The Lioness and her Cub

One day, out of the blue, my seven-year-old daughter presented me with her theory on life. “I think that before we were humans, everyone was an animal, and before we were animals we were insects, and before we were insects we were plants, and before we were plants we were rocks or minerals”.” Interesting cosmovision, or perhaps her very personal take on the “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” of my beloved grad school days: humans developed to a higher order just as life on Earth did. More or less. If we can be considered a higher order, that is. And if I remember correctly.

Having been raised a Catholic, who then rather lapsed in her wild oats-sowing days, I had tried to raise Cecilia nominally as a Catholic. So how did this vision square, I inquired? “Well, when you die you go to heaven and God sends you back to Earth as whatever you’re supposed to be, but humans don’t remember it.” All right. Hybrid Catholicism.

But the real fun of this theory was that she started to tell me what everyone we knew used to be. She informed me that I used to be a lioness – referring probably to my mane of unruly hair, and perhaps – I like to flatter myself – to my fierce protectiveness of my offspring. Her father, on the other hand, was a hamster. Why? “Because he’s super neat and always primping himself”, referring no doubt to his “no me despeines” (“don’t mess up my hair”) obsession. Her parents: a lioness and a hamster. From the mouths of babes: I did, indeed, eat him alive.

Her friend Andrea, blond, sweet, kind-hearted yet overbearingly hard to take, was a golden lab puppy. She is cute and awkward like her former canine self, “but she’s like a puppy – she wants too much attention.” So true.

This became a game in which we debated which each person was. You can only debate people you know well, because their animal alter ego reflects not only their appearance but also their character. Her friend Gemma, a graceful ballerina, wasn’t a swan but a swallow because of her dark, Mediterranean complexion. Unlikeable, cold people often ended up being fish or reptiles.

It’s funny how she was so often spot-on with her observations. My favorites were my friend Nestor and my boyfriend at the time, Enrique. Nestor is a masculine, barrel-chested “macho ibérico”. He’s got quite an ego about his own manhood which he doesn’t take pains to conceal. When I told him Cecilia’s theory, he said with all the puffed-up pride of a manly man, “And I’m a bear, right?” I asked Cecilia. Her answer: “A bear? No way! He’s a bat.” A bat? Why? “Because he looks like one.” I guess his face can take on a pinched quality at times. Needless to say Nestor’s ego was slightly deflated, but only slightly because after all, an ego like that has a life of its own, and he knew deep down he was really a bear; she just wasn’t ready to recognize it.

Enrique was tall and gangly. “He’s an ostrich,” declared my soothsayer Ceci. And it fit him like a glove: the kind of tall, angular man who never quite grew into his body, the head moving back and forth seemingly independent of the long legs; think Shaggy’s walk in Scooby Doo. Not to mention the personality that in time revealed itself to be none too kind. Perfect!

So what was Cecilia? A lynx. Why? Lynxes are quick, and Cecilia is a quick runner. They tire easy, and while she doesn’t so much tire, she does get bored easily when an activity doesn’t engage her. And, as she said, “They have pretty eyes like me.” Well, now that’s healthy self-esteem for you!

A lynx born to a lioness and a hamster. When Cecilia was just days old, I propped up that tiny baby, looked her in the eye and told her what I already sensed in my heart of hearts: “It’s just you and me.” Just two felines: the lioness and her cub.

By the way, if you ever see her, ask her what you used to be!

Coca de Vidre

“Coca”. Say the word and it conjures up all sorts of connotations – mostly illicit. But in Catalonia, coca is a traditional flatbread which has echoes in other Mediterranean societies, the best-known being Italian pizza and focaccia, along with pita bread and its more distant cousins the matzah or even Indian chapati. Coca can be covered with either sweet or savory topping, and its sweet guise reveals the kinship of the word “coca” with the English “cake” and the German “Kuchen”. Coca was developed as a way of using bread dough that didn’t rise. Thank goodness leavening agents don’t always work: they have left us the legacy of both cocas and the American invention par excellence: brownies.

Cocas are a dish for both rich and poor; the topping reveals which. Some are simply sprinkled with sugar, which caramelizes in the oven, others with olive oil and salt, scrumptious in and by themselves, while yet others are loaded with delicacies like seafood or vegetables, chocolate or pastry cream. Either way, in the past Catalan households had no ovens, so after the town bakeries were done baking their bread for the day, they let the neighborhood housewives bring their cocas and bake them in their ovens. Sometimes the bakeries would even donate their unsellable bread dough that failed to rise. Nowadays, bakeries sell ready-made cocas, often with roasted vegetables like peppers, eggplants, and onions on top, although any homemade version is infinitely better. They also make sweet cocas, like the famous “coca de vidre” (more on that delicacy below).

Cocas are often associated with holidays in Catalonia, such as the “coca de reis” and the “coca de Sant Joan”. Coca de reis is eaten on the Epiphany, January 6^th, when according to the Bible the Three Wise Men, or “reis mags”, reached Baby Jesus bearing their gifts. Coca de reis always has two surprises in it: a diminutive ceramic wise man, which brings the person finding it good luck, and a dried fava bean, which means that the person who bites into it or, in a more cowardly fashion, digs it out with their fingers, has to pay for the coca next year. But beware: they are both hard on the teeth!

The “coca de Sant Joan” is eaten on St. John’s Eve, June 23^rd, when Catalonians take to the streets to return to their pagan, solstice-celebrating roots, couched in Christian terms. They stay up all night lighting fireworks, building bonfires, drinking whatever is at hand, and waiting to welcome dawn on the beaches, most in a drunken stupor by then. They then eat this candied fruit-laden coca with a glass of “cava”, Catalan champagne, to welcome the summertime. Many a coca de Sant Joan has been eaten with no recollection whatsoever, I imagine, just as many other midsummer night’s frolics have quietly, thankfully drifted into oblivion after the inebriated revelry.

