Mix Tape

“Shhhhhhhhhh!”

My exasperated, whispered command to be quiet is the loudest sound on the cassette tape. Repeatedly.

Through the whir of the nearly 40-year-old tape, I can hear the giggles of my younger brothers fade beneath the laugh track. Marie Osmond is singing about how she’s a little bit country, and her brother Donny is responding that he’s a little bit rock’n’roll. I hear the shuffling click that signifies a commercial break, abruptly followed by the resumption of the intro music and laugh track.

***

tape-recorderIt’s just before 8:00 on a Friday evening in the fall of 1977, and 11-year-old me is crouched on the shag carpeting in the family room of the house on Mt. Vernon Drive. While my mom, dad, and brothers lounge comfortably on the sectional couch behind me, I zealously guard the channel and volume dials of the console color television like it’s my job. My fingers are poised over the play and record buttons of the cassette recorder. As the clock strikes eight, I press down.

I am living in a time long ago and far away, before the proliferation of remote control devices or video cassette recorders or cable television. The likelihood of a member of my family storming the TV to change the channel from ABC to one of the three other options is unlikely. But I am not taking any chances.

There are six days and 23 hours between now and when the next Donny and Marie Show episode will air. By that time, I will have memorized the script and the songs of this one—and every shushing sound I make. From the opening musical number and ice-skating routine through the corny skits to the farewell strains of “May tomorrow be a perfect day,” I will have replayed in my head the images on the screen over and over. And over.

***

It’s August 1984, and nearly 18-year-old me is crouched on the shag carpeting next to the stereo system in my bedroom. This state-of-the-art piece of technology allows me to play a vinyl record or an eight-track or cassette tape. It also gives me the option to record from LP to cassette without the interference of outside noise.

mix-tapeI unwrap a blank cassette and click it into the front-loading slot. I press the play and record buttons just before dropping the needle into the groove of Supertramp’s Breakfast in America LP. I hum along with “The Logical Song” and “Goodbye Stranger” as I clutch my blue ballpoint pen and painstakingly copy the playlist from the record jacket to the lined cassette cover.

A growing stack of freshly recorded tapes is piling up on the floor next to the radio/cassette “boom box” I will be taking with me for my freshman year of college. My dorm room will not be large enough to hold my growing record collection, let alone a turntable.

There is a token Donny and Marie Show tape at the bottom of the stack, beneath Prince’s Purple Rain, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., and Tina Turner’s Private Dancer. I will listen to that one when my roommate is not around.

***

It’s late June afternoon in 2006, and I have set up my laptop computer on my parents’ kitchen table, where I can enjoy the breeze wafting through the screen door. Mom is napping in her bedroom, recovering from her latest chemo treatment. Dad is on the golf course, taking a break from his nursing duties, and my brother and niece will be joining us for dinner in a little while. I am taking a break from laundry and food prep.

My iTunes library is displayed on the laptop screen, and I make a selection from the stack of compact discs from my parents’ collection—greatest hits compilations from Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, Anne Murray, Kris Kristofferson, Helen Reddy, and Tom Jones. These are the CDs my brothers and I have given to my mom and dad for Christmas over the years, meant to replace worn vinyl LPs with their scratches and skips. This music—in addition to Supertramp, Culture Club, Billy Joel, and my extensive Osmond discography—is the soundtrack of my childhood.

I click a Carpenters disc into the CD drive of my computer and select “yes” to begin importing the tracks.

I walk over to the refrigerator, pulling out the makings for a salad. I chop cucumbers and tomatoes to the accompaniment of Karen Carpenter’s soothing voice. I shred lettuce to the melancholy strains of “Yesterday Once More.”

***

Amy bio YAH

Dublin Lamb Stew

Nine months after my college graduation, I find myself living with my parents, looking for work, trying to write more frequently, de-cluttering my room, and generally freaking out about life. It is a time of uncertainty, a time that requires more patience than I have.

The lamb stew I am cooking for St. Patrick’s Day takes patience, too. Lamb—trimmed of excess fat and cut into 2-inch cubes—simmers with beer, some spices, and broth for at least an hour before I can add the cubed potatoes and sliced carrots. I start early in the afternoon so that the stew will be ready for my family’s 6 o’clock dinner hour. As it cooks, the stew fills the kitchen with a meaty smell. Its taste, when we finally sit down to dinner, is rich, with a hint of thyme and a ghost of wheat from the beer. My family’s silence indicates their approval.

Deciding to make lamb stew was not so much a whim as a nostalgic gesture to the weekend I spent in Ireland three years ago. It was the end of my semester studying abroad. Four girlfriends and I had arranged our flights to stay over in Ireland for the weekend. After a jaunt to Galway, the Cliffs of Moher, and the shrine at Knock, we returned to Dublin for a farewell dinner to Europe. We chose what the hostel employee told us was the oldest pub in Ireland—The Brazen Head—partly for its history and partly because it was only a short walk away. A waitress seated us at a battered wood table in the pub’s squashed and dimly lit interior.

