The Emilys

This piece is longer than my past pieces, so grab some coffee or a glass of wine and settle in. Family connections have been on my mind for a while and I just let it go where it wanted to go:).

I have a lot of family stuff: plates, platters, glasses, and silverware handed down from my parents, my aunt, and my grandparents on both sides. A good amount of it they received from the generations preceding them.

But I don’t keeps these things in a glass cabinet or in boxes wrapped in paper only to be brought out on special occasions. I use them frequently, if not every day. It might be the scrolled green-edged plates for dinner one night, the rimless white ones another. I use a sterling silver knife and fork for over easy eggs or veggie pasta or sashimi. I don’t hesitate to use Champagne glasses for weeknight mocktails, or, on holidays, for sparkling apple juice for the kids. And leftovers wait in antique Pyrex refrigerator dishes. Of course, the argument for not using these things is that they might break. Well, if one of the straight-sided, Wedgewood bowls break when I use it for weeknight soup, so be it. I’d rather carry on the tradition of my grandfather captured in a photo from the 1960s eating from one on a tray in front of the television. What’s meaningful to me is that these things had a useful life before me that I want to continue.

As much as I love owning these family heirlooms, I can easily give them away if they wear out, or if I just can’t find a use for them, or if I don’t find them attractive—the Santa mugs my siblings and I drank out of as kids after the painted faces faded, the ornate and heavy crystal wine and water glasses my grandparents purchased from the Hawke’s Glass Company founded in 1880 but is no longer in existence, the plates with indents that hold a whole cooked artichoke, the individual leaves once they are torn off, and melted butter for dipping.

It did take me twenty five years to free myself of two tea sets, one silver plate and the other sterling, but it wasn’t from lack of trying. I thought they were too valuable to drop off in the Goodwill bin with a shirt I decided I no longer looked good in. Over the years, I’d occasionally try to sell them only to give up when I couldn’t find any takers. Eventually, I discovered the tea sets weight in silver was wanted, so I had them melted down. This stung a little as I thought about past generations using them and I hoped I wouldn’t have bad karma. I wouldn’t like it if someone destroyed the Le Creuset pot I’ve had since my early twenties, but if I’m no longer around, it’s not like I’ll know. I also realized that if I had kept the tea sets and stuffed them in a corner somewhere until I died, my nieces and nephews would eventually have to deal with them. So, instead, I split the money between them with no strings attached.

I have loved setting a table since I was a kid, no matter the quality of the dishes or silverware. It was the organization and the neatness of it all that drew me. Forks and napkins on the left, knives on the right, glasses above the knives. As an adult, I enjoy it even more, because the anticipation has evolved. When I arrange everything in its proper place, I anticipate the friends, family, or even strangers that will soon gather around my table, the conversations that may unfold, their reactions to the food I will serve, the camaraderie over a shared meal. I also anticipate backwards and cannot help but wish my family forks and knives could talk, could tell me what conversations took place around the table, the ordinary and the momentous. Were the conversations stilted or energized or relaxed? Were there fights over money, vacations planned, siblings teased? Did they each have specific seats at their table or was it like my house where, including my mother and father, we sat at different seats each night?

This all probably helps explain why for years now, when I cannot sleep, I plan a lunch. I can see it vividly. It would take place on a screen porch in late June when the afternoon and the sun begin to stretch together. I would set the table with a flawed, white linen table cloth—nothing fancy, nothing starched and stiff, just printed flowers, a seam frayed at one edge, a few small round holes, probably from cigarettes, from when people smoked at the table. I would not bother to hide any of this. There would be four place settings, each with family silverware. A Flow Blue punch bowl, filled with peonies, would center the table. And the name written on each of the four place cards would be identical: Emily.

But this is a lunch that can never happen because, well, I’m the only one of us still alive. The guests would be my great-great-great grandmother, Emily Talman Davis (Emily 1, in the photo above), who lived during the civil war and saw the invention of the telephone and light bulb; my grandmother, Emily White Wood (Emily 2), who lived through both World Wars and was part of the first group of women in the U.S. to vote; my mother, Emily Wood Underhill (Emily 3), who saw the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Roe vs. Wade; And me, Emily White Luchetti (Emily 4), who would be their host.

