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AS A COLLEGE STUDENT MAKING HOLIDAY visits home in the 1970s, I first stopped in the basement to open a cavernous chest freezer and peek inside, hoping to spot frozen reminders of a great dinner party—creme de menthe parfaits, fudge cake, or yeast rolls. I climbed the steps to the kitchen where the dogs waited for supper, a neighbor sat on a stool at our speckled Formica counter, and my mother’s cherished beige rotary-dial telephone—with a cord so long it could extend out of the kitchen through the dining room and into the front hallway for private conversations—waited silently on the wall. That was before cell phones, call waiting, or answering machines. If you called someone but they were talking on the phone, you heard a repetitive busy signal, an annoying beep-beep-beep, telling you to call back. No surprise when years later after we moved home from England and lived briefly with my parents, my mother pulled me aside with a serious look. “My telephone,” she began, “I guess you’ll be needing to use my telephone.” While cell phones had been invented since the early 1970s, in the early ‘90s they weren’t common and you paid by the minute to talk. Yes, I was hoping to use her phone and hadn’t dreamed the one thing she loved most when three daughters left the house was to have the phone all to herself.
The fifth of five girls, my mom must have arrived out of the womb talking. She not only kept up with her older sisters, the Carr girls as they were known in Nashville, but gaggles of friends drawn to her frankness, gentle humor, and listening ear. Everyone remembered phone numbers back then. Ours was 269-3559. You memorized lest you pull out ‘’the book,’’ the weighty telephone book that listed everyone in town by name with address and phone. (As I recall, Julia Child was listed in the Cambridge, Massachusetts telephone book. No one had any privacy, and area codes were only used for long distance calls.) My mother talked on the phone from the moment she awakened to just before bedtime. She had morning callers like Aunt Louise and nighttime chats with Cousin Joe. It pained her if the phone rang during dinner because even though she had promised my father she wouldn’t answer it while we ate, those were the days before voicemail and it wasn’t that she was expecting news and more that she didn’t want to miss out on any news. If my sisters and I were anticipating a male caller you can bet if we ran to the phone to be the first to answer it, the caller asked, ‘’Where’s Bebe?’’ Bebe, my mom, was the most popular girl in our house.
What did she talk about? Us. Her daughters. Her mother who didn’t need to be driving anymore. A country music star’s mistress who moved in up the street. A dog that wouldn’t stop sleeping on her new white sofa. A latest episode of Days of Our Lives. How many cousins were coming for Thanksgiving. And her fudge cake recipe. Later she would talk about her cancer treatments, but that was to Louise and Charlot, her confidantes. They knew it all. I walked into my kitchen over the weekend and instinctively pulled out her fudge cake recipe time-splattered with chocolate. I grabbed the yellow Pyrex bowl that had belonged to her mother, made sure to use salted butter as everyone did back then, and chopped unsweetened chocolate for melting gently on the stove.
This is a chewy, fudgy recipe she’d make off the top of her head. It’s something she’d have in the oven when we came home from college or in the freezer waiting for us to just thaw and eat. This past Christmas, my husband had our old family movies transferred to digital. To see that 1999 New Year’s Eve dinner when my parents came to live with us, to hear my mother laughing at the table with my young children, sister, and cousin, I could feel the joy as if it were still happening. The soothing softness of her voice and the way she drew out syllables in a Middle Tennessee cadence was a melody to my ears. Recently I read that hearing your mother’s voice reduces stress levels, and I believe that’s true. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had 68 girls ages 7.5 to 12 years experience a stressful situation completing math and verbal problems for 15 minutes in front of an audience. Then, the girls either spoke to their moms in person, spoke over the phone, texted their moms, or had no contact with them. Those who spoke to their moms in person or on the phone had higher oxytocin (feel good) and lower cortisol (stress) levels than the texters and no-contact group. They benefitted in hearing their mom’s voice.
Today my relationship with the ringing telephone is less of a lifeline and more of an annoyance. I switched my phone setting to silent mode six months ago while on book tour and have never gone back. I’m not my mother’s daughter when it comes to talking on the phone, but then we have text messaging and email today. Depending on the caller I can be on and off in minutes or let the conversation linger like a slow dance. Phone calls while safely driving are one of my favorite diversions because they transport you miles on the highway as you talk through situations you wouldn’t have the patience for at home. One friend who shall not be named once talked me from Murfreesboro, Tennessee to Kennesaw, Georgia. That’s about three hours, and I was the one to finally end the call. My mother passed more than 20 years ago. She would have been 100 years this December. I remember her on Mother’s Day and pretty much every day. There’s so much I’d love to ask her now. With today’s goings on in America, it’s easy to get discouraged. Mother to daughter, I’d give anything to hear her perspective. As the fudge cake baked in my oven, I knew those smells. They permeated my kitchen, hallways, and my mind. They were a much-needed diversion from the morning news. Recipes do that. Then I cut a warm square and turned my phone sound back on to not miss a call. Happy Mother’s Day… - xo, Anne What’s your favorite food memory of mom? What recipe takes your mind off the news?
THE RECIPE: Bebe’s Fudge CakeFudge cake should bake up crackly on top but smooth and creamy inside. It’s an old recipe where the eggs provide the leavening, so no baking powder is needed. While my mom made this cake in a 13-by 9-inch pan and baked it for about 25 to 30 minutes, I use a smaller pan and bake it longer for chunkier squares. In simple recipes like this it’s the little things that make a difference. Like the flour. Use a soft one such as cake flour. My sister uses King Arthur’s gluten-free Measure for Measure and says the texture is like a flourless chocolate cake. I bake this recipe with Kerrygold salted butter and Ghirardelli unsweetened chocolate although my mother would have used Baker’s. I cut back her recipe by 1/4 cup sugar, but I did prep the pan as she would have—with the butter wrapper and a teaspoon or two of flour. These are old-school, cakey brownies as comfortable in squares at a picnic as they are on a dessert plate with a scoop of peppermint ice cream. Makes 9 to 16 squares
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