I Heart Betty

1965 Betty, the St. Paul resident of my dreams

To say that I admire Betty Crocker, or that I'm fond of her, does not begin to plumb the depth of my feelings. Offering the thought that I would gladly burn incense sticks and joss paper while prostrating myself in front of her portrait at General Mills headquarters (assuming that security guards would let me, which is unlikely) might be getting a little closer to the heart of the matter.

As I write these words, I realize it seems as if I think Betty Crocker is a real person.

Of course she’s real; what do you think I am, stupid? I know that Betty lives and breathes and cooks warm and tasty desserts somewhere, and now that I think of it, I even know where that place must be – St. Paul. How could she live anywhere else? I picture her house, a darling cottage on suitably adorably named St. Paul street. None of those big-city Minneapolis number-and-alphabet streets for Betty.  No, she lives in a tree-shaded glen on Juno, say, or Juliet.

I imagine going to visit Betty. Of course I’d be late, because how can Juno follow right after Juliet in the order of streets? Can’t they lay out the streets in any rational order in this god-damned city? Okay, calm down, breathe deeply and stop cursing, I tell myself. Betty is waiting, right behind that perfectly painted door with the two charming pots of traditional geraniums on either side.

She lets me in, pretending not to notice my sweaty and typically Minneapolitan-frantic demeanor, because Betty is a Perfect Hostess. She leads me to the kitchen, which is appropriate but not over-the-top. No Aga for Betty, just a perfectly good Hotpoint, thank you very much. It might even be Harvest Gold, which, to Betty, is still a swell color, no matter what those hipsters in Uptown have to say about it.

Is Betty wearing her trademark red suit and pearls? Hmmm, I’m stumped there. It seems a bit formal for a casual afternoon entertaining a sweaty woman from Minneapolis, more what she might wear when applying for loan at the bank or posing for a box of brownies. I hit upon the solution: Over the one outfit she seems to own, Betty wears an apron, something vintage-looking that she whipped up herself in the downstairs sewing nook. (I’ll bet Betty’s house has a lot of nooks, just saying). As she pulls a pan from the oven, I notice that her oven mitts match her apron. Of course, duh, she’s Betty Crocker.

And then she places a dish of something warm and chocolaty in front of me, and offers me a glass of cold milk. Milk! I haven’t had milk in 25 years, but yes, Betty, I’d love some!

…. and, as I lift the glass to my lips, my reverie ends, and I’m back in Minneapolis, home of many orderly streets and very few Harvest Gold Hotpoints.

And I wonder, what is my deal? Why I am so taken with a woman who is (to some naysayers, I have to say it) an imaginary spokesperson? It’s not like I wish I could meet Uncle Ben, or poke the avoirdupois of the Doughboy. My heart belongs to Betty, and I think I know why – because my mother loved her, too. My mom was a housewife in the 1950s,when it truly was a miracle to toss an egg into a bowl, add a mix, and whip it all up in the Sunbeam. For my mother’s generation, packaged food was always better, and Betty Crocker was the symbol of the perfect housewife who knew how to please her family with reliable packaged goods.  

As I look back on what must have been my mother’s own eating history, I’ve realized something – our mother’s mothers were, most likely, terrible cooks. In my own poor mother’s case, her mother died when she was seven years old, so I can’t imagine that she had many home-cooked meals. And, oh yeah, the Depression, which hit when she was nine. So of course she loved Betty Crocker. The food tasted the same way every time, and no dim-witted big sister or dopey dad could mess it up.

I’ve been doing some writing for General Mills the past few months, and, recently, I pitched a story to the editor of BettyCrocker.com. When she accepted my idea and gave me an assignment, I was happy beyond all rationality. I was going to be writing for Betty herself. If I couldn’t get over to her house in St. Paul (And, let's face it, I could never find my way around there, anyway), I would be writing for her, which didn't even involve trying to figure out the GPS.

I wished the thing I always wish when something nice happens to me. I wanted to call my Mom and tell her all about it. I could almost hear her, wanting to celebrate with me, but also eager to cut the call short so she could call all her girlfriends: Writing for Betty! Her own little girl, the one who used to insist on adding brewer's yeast and bran flakes to every sodden, leaden thing she baked! Finally, she had seen the light and would be worshiping, one egg and half-cup of water at the ready, at the altar of Betty.  

