At our house, there are no skeletons in the closet. All our skeletons — well, all the decorative ones — are outside, zip-tied to the trees, holding up the mailbox, and popping up between dead sunflower stalks. We are officially One Of Those Skeleton Houses, and they are there year-round, not just during Halloween.
This is hardly an edgy aesthetic these days. Lots of people set up elaborate skeleton displays at this time of year, investing hundreds of dollars in the deluxe 12-foot ones that loom over suburban streets. Lots of people never take their skeletons down and simply add Santa hats or Valentine hearts or Easter bunny ears, as the season demands.
But I’m different. I have a unique personal reason for keeping my skeletons up all the time, and it is this: I like skeletons. I always have. I think they are beautiful, charming and fascinating, tragic and dear. I also have a painting of a skull on our family altar and a painted, tin-winged skeleton Sacred Heart in the dining room, and I’m working on carving a melancholy little skull out of scrap cedar for my cold weather hobby. In elementary school, I obsessively drew skeletons dancing, climbing ladders and raking leaves. In college, I startled the chef by running a load of leftover ham hocks through the industrial dishwasher because I wanted to sketch those elegant bony curves and undulations. I just like skeletons! I think they’re neat.
For a while, I tried to persuade myself that this was a good old Catholic memento mori-type fascination. I was keeping all these skulls around as a reminder of my mortality, just like St. Francis or St. Jerome. Do all your work and live all your life as if it’s your last day on earth because you never know: It might be. Make your peace with death while you still have the choice, because it’s coming either way.
I wish this were my motivation, but it’s not. The last time death came to collect someone I cared about, I fell to pieces, as if no one had ever died before, and this was some new, monstrous means of torture designed specifically to make me, in particular, unhappy.
So I can’t claim to be particularly comfortable with death. Instead, I have made my peace with a related concept: not the fleetness of life, but the perseverance of the living, even after death. The tenacity, the sheer, dogged refusal of the human body to go completely away.
The German word sitzfleisch, which translates, as you might guess, “sitting flesh,” means the kind of single-minded persistence you need to, well, sit on your bum until you get the job done. And, in fact, sitzfleisch also means your bodily bottom, your “sit meat.”
Sometimes, it means not so much the meat you park in the chair as the patience you will need to sit in one spot until things resolve themselves, no matter how long it takes.
So here we arrive back at skeletons. There is nothing more patient than a skeleton. Osteogenesis, the process of growing bones, begins in the first few weeks after conception. Tiny little skeleton, bitty little pretty bones, raring to go, gratefully, eagerly borrowing calcium from the mother’s bones and teeth, with no intention of giving it back. Single-mindedly intent on adding to itself and not collapsing back into nothingness, while the mother, knowing or unknowing, steadfastly releases herself into building someone else.
In elementary school, we used to sing this Halloween round:
Have you seen the ghost of John?
Long white bones,
With the rest all go-o-o-o-ne,
Oooooooh!
O00-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooooh!
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?
WELL, it all comes together in today’s post.
SATURDAY Hot dogs, hot pretzels, raw broccoli and dip
I woke up SO late on Saturday and everything got pushed forward SO far, I’m pretty impressed we had three actual distinct things for supper.
Nothing else to report, except that I suddenly remembered a kid going through a phase of playing restaurant, and one of the featured items was “pretziles.” Which makes me remember I haven’t made homemade hot pretzels in a while.
[Daphne Moon voice:] I don’t know whyyyy.
On Saturday, I also finally put up an extra little shelf that I’ve been meaning to put up, and now I officially have room for all my spices! If you’ll recall, this is what it looked like before.
Then I got a bunch of spice jars and bunch of mason jars; and now I have an extra shelf as well, so here it is:
It’s . . . sigh . . . better. I swear it’s better. Only a few things are still in sacks, and everything is labelled, top and side. And I have hooks for red and yellow onions, and a little basket for my ginger and garlic.
I haven’t organized the spices, though. There are just too many other people using them, and trying to keep them in the order I want would be asking for constant heartache.
