Once upon a time there were four sisters. There were sixteen years between the eldest and the youngest. Right in between the other two, twins. Yes, and there were also four brothers, but we are not talking about them here. I had invited the sisters to Sitges, the Catalan coastal town where my boyfriend lives and where I now also spend quite a lot of time. They were immediately thrilled, the trip was booked within 24 hours and the fun could begin in the ‘Sitges Sisters’ app group.
I had spontaneous flashbacks of that time, almost forty years ago, when the four of them came to Brussels. I worked there as an au pair and while my employers were on vacation, I invited them for a sleepover. We ate burnt pizza, chatted late into the night and slept on mattresses in the living room. You should know, the eldest of these sisters is my mother. But in the company of my aunts she is slightly less so. Or at least I find myself looking at her differently in this context; more like a multi-dimensional human being.
The latter is of course due to all the stories about the past that I always try to get from my aunts when I see them. The last few days they spent with us in Spain were also filled with memories. We philosophized about how they actually grew up in different families. My mother was born in the first year of the war, a dreamy girl without any talent for household matters. Yet she was expected to help my grandmother and was not allowed to study. The twins were young during the reconstruction period and, although limited by reformed 1950s morality, had slightly more freedom and options. The youngest, a child of the sixties, really determined her own path.
There were also less serious conversations. What can I say, I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. For example, the story about my grandmother who was going to roast a chicken, an anecdote I had never heard before. One day my grandfather came home with a plucked chicken that he had received as a business gift. My grandmother hated anything that had bones, legs, wings, skin, in short, meat that actually resembled animals. Startled, she asked: “What should I do with that, Ice?” (My grandfather’s name was IJsbrand, a name that fascinated me immensely as a child.)
My grandfather asked her to fry the chicken so he could make his gift a soldier. So my grandmother roasted the chicken and didn’t eat any of it herself. But here’s the thing: afterward, she threw away her frying pan. This neat housewife, who had guided her family through a world war and never wasted anything, threw the pan in which she simmered beef steaks for Sunday lunch every Saturday, ploink, into the trash. “Seriously?”, I asked incredulously to my youngest aunt who beamed up the history and who could imitate my grandmother’s way of talking uncannily well. “Yes really, she said: ‘I’m so sad about it.’”
‘Kreen’ is a word my grandmother used for things that disgusted her. Well, all four of her daughters have inherited that ‘curiosity’ for overly meaty meat from her. On the last afternoon of their visit I wanted to serve them a paella, but… no way that they would like to chew on the usual pieces of rabbit or chicken. It was therefore the least Spanish paella I have ever made, but fortunately it was very tasty.