Tag: Family

Pancakes are Love (and Other Lessons Learned from my Grandmothers)

Posted on by filmscore80

By Michael W. Harris

I still use the copy of the recipe I wrote down while talking to my Grandma Jackie.

There is a line in the 2008 Wachowski’s movie Speed Racer that, even though it is largely a throwaway line uttered by what will soon turn out to be the film’s villain, has always stayed with me: “Pfannkuchen sind Liebchen. Pancakes are love.” Now, Google Translate informs me that that is not entirely accurate, that “Liebchen” actually means “sweet heart,” but I still like the sentiment because pancakes will always be love, specifically the love of my Grandma Jackie. And I can totally hear her saying “sweetheart” to me.

Growing up, Grandma Jackie, my dad’s mother, and her pancakes were something I looked forward to whenever we visited St. Louis or spent our summer vacation fishing at Montauk State Park in southern Missouri, the Harris family’s ancestral lands (at least in the immediate past). In the very best Midwestern tradition, breakfast at Grandma’s was a true feast: sausage, eggs, bacon, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, milk, coffee, orange juice, and, of course, pancakes. It is no secret that Midwesterners love their food. The church potluck is basically a cliché for the Methodists and Lutherans, to say nothing of basically inventing tailgating. But our love of food goes beyond needing big meals to get ready for a long day working the farm. In the Midwest, food is love. Continue reading “Pancakes are Love (and Other Lessons Learned from my Grandmothers)” →

William of Gin

Posted on by filmscore80

By Michael W. Harris

In September of 2017 I accepted a job at the College of William & Mary and had just two weeks to uproot my entire life and move across the country. I had spent the past decade living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and was now moving to the lower Chesapeake Bay and Historic Triangle of Williamsburg, Virginia. I had been to Virginia only once before, during my elementary school field trip to Washington, D.C., and my only memory of the state is almost being left behind at Jamestown when I spent too long in the gift shop looking at books.

I was a nerd from a young age.

My life seems to be a pattern of sudden change. While some live in a state of constant flux, mine seems to have long periods of stability punctuated with moments of rupture. Though, in retrospect, this change was possibly telegraphed. I had become restless in Colorado, and the physical changes my body was undergoing—I had recently decided to get healthy and dropped a considerably amount of weight—mirrored a larger change in my personality as I was struggling to figure out the direction I wanted my life to go. I had made the leap from professor to librarian, and by the fall of 2017 I was in the final semester of my library degree. However, there was still no sign that the permanent temporary status of my job at the University of Colorado would ever change.

So it was, when I returned to Colorado after spending a month in Wyoming doing the requisite internship for my library degree, that I decided to hit the job market hard and truly begin my new career in earnest. Not long after that I was packing up my apartment, including an inordinate number of bottles of gin leftover from my 37th birthday party, and began the three-day drive to Virginia and the College of William & Mary. Continue reading “William of Gin” →