Genesis II

At eight years of age, my family moved from DC to Redmond, Washington, a small town on the eastside of Lake Washington, about fifteen miles from Seattle. Years later, after I had left the area, a guy named Bill Gates started a company called Microsoft and built a huge campus just a half-mile from where I had grown up. But in the late 60's and early 70's, Redmond was a place of tract homes and cookie-cutter developments where housewives led Cub Scout packs and husbands commuted every day across the world's longest floating bridge. Gas was 32 cents a gallon, a complete 16-ounce steak dinner at Black Angus was $1.79 and my dad paid $31,000 for our split-level cedar shake home with a view of Marymoor Park, Lake Sammamish, and the Cascade mountains.

We had been excited about moving all the way to the Northwest from cosmopolitan DC. Dad said we would probably need to get a rifle in case bears came onto our property, and my mom speculated about hiring a nice native Indian girl to do housekeeping for us. We were all a little disappointed that Seattle seemed quite settled, and it was obvious we wouldn't be needing a shotgun. Already dominated by Boeing and the lumber industry, Seattle had come into its own just a few years before when the World's Fair brought international attention, hydroplane races on Lake Washington, and the awesome Space Needle. Schools were new, modern glass-walled wonders nestled among birch trees and rhododendron bushes. Innovative architects followed Frank Lloyd Wright's lead and built low-slung business parks surrounded by green fields. Entire communities sprung up in areas where orchards and dairy farms had existed just a year before. It was a boom economy held aloft by Boeing's success, and proud fathers made good money, providing three bedrooms, two baths, and Huskies tickets for their growing families while moms baked cupcakes for the cub scout troop.

About a month after we arrived, my Mom's parents moved from Southern California to be with us, and just a few weeks later, Grandma had a massive stroke. Although Mom and I had looked for apartments for them, including some gorgeous places right on Lake Washington, it was obvious that they wanted, maybe even needed, to live closer to us. I was all for that - Grandma and Grandpa were lively, funny, generous and loving people, a comedy team, really, like some Vaudeville act. As the only child of their beloved daughter Cookie (yes, that was her nickname), I was beloved by them, and was thrilled to find I had returned to my former status as golden boy. Dad bought the lot next door to our new house, scraped up the money to build a house on it, and rented it to my grandparents. It was a tight squeeze financially, but it was worth it, Dad later told me, if it meant Grandma and Grandpa weren't going to live with us.

Dad settled in to a life of satisfying work at the Naval base, gardening when the weather was nice, and constructing things in the workshop during the dreary wet winters. Mom took care of the house, did the shopping, took decoupage and macrame classes, and started another diet. Grandma, who had come home from the hospital in a wheelchair, figured out how to cook wearing crutches, passed the driving test after three failed attempts (a very important mission - Grandpa didn't drive), and discovered the only Jewish deli in a fifty square mile area. Grandpa, who had never so much as watered a potted plant, picked up a hoe for the first time and turned a bare pile of rocky dirt into the horticultural pride of the neighborhood. Grandma had quit smoking in the hospital, so the other three quit, too, in an act of solidarity.

As for me, I loved my new life. I adored my wonderful third grade teacher and made fast friends with Kenny and Cathy, two great kids in my neighborhood. Although I missed swimming, I taught myself how to ride a bicycle and spent hours circling the cul-de-sac, zooming down the street in front of our house, and waving at Grandpa in the garden as I passed.

There was usually a big project of some kind for us men to tackle each weekend that first year: dig a huge hole to plant a tree, lay down a couple of tons of bark, build a concrete block retaining wall around the vegetable patch. We sweated, strained, and felt proud of our accomplishments. Mom and Grandma would bring us glasses of iced tea and plates of meat loaf sandwiches, then ooh and aah our our handiwork.

