Muscle Memory
My mom was born in Lebanon and moved to this country when she was 10 years old. She was the youngest of six. Learned English by watching TV. And wanted nothing more than to be like every other kid at school.
The first 10 years of her life were kind of a blip. In her eyes she was an American. She lived the majority of her life as an American.
But I was enthralled with the idea that she wasn’t just an American. She was a real-life example of what this country was supposed to be: a sanctuary for those who needed safety, and a melting pot that brought the cultures from far away into our backyards. Her family fled their home country as tensions were rising in advance of the Civil War of 1958. They lived a comfortable life there, but fearing for their safety, they left it all behind. I loved hearing the story of her two-week cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to a brand new country. How she celebrated her 10th birthday on the ship. The passengers sang her “Happy Birthday” while the staff brought her a birthday cake. Because of the French influence in Beirut when she was born, when they landed in New York, she was able to keep her name (Jeannette) while other members in her family had their names updated to be more “American.” I would laugh at the story of how, in an effort to be “civilized,” they ate their first meal in this country (a hamburger) with a knife and fork. And eventually they would make their way to the largest population of Lebanese expats in the United States: Dearborn, Michigan.
She met my dad in high school. I’m sure my grandfather hoped for something more than a skinny white boy as his youngest daughter’s husband; but a skinny white boy is what he got. My mom famously didn’t know how to cook when they got married. I’m not sure if being the youngest allowed her to fly under the radar or if she was too high-maintenance to get schooled on the ways of middle eastern cooking from her mom and sisters. For a woman in 1968, she was quite progressive — working a full-time job supporting my dad with no cooking skills at all. She joked that she couldn’t even cook an egg, and the one time she tried to make rice, she added so much to the pot that it overflowed and went everywhere.
I don’t know at what point her cooking skills improved. But she had a small repertoire of Lebanese dishes she would make. Stuffed grape leaves, stuffed squash, stuffed cabbage, beans and rice, fatyre, kofte and potatoes, and, of course, tabbouli. My brother loved stuffed grape leaves, and so every summer, when the grape vines would be in peak condition, we would load into our big tan van with a couple of plastic grocery bags, and go to the best spots around town to pick our vine leaves. Shockingly, this didn’t mortify me at all. It was always an adventure. To this day, I remember some of the best spots. Off of Beech Daily Road across from the park. On 10 mile road on the outside of the cemetery fence. And to this day, every time I see a grape vine, I am nostalgic for those days.
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My mom had no real recipes for her Lebanese meals. And she did not do a good job of passing on her techniques and methods to her kids. But I have vague recollections of her mixing the ground meat and rice together and seasoning it until it smelled “right.” Or using a coring tool to cut out the center of a small green zucchini. Or the serving spoon that served as a measuring tool for adding olive oil and lemon juice to the tabbouli. I can’t tell you how many spoonfuls to add. Just that you add by the spoonful until the sheen on the parsley looks right.
But perhaps the thing I remember most vividly is how to roll up a grape leaf. I don’t know if this is traditionally a “kid's” job. But I do know that the only thing I was allowed to do was stuff and roll the leaves. I would watch while she tinkered with the filling, but I couldn’t touch anything until it was ready for my step.
All the leaves had to be facing the same direction. Ugly side up. Which is the ugly side? Well, if you look at a grape leaf, you’ll know. So my first job was to stack them all in the same direction, to make easy work of the later step. She would boil a kettle of water and pour it over the leaves to wilt them so they wouldn’t rip while I was folding. And then it began. One at a time, I can hear her admonishing “DON’T OVERFILL!” and “ROLL THEM TIGHTLY!” and “SEAM SIDE DOWN!”
My mom passed away in 2006. In the first 17 years after she died, my brother and I would talk all the time about trying to recreate some of our favorite meals that we hadn’t had since we lost her. But it was an overwhelming idea, punctuated by the fear of not doing it the way she did. The right way. But when I came across a notebook of hers that had a few “recipes” scrawled in it, including one for grape leaves, I decided to let the fear go.
The directions were atrocious. A pound of ground meat and a cup of rice was the extent of the specifics. A bunch of spices with no quantities. And no explanation for how to cook them. I went to the middle eastern grocery store to get a few things (including jarred grape leaves because it was too early for fresh on the vine options) and told the owner, “I’m making grape leaves for the first time. I’m nervous.” His advice was, “Watch YouTube. And don’t use water. Some people use water.” Guess what my mom’s recipe included? Yep. Water.
But, when as I gathered all my ingredients and contemplated what was ahead of me, all those years observing her method just came back. A muscle that hadn’t been used in ages, but was active and ready to go. Rinse the rice. Add the meat. Mix with your hands. Bones in the bottom of the pot mixed with water creates a broth — (that’s why she used water!!). Stack the leaves. Ugly side up! And one at a time, create a tiny little bundle, filling scarcely … knowing the rice will expand. Rolling tightly, so they don’t fall apart. But then remembering, it was okay if a few did fall apart. Those broken up bundles were like the treasure at the bottom of the pot. My brother and I fighting over the filling that was now soaking in the bone broth, grabbing it with torn pieces of pita bread.
And so I sat in my kitchen, and was transported back to my youth, sitting in my mom’s kitchen, at our Formica covered kitchen table, under her watchful eye: stuffing, rolling and stacking grape leaves. Grateful that the process came so naturally. Sure that I’m still under her watchful eye.
