Flour on the Floor: Potato Candy & Starting Over

As a child, I was easily overwhelmed by the hoopla of holidays. The blinking lights, the crowds, the bustle in the kitchen, the frenzy of wrapping gifts and parties. The Christmas after I turned five, I walked from my bedroom in the early morning and rounded the corner to the den. There stood my beaming parents, eager for my reaction at the mounds of wrapped things. Boxes big and small flanked the tree and all bore my name. I surveyed Mom’s hopeful smile and Dad’s expectant expression--then turned and left the room. It was all too much.

I didn’t need many possessions to be happy; I could be entertained for hours with a tape deck or a few stuffed animals. Though I didn’t need many things, there was one collection of items that I prized--my Christmas ornaments.

Each year, my parents would buy a special ornament for me and have my name and the year engraved on it. The ornaments were heavy--in both their make and their importance. A bronze teddy bear when I was a baby; a stained glass Christmas tree with colored glass ornaments embedded in it--its fragility making me feel grown-up when I handled it; a ceramic wreath trimmed in real gold that I was thrilled to be entrusted with. Even when they were packed away for the season, I could conjure the contours of each from memory. I looked forward to seeing what treasure my parents had gotten me to represent each passing year.

The year I turned eleven, my parents separated. Our family fell apart in the fall, right before the holidays. A list was drawn up of items that would remain with me. I was a package deal with things like the standing freezer (and what little girl doesn’t dream of her very own freezer?), our Lowrey organ (again, yippee), and my Christmas ornaments.

In some complicated turn of events my father gained primary custody of me and Mom was awarded every major holiday: Easter, summer vacation, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I spent that first Christmas with Mom in her new apartment furnished with half of our old home’s things. We had a tree but it was missing my signature ornaments as they were back at the home I shared with Dad.

Mom continued to build my collection anyway, faithfully seeking out special ornaments for me each year. She was steadfast while Dad proved to be erratic, chasing his dreams with an intensity that stamped out any objections. He hopped from one business to the next, waiting for the major pay-out he just knew would come. In the meantime, we moved from our house to a smaller villa to an apartment and so on with each place offering less space than the last.

Over time, my ornaments came to represent normalcy, my thread to a stable past. Each year brought a new delight in the form of a shiny, ornate, personalized bauble for the tree. The box grew. The ornaments were Christmas--all things family and happy and hope.

Dad was a person with disdain for attachment; he shed things and people as he went. He never maintained a single friendship but rather interacted with people as they met his needs. Possessions were the same. With each move, he winnowed our belongings. There was no discussion, just items left behind. The list of things I discovered missing grew: notebooks of my writing, childhood photos, letters from my mom and grandma, and love notes from boyfriends. Dad was utilitarian and boxes of things that did nothing but stir memories were just unnecessary.

He was the consummate salesman and knew how to handle a little protest. He had a way of making you feel diminutive; your worries, your anxieties--they were small-time. He could cut his eyes and purse his lips in a way that said it all. I accepted my losses and moved on.

Years later, a whirlwind of anger swirled around my leaving for college. Dad wanted me to live at home for at least my first year and was full of ultimatums--if you leave now don’t ever come back, and the like. I left.  

We eventually made up. During our time apart, however, my father’s irresponsibility pressed in on me and I realized that the time had come for me to gather all of my belongings and keep them close. I planned to stow my past under my sorority room bed. Once our relationship was humming along again, I mentioned that I’d like to pick up a few things.

But I was too late. By then the Christmas ornaments, my constant companions long after the organ and freezer were abandoned, were gone.

It was the first time I saw Dad stumble as he tried to explain, one lame made-up excuse at a time, what happened to them. Gone was his confident demeanor. He didn’t have to say it, I knew: he had thrown them away in a fit of rage. Dad knew he was wrong, but he still couldn’t hide his derision at my upset over something like a missing possession. He thought I should get over it already; what’s done is done.

That Christmas, circumstances prevented me from going to Mom’s and I was too mad to spend it with Dad so I ended up staying with a friend and her family. Mom shipped my gifts there. Absent the collection to add it to, she sent a 1989 ornament anyway. It made me tear up. But what I found underneath it made me bawl in earnest. She had included a second ornament. This one said my name in neat cursive but the year said “1970”--the year I was born. Her note said, “Let’s start over.” She alone understood. I was humbled by her optimism. Her love pulled me up. I have not missed spending a Christmas with her since.  

