The deep freezer hummed persistently in the garage. Here, Gram's danish waited beneath sheets of wax paper, nestled in the pans used to bake them. The moment the freezer cracked open, a puff of cold escaped into the humid Miami air. It took patience to savor the danish inside after a few moments in the microwave. More often than not, I devoured them standing in the cool of the open freezer. If my hankering was big, it didn't matter that they were frozen.
In her fridge, Grams always had a small pot roast cooked in gravy, a bag of prunes, sharp cheddar cheese, hard salami, peppermint patties, oranges, and several one-serving bottles of Sutter Home Chardonnay. She made her own raisin bread for breakfast and plain whole wheat for everything else. Each morning, she squeezed an orange into fresh juice.
Feisty and independent, she lived alone for the last seventeen years of her life. She kept active through her daily work, taking pleasure in routine. Always concerned with her health and her figure, she was petite and firm. She hated being called cute, though she was the smallest of our family. Hugging her felt like I would break her; the lightness of her frame had nothing to do with her real strength.
In the center of her home on the baby grand, she played songs from Les Miserables from memory. She checked her stocks every day, played Bridge on Wednesdays. She kept an orchid house and a rose garden with one rosebush named after each of her grandchildren. Every morning she got up early enough to say her prayers, go for a walk, shower, dress, and be at St. Mary's Cathedral by 7 am. I rarely saw her eat breakfast, as she had already done half a day of work by the time we stumbled into the kitchen.
* * * *
While I sleep, my cat will lick any dirty plates I am too lazy to remove from the bedroom. She is young. She thinks she is sneaky but is not, because she is loud when she is greedy. And in matters of danish-eating, I surely wasn't as sneaky as I believed myself to be. None of us were. I lingered in the kitchen casually and once no one was around, I opened the door an inch at a time. I gently lifted the wax paper to get to the best looking danishes I could find. The point was for no one to see where I had eaten, though this left big gaps in what were supposed to be untouched layers. My mom and my cousin Christine ate them this way too. My dad, oblivious and hungry, usually left crumpled wax paper as evidence. And from the study where I slept, I could hear the door peeling open as my family tiptoed to a midnight snack. At that hour, Grams was always well asleep.
When we visited Grams, she always met us at sitting on her doorstep in crisp white pants, her short hair carefully brushed into sweeps of grey. I slept on a nubby beige sleeper couch beneath a large mirror. One door faced the hallway; two sliding glass doors faced the living room. When the storm shutters were open, her orchid house and Biscayne Bay were both visible. Before I had a cellphone, I spent hours every night as MargNic, Grams' AOL account. I tapped for hours at the keyboard, needing constant contact with my boyfriend and friends back home in Indiana. While I chatted, I always had a snack next to me - a couple of danish or some peppermint patties from the kitchen freezer. I approached them the same way as I approached the danish.
* * * *
When my mom was sixteen, the family moved from Toronto to Miami. They bought property, and Grandma worked with the architect to design everything but the kitchen. She designed the kitchen by herself. She knew what she needed and also what she wanted.
What she needed was to keep her family close. What she wanted was a space that worked for her. The kitchen was designed to promote family interaction. The table was big enough so that everyone could sit and low enough for her to put her weight into kneading dough. The counters and cabinets were white so she could know everything was clean. And of course, there was a double oven for all her baking.
Eating together kept her family close. Her parents left Lucca, Italy as teenagers and settled in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There, they had nine children, ate lots of polenta, and worked hard to bridge the distance between Italy and America. My grandmother Marguerite was the oldest of the nine. She refused to speak Italian at home, and she fought to go to high school. She worked to support her family; when her brother needed glasses, her paychecks bought them. Taking care of family was always her role. And she was, without a doubt, our matriarch. We looked to her for reason, if we were ready for the truth.
* * * *
Food glues this family together. All the kids set the table, and all the women helped to prepare dinner. Dinners are loud and filling; glasses are sometimes knocked over in gesticulation. We sit at the table to talk long after we finished eating. It is our best gathering space.
When living alone and with family half the country away, the notion of family stretches. Immediate family is replaced by neighbors; community became her extended family. She thanked people with plate of danish, or when they were in season, a mango from a tree in her front yard. The tree bears nearly six hundred mangos each summer, and she made at least that many danishes in a year to sell at the monthly bazaars at St. Mary's Cathedral. Around Christmas time, she easily made three hundred. There were always enough in the freezer to feed anyone who stopped by to visit. Food was a gift to family, neighbors, and friends, anyone who did something nice for her.
* * * *
I was sixteen when Grandma corralled the four of her grandchildren to make the danish we ate so easily. The year after, she gave us her recipe. The original came from a Toronto newspaper in the 50s. With pictures, it took up only one page. We each received a copy of it and her eight page extended version: "Marguerite's Danish." Hers was a version perfected after fifty years of trial and error, and she told us everything we needed to keep on hand as well as the brands that worked best.
The amount of margarine in each batch of Danish shocked me. One batch called for one pound of Fleishmann's Corn Margarine. No wonder Danish dough is smooth and elastic. We folded the dough, added a third of the margarine, folded it again, and then let it stand in the fridge. We folded three times to laminate the dough.
"Be firm and steady," she said in her directions. "You are in charge."
Then the dough had to rest, and so did we. In teaching me to recognize when it was ready, she grabbed me by the arm with her soft, gnarled hands and had me touch the dough.
"See, it's alive," she said. "You know it's ready when it pushes back."
The recipe was the last gift she gave all of us. She died that next spring just four days short of her ninety-first birthday. After she died, the Sutter Home we kept on special reserve for Grandma sat next to her jars of strawberry preserves, collecting dust on the top shelf of the pantry. I spotted the chardonnay one day, and sentimental as I am, I thought I should drink one in her memory. She liked to buy the little bottles because they were a set amount to limit her; I too was glad they were small. At 19, I could only pucker my face at the bitterness, though now I find myself enjoying the taste.
* * * *
On a recent trip to my parents' home, I went up to my bedroom to search for the recipe. I found it sitting on the bedside bookshelf. The recipe is in a purple portfolio that folds up to protect even the bottom of the pages. On the first page she put two pictures; one of me rolling out dough, and one of her with the four of her grandchildren in the kitchen making danish. The shortest of us all, she beams, her eyebrows raised high above the frames of her glasses. As I read through the recipe again and delighted in her comments, I realized I could not have possibly read it this way the first time. It is comforting to believe that as she typed the recipe for us with her zigzagging arthritic fingers, looking out past her orchid house to the bay, she knew exactly what she was doing. Even when she was gone, she was still tying our family together.
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