When I was a young kid, we paid periodic visits to my Grandma Reynolds in Hillsdale, New York, just a short drive up Route 71 from our house in Egremont. One winter visit to my grandmother’s sticks out in my memory. As the station wagon pulled up her steep driveway, my siblings and I marveled at the snow-laden willow tree in the front yard. Scurrying from the car, we received the usual barked salutation from Sergeant, their German Sheppard, his doghouse stationed just outside the front door. Leaving the cold behind, we entered her kitchen, the smoky smell of the woodstove permeating our nostrils.
The adults sat and chatted, while we kids reacquainted ourselves with our cousin Steven. When we created a cacophony, we were told to “go play” and scampered off to his room. The visit turned out longer than expected, so Grandma threw together some lunch from leftovers in the refrigerator. The other kids finished eating and followed Steven into the next room to play board games, but as I started to push out my chair, Grandma halted me short and asserted, “You haven’t finished your mashed potatoes.” Maybe I was scared, maybe I was full, maybe I was an impatient and impetuous kid, or maybe they weren’t the kind of potatoes I was used to, but for some reason, I inadvertently told her, “I don’t like them.” Grandma, taken aback by this remark, retorted, “I’ve never met an Irish boy who didn’t like mashed potatoes.” I thought that that would be the end of it, but when I started to turn in my seat to get up, she doubled down, declaring dourly, “You have to clear your plate in this house. You can’t get up until those potatoes are gone.” Realizing she meant business, I sourly sat back down. She busied herself with the dishes and chatted genially with other adults, though I could still feel the weight of her watchful eye. Adults, who came in noticing me scowling at the mashed potatoes, raised sympathetic eyes but didn’t comment or interfere. Even my mother proved powerless, knowing not to cross her mother-in-law, or maybe knowing that my perpetual peskiness needed to be taken down a peg, as I had a firmly established wisenheimer persona.
As I sat there poking at the pallid gloppy pile, Grandma came back over to me, and proclaimed matter-of-factly, “If you don’t eat them, you’re going to sit there all night, and I’ll serve them to you for breakfast.” I was feeling a hostile heat inside when suddenly an idea came into my wily little child-brain. I asked, “Do you have any mustard?” She remained stoic, as I added dryly, “That’s how I like them.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to read me (or maybe seeing through me), then calmly went over to the refrigerator, brought out a plastic yellow barrel-shaped French’s mustard bottle, placed it solidly on the table, and folded her arms. Feeling her gelid gaze, I popped the red top, and started squirting mustard around the top of the potatoes, then pressed my fork down and around, changing the drab hue of the mound to a bright yellow. “You can have all you want,” she stated, “as long as you eat every last bit.”
I sat and choked down those cold, lumpy, jaundiced potatoes in this battle of wills until there was only some slight flaxen residue left on the plate. I held up the plate for her approval (knowing to suppress my smug countenance) and only received her measured stare, walked over to the dish sink, and set it in gingerly, the clink of the plate resonating in the stark silence. I skulked off to join the others, leaving the tension of the kitchen behind, the stingy tang of the mustard still tingling on my tongue. I avoided her for the rest of the visit, although she seemed oblivious or indifferent to my snub. On the way home, when my mom asked about my standoff with Grandma, I quipped, “I think the dog should be named ‘Grandma,’ and Grandma should be called ‘Sergeant.’” I was scolded for this remark and lectured about the consequences of being a smart aleck, a frequent disquisition during my upbringing, and spent the rest of the short ride home reflecting on my pyrrhic victory. This tale would go down in the annals of Reynolds family remembrances as “The Mustard Mashed Potatoes Incident,” and retold whenever I recollected past visits with my grandmother.
These days, I hold no ill will toward my deceased grandmother for her sternness and old-school ways, which she must have had to utilize while raising her eleven children, a grandson, and three foster children with only limited resources. After getting through, making do, and rearing a full house, it must have been a small task to tolerate a persnickety fussbudget like me. I recall boycotting potatoes for a while, but was back eating them in the time it takes for a young kid to forget. These days, I have no aversion to eating potatoes of any kind, but I only top them with the traditional butter, sour cream, or gravy, and rarely do I remove the mustard from the condiment shelf in the refrigerator.
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