I also still haven’t managed to re-hang the other shelf that came crashing down, that used to hold all my oils and vinegars, so that’s all crammed in there as well. It’s less upsetting if I think of it all as WEALTH, which it is. Never thought I’d need a spot just for all my various salts and peppers! My various oil! Look how lucky I am.
SUNDAY Hamburgers, chips, further raw broccoli
On Sunday I did a bunch of tragic gardening (I planted a few hundred bulbs and spent the time repeatedly reminding myself that absolutely none of them are going to come up and everything just dies anyway and what’s the point, oh boo hoo hoo hoo) and also put up some more skeletons. For, uh, self care.
We have a number of skeletons year-round, partly because it helps Instacart find our house when GPS insists on sending them to the fence company and saying that’s our house; but mostly because I have had a lifelong love for skeletons.
This one, I think the kids named Shakespeare
and this one, Insulon, is new this year (his eyes light up):
Then we have Baba Mailbox, which doesn’t really make sense, but whatcha gonna do:
and of course The Gardener:
and also new this year is Horbert, who lives by himself.
Here is a short video of The Hoisting of Horbert:
who didn’t end up as high as I expected, considering how hard it was to hold that tree down.
Then we had hamburgers for supper.
I don’t know if it’s been a long time since we’ve had burgers, or maybe I just worked up a good appetite tragically gardening and tree wrestling, but those were some especially delicious burgers.
MONDAY Chili verde on rice; corn
This is a nice recipe that I discovered a little shortcut for this week.
Normally when I make chili verde, I blister the peppers and tomatillos under the broiler, then let them sit and loosen, then pull off the skins and put the insides in the food processor, along with onion, garlic, and cilantro.
This time, I suddenly wondered what would happen if I left the skins on. I also put the onions in the oven, rather than adding them raw to the blender. Time to find out! Exciting!
I cut the pork shoulder into chunks, seasoned it heavily with salt and pepper, browned it in oil, blended up the vegetables, and then added the resulting green salsa to the pot with the pork, and let it cook slowly on the stovetop all day.
It turned out thicker than usual and quite a bit spicier than usual, a real sinus clearer. And absolutely delicious. Mayyybe a tiny bit bitter, but not in an unpleasant way. The family polished it off, to my delight. I might add some chicken broth in the future, to make it a little thinner, but I think I will stick with leaving the skins on. It made my life easier, and the flavor was great. If anyone knows of some reason why I should be taking the skins off, speak now!
I was gonna make corn bread or corn muffins, but a quick poll revealed that nobody actually wants that, so I just cooked up some frozen corn, and made a bunch of white rice, and that was what they wanted. We had lime wedges and sour cream for toppings, and we really needed that sour cream to ease up the spice!
Wish I had had a little more cilantro to top it off. But it was a good meal. Everyone either has, just had, or is about to get a cold, and it’s been damp and foggy out, so this worked nicely.
On Wednesday I also got a very subtle haircut. Usually I got to Head Whompers and pay $12 to get most of my hair chopped off, but this time I went to a Fancy Place and paid quite a bit more to get little bits here and there removed.
I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but Damien said my head looked fluffier, so I think that’s good.
TUESDAY Beef barley soup, pumpkin muffins
Jubilation. This is a highly-anticipated meal (second only to ham-peas-mashed potatoes) that I hold off making until the frost is on the pumpkin or whatever. I forgot to get mushrooms, but it was still very tasty.
This is the soup I make in my head when I can’t fall asleep. I go through it as slowly and meticulously as possible, paying close attention to each detail, cleaning as I go, and if I don’t actually fall asleep by the end, I usually at least feel less anxious. Thanks, soup!
In real life, it was a soccer day, so I made the soup in the morning, except for the barley, and then put together the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients for the pumpkin muffins
and then combined them when I got home, and quickly baked them right before supper.
Full disclosure, the muffins were a tiny bit squashy (I mean technically they were 100% squashy, since canned pumpkin is actually squash; but I meant they were somewhat underdone) and the barley was a little bit chompy, because I forgot how long it takes to cook; but it was still a well-received meal.
Piping hot muffins and a bowl of soup with tender beef, lots of wine and tomatoes, plenty of carrots and onions and pepper. What’s not to love?
