Meatballs, Mariah Got Me Feeling Emotions

My mother brought food to the dinner table every night when I was a kid. She was a depressed, chain smoking, secret eating house of a woman, but the act of bringing plates of amazing breaded veal cutlets, delicate sweet sauces with meatballs and plates of breaded cauliflower to a red formica kitchen table with only one and sometimes two children there to eat it was her purest gesture of happiness. My other two brothers were already away at college for most of my dinners.
So, after she brought the pristine white plates filled with the steaming plates of food, perfectly made, she turned and made her way back up the pink carpeting hugging the steps that led to her master bedroom, where she laid on her bed and smoked cigarettes facing the windows to the backyard.
I sat at the table with a bounty in front of me appreciating her gesture more than I appreciated the glistening breaded meat, though that wasn’t so bad.
When she got divorced she was feeling less out of her element than in it, reveling in recipes that contained Campbell’s soup cans. It was an uncertain time.
This leads me to Mariah Carey.
Last year at this time I was preparing for a trip to South Africa. And while on that trip my friend Tracy and I rented a BMW and drove around Afffrica. And yes, we kept calling it Afffrica,
So, as I sit here and finish off the last of the meatballs I made last night--the meatballs my mother taught me how to make--I think about what I was doing last year and my mom and now Mariah. With so much change going on in my little insignificant life, I like to take a moment with a meatball and, in this case, Mariah. Again, uncertain times.
South Africans were listening to Mariah last summer. They were singing along with Maria as she sang, “We Belong Together.” As we all were last summer.
See, Mariah’s gesture in her singing technique is full of love but also a bit of crazy and obsessive. As my mother perfected the tender meatball that falls apart at the slightest touch of a fork’s tine, Mariah perfects the long note. As Sasha Frere-Jones pointed out in his definitive Mariah profile in April, Mariah has a “freakish vocal quality.” This comes from Mariah’s plenty. Some women don’t know how to handle what they got.
My mom made amazing meatballs.
Mariah carries a note over several beats of a song.
That’s how my mom and Mariah are examples of the superwomen of the world.
Praise them.

Comments

[Judy]

After reading this, last night I had a dream that I worked in a record store and had to find a recording of "We Belong Together" for this odd woman who wanted to spend $400,000 on it!