Required Culture Under the Pink Chandelier
Among the de rigueur holiday season activities at my childhood home on Bedford Street in Midland was the annual pilgrimage across the street to a tea party at which my mother and I would view the Christmas decorations in the home of our neighbors Charles and Arletta Underwood. The Underwoods were sixty-ish childless Tennesseans who had traveled the world during Mr. Underwood’s career as a newspaper executive and settled in Midland with his last job. He left every morning for the newspaper office in a Cadillac while Arletta carved an exquisite garden out of the West Texas desert and tended her house full of priceless antiques. Arletta loved to entertain. She was a fragile little aging Southern belle who gave what were for me, at least, excruciating little tea parties. Her aristocratic Tennessee heritage, refined Southern manners, and elegant antique furniture made Arletta quite an arbiter of taste to my mother, and my attendance at her parties was required in the (ultimately vain) hope that she might have a civilizing effect on me.
The menus at these torturous afternoon soirées varied little from year to year. There was imported tea in delicate china served alongside petite sandwiches spread with mango chutney, fruitcake cookies, Martha Washington candies (chocolate-covered butter balls), and slices of candied ginger. I was a chubby, awkward child, whose social graces and calorie intake were always strictly monitored in public. Sitting on the edge of a dainty antique chair with a teacup in one hand and a saucer of cookies on my lap was a sure prescription for some sort of faux pas guaranteed to humiliate me and mortify my mother — things like spilling tea on the Persian carpet, depositing uneaten bits of candied fruit around the edges of the plate, or hiding a piece of candied ginger between the chair cushions when Arletta wasn’t looking because its sweet, peppery bite was a shock to my uneducated palate.
Once the party commenced, Mother and I would tour the house and murmur the appropriate “ooohs” and “ahhhs” as we viewed Arletta’s lovely Christmas tree ornaments, poinsettia arrangements, and Christmas creches. Then we’d sit down to tea. After the year I spilled tea on the Persian rug, Arletta began entertaining us at the dining room table, just to be on the safe side. The three of us would sit at the beautifully polished cherrywood table under the gleaming prisms of an heirloom chandelier and make ladylike small talk for what seemed like an eternity — always plenty of time for me to inadvertently say something gauche that would cause mother to weep with shame once we got safely back across the street.
Though the memory of my awkwardness at Arletta’s holiday parties can still make me cringe inside, I have to credit her as the first person who introduced my West Texas whitebread palate to the exotic flavors of imported Chinese teas, chutneys, and candied ginger. Now when I chop ginger to add to holiday baked good and condiments, I remember her sitting at the head of her dining room table under the glow of that pink chandelier. When Arletta died, Mother purchased the chandelier at the estate sale, and when Mother died, it came to me. Someday soon, I intend to hang it in the dining room of my own home, as a reward.
This article appears in December 21 • 2001.