In Praise of Weird Moms

The ones who make their own chop suey and Christmas trees

My mother, not in the kitchen.

If the popularity of Mother’s Day brunch is any indication, something we most honor about our mothers—the imperative to nourish—is what we seek to deny on their special day. That is, our gift to them is a day free of presumed drudgery in the kitchen. By contrast, Father’s Day is often observed with a gift of cooking utensils—namely, barbecue gear—because “dad cooking” is fun, and outdoors, and vaguely dangerous.^[1]

Our mothers’ daily cooking, like daily anything, can be unexciting; its virtue is keeping us from a childhood diet of orange-colored snacks and sugar water. But the image of an aproned mama, or grandma, serving forth homemade dinners is perhaps second only to Christ-on-the-cross in Western iconography, especially here in Italy. The familiar can be boring, even when venerated.

My own mother, who never worked outside our middle-class suburban home, was an accomplished and adventurous home cook. Although her lifetime overseas travel itinerary consisted of four days each in London and Paris, she regularly whipped up Chinese-ish chop suey,^[2] relatively Russian beef stroganoff, sort-of-Swiss fondue, and any number of Italian “noodle” dishes, there being no pasta in Midwest America in those innocent days.

In my mind I can readily conjure images of her, in an apron of hot pink and orange (her favorite colors), setting out platters of Thanksgiving turkeys and pumpkin pies. But more commonly I picture her whirling hollandaise sauce in a blender to accompany steamed artichokes, her dinner-party showstopper.

In short she was following the latest cooking trends—straight out of fancy New York magazines back when magazines mattered—with enthusiasm and curiosity.

She never made any dishes from her own mother, having grown up in a severely dysfunctional inner-city Detroit home of Slovak immigrant parents named Joseph and Mary. Joe was generally drunk and checked out, which made him the better parent. Mary was a sadistic manic depressive who beat my mother (the baby of three daughters) every Sunday after returning from Mass, apparently taking the wrong inspiration from those images of flagellated martyrs.

In a career move inconceivable today, Mom left home, and the whip, at age 14, moved to Toledo and became a dance instructor. (Thanks for teaching me how to waltz, Mom.) She once told me that she was a virgin upon meeting my father in her mid-20s because in the Detroit ’hood there was no access to birth control, and getting pregnant meant the rest of your life married to a dull and possibly alcoholic factory worker like your dad.

She had in mind something else. Anything else. College was not an option but library books were, and she inhaled them—the usual bestsellers of the era like Doctor Zhivago but also psychology, European military history and anything about art and culture.

Mom made her own Christmas trees.

Thanks to her, our family’s version of suburban life showed signs of mild resistance. On a block of traditional Cape Cods, Dutch colonials and faux Tudors, our house was mid-century modern, all glass and overhangs. That was more a reflection of my dad’s taste as a former furniture designer for Herman Miller,^[3] but the Japanese rock garden instead of a boring lawn was Mom’s, as well as her hot-pink-and-orange interior designs.

She got out of the house. While working at the local city arts council—fundraising to commission a public sculptural installation by Alexander Calder—she became friends with Françoise Gilot, the artist who, apart from her own distinguished career, had two children and a decade-long relationship with Picasso, 40 years her senior.^[4] Her bestselling book about their love affair enraged Pablo. Naturally Mom had a signed copy, which I now treasure.

Original art by Françoise Gilot.

Much weirder was Mom’s decades-long friendship with the flamboyantly gay comedian Rip Taylor (they met at one of his nightclub shows and somehow hit it off), who had no family of his own and regularly flew in from Vegas to spend Christmas with us. He too loved to cook, often taking over our kitchen and filling the house with smoke as he pan-fried pork chops. He and Mom both died in 2019.

Today I never cook anything my mother made, not even her excellent but mild chili, which she made with ground beef and kidney beans (sorry Texas). Her kitchen lesson to me was not what she cooked but that she cooked, and that it was only one side of her life. She is always at my own side, in the kitchen and on the dance floor, even though I rarely do fondue, or the waltz.

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^[1] Does anyone still give Dad a tie?

^[2] The origins of chop suey are disputed but it was probably invented by Chinese restaurant cooks in San Francisco in the 19^th century.

^[3] The Michigan manufacturer of iconic mid-century furniture such as the Eames fiberglass bucket chair.

^[4] Their daughter is the jewelry designer Paloma Picasso. Gilot, who later married Jonas Salk, died in 2023 at age 101.