You Can’t Go Home Again or
This Bacon Ain’t Talkin’
by Catheryn J. Brockett


Whoever said you can’t go home again was incorrect.  You can go home again.  I was just there.  Three two nine Bowline Court, Severna Park, Maryland.  For the big annual Fourth of July celebration.

It’s late – and I’m digging through my parents’ fridge to see what I can come up with because the only food I available on my flight from LA was a mini-snack pack.  My father is standing at the sliding glass door – glass of wine in hand.

“Do you know why the side of the pyramid on the one dollar bill is blank?” he says.  He is looking out into the darkness towards the cove as if the pyramid is there in front of him.

“Um, no.”

“Neither do I.”

I think he does – but he has forgotten and I wonder if he knows it's because he's been drinking.  “Waffles,” he then announces, “tomorrow morning – 8:00 a.m.!” and he’s off to bed.

Great.  Attendance is mandatory for the making of the Belgian Waffles – because it is “quality family time.”  “Quality time” in my family is defined as any time spent in the approximate or same location involved in the same or a similar activity.  I think this is why our first and last annual grown-up family vacation was a cruise.  Seven days and six nights of “quality family time” where we barely had to see each other.  The only person I managed to bond with on the trip was Solange – our Jamaican room attendant – but he knew how to fold the bathroom towels into animals.  I do however know we all had a good time because I overheard my mother calling friends from ports telling them what a nice family vacation we were having.

The high-pitched whine of the brown and yellow Sunbeam mixer begins just before 8:00 a.m.  This is the sound of my father “whipping” egg yolks.  Any cook will tell you – you can’t really whip egg yolks, whites, yes, yolks – not really.  But the steps of this recipe will not be deviated from – not at any cost – because if the world famous Belgian waffles do not turn out perfectly my father will be furious with himself.  He’ll stomp his foot and say “damn!”  My father is not real big on mistakes.  He used to tell me that there was never a reason to get a wrong answer on a spelling test because it is the only test where you are given all the answers before hand.  Well it’s true.

So the mixer starts just before 8:00 – no matter how many times I’ve mentioned to my father that it is not yet 5:00 a.m. my time.  I hustle downstairs passing around him at his post at the counter – beaters whirring over the congealed yellow mass of yolks that sit at the bottom of the stainless steel bowl – because yolks don’t whip.  I try to think of something clever to say about what time it is on the West Coast to fend off the impending comment about me being “just a little bitchy in the morning” while attempting to get to the plates and cups from the corner cabinet to their places before he gets to say,

“Well someone could set the table,” in a tone that sounds like he is, after all, doing the hard part.

My older sister who has come up from Sarasota drifts in.  It is her job to contribute absolutely nothing to the process while taking up as much space in the kitchen as possible.  Beth is the pretty one.  She has always been obsessed with diet and exercise and seems even more frantically so these days because the new anti-depressants she is on have caused her once fantastic body to bloat.  She is always trying to push “healthier food options” on my parents.  This year it is fake bacon.

So as my father reaches in the fridge for some kind of meat my sister makes a face and says in her little girlie voice, “No – I want fake bacon, fake bacon!” and pushes past him to pull a happy looking bright green package from the refrigerator.

My mother wanders into the kitchen.  Fresh from the shower she has a small roll brush perched in the front of her hair like a single defiant curler.

“Does any one need anything from BJ’s?”  BJ’s is the East coast version of Costco and as I think of what toiletries I need to stock up on and what will fit into my suitcase my sister makes an announcement:  A man – who is she is “definitely not seeing” – will be flying up for the weekend.  His name is Doug but I only ever hear her use his name once because the rest of the time she calls him “Six Kids” – because, well – he has six kids.  He is “just a friend” not a “marriage prospect” – because – he has six kids – and his stupid soon-to-be ex-wife won’t let him see them this weekend so he will be joining us.

Great – I think of running into this man on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  I ask where he is going to stay.

“Oh – he’s getting a hotel room – but what does it matter – Daddy already thinks I’m a slut.”

The beaters are still going – but now, thank God on the whites – so they can just pretend they don’t hear this.

“Do you need toothpaste?  BJ’s has good deals on toothpastes,” Mom chirps.  My father scrapes the sides of the mixing bowl.

I check their faces for clues – fully expecting not to find anything – after all this was a pretty amateur attempt on my sister’s part – only a very small cry for their attention.  Her bigger efforts – the nervous breakdowns – the suicide attempts hardly cause a ripple – they don’t like problems.  I was smart enough to give up years ago – what did she think they’d changed now that they are retired?  Silly Beth – did she forget her medication this morning?

Although my mother has already left the room, deftly changing the strategic position of the roll brush on the way out, my father speaks in her direction,

“Well I have too much yard work left to do.”

When any uncomfortable situation arises he disappears further into the yard.  I wonder when he’ll start mowing the neighbor’s lawn.  He is also building a large stone wall out by the garden.  I am amazed that even he can’t see the metaphor in this.

My sister carefully peels a strip of bacon from the package and warns, “You have to watch very carefully or the fake bacon will burn.”  I wonder how she can tell as I look at what appears to be strips of salmon pink play dough laying in the pan.  There are ribbons of creamy white color artfully added to enhance its bacon like appearance.  I think the fake food people are making a mistake because making it look like the real thing raises your expectations.  If it was say – grey and clearly marked miserable soy-based breakfast product substitute than it wouldn’t be so disappointing.  She stands over the pan intensely watching as it definitely does not sizzle.

When the “World Famous Belgian Waffles” are finished we all sit around the table – my younger brother the last to arrive to complete the family picture because since he has been born again he is usually busy with Christ until just before the first waffle hits the table.

They are indeed perfection – crunchy, eggy and rich.  And light as air.

We all make appropriately complimentary comments about the waffles to my father and after receiving waffle accolades we have nothing to say to each other.  We don’t really know each other.  I’m pretty sure we don’t even like each other.  No one addresses the uncomfortableness of the room.

My sister crunches loudly – clearly prepared to defend her cartoon bacon.

And I laugh from the end of the table before I know it because suddenly I am angry – really angry at my fake bacon – for pretending its real.  I want to yell at the bacon –

“Oh bacon – you’re not foolin’ anybody!  You taste like the cooked plastic wrapper from a slice of processed cheese – that’s right – I said I’ve tasted packaging that tastes better than you and yet you sit there – all smug and baconlike – like you have no worries in the world – doesn’t it bother you?  How can you be happy knowing there is real bacon out there and you are just a sad empty imitation?  Stupid – stupid fake bacon!”

But I can’t possibly say that to bacon–

Because if I did then bacon might say to me, “Me?  What about you?  You call that a “family” – a group of people with a shared understanding of who they are supposed to pretend to be – people without hurt or anger – and any therapist will tell you that – if you can’t feel like you can be real and be loved by your family then you will end up cracking like an egg one day?”

And I would have to say – “good try – but you, soy breakfast product, cannot possibly understand what the need for family feels like – it is unavoidable – it is like DNA – deep in my bones – and that it feels like the only thing that would be worse than this pretending would be missing it – to be somewhere else when Mom overcooks the pumpkin pie and the fire in the fireplace smells like home.

I would have to explain to bacon that we are doing this because we love each other the only way the know how to be.

And bacon cannot possibly understand all that, like – What a stupid – vague – unfixable thing to say – and I do need some fucking toothpaste.  So I say, “Hey, I’ll go to BJ’s with you, Mom,” and reach for another waffle square.

© 2005-08 Catheryn J. Brockett.  All rights reserved.