Salon.com > Gayle Brandeis

“Mad Men” and Mom’s suicide

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“Just a heads up,” my daughter texted two Sundays ago. “You won’t want to watch the last act of tonight’s ‘Mad Men’ -- just look up a recap for that part, maybe. It’s ... upsetting.”

Someone had hanged himself. I knew without her having to say it, and was grateful for the warning. Since my mother hanged herself two and a half years ago, anything related to suicide, especially – obviously -- suicide by hanging, has been a major trigger. I find myself going through elaborate verbal gymnastics to avoid using the word “hang,” even in the most mundane and innocent of contexts. I’ll say, “I want to ... put that picture on the wall,” for example, or, “Could you ... drape that towel on the hook for me, please?” For a while, I avoided playing “Words With Friends” on my phone because the pop-up ads for “Hanging With Friends” would stab me in the heart.

Glib references to hanging abound, as my sister and I quickly discovered. “This yeast infection makes me want to kill myself” one of her colleagues said before she mimed wrapping a noose around her throat and letting her head drop to the side. My husband’s sister innocently passed us a game of Hangman as we flew home from their mother’s funeral in Denmark -- she had died unexpectedly four months after my mom -- and for a moment, I was unable to breathe.

Cold fusion

Tue, 20 Jun 2000 18:50:00 +0000

My freezer is full of cats.

Before you call the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, let me assure you, these cats are not alive.

They're not dead, either. These are stuffed animals, toys, drenched in water and left on their backs in the cold. Small icicles hang from their tails. The wire shelf racks score ribs into their synthetic fur. Soon my kids will take them out and squeeze them to see how crunchy they've become. They'll marvel at the temperature. They might suck on a frozen paw.

Now 9 and 6, my kids have been freezing their toys for as long as I can remember. At any given moment, I can find a Tupperware container in the freezer, the water inside thickening into ice floes around a bunch of Legos or a Barbie head. Often, I'll walk into the kitchen and see the kids madly stabbing at blocks of ice with butter knives, frozen shards flying like sparks as they excavate their playthings.

Toys are not the only things my kids freeze. Currently, the freezer sports an atomic fireball candy encased in a cup of ice. The kids will thaw the confection and drink the water, which they say tastes like cinnamon tea. They have frozen volcanoes made of vinegar and baking soda, socks, pencils, strange mixtures of juice and pretzels -- pretty much anything that can be stuffed through the narrow door of our side-by-side Coldspot.

Arin and Hannah’s cold fusion atomic fireball tea

Tue, 20 Jun 2000 18:28:00 +0000

You will need, per person:

One plastic cup

Enough water to almost fill the cup, but not all the way

One atomic fireball candy

Directions:

1. Put the water in the cup.

2. Suck the atomic fireball until it turns your fingers red when you take it out of your mouth.

3. Put the candy in the water and wiggle it around until the atomic fireball gets white or the water gets really red.

4. Put the cup in the freezer. You can keep the atomic fireball in, or you can take it out. If you keep it in, the tea will be sweeter.

5. Freeze overnight.

6. In the morning -- or whenever your mom says it's OK -- take the cup out of the freezer and put it on the kitchen counter. While it's still frozen, you can lick it, like a popsicle, or you can chop it up and eat it, like a Slurpee, but most people wait for it to melt and drink it, like tea. Sometimes it takes all day. You can cover it so flies won't get in.

Contemplating hash browns

Tue, 02 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

hash \'hash\ vt (1590) 2: to talk about: REVIEW

I owe my life to hash browns.

The first time my dad ever called my mom, he said, "I love hashed brown potatoes!" when she answered the phone. No "Hello." No "Um, this is Buzz Brandeis -- we met the other night at the Quadrangle Club?" Just a bright, enthusiastic "I love hashed brown potatoes!"

Fortunately -- for the sake of my own, and my descendants', existence -- my mom didn't hang up. Fortunately, she laughed. Fortunately, she remembered the line, which came from a Eugene Ionesco play they had both seen the night they met.

Neither of my parents can remember the name of the play: My dad thinks it may have been "The Woman With Three Noses"; my mom recalls it as something like "The Woman With One Eye." I can't find any proof that a play exists under either name. I thought maybe it could have been "The Rhinoceros" -- the only Ionesco play I had ever heard of -- but the closest reference I could find to hash browns in that script was a stage direction that called for an "edible cigarette" (a hash one, perhaps?).

Hash browns

Tue, 02 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

Absurdly easy hash browns

4 medium unpeeled potatoes

1 cup grated onion

4 teaspoons olive oil

4 teaspoons butter

2 teaspoons fresh or dried herbs, if desired (rosemary, oregano, etc.)

Salt and pepper

1. Grate potatoes coarsely; rinse with cold water and pat dry.

2. Heat butter and oil in a large skillet.

3. Add potatoes, onions, herbs.

4. Cook over medium-high heat until tender and golden; toss occasionally, but not too often.

5. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serves four.

Hash brown casserole, ` la Ionesco

1 2-pound bag of frozen hash browns

1 can condensed cream of potato soup

2 cups sour cream

1/4 cup butter

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 cup green onions, chopped

2 cups cornflakes, crushed

Salt and pepper to taste

O Tin-nenbaum

Thu, 16 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Before the metal Christmas tree, my husband used to think of the holidays the way he thought of traffic school. Sure, they may offer you a couple of free slices of pizza; sure, the instructor may be one hell of a funny guy; but the bottom line is this: You Are Required To Be There. It's court-ordered. If you don't show up, buster, you're in for it.

Matt was never a Grinch about the season, but he was never a Who down in Whoville, either. The holidays held no true joy for him. They felt like one big fat expensive obligation. Standing in line at the DMV, taxes, regular dental visits, holidays -- all filled him with the same sense of duty and dread.

I have always loved the holidays. I've always loved lighting the Chanukah candles, saying the blessing. I've always loved assembling the pieces of the small artificial Christmas tree from my assimilated Jewish childhood. Dust and old plastic smell more like Christmas to me than pine boughs and frankincense ever will.

Now that the scent of spray paint and acetylene have become part of our holiday traditions, Matt appreciates the season much more, too.

DYR MOM: WY R YOU SO LAVEABL?

Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:00:00 +0000

A few months ago, I bought some sugar cookies shaped like the letters of
the alphabet. When Jewish children begin to study Torah, rabbis often give
them a spoonful of honey so they will always associate learning with
sweetness. I figured the cookies would provide a most delicious reading
lesson for my 5-year-old daughter. I could picture us at the table
together, spelling CAT and LOVE and APPLE on paper plates, our mouths full of shortbread and sugar and the lingering sweetness of words.

When I got home, though, I discovered my daughter had already created her own movable feast. Hannah had been sent to her room for some minor infraction while I was out, and she was not happy about it. Did she whine? Maybe. Did she cry? Most likely. I wasn't there to hear her protests. She did leave some evidence behind, though. She wrote.

Hannah had never written anything all on her own before, other than her own name and the names of our family members. She had never constructed a sentence, never sat down with the intention of getting her thoughts on paper. In the hour that I was gone, though, she essentially figured out the whole writing process.