Next time I need to make more soup! Some people have come around to soup recently, to my delight.
This is why I stick to my policy of just making food that seems good to me, and offering it over and over and over again. People really do come around eventually, often enough. Or if they don’t, that’s also fine. I just don’t want to fight about food. There’s enough fights.
WEDNESDAY Pizza
One cheese, one pepperoni, and one Things Mother Likes. To wit: Black olive, fresh garlic, red onion, fresh basil, ricotta, anchovy.
This absolute cartoon cat got to clean out the anchovy can for recycling
and I got to eat two pieces of this scrumptious pizza
so everybody was happy.
THURSDAY Asian meatballs, pork fried rice, pineapple
I made extra rice when I made the chili verde, for the express purpose of having leftovers for fried rice. Wasn’t that smart? I feel like I am waking up out of a fog this week. I’ll probably live to regret saying this, but I stopped taking Propranalol because it wasn’t doing anything for my headaches anyway, and within a few days I felt much more awake and much less pukey; and without changing my diet, I lost three pounds. So. Go to hell, Propranalol. I have a real live appointment with an honest-to-goodness neurologist, and I’m going to insist they stick needles in my cheeks or install a skull steam valve or something. But no more stupid drugs that make me stupid! I’m already stupid enough!
Anyway, the fried rice was good. I minced some ginger and garlic and threw it in the pan with hot oil for a bit, then added pieces of leftover pork and diced red onion, and then I dumped a bunch of brown sugar on top of that and let it get bubbly and dark.
Then I added scrambled egg (I didn’t think I was up for scrambling the egg directly into the rice today), some bagged broccoli, carrot, and water chestnut, and the leftover rice, and then I dumped on a bunch of oyster sauce, a little fish sauce, and quite a bit of soy sauce, and heated it all up.
Pretty tasty!
I made the meatballs in the morning, and cooked them while I was making the rice. I used a recipe I’ve used before (it’s not letting me put the “jump to recipe” button in, for some reason, but the recipe is at the bottom of the page: Vaguely Asian Meatballs), except instead of ground beef, I used ground turkey, which happened to be $3 a pound. I cooked them at 425 for about 20 minutes before dinner
and served them with a jar of sweet chili sauce, and they were delicious. Light and garlicky and just very pleasant to eat.
I also cut up a couple of pineapples and sprinkled some more chopped scallions over everything, and it was an easy, successful meal.
When I make two kinds of Asian-inspired food, my goal is to not use the exact same ingredients in both dishes, and I achieved this by refraining from putting ginger in the meatballs. My breath was still glowing in the dark that night from all the garlic.
FRIDAY Quesadillas?
Yes, I think quesadillas. I have a bunch of spinach in the fridge that I never used, so I think I’ll make spinach quesadillas, which are very nice.
It occurs to me that one of those skeletons should be named John, or Chili Verde, or Tomatillo, or something. Well, there’s always next year.
You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!
Ingredients
5lbspork shoulder
salt and pepper
oil for cooking
2cupschicken broth or beer(optional)
For the salsa verde:
4Anaheimpeppers
2habañeropeppers
4jalapeñopeppers
4mediumonions
12tomatillos
1headgarlic, cloves peeled
1bunch cilantro
For serving:
lime wedges
sour cream
additional cilantro for topping
Instructions
Preheat the broiler.
Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.
When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want.
Put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.
In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.
When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.
Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.
Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.
29ozcanned diced tomatoes (fire roasted is nice) with juice
1cupuncooked barley
salt and pepper
Instructions
Heat the oil in a heavy pot. If using Instant Pot, choose "saute." Add the minced garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions and carrots are softened.
Add the cubes of beef and cook until slightly browned.
Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, the beef broth, and the merlot, plus 3 cups of water. Stir and add the mushrooms and barley.
If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for several hours. If using Instant Pot, close top, close valve, and set to high pressure for 30 minutes.
Before serving, add pepper to taste. Salt if necessary.
Very simple meatballs with a vaguely Korean flavor. These are mild enough that kids will eat them happily, but if you want to kick up the Korean taste, you can serve them with dipping sauces and pickled vegetables. Serve with rice.
