My mother; High Priestess

When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.

That sentence, as simple as it is stunning, opens Alice Siebold's new novel, The Almost Moon. I have not read the novel yet, but I am anxious to do so.

Anyone who has lived with, what I have come to call, "an emotionally dynamic" mother understands the spectrum of feelings about a relationship that myth and legend says should be simple and nurturing.

I have (and will again) written caustically about my mother, but today is a tribute to her. Well, mostly.

I was listening to the radio yesterday -- an interview with a gastronome -- and Lona came to mind.

Lona was an extraordinary cook. As well as Nabokov knew language (did you know that English was his third language?) Lona knew flavors. She knew how to create their taste and their texture. What she wanted your tongue to feel was downright erotic. (Incestuous, as her child?)

Recipes weren't instructions but inspirations. Cook books were sheet music with the notation: improvise. Just by tasting a sauce, she could recreate it the way some musicians can listen to a piece and, days later, reproduce it exactly.

With an annual exception, she never baked. This was almost a point of pride with her. And how befitting that was to this woman whose complexity rarely exhibited behavior that one would call traditionally sweet. In fact, she considered baking somehow beneath her. Baking was, in the same way she was a social snob, a lower class of cooking.

The fact of the matter was that baking leaves no room was inspiration or personalization. You have to follow a formula exactly. Just this amount of flour to exactly that quantity of baking powder. My mother, the authoritarian -- the lover of rules and rulers -- hated rules, rulers and having to follow rules.

But once a year she made cookies. Tons of them. From Thanksgiving on through Christmas eve. We were forbidden, upon pain of spankings, smackings with a wooden spoon and yelling of having any more than a rationed cookie here and there before Christmas. But on Christmas ... oh my god ... it was cookie heaven. We ate ourselves sick.

It just so happened that yesterday while I was listening to the radio interview with the gastronome, I was beginning the annual cookie bake with my daughter, using Lona's sacred recipes of course.

And so, she was on my mind. I was chopping walnuts and over at Zoe's station, the flour was flying and the mixer whirring. As we worked, I remembered a yellowed newsprint article. Something about her pulling one of her authority-defying stunts at an airport. There was a grainy photograph. Roy de Groot was involved. He was a well-known food writer at the time. I remember his towering height. And -- intriguingly for a gastronome -- he was a blind gentleman with a seeing-eye dog. Roy de Groot was a frequent visitor to our home in Manhattan (in which Lona had the kitchen custom redesigned for two ovens so she could cook for enough people at once.)

After the cookies were baked, the cyclone aftermath somewhat cleaned, Zoe driven home to her mother's house, I retreated back to my study that night and got on the internet. The New York Times. Archives. Search for Dubilier. Useless because of a distant relative who is in finance and dominates search results. Ahh, but Roy de Groot. Bingo.

December, 1966. Roy de Groot has a shipment of specialty foods from France held up at the customs office at JFK because of wild boar pate. The article about this event is a tribute to classic Lona at her best.

Mr. de Groot negotiates with the customs office at JFK to the degree of success that they grant him, apparently by written "communique" (I love the language in this 60s article) to enter the airport compound for

"the purpose of inspecting the seized merchandise, which inspection may include, if desired, a tasting of the merchandise."

Along with three others, Mr. de Groot invites Lona to be part of his tasting committee. She organizes the event, complete with a "hampery" including bread and "beautifully starched napery, sterling silver forks and an assortment of wines."

Upon arrival, it is clear who is in charge. The reporter writes, "Mrs. Lona Dubilier ... seemed to be the high priestess of the tasters." She is pouring out wine, slicing bread, serving up the various delicacies, and taking notes on committee's comments.

The article is so classic 1960s in that it also openly displays the class distinctions of the time. The reporter almost mocks the customs official. Though he allows that Chester Smith is hospitable, he also mentions that the shy and smiling Mr. Smith is "coatless."

Lona, meanwhile, ever the lady, knows that in high society (as she would frequently remind us) one treats "the help" with just as much class as one's peers. This obviously impressed the reporter who wrote:

Mrs. Dubilier turned to the coatless Mr. Smith, who had tasted nothing, and didn't look as if he wanted to. He was still smiling.

'Mr. Smith, would you like to clear your palate with something?'

'No, thank you,' Mr. Smith said with a smile.

And then Lona, having performed her duties as an organizer, a tasting stenographer, a lady attending to the working class, decides it's time to let the world know that while she is all that, she is also, after all, the high priestess. This title is not earned without asserting it. And one asserts it through challenge.

Here an exchange between Lona and Mr. de Groot (who was a baron) following their tasting of the wild boar pate, the piece de resistance:

'Yes I like the sanglier,' the Baron repeated.

'Baron,' said Mrs. Dubilier, the chief note-taker, 'I think you have so much snob in you, you think the sanglier is better than it is. Try it again, and try to forget it's boar.'

'No, I disagree with you, Lona,' the Baron said. 'There's a gamey flavor about it.'

Ah, beautiful. I like the patronizing phrasing, "try to forget" with its implication that she is not convinced he can accomplish such a feat.

I am attaching a picture of the article which you can click on to see larger, but it probably isn't large enough to read. If you could, you would notice that the reporter happens to be none other than Craig Claiborne.

Though there is no evidence for my final assumption, just knowing my mother, I am convinced that it was her idea to have this whole episode elevated to public spectacle by having it reported in the Times.

It is the signature of a High Priestess.