By July begins, and the household has found its post-lockdown rhythm — not normal, not the old normal, but a rhythm that accommodates Robert's retirement, Ruth's masked presence, the library's tentative reopening plans, and the particular anxiety that living with a high-risk person during a pandemic produces, which is the anxiety of a woman who washes her hands fifty times a day and who considers every visitor a potential vector and who loves the people she is protecting with a love that has become indistinguishable from fear.
Robert's retirement has been good for Mama. He spends mornings with her now — not Ruth-mornings but Robert-mornings, which are different: quieter, less clinical, more companionable. He reads to her from the newspaper (she doesn't follow the content but she follows the cadence of his voice, the baritone that has argued cases in courtrooms and that now reads obituaries and weather forecasts with the same measured authority). He walks with her in the garden. He shows her his woodworking projects and she touches the wood and says, "Smooth," and the word is both an observation and a compliment, and Robert receives both.
Carrie is packing for Emory. The packing is happening in stages — the books first (always the books first; she is my daughter), then the clothes, then the Japanese artifacts (the calligraphy brush, the ink stone, the prints she bought in New York). The room is slowly emptying, and the emptying is both physical and emotional — the walls becoming bare, the shelves becoming empty, the room becoming a room instead of Carrie's room, and the transition from named to unnamed is the transition I am trying not to feel but that I feel anyway, in the space between the ribs, where losses live.
I called Joy every day this week. The calls are short — Joy's attention span for phone calls is approximately three minutes — but the shortness is not brevity but completeness: Joy says everything she needs to say in three minutes, and the everything is "I'm painting" and "Diane is my friend" and "When are you coming?" and the three sentences are her entire world, reported fully, delivered with the confidence of a woman who considers her world sufficient and who is right.
I made Mama's pickled shrimp — the July appetizer, the cold dish that belongs to summer the way pecan pie belongs to fall. The shrimp marinate in vinegar and lemon and bay leaves and onion, and the marinating takes twenty-four hours, and the twenty-four hours are patient and the result is worth the patience, which is a sentence I have written before and will write again because it is the sentence that governs my life.
Pickled shrimp takes twenty-four hours, and I didn’t have twenty-four hours of patience left in me this particular July — not with Carrie’s shelves emptying and the house rearranging itself around her absence. So I turned to the other make-ahead appetizer I keep in my summer rotation: a party cheese ball, mixed and shaped and left to firm in the refrigerator overnight, which asks the same thing of you that the shrimp does — trust the process, step away, let time do what effort cannot. It’s the kind of recipe Mama would have recognized instantly, something passed from hand to hand at every summer table I’ve ever sat at, and making it felt like a small, familiar act of continuity in a week that needed one.
Party Cheese Balls
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes + 8 hours chilling | Servings: 12
Ingredients
- 2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
- 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 3 green onions, finely chopped
- 1 cup finely chopped pecans, divided
- Crackers or sliced vegetables, for serving
Instructions
- Mix the base. In a large bowl, beat the softened cream cheese until smooth. Add the shredded cheddar, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne pepper. Stir until thoroughly combined.
- Add the mix-ins. Fold in the green onions and 1/2 cup of the chopped pecans until evenly distributed throughout the mixture.
- Shape the balls. Divide the mixture in half. Using clean hands or plastic wrap, shape each half into a ball. Place each ball on a sheet of plastic wrap and wrap tightly.
- Chill. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours, or overnight. This is the step that cannot be rushed — the chilling firms the cheese and lets the flavors settle into each other.
- Coat and serve. Spread the remaining 1/2 cup of chopped pecans on a flat plate. Unwrap each cheese ball and roll it firmly in the pecans, pressing gently so they adhere. Serve immediately with crackers or vegetables, or return to the refrigerator wrapped until ready to serve.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 210 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 19g | Carbs: 4g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 230mg