To honor three food-and-tale-filled blogging years, let’s revisit a reader favorite: from May 13, 2009, here’s a story about my friend Andie, and also Andie’s mom and Judy Blume, and what we learned about men from them both.

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MOMS WILL BE MOMS, BUT JUDY IS FOREVER

Original post and comments found here.

{ A Mother’s Day tale }

In 1978 just three types of contraband existed for me and my pal Andie Lerner: shoplifted Bonne Bell makeup, those curious magazines in our brothers’ rooms, and Judy Blume’s teen sex novel, Forever. But at eleven, I feared juvenile cosmetics prison and declined the five-finger discount; despite many examinations of our brothers’ covert reads, Andie and I weren’t quite clear on the attraction; and finally, though we’d heard the title whispered and wanted it desperately, we were not wise to the horizontal goods in Forever. We were not actually wise to anything.

What we were was clueless, but lucky – a copy was circulating in our classroom by day, and pedaling home to bedrooms at night. The smudged paperback moved desk to desk – when Mrs. Endicott turned to the board, one girl slid it to the palms of another, and by the time she turned back, the deal was done. Math resumed with two flushed faces, one triumphant and one hopeful – and one day during fractions, the palms belonged to Andie. It was Friday afternoon, and our eyes locked in telegraphed plan: sleepover, toaster-oven snacks and a cover-to-cover inspection – no falling asleep like last time, Andie - of Forever.

Andie lived two houses down from our split-level, in a rambling old Tudor. Her family snacked on flax bread, and ate lentil soup in hand-thrown pottery crocks. Wide oak stairs led to a sunny living room crammed with macrame plants and art books and an enormous black Steinway, on which Andie’s dad would balance a glass of red wine and frequently bang out jazz. My own dad liked to browse tax law, so I found it all thrilling, right up to the day Mr. Lerner met a young woman and left the grand piano – and Mrs. Lerner – behind. Andie’s mom started wearing bangles and scarves and higher heels, and buying potato chips, and was never home. Mr. Lerner’s unfortunate weakness had built a premier sleepover destination.

So it was in an empty house, in the sitting room that held just a sofabed and television, that we holed up with Forever. Our props meant business: sleeping bags, Twizzlers, root beer, at least a dozen pillows and a few of their Persian cats. The fridge revealed one package of cocktail franks, and I’d brought a can of Wiener Wrap – a kind of processed dough you wrapped and baked around hot dogs. We could bake them in the toaster oven. I could sprinkle them with cheddar, and was excited about that, about sprinkling cheddar on Wiener Wraps.

But first, Forever. We literally tore through it – pulling back and forth – until we finally took turns munching licorice and reading aloud, all about Kath and Michael, and what they were doing. But…what were they doing? An hour later we’d read all the words, laughing – ha ha, he called his member Ralph – and while we knew what Judy Blume was saying, sex on a multicolor rug, we didn’t quite know what sex on a multicolor rug, or any rug, was supposed to mean.

So we put the book aside and chugged root beer, and watched TV. They were showing Planet of the Apes, and we were mesmerized by chimp makeup and funny lines. Charlton Heston was yelling about something. “I bet he never had sex on a multicolor rug!” Andie said. I pointed to Roddy McDowell’s ape. “Not him either!” I said. We howled and turned out the lights, and everything on TV was hilarious, and Forever fell to the floor. Eventually we heard a key turn, and a clack-clack down the hallway. “My mom,” Andie shrieked, “get the book!” I reached under the bed for the paperback but couldn’t find it, scrabbling. Mrs. Lerner poked her head in the dark room, then swept in all the way.

“You girls are stillll up,” she said.

“We’re going to sleep, Mom,” said Andie. Mrs. Lerner smelled like sandalwood, and swayed on her heels a little. Instead of leaving, she plunked down on the bed. I breathed in, but inched away. She leaned over. “What’s this?” In one floral-sleeved movement, she brought the book off the carpet.

She took a flashlight from Andie. “What is it?” She shined one spot on the cover. “Oh ho,” she said, “oh yes I do see!” My lungs collapsed. I could run home, I thought, I could bang on the door and I could confess to having the book, but at least I’d be out of here.

