Thursday, April 9, 2015

Article on Laurie Colwin written by her daughter Rosa Jurjevics

This was in the Barnes and Noble Review, here. If you've read my letters for a while, you know how fondly I feel toward Laurie Colwin. If not, just type her name into the search bar.


Looking for Laurie
Posted by Rosa Jurjevics  November 26, 2014

Editor’s NoteTo mark the publication of a new edition of Laurie Colwin’s classic works on food and life, Rosa Jurjevics looks back on her mother’s legacy, on and off the page.

Sometimes, all it takes is a glance. I’ll be on the train, or waiting in line at the supermarket checkout, or about to cross the street, and right thereright over there, is a tiny piece of my mother. It’s always a small something—a skin tone or a hairstyle, a striped shirt, those perfect teeth I’m lucky enough to have inherited—grafted onto the body or face of a stranger. Once it was a tiny, irregularly shaped gold-hoop earring on someone with a head full of chestnut brown curls that did it. I hung there as everything rushed by me at the same speed, tunnel vision locked on the unfamiliar woman who had no idea why the big-eyed weirdo was staring at her unflinchingly.

Shocked doesn’t quite describe how I am or how I feel after the sudden appearance of a mysterious not-my-mother; dumbfounded might be a better word, with longing a close second.

It’s strange to think that the last time I saw my mother (whom I will at times, out of habit these days,
refer to as Laurie) was more than 20 years ago. I was eight—a newly minted third grader with a beige plastic recorder, a fish tank full of neon tetras, and a matted blond ponytail trailing down my back. My biggest concerns then were: if my friend Julia and I were fighting or not, which Playmobil set I wanted for Christmas, and how I could get out of having to load the dishwasher. Little did I know…

Laurie’s death was the end of the line for us as mother and child, in most ways; in the ways that matter the most. No longer could we quarrel over what was going in my school lunch (“YES, Fruit Roll-Ups, Mom!”), or go for a walk around the neighborhood together (just because), or shop for my father’s birthday present (a tie, from Saks).

She didn’t get to see me graduate from high school or college; she didn’t have a chance to read the articles I wrote, watch the videos I made, or get a hand-drawn card from me in the mail. In turn, I don’t get to have her over for coffee (from the blue Hall teapot I would have begged off of her) at my apartment, call her up to ask how long I ought to bake chicken and at what temperature (45–55 minutes, 350 degrees in the oven I have now), or introduce her to a significant other (not that she’d have liked most of them).

It is hard to carry on a rapport of any kind with a person who is no longer alive— harder still when that person is your mother. But, though the idea is undoubtedly an odd one, there is still a relationship between us. As I would were she alive, I still get mad at her when I learn of something she did that angered another person, or left them hurting.

In antique stores, I consider which pattern of plate I would have bought for her, or what kind of teacup would have fit perfectly in her small, long-fingered hands. When another of her beloved New York institutions closes and reopens as a gentrified mess, I am indignant on her behalf as well as my own. Laurie would have forever mourned losing the Empire Diner, Balducci’s in the Village, and the L&S Dairy, and would have cursed every mega-million-dollar hotel to invade the meatpacking district. “These developers are morally bankrupt and out to lunch,” she might have said, slouched in a booth at the still-standing Carnegie Deli. And, lifting her can of Cel-Ray high, she’d toast: “To the same old thing!”

Though there will be no more words from Laurie Colwin, no more –isms and quotable sayings, no more long breakfasts, roast chicken dinners, or lazy Connecticut summers together, I still continually discover her. More of her comes out through what has already happened—the past rockets into the present in the form of the letters that I rescued from my grandmother’s nutty Philadelphia townhouse, or scribbled notes my mother took throughout my lifetime, and stories her friends and frenemies (though death seems to bury most hatchets) relate to me over meals, emails, and the phone calls.

And, of course, there are the books. I need only to crack open my well-worn copies of Home Cooking—complete with an illustrated inscription from my mother, crayon-colored in my 4-year-old hand—and More Home Cooking to see the life we led together as real and as immediate as if those days of warm fires and tussles over chores and Halloween gallivanting and gingerbread-making were still ahead of us.

