2024/17 A BOWL OF PISTACHIOS

When I was small and we were living in our old brick English Tudor house on Old Clairton Road, with its hardwood floors and midcentury Pennsylvania charm, our mother kept a carved marble bowl on one of the built-in shelves in the dining room. I can picture it now as I imagine the dusting of it during Saturday chores. Occasionally she kept red pistachio nuts in it. You could always tell when someone had snuck into the bowl because the evidence appeared on their fingertips. In those days they dyed imported pistachios a deep red. They looked beautiful in Mom’s white marble bowl. Pistachio nuts were generally out of our budget range, but Mom had a strong thirst for beautiful aesthetics. She sometimes chose to forego some of the basics for just a fingerful of the divine. I have long admired this about her, that she knew what brought her delight and she found a way to make small things happen to beautify her world rather than bemoaning her situation. It was generally understood that those deep red pistachios were there for purposes other than satisfying our hunger. Our mother was a fan of the color red, especially against white. Only on holidays or special occasions were we given permission to go ahead and crack open those exotic treats.

Red pistachios, imported from Iran, are no longer the norm.
They were dyed to cover their flaws.
We in the US generally get our nuts from California.

Fast forward a few decades.We are living in Utah as adults and Mom has a place of her own just across the highway. Mom’s kids are grown, with careers and children of their own. Mom also has her own successful career as a Realtor. Her grandkids will tell you one of their prominent memories of visiting Gram was the large wooden bowl filled with pistachios on her kitchen counter. I don’t think I had ever seen, anywhere else, such a grand and inviting bowl of rare nuts. Pistachios were, to us, an exotic treat. I think mom had reached a place in her sense of self that she wanted to share the wealth. She was successful, and independent… finally. For so long she had been caught in the social norms of the day. She and all our friends’ mothers were the one who stayed home and kept the house and made the meals and raised the kids. It was the dad who brought home the paycheck and allotted what he felt she deserved. Sadly, with the mental and physical state of our addicted father, Mom hardly even got that. So, when she was finally free and could provide for herself, that massive bowl of endless pistachios represented that what she had she was willing to share.

I now keep a bowl of pistachios on our family room table. Ours are kept in an old wooden rice measuring bowl we bought in Macau China when we travelled to Hong Kong to retrieve our Kate after her 18 month church mission. It has a companion bowl for discarded shells beside it. The containers are square and wooden with intricate dovetailing. 

There are always plenty of fresh pistachio nuts at our table. Our kids and grandkids eat them like popcorn.  Popcorn would be cheaper, but it wouldn’t remind me of my mom and her generous heart.

Six-year-old Tess added this little sign to our nuts last week.