Category: Memories (Page 8 of 11)

Sponge cake

Tomorrow is the first part of Mika’s birthday party (a sleep over with a couple of friends, if that), and I promised to bake her a cake. I want to bake her a sponge cake, that same one that was a specialty of Granny and Gladys. It was delicious with lemon curd, but I preferred it with whipped cream, but Argentina’s whipped cream is so much better than America’s.
I think I still remember the taste, hints of the taste at least. The texture. Their specialty – along with a white cake with chocolate-dulce-de-leche frosting and a chocolate cake with peppermint frosting. I think two of those recipes came from the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook, circa 1950’s, which I think was the only cookbook they owned. Perhaps, though, like my mother, they had a copy of Las Recetas Economicas de Doña Petrona, which seemed to be the Bible of every Argentine housewife. If they had one, though, I don’t remember seeing it. They did have a black spiral folder filled with hand-written recipes, mostly on Gladys’ handwriting (would I remember my grandmother’s?). Some are in English and some in Spanish.
Will I bake this cake in homage to my grandmother and aunt? In remembrance? In a mistaken attempt to give my children a slice (ha ha) of the childhood I had and that they will never comprehend? Will the cake even come out?
It’ll be for Mika’s 7th birthday. I can’t remember for what birthday Granny baked me the sponge cake with cream. Did she die when I was 8 or 9? How can I not know?
I still haven’t decided if it’s good to remember or if it’s just too painful, too senseless.

The apartment

We moved into our apartment in La Plata when I was 5 years old – I really can’t be more precise. The apartment was three blocks away from my grandparents’ house and a couple of blocks from the Plaza San Martín and the beginning of the centro, not the literal center of the city (that would be Plaza Moreno), but the commercial area. La Plata is the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, and the provincial government buildings are located around the plaza as well. One of them, the casa de gobierno, an imposing building that apparently is even more beautiful inside (pictures at http://www.laplata.gov.ar/nuevo/ciudad/arquitectura/casadegobierno.shtm), burnt sometime during my childhood. I remember a story of a maid and some curtains. There were quite a few fires happening at the time, I remember praying every night that there wouldn’t be a fire in our building. But I also prayed that there wouldn’t be a volcano explosion (I’d seen The last days of Pompey), an earthquake (there was an 8.9 earthquake in San Juan in 1977, it was felt in La Plata, over a thousand kilometers away, but I’m pretty sure we slept through it) or a tidal wave (another movie I watched). Later I would wonder if so many fires were related to the repression, but I’ve never read anything that would support such supposition.

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Mendoza

I haven’t written about my childhood for several days. I should be working now, not writing. But I just washed my hands in the kitchen, and saw the little milk pot that belonged to my grandmother and to Gladys and I’m brought back to my childhood. It’s amazing, for so many, many years I didn’t think of my childhood, and suddenly I think so much about it. It must be because I’m getting old. Or because of Gladys. It’s been two years since her death, and once again I blocked the date from my mind, just three days ago. But she lives in my heart and my mind all the time. I wish she would know that. I know she knew how much I loved her.

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Memories through images

As I said, I’m not a story teller and I have very few, if any, stories to tell. What I have are little mental images, places and feelings. But I also have a few photographs that were taken during my childhood. My dad was really into photography before I was born, but he pretty much had abandoned it by then. He did have a camera and took pictures of us from time to time – which my mother would diligently divide among our photo albums. Looking at the pictures bring up memories, so here these are 🙂
1.jpgOK, this picture brings no memories of my own. My mother says it was taken 15 minutes after I was born. I was the first of four, and the ones with the hardest labor. My mother broke her water moving a heavy table, I think, and then went to the hospital (was it the Instituto Médico Platense? Those are the words that come to my mind). There they gave her pitocin, and she proceeded to have a 24-hour-labor, with no anesthesia, until they decided to do a c-section on her. To this day she tells me the story every year on my birthday – clearly it was really traumatic. The two natural births (now called VBACs) that followed, were a breeze in comparison. The other story from those days is that my dad slept with me my first night – and my mom was very worried that he’d squash me. Michaela, my oldest, slept on my breast part of her first night as well. She slept with Mike, her daddy, also.

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