In 1994, our family of three was joined by a fourth – the man I call Pa. Pa was quiet and gentle with my brother and me; there was a stillness about him that calmed. When I think of Pa I think of his deep desire for the sea, his collection of longboards, resin fins in red and blue and yellow. His never-ending search for the perfect set of waves, him lying on hot sand. I think of music – Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Stranglers, Blur, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, lounge music and Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. I remember when we would watch repeats of The Bill, Fawlty Towers and Monty Python's Flying Circus and we'd all quote the lines in the silliest of voices. Pa loves Scotch, souvenir teaspoons, trains and planes. He loves to sit and read non-fiction books, but he never reads from beginning to end, he only takes bites. When it comes to my mother, he is the epitome of devotion, and you will often hear her telling him how lucky he is to have her.
I love pesto with every fibre of my being. It takes me back to my childhood, when I would be surrounded by Pa's sweet-smelling basil plants.
After school, Pa treated us to custard tarts from Crusty's Bakehouse in Lismore. And when we'd finished the weekly shop at Woolworths in Lismore Shopping Square, he would take us to Wendy's, where my brother got a hot dog and I got a doughnut, steaming hot and rolled in cinnamon sugar. And when the sugarcane harvest had begun, Pa would take us at night to watch the cane burning, the flames dancing and leaping, and the air filled with the smell of leaves on a campfire. On weekends, Pa took us on the ferry to Broadwater, to a cafe with its name written in a hedge, letter by letter. We sat under the shade of an old fig tree where we were surrounded by the distinctive saccharine smell of sugarcane. My mum and brother always had the ploughman's lunch and I would have high tea served on a tiered cake stand. I remember eating cucumber sandwiches and little tea cakes from mismatched fine bone china with gold trim and feeling like such a lady.
Pa and Mama had two children each before they met but never had a child together. As my father re-partnered, my number of siblings grew by three. There are theories about how birth order affects your personality traits; I, however, am a complicated case study – I was the last born in one family but the first in the other. I have read that firstborn children are often diligent and seek to excel at everything they do; they are dependable, overachievers and thrive in a structured environment. The youngest in the family are often outgoing, fun-loving, self-absorbed and attention-seekers. I am all these things.
Your family is the source for so much of what forms you: your likes and dislikes in food and music, your passions, interests, hobbies, humour. And, more than that, every family has different ways of being, and different ways of knowing; every family has a different love language, expressed in different ways. As a child of two families, you learn one thing quite early on: some families simply do not blend. Instead, they curdle, like milk, into clumps – like my family. The challenge of being from a curdled family is that you spend your formative years trying to adapt to two separate home bases, divided between two systems of loving and learning. I had been formed by my life with Mum, Pa and my brother, where words of love flowed freely. And in this home, along with weekly visits from my grandparents – Nanny, Pop and Grampy – I had a life filled with spontaneous affection, cuddles and hugs and butterfly kisses. For me, this was so different from the life of my father's family, it sometimes made it hard to fit in, even when I so desperately tried to do so.
In my father's family, Grandma and Papa Ree were my one constant. Both had their own way of making me feel like a part of the family. Papa would tell me I looked like my father, and he'd tell me how I was so similar to my grandma. Papa was kind and beautiful. He wore long johns and nightgowns. In the morning, he would tap the bed, a signal that we, his grandchildren, could tumble in and snuggle up next to him. He would read to my cousins and me and tell us stories at night. He gave the best back rubs. He was patient and with his gentle words of encouragement, I learned how to swallow a tablet when migraines plagued me, just like they did Grandma. Papa was demonstrative in ways that Grandma was not, and I have sometimes wondered if this was the result of her having lost her mother at a very young age. But Grandma had another language with which to show me love and that was food. She would make egg sandwiches and shortbread biscuits. She also showed me how to brew tea leaves in a teapot, and taught me how tea drinking could be meditative and calming.
Sometimes, after a particularly stressful day, you will find me with my nose deep in the tea caddy, inhaling the earthy, floral, sweet scent of the tea, and somehow I feel instantly calmer.
When I was 13, Grandma and Papa took me on my first trip overseas. We visited Paris. I asked Papa if he knew it was called the city of love and he told me yes, he did, and he jokingly reassured me that he would never break my heart. But Papa died just weeks after we returned from our trip, and my heart splintered into tiny pieces.
When I was growing up, there was always plenty of colour. My childhood homes overflowed with an eclectic assemblage of coloured glass and pottery glazed in vibrant hues. My mother, who is soothed by clutter and indifferent to disorder, would confound us all with her need to arrange her collections by colour onto the Ladderax shelving. So now, in my own home, I too diligently arrange my glassware, crockery and books into a spectrum of colours. Coming home after an exhausting day at work, or just sitting with a cup of tea, I love looking at my harmoniously ordered shelves.
Grandma had another language with which to show me love and that was food.
Books have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Even though money was tight, Mum always bought me books, and through their stories, I learned about the human conditions of friendship, love, bravery and loneliness. Mum would connect every book to a personal experience of her own or to one of our family's. On the inside cover of one book about growing old and forgetting, she had written in her habitual messy scrawl a short story about my great-grandmother Ollie. A beautiful mother to 11 children, Ollie's mind was lost to Alzheimer's long before we were ready to let her go.
I loved my collection of books, and I knew one day I'd pass them on to my own children, who would read Mum's notes, her snapshots of moments from our lives. But one afternoon I arrived home from school to find that the bookshelves in my bedroom were completely bare. I ran into the lounge room, and in the quietest of voices I whispered what I did not want to be true, "Someone has taken my books".
Mum pulled me into a hug and stated very clearly that she had not been able to afford the accumulating fees at my Catholic school, and after some negotiation, the principal and the priest had agreed to accept instead a 'donation' to the school library.
A donation of books. My books. My beautiful books.
This extract and recipe is from Charlotte Ree's Heartbake: A bittersweet memoir (Allen & Unwin) out now.
Pa's pesto
I love pesto with every fibre of my being. It takes me back to my childhood when I would be surrounded by Pa's sweet-smelling basil plants. He would often make chicken pesto pasta when I had study sleepovers with friends, and we would eat it by the bowlful – hot or cold. He always had a stash of pesto in the freezer and when I moved out on my own, I found solace in having a freezerful for myself, too. I divide its velvety green goodness into individual portions in zip lock bags, named and dated, then add it from frozen to a tablespoon or two of reserved pasta cooking water and a handful of freshly grated Parmigiano to create a delightfully silky sauce.
Makes 1 serve
Ingredients
- 1 bunch basil leaves
- 120 g baby spinach leaves
- 30 g pine nuts, lightly toasted
- 1 garlic clove, peeled
- 80 g freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Pinch sea salt flakes
Method
- To make the pesto, combine the basil, spinach, pine nuts, garlic and salt in a food processor. Pulse until smooth paste forms.
- Add the Parmigiano, and pulse again until combined.
- With the motor running at its lowest speed, drizzle in the extra virgin olive oil until it binds and you create a smooth sauce.
- This recipe makes ½ cup pesto, which I divide into 4 portions stored in zip-lock bags.
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