#15. I fill in the blanks: “Nothing cures_______ like________.
by storytellerisabel
I’m not homesick, exactly. Homesick is more like that time I went to Nature’s Classroom and missed Dad’s grilled cheese.*
And, I don’t know if there ARE any good towers to explore around here. The ancient wooden fire tower at West Lake is no Hogarts’ Astronomy Tower. I would love to climb that steep spiral staircase, pull on the iron ring-handled door leading out onto the crenellated ramparts, the parapet and all that. But that’s in a book. This is life.
What if I treat “unexplored tower” as a metaphor—a message about something else?
My mind wanders to Harry Potter and how sad I was when I finished the series…
All of a sudden it seems like a big hand–a Dad-size hand–is on my back, nudging me. I straighten up and start to talk out loud.
Or maybe it’s that I’m HEARTSICK. Not HOMESICK. Hmmm. HEARTSICK for Mom and Dad.
The words “unexplored tower” still puzzle me, but I’ve always thought of puzzles as a kind of pump. Mimi has a pump in her little catfish pond. It’s got a photovoltaic panel that uses the energy from the sun to run its motor, so it can squirt the pond water up into a fountain. (Besides getting good air into the water, it makes rainbows too.)
So. I’m pumped. And I’m catching the sunlight. Energized.
I find a t-shirt and jeans. I pull on my socks.
An Unexplored Tower could be anything I explore, or find out about. Or do.
I tie my sneakers tight, so I won’t trip on the laces.
It could be like a quest or a job. It doesn’t have to be a real tower.
I go back to the first lace and double-knot it.
I know exactly what my quest will be.
Revenge. I will seek vengeance on the guy who killed Mom and Dad.
I double-knot the other lace and stamp my foot back to the floor. I do a mental inventory. Hey, this is good. I can’t feel determined AND heartsick at the same time. I’ve found a “tower” to explore! I race downstairs, but stumble on the last step when I wonder if Dad would agree with my cure for heartsickness.
Well, he isn’t here now, and I do. I do agree with myself, that is.
ISABEL
* See my comment in the comment-reply section for Dad’s recipe for grilled cheese. It was Pop’s originally, so he was able to pull it out of his recipe box when I asked about it today.
I Am Isabel the Storyteller 
*Pop and Dad’s Grilled Cheese:
Take kale leaves (Note to Readers: Don’t quit the recipe because it has kale in it; kale rocks!!) and put them in boiling water, take pot off the stove and keep the kale in the water until it turns green as an emerald. Take it out of the water with those tongs you use in the toaster to get stuck toast out. (This is what I observe Pop doing; Dad just used his fingers quickquick.) Tuck the kale dry in a paper towel, or, if you’re like Mimi and Pop and Don’t Use Paper Products, tuck them between the folds 1of a clean dish-drying cloth.
Heat oil on a skillet and cook red onions (1/2 inch-thick slices) until they’re “caramelized.” Pop says that caramelized means that the natural sugars in the onion “comes out” when you heat the onion slowly until it’s richly brown. (I can tell you it’s amazing that something that can make me cry when I stand next to Pop slicing it, turns to something sweet and lovely when it’s cooked. Just shows. Hmmm. I don’t know what it “just shows.” I’ll have to think about this more. Back to the recipe.)
Take onions off the heat and put a little wine vinegar in and scrape all the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan. (I think this is a Pop technique for not wasting any food? Remember, I am not yet a chef like Pop is and Dad was.)
Heat another skillet. Using butter or cooking spray to coat one side of each slice of some kind of “great grilled cheese bread” (“Specifics, Pop. Specifics,” I say and he says, “heavy breads are best, like sourdough, multi-grain, Brioche, and French.”
Put slices in the heated skillet with the sprayed side down. Cook a bit until the bottom starts to get toasty-like.
On top of each put: grated Parmesan (Pop always grates the cheese himself.), kale, the onion–did I say to add salt and pepper to the onion?, and shredded Gruyere cheese. This cheese is a great “melter” says Pop.(You could add chopped, sautéed ham or bacon if you like such.)
Put the assembled sandwiches on a cookie sheet and bake them all for 5 minutes in an oven that’s heated to 300 degrees. What you want is for all the cheese to melt and NOTHING to burn. (Although Pop will eat blackened food–remember he never wastes anything?–most humans don’t like to eat burned up food, me included.
These are the best grilled cheese ever.
You’ll see why I missed eating them when I went to Nature’s Classroom. (There were other reasons I was homesick; like I didn’t like–I know this makes me seem like a baby, but–I didn’t like the outhouse and I didn’t like that all the food was white: white potatoes, almost white meat, white gravy, even the vegetables seems almost white. Really. I LOVED the nature part, but it got diluted with having to play group games and learn songs. I THOUGHT it was going to be tons of hiking and learning about birds and wild animals and plants I could eat if I was lost in the forest–that sort of thing. Maybe I’d like it better now that I’m mature.)
Isabel Scheherazade
PS (I’ll need to learn to write out recipes with less story to them, but I’m living up to my middle name.)
I like the pump idea. I’m a grown-up and sometimes grown-ups need the jolt of a pump to get going, too. I am loving your stories.
Hi Veronica,
You and my Dad love pumps. Since I wrote this entry I’ve been wondering about an idea I’ve never wondered about until I wrote the entry. (It’s like a miracle that writing brings up ideas and questions I never knew I had.) Here’s the wonder: Do you think when my Dad showed us (all those times!!!) how Miss Mary’s pump worked and got us (er, really just me, as I said) to explain it ourselves, well, do you think he was trying to say something else? Do you think HE was using the pump as a metaphor? Do you think HE wanted us to know that sometimes in life we need a waterfall of fresh something to pull ourselves out of wherever we are that’s holding us down?
Isabel Scheherazade, your new blog friend
PS Also, it’s a wonder to me that he didn’t drill us on how the catfish pump worked. It’s possible that he wasn’t up to speed on photovoltaics.