Now I bring my husband and children. Though we are raising a Jewish family, we continue the tradition in Mom’s home by decorating the tree there with the ever-growing collection of special ornaments including the ones she has picked out for the kids each year since they were born.

This year we also built familial heritage by making an old-fashioned Southern dessert that was one of my favorites as a child: potato candy. It seems like a misprint, these two words together (sort of like Jews decorating a Christmas tree), but it’s a delicious confection with the dual flavors of sweetness and peanut butter.

Mom is a free-form baker. Good luck getting a recipe from her; she uses words like “smidge” and “pinch.” We are opposites in this way. For every cup I level, she adds based on appearance and texture. Baking with her is great fun as it reminds me to trust my own intuition more. My mom and my daughter fit together this way, working side by side, mixing with their fingers dug in. It’s a treat to see them bake together. As we three work in the kitchen, our similarities become apparent--we each want to take over and do it our way (my five-year-old is the most persistent in this). We are sprouts on the same tree.

I do a little research on potato candy and all I can ascertain for sure is that Southern potato candy is different from that of the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Irish recipes. There is no real history to report, only notes from bakers saying how their grandmothers used to make it. It is simply the history of family tradition being passed down.  Even my Mom can’t, for the life of her, remember where she learned to make it. She assumes it was from her own mother.

As for me, I know I learned it from my mom. I remember a childhood spent curled on the couch with a plate of these soft white and brown pinwheel candies in front of me. They are fudge-like in their melting, and achingly sweet until you hit upon the peanut butter which offers a flavorful respite. Both of my kids love it now too, eating so much that we make a second batch later in the week.

Today is our last day at Mom’s after spending a week here. I feel the familiar sadness that perhaps only children of divorce feel at the end of trips. It’s the feeling that much will happen before you see your beloved parent again and that the visits are always too short and cannot possibly make up for all of the time lost in an adolescence spent shuttling between parents.

Tomorrow I will hug Mom at the airport and will cry all the way to the plane with my children tugging at me asking, “What’s wrong, Mommy?” In their security, they can’t possibly imagine the loss I feel at each separation from my mother.

She is my tether. She is unconditionally loving and accepting. She connects me to my past in a tangible way even as she figures in my future. This is my holiday love note to her. Merry Christmas, Mom.


Mom’s Southern Potato Candy

32 oz. confectioner’s sugar
1 small potato, boiled till done, skin on
1 stick (8 tbl) butter, softened
4-5 tablespoons milk
¼ tsp vanilla
16-20 oz. peanut butter
2 sheets waxed paper
non-stick spray

The word “Southern” should tell you that this is not a low-fat recipe. For confirmation, look at the ingredient list!

Peel the cooked potato and remove any eyes or bruises (the potato is more tender if boiled skin-on then peeled rather than the other way around). Mash about half or about ⅓ cup of the potato in a large bowl.

Add about ⅓ of the confectioners sugar and mix the two together with the tips of your fingers. Add half of the stick of butter and continue mixing together. Add another ⅓ of sugar. The mixture should start resembling bean-sized balls as it incorporates. Start adding the milk a single tablespoon at a time and continue mixing. Add the vanilla. The more mixing you do here, the better the whole thing will roll out. Set aside a small amount of the confectioner’s sugar (about ¼ cup) for use when rolling dough. Add the last of the butter, the sugar and the milk and continue to work your fingers through the dough, incorporating the ingredients with each other.

Split the dough into two large, similar-sized balls. Lay out a sheet of waxed paper and spray it with non-stick spray. Place one dough ball in the middle of the paper and sprinkle with some confectioner’s sugar to prevent sticking. Roll the dough to about ⅛ inch thickness. The dough should be longer than it is wide when you are done.

Next dollop half of the peanut butter on the rolled dough and spread it gently, covering the entire dough right to the edges. Working from one of the short ends, begin rolling the dough into a log, still keeping it on the paper. Once the log is rolled (it will be smaller on the ends), wrap it completely in the paper and twist the ends to seal.

Repeat rolling out process and peanut butter spreading and log-rolling with second ball of dough. Refrigerate both dough logs for at least one hour. Using a sharp knife, cut downward into the roll, creating pinwheel-type soft candies. Enjoy.

Makes about 34 pieces.