Chess Pie

Spencer's sister Barbara asked me if I had her mom's recipe for Chess Pie, a rich, gooey, family favorite that was as important to the Morrow Thanksgiving as the turkey. It's nothing but butter, eggs, sugar and flavoring (including vinegar) baked in a pie shell.

Well, I've baked Candy Morrow's chess pie a dozen times and always with the same result: a sloppy mess that does not at all resemble the divine confection I had at her house. It doesn't matter how long I bake it; it never firms up.

So when I got Barbara's request, I didn't know whether to send her mom's version or my own, The Joy of Cooking's pecan pie without the nuts that includes a heretical ingredient, corn syrup. I also add the all-important vinegar. Spencer thought it would be silly to give her a recipe that doesn't work, and that I should just send mine without comment. As far as he is concerned, it's Chess Pie.

But given my love of family history, I felt obligated to preserve the authentic recipe from Barbara's mother's kitchen, so I sent it to her with the explanation that I can't make it work, and also sent my Pecan Pie Without Pecans.

And guess what?

Barbara has Candy Morrow's recipe, but it has never come out right for her either! She thought maybe she wrote it down wrong because she always ends up with a sloppy mess too, and that's why she requested the recipe in the first place.

So this year, she's making the kind with corn syrup, and I know from experience that it will be marvelous.

Second-time empty nester

After a stint in Europe, my son Jesse moved in with us for a couple of months. Most of the time, Spencer was in Maine, so it was just the two of us.

Having him as a roommate required adjusting shower schedules, different shopping habits, brewing more coffee each morning, and watching more ESPN. He slept on the fold-out and stowed his worldly goods next to the recliner. Not a very happy living situation for a 36-year-old.

It was stressful for him and for me, but it was also a gift to spend time with him. We haven't done much of that in recent years. We looked up stuff on the internet, went hiking in New Hampshire, talked on the fire escape, cooked dinner.

He's moving out this weekend, sharing a place with his old roommates. It will be great to have things "back to normal" in the apartment, and great for him to be able to do his own thing without his mom in the mix.

But a gentle sadness wells up inside me. I'll be away this weekend, and when I get home Monday, he and all his stuff will be gone.

I skipped the empty nest syndrome when he left at 18 because his father was very ill, and my mind was otherwise occupied.

To my surprise, I'm having it now.

Omaha, October 2009

As my plane descended on its approach to the Omaha airport, it flew over an emerald baseball diamond completely surrounded by farmlands brown after the harvest but still showing their even furrows following the contours of the land.

Reflecting its surroundings, Omaha is an orderly place with clean, wide streets: no random storefronts among the tall office buildings, no irregular jutting in the architecture, no meandering streets. Everything is rectangular and spotless.

The occasion was my niece Julie’s wedding, a stylish celebration in orange and cream that spotlighted the creative genius and profound love the couple shares. On the door of the reception venue, a dance club, a sign said, “Closed for a private event.” What fun to be among the invited instead of the disappointed. We Kush sisters comprised the old generation, the gaggle of aunts at the elders’ table.

Three of us yukked it up in the hotel elevator after the party and told another passenger that we were sisters.

“Who’s the youngest?” he asked.

We froze.

That would be Betty. We had last gathered in Omaha four years ago for her funeral.

But in a flash, we recovered the festive mood and replied with good humor.

I’d opted to return to Boston at the crack of dawn Monday, and by mid-afternoon Sunday, the rest of the family had gone. Alone in a hotel in the heartland, I felt like the last person on the planet.

I wandered the streets of “NoDo,” the up-and-coming neighborhood north of downtown. I saw signs of an artsy community on the verge of bursting out: the Tip-Top Apartments in a rehabbed, 90-year-old factory; a sculptor’s studio in a low, orange-painted building, the lawn and driveway covered with metal creations. The place was deserted; no sensible person walks around downtown on Sunday evening.