If there's a way to eat package-mix brownies in heaven, I hope my Mom is having a little celebratory treat for me. And here's to Betty -- long may she reign.

Some other time

I had a conversation with a friend the other day and, in one instant, I made the poor guy feel fifteen years older than he’d felt when he picked up the phone. And all I did was tell him a hard truth about the passing years.

We’d been chatting about business and kids and some desultory topics, and then he raised the question of half-birthday parties, one of those “any excuse” events which I persist in cooking up and celebrating. He’d been thinking about such a party himself, and he had a question for me. “You gave your husband a 49-and-a-half birthday party a couple years back,” my friend said, “and I was just wondering how you went about that.”

I experienced that rare thing for me, a moment of speechlessness. “It was a THIRTY-nine-and-a-half party,” I said, giving him the cold slap of reality as gently as I could. “That party was fifteen years ago. You were there,” I added, perhaps unhelpfully.

He started through the seven stages of grief right on the other end of the line, beginning with denial and transitioning quickly into bargaining. “I can’t believe it!” he said. Then switching tones, he said, “Okay, let’s say it was three years ago, tops.”

“Mary Katherine was four months old when I gave that party,” I said, wondering for the first time what sort of idiot (me) would give a surprise half-birthday party when she had two kids under age three, but there you go. Any excuse. “She’s a sophomore in high school now, so that means that the party was fifteen years ago.”

He sighed, heavily, and I could tell he’d reached the acceptance stage. Nothing forces the realization of passing time like other people’s kids, a sad fact that seems to be getting worse for me the older I get. My niece Blake sent a lovely birth announcement this spring for her new daughter, and I keep it up on the bulletin board because I love to see the child’s darling face. I’m sure it will be just a matter of months before I’m pinning the girl's high school graduation picture on top of it, wondering how it all moved so fast.

When I was young, I used to hear grownups talking about how rapidly the years had flown by, and, like most things the grownups I knew said, it was stupid. I was living out a life sentence right there in St. Ann, Missouri, and the clock ticked at 108 Constance Court more slowly than anywhere else on earth. For a girl who is itching to get out and start a fresh new life, one that never repeats the mistakes her mother made, time practically stood still.

These days, I’ve become my mother in so many ways, recreating so many of the dumb mistakes she made, and understanding her much more than I ever did. Yet here I am, running into a woman of passing acquaintance at the grocery store, asking what grade her little boy is in this year, and she tells me the kid is a sophomore in college. I want to examine her handbag for signs of prescription med abuse, because I know that’s not possibly true. Just hand over the bottle of Xanax, sweetheart, tell me that he’s in fourth grade, and we can get through this without anyone getting hurt.

Mary Katherine took me to see “On the Town” for Mother’s Day, and there was a wistful song, sung on the subway late at night, when the couples are about to part. I’m sure I’ve heard it before – let’s face it, the Great American Songbook and I have been around the block together a time or two  – but somehow, that day, it seemed so incredibly new and poignant. I blew loudly into my handkerchief, that crazy lady on the aisle, as the couples sang:

Where has the time all gone to?  
Haven't done half the things we want to.
Oh, well, we'll catch up some other time.
This day was just a token; too many words are still unspoken.
Oh, well, we'll catch up some other time.


Just when the fun is starting, comes the time for parting,
But let's be glad for what we've had, and what's to come.
There's so much more embracing 
still to be done, but time is racing.
Oh, well, we'll catch up some other time.

I never really heard the song before, I suppose, because I didn’t fully appreciate the irony until that day.  The heartbreak of the song, of course, is that there won’t ever be another time, ever. I will never be standing at the top of a staircase in Wuhan, China, waiting for someone to put Emma in my arms for the first time. I will never be corralled onto the couch for one of Mary Katherine’s countless “shows,” and she and I will never walk down to the stand of pines trees where her imaginary friend, Lulu, lived, so she could slip in and talk things over with the invisible.

In another fifteen years, I’ll have run out of the steam to throw parties for no reason, or I won’t be here at all. And all these kids can pick up where I left off, wondering how other people's children are growing so fast, and  looking for pill bottles in crazy friend's handbags at the grocery store, steadfastly refusing to understand how the years have managed to slip away. 

Oh, well, we'll catch up some other time.