French Stew

    In childhood and much of my adult life, I lived in the shadows of shyness. Whether an innate personality trait or an offshoot of my retreat into a dark closet when Mother died, I cannot say, but the affliction nearly suffocated me in social and classroom settings. 

    The inner awkwardness was compounded by the outer visible response of my face turning beet red, a symptom known as blushing and I hated it. I lived in dread of the next time my face would let me down. Later in life I would overcome some of my shyness and eventually outgrow the turning-red syndrome, but only after some uncomfortable occurrences.

    In an oral book report incident in tenth grade English, as soon as I turned at the podium to face the class, I felt my cheeks light up, and I knew that my classmates and teacher could see my stage fright. Another memorable blushing episode happened when I worked for Aunt Bernice at the drapery shop one summer during high school.

    Almost every day at the shop, a UPS man came through the back door with supplies. One morning he noticed me, the new employee, sitting at the table sewing. He either said something about me to Aunt Bernice, loudly enough for me to hear, or directly to me. Either way, he had called attention to the one who wished to be invisible. I responded with my cheeks turning fiery red.

    Aunt Bernice witnessed my distress and took gentle control by telling the delivery man, "We think blushing is a virtue." My aunt sought to comfort me in my embarrassment. While I might not have known the full meaning of the word virtue at the time, I knew that she had said something nice about me. Notably, she used the collective "we" instead of the singular "I," pointing out that everyone -- not just her -- thinks that blushing is a virtue. 

    More than ten years later in my late twenties, I called on Aunt Bernice to help me with my wedding dress. I had taken on the project of sewing it myself. Why I went down that road is a potential case study in abnormal psychology, but for the sake of brevity here, I pursue that no further. Asking my aunt to help me with the fit also rustled up an excuse to visit. When I had almost finished the dress, I bundled up the yardage of satin and lace and drove to her house, the one she moved to after Spring Garden Street.

    When I arrived she opened the door and said to me, "So, you think you need a man." Somewhat put on the spot to defend my upcoming nuptials, I responded with, "I don't need a man; I want one." Today I would gladly give up chocolate to recall more of that conversation, for those few words alone could be the basis for yet another case study in psychology, or an interesting opening for a paperback novel.

    When we had finished pinning and pinching the dress, she took me through the new house I had not seen before. Down the hall in one of the bedrooms we came to an unmade bed. She explained it away by saying that her granddaughter Chrissie had spent the previous night. "I don't care that she didn't make the bed," she said. "I'm just glad she came."

    As I prepared to leave, my aunt sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a recipe for French Stew. For nearly forty years, the white index card has been folded in a small metal box with other favorite recipes. More times than I can count, button mushrooms and stew beef have tasted mighty fine, especially with a glimpse of Aunt Bernice in the back of my mind.

    She is responsible for several of my firsts:  My first trip to Cellar Anton's and my first veal Parmesan (she took everyone in the drapery shop out to lunch); my first movie in a theater (she invited me to spend a week with Ellen and treated us to Thomasina); my first meal at S&K Cafeteria (prior to the movie and possibly my first restaurant meal ever); and my first job.

    In the depths of my long ago, I can still uncover remnants of traipsing through the grand Victorian on Spring Garden Street, of climbing its wide staircase to the roomy bedrooms upstairs, playing dress-up with my younger cousin Ellen, and my older one Bea Kay at the kitchen stove cooking my first buttery fried banana. I can see the cluttered workroom with bolts of fabric lining the walls and folds of cloth stacked on the floor, spools of thread in every color of the rainbow and more, and Aunt Bernice, ever kind, ever gracious, simply going about her day sewing curtains, as she sowed a legacy for us to behold.