On to my favorite: coca de vidre (literally “glass flatbread”). It was so named because of the crystallized sugar that forms as it bakes. The dough used in Spain is more similar to pizza dough, but coca de vidre is equally – if not more – delicious using a flaky homemade pie crust. Yet another name for coca de vidre is “llengua de gat”, or cat’s tongue, because of its elongated shape.

Here’s the recipe: there is none. Like most traditional dishes, each cook has her own way of making it, and they’re all valid. How should you make it? However you like. However it tastes the best to you. But if I must: you preheat the oven to – I don’t know, maybe 400? Roll out the dough, brush a thin coat of olive oil on it, smother it in white sugar, and add pine nuts that toast up nicely in the oven. When is it ready? When it’s ready! How do you know? Does it look delectably edible? Yes? Then it’s ready. As soon as you remove it from the oven – and this is the key – spritz it with anisette (anise liqueur); this immediately liquefies the sugar with a satisfying sizzle, which then hardens into a glass-like coating. Hence the name. Don’t stint on the sugar: coca de vidre is emphatically NOT a diet food, so indulge… and enjoy! And eat it hot, right out of the oven, when all the flavors infuse the senses with the delightfully cloying sweetness of the anisette-glazed sugar, the toasted earthiness of the pine nuts, and the buttery flakiness of the crust.

I don’t know… it’s fairly heady stuff. So maybe coca de vidre should be considered a controlled substance after all, bringing into closer kinship with its better-known namesake.

Closure

When you leave your country and come back periodically, or permanently as is now my case, you notice trends, groundswells of popularity for things or notions that only had a shadowy existence in the past. Take Asiago cheese. Where did that come from? I had never heard of it, but about eight to ten years ago Asiago was suddenly on every menu. Was there a surplus in Italy that Sysco got wind of? And what about tilapia? When I was a kid there was haddock, catfish, flounder, not to mention what I was raised on: frozen “fish” patties. But I had never heard of tilapia.

Language goes through pendulum swings, too. What’s up with “My bad” and its counterpart – on the opposite end of the spectrum – “I’m good”? I didn’t ask you if you behaved well, I asked how you were. But that’s probably just the old dried up sourpuss grammarian in me. As a human, however, there’s another new emotional, armchair-psychological, faddish development I take issue with: closure.

Closure is a tempting notion. Something bad happens, you want closure and poof! It’s gone. A loved one dies, you get divorced, or a friendship ends: Americans seek closure, the panacea for all woes.

Rituals to mark sad occasions abound as time-honored ways of helping us handle bereavement. Over time every culture has developed its own way of mourning the death of a loved one, some of which last for months or even years: a fitting way to grieve over the survivors’ loss and honor the deceased person’s memory. Mourning is messy; it can entail wailing, sometimes even with formal paid wailers, special clothing – widow’s weeds, or ritual purification, prayers, or processions. Yet it also involves love and togetherness, solidarity and support in the guise of dishes cooked and brought over, company kept with the bereaved family. All of this in its motley, makeshift, utterly human way gradually lures the mourners back into the world while acknowledging their loss.

But closure isn’t about mourning, and it’s not a slow process: it’s a modern, streamlined version. It’s quick and simplistic and tries to erase everything in one fell swoop.

Closure is business-like. We perform a quick act with the aim of sweeping that sadness under the carpet and getting on with the bright side of life. After the Oklahoma City bombings, some suggested that the families of the victims watch McVeigh’s death as a form of closure. As if that could erase the loss. Or, less drastically, some celebrated the jury’s decision as a form of closure. But did justice really heal anything? Now the loss is… what? Karmically offset? Nullified? The idea behind closure is neat efficiency: instead of coexisting with the sadness of loss, we perform or witness a quick act with the expectation that it will cauterize that wound and erase that scar, pronto!

Sadness, like death, is part of life. Why we try to avoid it is understandable; why we think we can is incomprehensible. American culture is deeply uncomfortable with anything associated with sadness, and hence with death. I remember being disconsolate soon after a very painful event. A friend told me, “Maybe you need to take antidepressants.” I was flabbergasted. I was sad! I was sad for a reason and I felt I had the right to be. That was not abnormal and it was not clinical; it was a healthy response to loss. I wasn’t floundering, giving up, burrowing inward, plunging into the abyss. I was rightfully sad. I wanted to be allowed to be sad, yet it seemed that I was violating some happy pact. Apparently we do not allow ourselves time to mourn anymore; instead we seek the mythical grail of closure so we can get on with the brisk business of life.

By the time we reach a certain age, most of us have already experienced serious loss. And if you have, you know it’s not something you can quickly cauterize and then blithely gloss over. If only! Instead, loss gradually tears away at the edges of our bright, shining youthful selves; it beats our innocence into submission and leaves us battered and bruised. In our culture we then desperately seek that band-aid, that cure-all – closure – to try to get back to where we were pre-loss ASAP. Why not simply accept our rips, shreds, and bruises? They are our history, and they don’t go away. Like all our experiences, they season us and they burnish us; they make us who we are. They are an inextricable part of our biography. There is no need to wallow in them, but nor is there a reason to erase them. And let’s face it: even if we wanted to we couldn’t.

So, reluctantly, Asiago and tilapia are keepers, I guess: Sysco says so. “My bad” and “I’m good” are grammatical abominations, but I’ll save tirades on them for another day. Closure, on the other hand, is what needs to be swept under the proverbial rug and replaced with an acceptance of mourning and sadness, acknowledgement that life and its travails are a messy business that sometimes needs time to be processed and never wholly goes away – the good or the bad.