Written for the Oncology Memoir Group reading, Nov. 2013
Indian Pudding is dark and rich, all molasses and cornmeal
and raisins. Although it's out of fashion today, when I was in grade school,
Indian Pudding was a New England Thanksgiving favorite. I lived on the
north shore of Massachusetts surrounded by colonial history. As a kid, when someone said "Indian
Pudding" in my mind's eye I saw an Indian—or native American
today- standing among the trees with dark braided hair and one
feather hanging down the braid. I'd never seen an Indian in the flesh, but I'd
seen plenty of images of pilgrims and Indians sharing a Norman Rockwell meal.
-- A long table under the trees. half-dressed Indians despite the
November temperatures. Pilgrims in black with white collars, cuffs and aprons,
and several big fat supermarket turkeys on platters surrounded by
vegetables arrayed down the middle of the table. I'm sure there was Indian
Pudding on that table, too.
I'd never eaten Indian pudding. I'd never even seen it
served. I only imagined it. Why wasn't Indian Pudding one of our
family traditions? True, my father was a only a first generation Finn, but my
mother was a DAR-eligible WASP. Her mother was about as genuine a New Englander
as one could get, except for her divorce during the depression when her
husband's company sent him to St. Louis to work and he fell in love with a
woman there. But that's a whole other story. Anyway, Indian Pudding was a
real new England tradition but I had no idea what it tasted like.
It never occurred to me to ask my mother why we didn't have Indian
Pudding on Thanksgiving or any other
day. I just knew it should be served warm with vanilla ice cream melting over
it. It would be delicious and I felt deprived. I loved our family's Boston
Cookies and apple pie made with Macs from the orchard on the hill where my
father lived as a child. And, I'd even have a little bit of squash pie, which
was pretty daring for the finicky eater I was then. In reality, I wasn't
deprived of either desserts or tradition but it wasn't good enough for
me.
Years later, when I was a young hippie living in a small
Cambridge communal house, I was going to spend the holiday with the family for
the first Thanksgiving in some years. The dinner was planned for my parents’
log cabin on a quiet pond in New Hampshire. Yes, a great New England Thanksgiving
setting.
What should I bring? AHA! Indian Pudding. I'd make
traditional Indian Pudding as a surprise. I'd still never tasted it. I pulled
out the Joy of Cooking, a gift from a bunch of campers and co-counselors one
summer when they discovered I couldn't cook -- but that's another story.
My mother, who I was always trying, but failing, to please,
wouldn't touch it. She hated even the smell of it. (You know something went
wrong. Would I be writing this otherwise?) The Indian Pudding was delicious-----
just as I'd imagined. Warm and rich, ice cream offsetting the molasses. I loved
it, but my mother's disdain took the Joy right out it. I couldn't understand
it.
I needed to know why. What's wrong with Indian Pudding I
asked. She shrugged vaguely. "I served too much of it to ever want to see
it, smell it, or taste it again," she said.
I didn't get it. What do you mean you served too much of it? We
never had it. What did she mean?
During the depression, when she was in high school, one of
her mother’s friends arranged for her to waitress at a popular and expensive
restaurant in Framingham. .
This job meant traveling for hours every weekend to get
there, staying in a little room above the restaurant, and working long hours
while missing her friends and their parties. Her family was dependent on her
tips.
“ My father was gone,’ she said. “Gram needed the money to
support us. And I was miserable. Indian Pudding was their most popular dessert.
I served gallons of it every night. Gallons and gallons. I hate it. It reminds
me of that terrible time in my life.
“You eat it. Enjoy it. But, she said, “please don't bring it
again.”
I have never made it again, but I woke up thinking about it
this week.
What evokes these food memories? Why are they suddenly
resurrected from the recesses of our brains? I still don't cook much. I no
longer live in New England. But, I guess that's still who I am -- the little girl
trying to find my identity through the foods I eat and the pictures evoked in
my mind's eye. That Indian in the trees is still as vivid as he was fifty years
ago.