When I was growing up, Emily wasn’t a popular name, but I liked it for that reason, to be different. I don’t remember meeting another Emily outside of my family until I was in college. I was also proud to have a family name and have always felt a self-imposed responsibility to live up to it. Emily comes from the Latin Aemulu, meaning industrious or eager. There’s no greater genetic probability that I have more things in common with the Emilys than my other relatives, but I can’t help but want to see first-hand if I do.

In my mind, at the lunch, we are all in our 60s. That’s my age now and an age at which we all have some life experience to reflect on. The lunch begins with a reception of Veuve Clicqout rosé Champagne. Then, I present a gift to each. For my mother, her American National Red Cross Nursing Pin with its gold edge and predominate red cross. For my grandmother, her multi colored World War I Land Army pin, with its border of fruits and vegetables, a crossed hoe, shovel, and rake and bundles of wheat. And for my great-great-great grandmother, the necklace that she wore on her wedding day, pearls barely the size of mustard seeds. I help her put it on as my mother and grandmother proudly put on their pins, and there is a proud, quiet pause.

On small silver platters I had polished myself, I pass appetizers of gazpacho served in the demitasse cups from my collection of about fifty, each unique, given to me by my godmothers over the years, and mini grilled cheese sandwiches with California Teleme cheese and fresh thyme on thinly sliced sourdough. As we begin to eat, I ask them their favorite ice cream flavor and what was something in their life that gave them meaning. (My answers are coffee chip and my curiosity to learn new things.)

Over a salad of arugula, endive, red little gems and avocado tossed with a vinaigrette made of three parts olive oil to one part sherry vinegar and a touch of Dijon mustard, I apologize to Emily 1 for the condition of her wedding necklace. I explain that it has been in a box in my dresser drawer for decades. A few years ago I took it to a jeweler to be restrung but he said it was too delicate and that no one would take the time. I vowed to restring it myself but have never gotten to it. Then I ask her who gave it to her. Once she tells use the story, I turn to my mother and ask why, given that she and my grandmother also each wore it for their wedding, it was not offered to me at the time of mine? It occurs to me that she did and that I chose not to wear it. But I don’t think so.

As we eat the main course of wild King salmon with a warm sabayon, I explain it’s a dish I made when I was twenty-four and cooking professionally in France. The sabayon, in particular, I prepared so many times at Pangaud’s Restaurant outside Paris that by the end of service each night my arm would hang limply by my side, exhausted from whisking. I tell them Peter and I raise Dorper lambs in Northern California and even if it’s the best lamb they’ll ever taste I chose not to serve it for our lunch as it would have been too heavy. I thank Emily 2 for letting me share her nickname, Emmy, but then, on my mother’s behalf, ask her how she had convinced herself it was okay to read my mother’s teenage letters, discovered by the powder sprinkled in the envelopes by my mother that dusted the floor. I will ask her how her life changed after the 1929 stock market crash when she and my grandfather lost the bulk of their savings that they never recovered. Did she ever again travel with the Louis Vuitton trunk stamped 52, the one she had taken to Cuba on their honeymoon, that I now use as a side table? And I would have to ask for the story behind the Flow blue punch bowl at the center of our lunch table. Was the family rumor true—did she only pay twenty-five dollars for it? I ask her the secret to her hot fudge sauce recipe as I have never been able to get it quite right. My version is always grainy and I want to like it, but I can’t.

For dessert, I present my favorite summer dessert, my summer pudding, which I made at Stars each year. I describe how, the day before, I had slathered brioche slices with a cooked compote of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries and layered them with more berry juices in a pan. Overnight, it was weighted down with a cast iron pan. Once I serve a portion to everyone, we pass the bowl of whipped cream among ourselves. I watch to see if Emily 1 takes a generous dollop from the bowl and drops it on her summer pudding. I need to counteract my image of her stern face in the small painting hanging in my closet into one of unmistakable joy. I study each Emily and wonder who, if any of them, I physically resemble. I think of the portrait I have of my grandmother at twenty-one and how let down I feel when people see it and comment how much my sister looks like her with no mention of any resemblance to me.

With everyone settled into their summer pudding, I zero in on my mother. I ask about her engagement before she met my father, something I only learned years after she died. Then I ask her how she felt giving up her nursing career to marry my father. I ask about her experience with menopause to see if it mirrors mine. Then I will thank her for not pestering me to have children and for letting me be whoever I wanted to be, even when that took me across the country to live.

