During the pandemic lockdown, many of us found ourselves revisiting family cookbooks for gems from the past. In our family home in Harwich Port, Massachusetts, my nephew Clark and his wife Jenn were diving deep into my late mother’s well-worn cookbooks when they found three pages of a recipe along with a note on U.S. Senate stationery reading:
May 5, 1970
Dear Mrs. Clark,
Here
is the Eggplant Parmigiana Recipe that Brooks seemed to like.
I
hope you all like it as much as we do. I’ll be anxious to know.
Marvella
Evan Bayh, who lived a few blocks down Garfield Street, was one
of my neighborhood friends who walked to and from school past my house. In a
visit to their home, I must have devoured Mrs. Bayh’s eggplant parmigiana with
relish, and in a phone conversation with my mother, she offered to send my mom the
recipe.
Sharing recipes is a time-honored way to nurture social
bonds. In this case it was an especially gracious way for my classmate’s mom to
reach out to a fellow mom she hadn’t yet gotten to know. Sometimes recipe-sharing
can nurture intergenerational bonds as well.
Jenn and Clark knew that Marvella was the late wife of
Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, known as “The Father of Title IX” for his role in
writing and passing the 1972 legislation that banned discrimination based on
gender in education, athletics and activities that receive federal financial
assistance. I was pleased to mention to them that Marvella, who had met Birch
when she beat him in a college debating contest, had applied to the University
of Virginia Law School in the early 60s but was turned down because of her
gender. She made sure this injustice was very much on Birch’s mind as he worked
on Title IX.
My mother and Marvella had plenty of opportunities to
interact as Evan and I made our way through high school. In the fall of 1971,
my mother took our neighborhood gang to the Washington Senators’ last game
before they departed for Texas. The game ended in a riot, and my mother got
lost on the way home. Evan had to make a call home from a pay phone—all on a
school night. My parents also took us to see The Last Picture Show, the
rather racy version of Larry McMurtry’s novel about growing up in a north Texas
oil town. Not pleased, Mrs. Bayh said she came from an Oklahoma town not too
far from the fictional Anarene, and that was most certainly not how she grew up.
Through it all, she was always very kind to me, and I still treasure the U.S.
Senate pen and mechanical pencil she gave me as a high school graduation gift.
In those years, Mrs. Bayh was diagnosed with breast cancer. As
she fought her battle, she served as a courageous president and spokesperson
for the American Cancer Society. She died in 1979 at 46.
Jenn showed the recipe to my sister, Kathy, who made it for
our vacation arrival dinner. We arrived after our two-day drive and —Covid
protocols in effect—ate it on a picnic table outside with appropriate social
distancing. It was especially gratifying to share this meal with family of
several generations.
I emailed Evan about the many memories the eggplant
parmigiana had brought me. He replied, “Thanks so much. I probably enjoyed that
dish a hundred times growing up, and seeing my mother’s recipe and handwriting
is especially evocative.”
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