

“You’re welcome,” I say. “But really, Matt did most of the work.”

“Ah,” he says, turning to Matt, and like a record needle being dropped onto a new track, begins again, “Thank you kindly, Matthew. Lemon pasta, huh? I’ll have to remember that one.”

After Matt and I got engaged, and Grandma and Mom refused to celebrate the announcement, Bruce gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me through the years. He told me, “You know what would be helpful? Is if instead of being so defensive, if you and Matt could just be yourselves and let everyone see you two as the happy couple that you are. That would be helpful for us.”

People say you have to choose your battles. We could’ve made the lemon pasta and salad with the canola oil, but it’s three years later now, and I don’t regret fighting for the olive oil. I also don’t regret fighting my parents over their reaction to Matt’s and my engagement. Because I think certain things—big or small—are worth fighting for.

What I do regret, however? I regret the way I went about it, the way I hinged my happiness on their approval. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t have just approved of Matt, they would have been thrilled for us. But at the end of the day, as annoying as it was to hear Bruce advise me to be less defensive and to instead go about my presumably happy life with Matt
happily
, in a way, he was right.

After all, you can’t change your family. You can’t convince them of your happiness or of your own success. You may not even be able to expand their worldview to include the idea of husbands cooking dinner, or of the simple beauty found in an early-evening beer on a screened-in porch in the dead of summer.

You can, however, make them pasta with marinara sauce, as we did on our last night there. And you can laugh when they say things like, “Hmm. I usually have this with meat” (even if they concede, “But this is pretty good too”).