Laurie leaps off the pages of her books, and not just in my hot little hands but in kitchens and favorite reading chairs across the country; from bedside tables and shelves holding beloved volumes in France, England, Spain, and Japan. “She’s like the best friend I never met,” people tell me, and I get it, for she was the mother I never fully got to know.

I will constantly be looking for Laurie; I will reach for her again and again and again, as long as I’m here. It’s to be expected, and it’s not a sad thing. In fact, it’s a hopeful one. I can still get to know my mother as her now-grown child, by hearing tales of her years as a young woman, learning who her favorite poet was, or reading about where she got the original recipe that inspired her amazing beef stew.

Laurie Colwin—Mom to me, really; forever Mom—wrote as she spoke, with a light in her eye and keen wit about her, and for this I am forever thankful; in some small way, my mother will always be here, on those pages, almost as alive as ever.

13 comments:

  1. What a lovely essay! Enjoyed reading it very much. And how wonderful that she has those book that her mother penned in order to "know" her better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is how I feel about my mum's diaries, Kay. I can almost hear her voice in her writing.

      Delete
  2. Nan, thank you so much for posting this. I would have hated to miss it but now am going to print it out to put in one of her books. I knew Laurie died young but did not realize that her daughter was only 8. Unimaginable, isn't it? Her two books with essays on cooking are some of my most used, and read often purely for enjoyment. I think I read most of her novels and loved the home details best.

    I think back to when she wrote of her little girl, who seemed to be a budding little gourmet herself, even if she did like fruit rollups in her lunchbox!
    Dewena

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just love LC's 'home details' and her desire to be home. I wrote about it in one of my book reports. I feel like she is a kindred spirit even though no longer in this world.

      Delete
  3. Although I've not read any of the books, I can relate very well to what Laurie's daughter says about still having a relationship with her late mother. My mother is alive and well - something I am immensely grateful for -, but my husband isn't. He died 5 1/2 years ago, and I still think of how he would have laughed about something I've just watched on telly, how something happening at work would have upset him, how he'd been eager to get the latest incarnation of one of his favourite computer games, how we'd be going for walks or bike rides together now that spring is here, and so on.
    And similar to what Laurie's daughter experiences when she finds bits of her Mom on other people, sometimes I see a man walking on the street far ahead from me, and his silhouette looks so much like Steve that my heart makes a tiny exclamation mark before I remind myself that of course it can not, will never, be Steve again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A beautiful essay about a woman whose work has meant so much to me and to so many others. I'm deeply sorry that her daughter lost her when she was only eight years old. One of my father's died when I was in Kindergarten and I still feel this loss because I never was able to know him the way I would have liked. And I relate so much to Librarian's comments above. My husband Paul died in 2007 and the day after his funeral was our 35th wedding anniversary. Life has so much loss and though we cannot live in the past only, it is good to know that the good of it can be part of us forever. Thank you for posting this, Nan.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rosa! I hope you receive this....I had the supreme honor of being your mother's nurse when she pregnant with you and we had a short-lived but wonderful friendship. One of my great regrets in life is that I let my life get in the way of forging a more lasting friendship with her. But I do have fond memories of sitting in your house in the village and eating her delicious food! I wish you all the good things in life that she would have wished for you...Love, Karen Herbster

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am re-reading HC and MoreHC after having read them 10s of times. This time I really wondered about what had come of Rosa. I’m so glad to have found this essay she wrote. She reminded me of her mother. I loved that she hasn’t found her perfect and can still get mad at her, like all of us lucky enough to have old moms do everyday. I’m glad she didn’t miss that part of life. I hope she writes more that we can read, I liked her voice a lot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So delighted you found this post. Thanks for taking the time to write.

      Delete
  7. I miss your mom, too. I loved her articles in Gourmet, her quirky observations and her two books (Home Cooking and More Home Cooking) are on my cookbook shelf. I enjoyed her description of your quirks, too, loving goat yogurt and asking for "slamber, pink and green" from the bemused fishmonger. You seem to have inherited her wavy-lensed outlook on life and a knack for describing it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Re-reading Another Marvelous Thing. Loved all your mothers books so much! So glad I found this newsletter to read your thoughts on her. We are lucky Laurie Colwin was in this world for a short time. Be well!

    ReplyDelete

I'll answer your comments as soon as I possibly can. Please do come back if you've asked a question.
Also, you may comment on any post, no matter how old, and I will see it.