Snapshot: When we were the kids in America
My big sister Jane and I are enjoying the cool shade of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC, on a hot, humid August day in 1972. Richard Nixon is president, the US troops are still in Vietnam and our parents have just moved the family from Hertfordshire to the US on a year’s exchange.
Thinking of it now that I have two children of my own, I imagine my parents’ excitement, stress, upheaval and culture shock. But, aged three, I just went along with it all and quickly became immersed in American life.
I picked up the accent almost straight away – people meeting my parents and expecting to meet their little English girls were disappointed. I ate King Vitaman cereal in the morning (“Have breakfast with the king!”) and learned to love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. A yellow school bus collected me for kindergarten where I lined up with my friends to pledge allegiance to the American flag daily. I spent a day at summer camp, where I was awarded a certificate for being the “most friendly”.
My parents didn’t have a cine camera but, along with our photographs, my dad carefully put together an audio tape. He recorded among other things, me reciting the pledge and singing along to the theme tune of Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood. When we returned to England, Jane and I used to laugh listening to our American selves chatting and singing on the tape. I was very proud of that part of my history growing up and loved to tell my school friends that I used to live in America.
Sally Cooke
Playlist: Mum and Dad’s mess of good years
It Was a Very Good Year by Frank Sinatra
“When I was 17, it was a very good year / It was a very good year for small town girls/ And soft summer nights”
There are more than 30 versions of this song. Even Homer Simpson and Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets have done their version. In it, an older man looks back at his romantic relationships and how they changed during the different periods of his life.
It is perhaps a strange choice for a woman brought up with 1970s classic rock, and not a song I ever admitted to loving. But it has been the one constant piece of music through my life and the only song that evokes such a range of emotions and memories. It has accompanied many different situations I have faced in life.
I also persuaded my brother to use this song at our mother’s funeral. Since losing my dad in 2005, her life had become a shadow of what it was. Funerals are often sad, facing up to a loss rather than celebrating a long life well lived. The last line, sung by Frank in his smooth, velvety voice fitted Mum and Dad so well and even now I cry when I hear it. My song was their song too. As it goes, “It was a mess of good years.”
Jane Stevenson
We love to eat: Ray’s pot luck chicken stew
Ingredients
1 chicken carcass and all the goo left in the roasting tin
1 onion
3 small carrots
1 yellow pepper
A piece of pumpkin
Clove of garlic if none already in the pot
1 parsnip
1 large potato
Sprigs of thyme and rosemary or whatever herbs are in the garden
Put all the ingredients, except the potato, in a saucepan and cover with water. Simmer until all the vegetables are soft. Remove the vegetables and put to one side. Strain off the liquid into another pan and keep. Throw away the carcass.
Add the potato to the liquid and cook until soft – this will thicken the “pot luck”. Return the vegetables to the pan of liquid, heat and season to taste. You can eat it as soup or stew.
My lovely father-in-law, Ray Moxley, passed away last month, aged 91. When I make this – see my photograph for a recent pot luck – I think of Ray and all the wonderful meals we ate with him. He was always interested in cooking, as his mother had insisted that her sons must help with the chores. It was very unusual when he was young for boys from middle-class homes to do any housework, but his mother was not an English rose – she was a Viennese violinist.
I have a lot to thank her for. That tradition has led to everyone in the family being able to cook and has been carried on down the generations. My husband, sons, daughters and nephews are all excellent cooks. One of my daughters even cooks professionally.
When we were poor and hungry students, my boyfriend (now husband) and I were fed many splendid meals by my father-in-law. He seemed to have the same saucepan of pot luck on the go for years. He said that as long as it was boiled up every day, nothing could go off. It looked like a witch’s cauldron, but tasted rich and wholesome.
Occasionally, the saucepan would become too full and look too brown, and would have to be thrown out. A new one would be started when the next chicken was cooked.
Although I have listed ingredients, it should be more spontaneous than that, and you should bung in what you have in the fridge. Well, perhaps not everything in the fridge!
Juliet Moxley
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