IMG_2325Four months abroad had felt like a lifetime; we were ready to return to American soil and our families. Yet, at the same time, we were overflowing with the exhilaration of seeing the world, of being young, of having friends, and of being more or less carefree. We ordered Guinness and raised a glass: to friendship, to Ireland, to life.

When the time came to order our food, I knew I had to try a truly Irish dish. I chose the lamb stew. Ladled into a wide-rimmed, white bowl, it came with a scoop of mashed potatoes floating on top. Crusty brown bread was served on the side, slathered in butter, which of course I dipped in the stew, soaking up all of its delicious gravy. My friend, Allison, also ordered the lamb stew and together we reveled in its heartiness, while the other girls enjoyed beef and Guinness stew, another Irish favorite.

Stew, in all its forms, although hearty and flavorful, is a rather unremarkable dish. What was it about the Dublin lamb stew that captured my attention so that it stands forth in my mind as a dish worth recreating?

I felt whole during that weekend in Ireland. Now that I had seen places that before I had only read about, the world seemed smaller. Anything was possible. I could go anywhere. I could meet anyone. I could do anything.

Perhaps, subconsciously, it is that feeling of potentiality I am seeking to recapture as I cook lamb stew for my family this St. Patrick’s Day. A bubble of hope rises in my heart like those that rise to the top of my stew as it breaks into a gentle, rolling boil. Anything is possible.

*   *   *   *   *

IMG_6527 vig“Dublin Lamb Stew” is by Stasia Phillips, a writer and amateur cook who loves a delicious bowl of stew once in a while. Studying abroad in Austria for a semester opened her eyes to a whole world of flavors that she is slowly incorporating into her cooking repertoire. Stasia draws inspiration for her writing from nature, good books, her faith, and hazelnut coffee. You can find her blogging at “Cold Hands, Warm Heart.”

Movie Nights

I sometimes joke that I grew up thirty years before I was born. I was born in the early 80s, but most of my frequently watched movies and television shows are from decades earlier. As a child, my family rarely had cable, but we did have a large video collection. Most of the videos were carefully recorded from TV onto VHS tapes. Small white stickers with black numbers were dutifully placed on each tape and then entered into a handwritten index. We had indexes listing our movies both by alphabetical order and by number order.

This was mostly  my mother’s influence. She loved the old movies and the shows, many created even before her childhood. They made her laugh, and Mom has always clung to the things that bring her joy. I recently took a vacation with a friend to Niagara Falls and she honored my desire to re-visit these childhood memories by driving an hour out of the way to see a giant mural of one of Lucille Ball’s famous scenes on the side of a building in her hometown of Jamestown, NY.

Posing with a Lucy mural in Jamestown, NY. December 2015.

Posing with a Lucy mural in Jamestown, NY. December 2015.

On Friday nights in my childhood, my two brothers and I would spread our sleeping bags on the patchwork-brown linoleum in the living room for family movie night. On the kitchen table Mom and Dad would put out Breyer’s vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, cool whip, and often some type of candy or sprinkles. We’d build our traditional Friday-Night-Sundae and sit on top of our sleeping bags — ready to laugh along as Jerry Lewis belts out a (rather catchy) song about beans in At War With The Army. Or, we would giggle for the hundredth time at Lucy and Ethel as they shoveled chocolates into their mouths. Sometimes we’d invite friends over; sometimes it was just us. There are dozens of movies (and television shows) in my head that I remember with smiles for the way they filled my childhood with laughter.  

Other times, we’d watch the movies late into the night. My parents would delay bedtime and press play on an old favorite because the night was special. Once, I was laying on the couch, my head in my mother’s lap as she raked her fingers through my bangs. We were watching one of Martin and Lewis’ movies. I would glance up every time I heard her laugh to see the light in her eyes. There were days that it was hard for Mom to smile. Days where Depression did its best to keep her isolated and numb. But there were other days that stretched into the night where joy, and laughter, were present. Those were nights we celebrated and embraced the joy.

I used to wonder why we didn’t watch the movies on the sad days, so that they would bring the laughter. It took me into my young adult years to understand that the laughter came on the late nights because the clouds lifted, not because the movies penetrated them.

This Christmas my younger brother and I stood in our parents’ hallway and scanned the movie collection, laughing in recognition at some of our old favorites. Much of the family gathered around the television and put in Dean Jones’ Snowball Express (Dad’s favorite) and we all laughed along as Jones flew backwards down the mountain, on skis. A few days later we pulled out North Avenue Irregulars to keep us awake as we counted down to the New Year. Mom and my brother had tears in their eyes from their laughter as Cloris Leachman rammed her car into a mobster who had caused her to break her newly-manicured nails.  

Those late night movie watching parties where Mom joined us in the laughter are treasured memories, but as an adult I think the work of joy is more evident in the every-Friday-night routine. Mom set up that routine and maintained it. Despite her own struggles, she made sure there was joy and laughter in the house for her kids. A joy that still pays off for us all these years later.

 

***************************************

Nicole bio YAH