At the end of the meal, with coffee I serve my homemade chocolate and explain the cacao beans are from the Dominican Republic, at a farm where the Bicknell’s Thrush migrates each winter from New England. I tell of my visit there, where I got to see cacao harvested, fermented, and dried. I explain that roasting cacao beans is determined part by science and part by instinct and that learning to make chocolate from beans is a frustrating, mesmerizing, and addictive process. I add that the challenge inspired me to write poetry, which seems crazy given my overly pragmatic self.

That night in bed, after the Emilys have left with jars of my apricot jam, I think about the opportunities to talk to the two Emilys I knew, my grandmother and mother, that I missed in my life. My grandparents lived eight hours away by car, much too long of a drive for them to make on their own, and we only visited them for a short period in the summer. When I did see my grandmother, the week was full of going to the beach, the Good Humor Man, and riding her bike around the small town. She sent occasional postcards to me, but they were limited to, I hope you have a happy birthday or Hello, written simply to excite a ten-year old receiving her first mail. During high school I barely remember seeing her and when I did it was among a large group of relatives. She died when I was a freshman in college just at the point, I’d like to believe now, I would have begun to become more interested in her as a person with experiences and wishes of her own, not just as a grandmother. In hindsight, I should have before then, especially when I became a teenager, but perhaps I need to give myself a break and recognize it simply was because we weren’t around each other enough.

My mother, of course, was around. Both she and my father were loving and supportive, but beyond current events and politics where all sides were discussed, conversations weren’t revealing. They’d correct us when we did something wrong, be the first to compliment us when we accomplished something, but we never talked about who we were or why we were. It was never stated, but it did seem like the rule was that my siblings and I weren’t supposed to take up much space with feelings, either good or bad. Blend in, don’t draw attention to yourself. My parents had specific and strict expectations set on them by their parents, which they resented but mostly fulfilled, so, I expect, in an attempt to avoid placing such unwanted obligations on their children, they swung the other way. We were never told what direction our lives should take. And when they did make suggestions, they didn’t make thundering edicts but were clever. When, for example, I told my parents I wanted to take a year or so off between high school and college, they said that was fine but that they might not have the money in the future so, if I wanted them to pay for it, I shouldn’t wait.

After college, when I was on my own financially, my mother explained that our relationship should from then on be one of adults, not mother/daughter. Don’t bring your laundry to my house, she said, and I won’t bring mine to yours. Even today I’m not totally sure what that might mean, metaphorically, what she didn’t want to know about, but she wouldn’t give unsolicited advice and would not interfere if I did something she disagreed with. This wasn’t that different from how our interaction had always been, but it did give me the freedom to feel less guilty what I decided to move across the country to California, work in restaurants with little time off, and as a result to not visit them more than once a year for a decade.

My mother and I did grow closer after my father died and later when she got cancer. She shared how lonely she felt when a couple would pick her up to go out for dinner and she’d be alone in the back seat. But she would also never be in another relationship. When she was sick, we were together a lot, as I was her main gate keeper, allowing visitors she wanted to see and making excuses for those she did not. But there was still a privacy line with her I didn’t cross. The day before she died she told my siblings and I to burn the love letters between her and our father without reading them. I was tempted to open them but we did as she asked. She did give me the gift of showing how it’s possible to die with dignity and humor, not bitterness and anger. Maybe if she had lived longer than sixty-nine we both would have divulged more. On my end, I know I don’t open up easily to others and don’t want to take up other people’s time with my issues.

I envy my friends who have older female relatives to cook or have a cocktail or play cards with, to show off a new haircut to, to ask for advice or about a family story one more time. It isn’t loneliness that I feel, as I have friends and other family I value and spend time with. It feels more like a missing connection, not just to individuals but to a lineage of women I feel a part of but had scarce access to. And as much as I want to spend time with them, I want them to spend time with me.

After my restless night, for breakfast the next morning I cook an over easy ranch egg and warm, leftover roasted carrots and shiitakes. I remove one of the Wedgewood bowls from the cabinet and spoon in the vegetables, then gently place the egg on top. After a sprinkling Maldon salt, I choose a fork monogrammed with Emily on the handle and break the yolk. I do not set the table, but eat standing at the kitchen counter. I’m grateful for this dish and utensil, along with all those that are in my possession. They are my link to these women. While I might want more, they are what I have and it must be sufficient.

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