Mascara, Mallow & Maples

life, measured in six-minute segments

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter, October 1988

Dear Darling Daughter,

We’ve been home less than a week, and I’m wearing mascara.

Five days with you in southern California wasn’t quite enough to affect a sea change in my lifestyle but it did propel me to do something radical about my eyelashes. For me, this is a makeover.

It was in the plane on the way home that it dawned on me that there were two things I badly needed. One was the mascara, which I bought the next morning (Come on! We got home at midnight and nothing was open. This is not California!), and the other is A Book.

You know the kind I mean. One of those executive organizers in executive burgundy leather, with all the tabs and sections for appointments, phone numbers and projects—like yours, the thing you carry everywhere, even to the grocery store. You always were orderly: how we both love our lists and tidy kitchen drawers! But when I peeked at your book, I was horrified to find the hours divided into six-minute segments. What can one do in six minutes that’s worth writing down, anyway?

Nevertheless, I do need something better than my stupid little spiral notebook that I make random entries in as I go along. If only I had remembered that we’d made plans before we left for California to make cider when we got back (tomorrow morning, in fact), I probably would have thought twice about scheduling a committee meeting for tomorrow afternoon. I need A Book.

Today, on the mile-long walk home from lunch at Gussie’s, I counted nineteen cars coming and going. That’s a lot for us (the fall tourists, much fewer than the summer ones, are here), and one of the nineteen was Bob, driving home ahead of me. I wanted to stake out the wild roadside asters that I’m going to use for an arrangement I have to make for church this Sunday. You don’t have asters out there. But you do have cars, I noticed, lots more than nineteen going by in both directions in a twenty-minute interval.

Ah, well, roots is roots. And even though your life, at present, is choreographed to the rhythm of the southern California drumbeat, I can tell there’ll always be a special place in your heart for Maine. Just now, the tide has filled the cove, almost submerging the ledge where you and Jack, that dashing, daffy black dog we all loved so well, used to step off into the frigid water no one else ever dared set a foot into.

Enclosed are a few snapshots, taken the day after we got home. How do you like that pink mallow, still blooming madly and bravely at the corner of the house, while the first of the maples turns flaming red in the background? We don’t have to go beyond the dooryard for a stunning display of foliage that city folks drive miles to see.

It will be grand to have you back at Christmastime. Where but in California, where practically everyone is from somewhere else, would a company shut down for ten days to let its employees go home?

If you’re lining up Christmas gift ideas, don’t forget, Granny loves elephants. For Bob, bring back a big boodle of macadamia turtles from the chocolatier in Laguna Beach. And I need A Book.

Travel light. Just pack jeans and undies. You can use my sweaters and one of my down jackets. Remember winter?

Stay sleeveless and don’t forget: Your Mum loves you.

Amie’s Headnotes

Here’s a recipe from another mother-daughter duo, submitted by reader Krysi L, whose late mom Doris (more on her next month) was a first-generation Cook & Tell subscriber. “Helios was a tearoom in Carmel [Indiana] that Mom and I went to ALL the time,” Krysi writes. “The recipe is from the owner, Kathy Kraft. The tearoom always served it in the fall.”

Cook & Tell demoed this recipe over the weekend, on yet another scorcher of an Arizona fall day that most certainly did not feel like fall, and, yes, using the oven was not the most brilliant move ever, but nonetheless, this cinchy recipe tastes like fall!

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HELIOS PUMPKIN SPICE CRUNCH

• 1 (30-ounce) can pumpkin pie filling (NOT pumpkin puree)

• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

• 2 eggs, beaten

• 1 (13-15 ounce)* box spice cake mix

• 2 sticks butter, melted

Combine pie filling, condensed milk, and eggs together.  Spread in a greased 9"x13" pan.  Sprinkle dry spice cake on top.  Top with melted butter.  Bake at 350 degrees for one hour and ten minutes.

Cool thoroughly and chill in refrigerator at least 4 hours or overnight before serving.

*the original recipe called for one 18-ounce box of spice cake mix, but thanks to shrinkflation, this size no longer exists

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Amie’s Endnotes

My mom’s whirlwind California visit was more than thirty-five years ago and still, I recall us riding the Ferris wheel at the Fun Zone, fingers sticky with cotton candy; the ferry over to Balboa Island; strolling along Main Beach in Laguna; and the funky cafe with mismatched silverware where we ate breakfast every morning.

I lived in a tiny apartment in Newport Beach, then, and had recently landed a job as office manager at an ad agency almost as small as my living quarters. In that pre-Palm Pilot and iPhone era when Day Timers ruled and my world was measured in billable hours, six-minute increments marked the passage of time. My life felt so impressive, so monumentally important then. How could I know the true measure of worth would be the quiet, timeless achievement of humility?

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What Readers are Saying About Cook & Tell

Thank you for giving us all your gift of time and words and the legacy of Cook & Tell.

—Amy W.

The drawings and thoughts of your mom bring back longing for my mom and simpler times.

—Lori