Now Mrs. Lerner swung to face us. Andie and I huddled on the sofabed, toward the wall. She turned the flashlight off for a moment, then on again. Then pointed it at us. “So you got this. Okay. Okay. Just tell me one thing, ONE THING.” We held our breaths. “Was it good?”

Was it good. I looked at Andie, who was looking at me. Good? Her mom was still lurching. “Was. It. Good. Was it good for her the first time?”

Oh, now we were truly up a creek. Neither of us had an inkling, but from her wild-eyed jangly look behind the light, we sure needed an answer. Andie looked stricken. So I gave her one.

“Oh yeah, it was great!”

She looked suspicious, pressed the book under her palm. “It was great. The first time.”

It seemed to be working, so I went on. “Yeah, fantastic! Everything was perfect!”

Mrs. Lerner slipped the flashlight off, and was silent for two minutes. I thought she might be asleep.

“Then it’s a LIE!” she yelled. I touched Andie’s arm. “If it was good for her then it is BULL.” She jumped to her feet, and yanked her beaded shawl. “All men are assholes,” she said, “and don’t you forget it.” She reached down, grabbed the book, and left.

Andie and I sat frozen for five minutes. Not until we heard shoes on wood, then shoes hit a wall upstairs, and finally the flump of a body in bed, did we finally start laughing, laughing so hard that root beer came out my nose. We did not discuss Kath and Michael, nor virgins or moms nor multicolor rugs. At two a.m. we went to the kitchen, preheated the toaster oven, and carefully wrapped pink cocktail franks in canned yellow dough. We sat on the brick floor in pajamas and tore open a bag of Oreos, giggling and crumb-faced, waiting for Wiener Wraps.

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* no illustration of Wiener Wraps; remember what happened last time?

All young ones have their growing pains, I know. Fortunately, Josie never really showed us Terrible Two’s – oh, she had a few Nightmare Days of Three, and now we’re in the Testy Try-Me Teens, but none of the normal hubbub that usually accompanies two.

Simmer, on the other hand, is my problem child. At first it grew beautifully, zooming all the way to 350-plus posts before the warning signs: refusal to open files, back-talking error codes and finally, total tech meltdown. I stood firm, doling out tough love and new codes, and we did sort it out, but also learned this: much the way a kid sleeps in too-loose footie pajamas and wakes up in them too tight, Simmer has outgrown its clothes. I believe we’re headed for a redesign, something a bit bigger but not too big, just enough space for growth spurts and tantrums and a lot of good eats.

Please know that I appreciate every one of you out there, from early house blog readers to those first dropping in today. You’ve made raising a blog more fun. Some days I look at posts and think, oh dear, that was supposed to be funny and it’s sad, and that one’s sort of sad but giggly, and that, well that was just plain spastic. And then you show up anyway, and keep reading, and it occurs to me that a sort of controlled babbling sound isn’t so bad on a blog, not if people connect.

In one of my favorite movies, 1962′s The Music Man, wily Professor Harold Hill (Robert Preston) inspires a reluctant barbershop quartet by telling them “singing is just sustained…talking…” Of course he sings that line, and I sing like a dead frog, but point taken; if singing is sustained talking, blogging is just sustained typing. Some songs are better than others, but gosh darn it, people keep typing and people keep reading, and the next thing you know there’s 76 trombones and a parade down Main Street.

Yeesh. Two sentences too far but you got that, right? Wait – I am reading it again to see if I got it.

All typing and trombones aside, thank you for following me into the kitchen and on the page for lo these two years. I know you’ll join me in my birthday wish for Simmer: a redesign free of glitches and growing pains. May it emerge as a well-groomed, obedient blog trained only to dispense madeleines and serve coffee. Now why didn’t I wish that for Josie?

Oh, look! While I was yammering, someone brought in cupcakes.  These are for my dear mother-in-law, Marsha…
…who shares a September birthday with Simmer, prompting us to use her cake as co-celebrant last year, too.

What’s your favorite birthday cake? Does your family have an heirloom recipe that gets baked no matter what, or a ten-layer confection from a special bakery? Celebrate Simmer’s 2nd birthday by sharing your favorite in the comments – and again, thanks for hanging around.