At a squeaky-clean bar in the Tip-Top, I drank a Tall Grass beer brewed in Kansas and watched football while waiting for a to-go sandwich.

I was a long way from Boston, but even farther from the Midwest I knew when the nine Kush kids lived in Lake Zurich, Illinois, more than 50 years ago. We were together in that house for only a few years between Betty’s birth and Jackie moving out for college, but the experience still defines a part of each of us. We ended up in nine different states. Betty landed in Nebraska when our parents moved there, and she stayed.

Although Julie and Jason reestablished the Kush connection to Omaha after Betty’s children moved away, I sipped my beer and doubted I’d ever return. I had a strong feeling that at first felt like sadness, but before my sandwich arrived, I knew it was something else, an intimate awareness of the passage of time.

Good-bye Mom

As my plane taxied toward takeoff in Denver last Sunday, I stared out the window through silent tears at the gleaming mountains my mother loved. I was returning home after her funeral. I recalled the many times I sat on that tarmac eager to get home, but grateful for the time I had spent with her and knowing I would be back soon.

Joanna Altenkamp Kush was the last of our family pioneers who came to America from Germany and founded dozens of families now prospering from shore to shore. She landed at Ellis Island on Aug. 1, 1926, barely 3 years old. A photograph of the Altenkamps some 77 Christmases ago hangs on my door. Joanna is a little girl with a new doll, snuggled against her proud father, a blacksmith enjoying the leisure of Christmas Day. The family is gathered around the tree, under which is a photograph of Joanna’s grandparents in Germany. I imagine my grandmother placing the picture there and decorating it with evergreen boughs. Leaving them behind was the greatest pain of her life, and she must have felt the loss deeply at Christmas.

My mother loved Christmas and created magic each year with a big, beautiful tree dwarfed by heaps of presents for nine children. One year, it nearly didn’t happen. She waited until the last moment, probably until payday, to order toys and clothes from the Sears catalog. They promised delivery by Christmas Eve, but as the day grew late and she placed desperate calls to Sears, she faced a nightmare of no Santa Claus. Hours after the children left cookies for Santa and went to bed, the truck finally arrived. I heard the commotion downstairs, my parents laughing and the driver booming “ho, ho, ho” as he hauled endless packages into the house.

Most of Joanna’s many hard times did not have such happy endings, but she remained optimistic. Struggling through a marriage with too little money and too much drinking, she took comfort in family celebrations, summer evenings, murder mysteries and watching her children craft fulfilling lives.

She crafted one of her own after she was widowed at 56 and we children were grown. She became international customer service representative for a computer company in Omaha and received her bachelor’s degree from Bellevue College at age 59. Soon thereafter, she moved back to Chicago to care for her declining mother and her housebound brother. But characteristically, she made the most of an emotionally and physically draining situation. She renewed a warm friendship with her Aunt Bridget, who was losing her memory but not her high spirits and taste for fun. And she forged a tight family circle with her daughter Judy, son-in-law and three of her 25 grandchildren.

Bridget and Judy’s family accompanied her to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and Alaska. She returned to her birthplace in Germany with daughters Gerry and Jackie. But she went alone on her dream road trip when well into her 70s, driving 10,000 miles to visit all her children scattered from Washington to Massachusetts.

When Judy’s family moved to Colorado, Joanna joined them and renewed her childhood love for tap dancing. Her life was a whirl of family outings, dancing, and aerobics, but she relished quiet mornings and evenings with crossword puzzles, coffee, and books.

Those tranquil pursuits shaped her final two years, and she faced advancing cancer calmly and bravely. She died at home on December 18, 2007, with three of her children at her side. She was 84.

At her funeral, we placed her tap shoes on a brocade-covered pedestal beside a photo quilt Judy made for her 80th birthday. A recording of the Vienna Boys Choir singing her beloved “Stille Nacht” played softly.

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh, Mom. Sleep in heavenly peace.

Read more about Joanna's passing on my niece Missy Keenan's blog, http://huggingthemidline.typepad.com/my_weblog/