Holding memories

 Last night my youngest and I went to see the delayed by Covid, New York City live-in-person premier of a wonderful poignant funny film made by my friend Judith Helfand. 

You can watch the trailer above or watch the entire movie by clicking on this link Love & Stuff (well, only until November of this year).

Watching this movie that deals so much with the objects in our lives that carry the memories of people who are no longer with us was so right for me this week. 

I have spent two days this week making what for my family, for me are the touchstone foods of the High Holiday season. I made a big pot of tzimmis earlier this week.

I more or less followed the recipe I extracted from my mother during a very long digressive conversation more than thirty years ago.

I wrote out more explicit directions here. I am my mother's child so the directions are a bit digressive but it is hard to get tzimmis wrong as long as you have lots of meat and root vegetables cooked along with brown sugar and sour salt for a long long time.

In all honesty, I didn't make enough tzimmes, so it will be served as a side dish and not a main dish.

Today was stuffed cabbage day. I had steamed all of the cabbage leaves a couple of days ago which made assembly much easier. To my friend Anne from Quincy---yes with raisins, sorry.

I am writing this several hours after this photo was taken and the cabbage is still simmering away in the oven.

I was thinking last night that I pretty much have satisfied my need to connect with my no longer living parents through the big holiday cooking I do. And then I remembered the bag my husband brought home from our storage unit earlier in the week. 

He brought home a bag filled with my mother's textiles.

There was a collection of brand new, never used dishtowels to be put out when there was company.  Please allow me a digression, during my mother's Shiva I put out a dishtowel with the Remick's of Quincy price tag still on it. Remicks had been shuttered for several decades by the time my mother had died. These towels were more recent but still unused.

Also unused was this set of luncheon napkins I had made for my mother out of Liberty of London tana lawn backed with cotton batiste in slate blue

Continuing in the theme of saving for nice...

Was this set of beautiful hand woven placemats.  Actually one of them was used on the center of our kitchen table with a  ceramic vase of seasonal dried flowers in the center. Just one of the set was used. The other five napkins all have their original tags. 

The hand woven placemat replaced this little cloth which had the center of the table honors for several years before.

I don't know where this little cloth came from but I suspect that it is Scandinavian in origin. My mother's Hebrew name was Zipporah, bird so I suspect it may have been a gift .

Both the handwoven cloth and the bird cloth lived in the top center drawer of the dining room buffet that held our Shabbat candlesticks. Another resident of the drawer was 

the lace mantilla my mother wore when she lit candles.   I remember that this mantilla replaced a less elegant lace  head covering made out of a much lesser nylon lace. This is lace appliqued onto silk tulle.

The last item in this bundle from the past was

the shadow work dresser scarf that lived on my mother's dresser for all of my childhood. Seeing this piece---now yellowed, felt like a visit from my mother herself. I plan on giving the dresser scarf a good soak and restoring it to glory.

So returning to the topic of Judith's movie, Love & Stuff.  Not long after Judith's mother died she asked me to turn a bundle of her mother's scarves into a Jewish object to be used to wrap up her new baby at her baby naming.  You can see the piece in progress here and see it completed here. You will see the piece in the movie. ( Yes, I was filmed --twice but the movie isn't about me so I don't appear in the film.)