Servings30large meatballs
Ingredients
2.5lbsground beef
1sleeveRitz crackers, crushed finely
1/3cupsoy sauce
1/2 headgarlic, minced
1bunchscallions, chopped (save out a bit for a garnish)
1 tspkosher salt
1Tbspground white pepper
For dipping sauce:
mirin or rice vinegar
soy sauce
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425.
Mix together the meat and all the meatball ingredients with your hands until they are well combined. Form large balls and lay them on a baking pan with a rim.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
Serve over rice with dipping sauce and a sprinkle of scallions.
The other day, I was feeling a little low. One of my children suggested I go out and buy myself a nice new skeleton. She was right; it would have cheered me up.
I love skeletons. Lots of people do, and why not? They grin so cheerfully, and they’re so accommodating: You can bend them and tote them around them and make them do whatever you want. This year I set up a skeleton climbing a ladder up the side of the house, and one lounging in a chair by the mailbox, waving to traffic. It’s amazing what you can make them do with zip ties.
The novelist Joyce Carol Oates made herself look a little silly on Twitter a few weeks ago, responding to a photo of a house similarly decorated for Halloween. She tweeted, “(you can always recognize a place in which no one is feeling much or any grief for a lost loved one & death, dying, & everyone you love decomposing to bones is just a joke).”
Several people hooted in response, “No one tell her about Mexico!” Other readers with a longer memory pointed out that Oates had in fact written a story based on the death of an actual specific human being, and when the friends of the dead man complained at her callous co-opting of his personal life, she was dismissive. And a few folks felt a moment of pity, pity for the poor old bat. Someone named “JustLuisa” said kindly, “My 5 am hot take is that people should be nice to Joyce Carol Oates about the skeleton thing. She’s a freakin’ octogenarian; why are we making fun of the old lady wrestling w skeleton thoughts.”
Why indeed. This year, when I hauled my plastic skeletons out of the attic, I had a bad time for a few minutes. They really weren’t funny, for a few minutes. What are you smiling about! Effing skeletons, what’s so funny? How many times had I pictured my own father and my own mother with their hollow eyes down in the ground, on their way to being just bones, of all things. You think you know these things, but it turns out you weren’t quite there yet. You believe in the resurrection of the body, but still. There is that time, under the ground. It’s a bad time.
“Nobody tell her about Mexico,” some people said. I have heard about some cultures, in Mexico and elsewhere, that not only celebrate and remember the dead, and skelly it up with sugar cookies and masks and paper banners, but they actually go and dig them up. They wait three years, or seven years, and they dig the corpses up, clean them off, dress them, and have a little party.
I wonder what that does to the living, knowing this day is coming. You wouldn’t be able to just walk away in a straight line, after somebody dies. You couldn’t just progress neatly through the stages of grief, getting further and further away from their death as the date wanes into the past. You couldn’t just say goodbye and have that be the end of it.
That’s a joke, of course. You can’t do that anyway, with or without the corpse party. Even if you go full-on American, and pump your loved one full of preservatives, seal them up in airtight caskets that look like tiny little posh hotel rooms, and expect them to stay there forever, there are no straight lines away from death. There’s a lot of staggering and slumping and backtracking involved, believe me. Look at poor Joyce, 83 years old and still struggling with skeletons, and it’s not because she hasn’t had a chance to think about it.
Every so often, I have the urge to write about my dead parents. I always wonder if I’m doing it too often, and I always wonder if what I’m doing is remembering them, or exploiting them. Is it for them, or for me? I pray for them, of course, but the writing is for me, assuredly. But for what purpose? Why am I dragging them out of the attic again? You look at the calendar, you see it’s the season for memento mori again, so you dig the old folks up, brush them off, and get 800 words out of it.
Not that my parents would mind. It doesn’t do them any harm. But I do try not to tote them around too much, or pose them in any ways that would be too foreign to who they were, as I knew them. Which is only as my parents, which is by no means all of who they were. And bones is not who they are now.
But still. I try not to make the zip ties too tight if I can help it, when I set them up for another pose. I can’t seem to help wrestling with skeletons every so often, but I try to be gentle. And I’m sure I’ll be back again, because there is not a straight line away from death.