On hot summer days, Grandma and I would pick bucketsful of blackberries from the thorny bushes along the main road. Then we'd collect Grandpa from the yard and drive down to Lake Sammamish in Grandma's powder blue Plymouth Sport Fury. While Grandma spread out a fine picnic lunch, Grandpa and I swam in the murky lake. Grandpa inevitably fell asleep on the way home while Grandma regaled me with stories about growing up in a family of ten kids in turn-of-the-century New York.

Every month or so, usually for someone's birthday or for a holiday of some kind, all of us would get together for a big dinner. The location alternated between G & G's house and our house. I was official helper and spent the day with either Grandma or Mom, setting the table, chopping the liver, grating beets for borscht or mozzarella for lasagna, setting up the relish tray, grinding the walnuts, stirring the cheese sauce, and licking the cake batter from the mixing bowl. Food was a big deal. All of us loved to eat, and we pulled out all the stops at these dinners. To accompany a dungeness cracked crab fest, Dad would bake crunchy loaves of italian bread from scratch, the smell of yeasty dough filling the house and making all of us drool. Mom would roast a huge prime rib with onions and garlic, or make an elaborate lasagna. Both my parents had a flair for exotic cooking and we frequently had complex curry dinners and authentic Cantonese banquets.

It wasn't a successful party unless everyone left the table groaning in pain from being full to bursting. If Dad laid down on the floor after dinner and undid his belt, everyone knew the meal was a hit. We didn't care about Pilgrims - Thanksgiving was about succulent turkey, rich gravy and marshmallow-sweet potato casserole. Sometimes the space between Channukah and Christmas was only a few days, but each holiday required a full banquet. A week later, it was time for New Year's Day, which meant a cloved ham, macaroni and cheese, and another relish plate.

Grandma, the most brilliant cook of all, created phenomenal meals using treasured recipes learned at her mother's side, yet freely adapted to the products available in the Pacific Northwest. She was an expert in all things Italian and all things Jewish, having been raised one of ten kids by an Italian mother and a German Jewish dad. She used salmon in her gefilte fish when she couldn't get pike. They were pink, but absolutely delicious. Grandma knew amazing little tricks, like putting a spoonful of good scotch in a bowl of chicken soup to add complexity to the flavor. She had a delicate way with baking and made hundreds of individual tartlet shells to be filled later with cheesecake, prailine, and apricot custards. Her almond crescent cookies were light as a feather and meltingly scrumptious. There was always a tray of muffins or crescent rolls hot out of the oven, ice cold sweet butter, and jars of clover honey. Sometimes I'd drop in on G&G at dinnertime, just a regular day, and Grandpa would be sitting down to a four-course meal - homemade soup, a fresh salad, pork chops, a nice red potato, some green beans, a good hard roll, and a lovely piece of chocolate cake. Her cooking was an expression of her talent, a matter of pride, a way to express love for her family, the main source of compliments and her chief pleasure in life. To show us how much she loved us, every dish was rich: walnuts and butter go with almost everything. Besides, she loved to eat as much as the rest of us, and her cooking, as everyone would agree, was sublime.

Grandpa knew how to make eggs and grill steaks, but his forte was serving ritzy hors d'Oeuvres like smoked oysters on melba toast. There was always a bowl of Planter's peanuts around, and some sharp cheddar cheese cubes ready to spear along with olives and cocktail onions.

I had a talent for cooking (and a love of food) and absorbed all I could from these accomplished chefs. I also read cookbooks and watched Julia Child on TV. We had the entire Time-Life series of cookbooks from each country in the world, and I'd dream of making a Charlotte Russe studded with candied violets. I experimented in the kitchen for hours, making huge messes but turning out intricate, delicious dishes swimming in butter, cream and cheese. I was addicted as much to the flavors and textures of rich food as I was to the fulsome compliments and grunts of approval from my family.

We ate and ate, grunting our approval and huzzahing over the flavors as we stuffed our increasingly fatter faces. Food was our entertainment. We would no more put up a badminton net and have a family tournament than we would hit each other. We cooked, we talked, we ate, and we felt loved. The richer the food, the more fulsome the love.