My Mother’s Kitchen

Kim Carson’s interview withPeter Gethers, author of My Mother’s Kitchen

Today my conversation is with Peter Gethers who is an author, screenwriter, playwright, book editor, and TV/Film producer. Today our conversation is about his book My Mother’s Kitchen: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and the Meaning of Life.

Kim Carson: Thank you so much for talking to me today Peter. Peter Gethers: Thanks for having me. Just hearing that description it’s no wonder that

I’m tired. Kim: So this is a memoir about a son’s discovery that his mom has a genius quality for understanding these really intimate connections between cooking and people and love. So how did that start to unfold and become clear to you? Peter: It is kind of a memoir in the story of my mom. It took a lifetime for me to understand it. My mother was a very important person in the food world, which I can get back to, but when she was 85 years old, she had a very severe stroke. And this is when I began to realize just how extraordinary she was, because I was told she was gonna have locked in syndrome and that she’d never be able to speak or move again at age 84. Six weeks later she walked into a Christmas party because she refused to be wheeled in and she was speaking and making jokes and walking and eating of course. And six weeks after that she moved back to her apartment in New York. She was indomitable and food was so important to her that over the last few years of her life I got so interested in how she had become who she had become, which was someone who has a great level of peace with herself. And I thought, this is really interesting to me. I asked her what cooking did for her, I said, did you cook because it gave other people so much pleasure? And she said, no, which really surprised me. She said I cooked for myself. And I said, really,

what did it give you? She thought about it and she was quite aphasic but finally she came up with the perfect word, she said, it gave me identity. And I realized people who have that sense of identity also have a great sense of comfort. And we’re all looking for comfort. And I said to myself I wanna see how this person became who she became. Kim: And thus the idea for sharing these stories in your book, My Mother’s Kitchen. Peter: Yes and I went to her and I said, I wanna know more about you let’s start with food, because that was really an access point, it was for my mom. I got her to give me her fantasy breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus and I decided I was gonna learn to cook all these things. So over a couple of years,

I cooked for her and with her and learned from her. We talked about every possible thing in life from her early days, literally up until the day she died. And we talked about death and all sorts of serious things. It was a remarkably honest relationship and midway through the process I thought, well, I’m not just learning how to cook from my mother.

I tell the stories of my learning how to cook which I think are reasonably hilarious because I just bumble my way through them but I get there. I learned about life from her in a powerful and profound way. And I went, this isn’t just a life experience for me. I’m gonna write a book about it. I am a writer after all. So I should share these things. And that’s a long-winded way of how the book came to be Kim: And your mom, Judy Gethers was a celebrated cook and cookbook writer. She was also a mother figure and a mentor to so many different chefs,

Wolfgang

Puck, Jonathan

Waxman and Nancy

Silverton. She also ran the cooking school

Ma Cuisine teaching right alongside Julia

Child. I mean her life was cooking and this all happened later in life. Peter: She didn’t start until she was 53 years old.

That was her first job. When she took a nonpaying job at Ma Maison to become a good

French cook. That was her goal. She worked there three nights a week and they said, we’ll work you to the bone. And a year later she was the mentor to all these chefs and opened up a cooking school and was pals with Julia Child; it was incredible. Kim: It is incredible. You visited your mom at least twice a week and I’d like to know what those visits looked like and what did your mom share about food, family, love and how they’re all entwined? Peter: Everything, because I really wanted to learn how she achieved this kind of extraordinary serenity when she had so many ups and downs in her life, especially over the

Julia Child with Peter’s mother, Judy Gethers

last decade of her life, because I was not that serene a person. I don’t think I would’ve dealt with a lot of things the way she was able to, you know she just didn’t give up. When she had her stroke, and I told you how severe it was, her doctor who was a wonderful gerontologist said to me, I’ve never seen anything like this. Your mother’s never been depressed. He said, at first I thought maybe she was in denial. Her life is so diminished but she just literally from day one went, I don’t need antidepressants. I’m not depressed.

I understand what happened. I understand what my life is gonna be. This is what it is.

I’m gonna deal with it and move on. And she just went forward with no regret. Kim: She just pressed through and continued to press through Peter: And pressed through with a great joy of life. She never felt sorry for herself. She just went, you know what this is what my life is now, this is what I’m gonna appreciate. Kim: It’s acceptance. There’s a peace in that as well. Peter: And I believe a lot of that came from what she learned and did in the kitchen over the 30 years before this happened, it was quite extraordinary. And I did learn a lot, you asked what happened in those sessions?

I cooked. And she often laughed at my ineptitude and made fun of me. She would say “oh my God, you’re really, you have no idea what you’re doing” and I’d say, what happened to the nice, quiet aphasic mom

I had five minutes ago. Now that you’re making fun of me, you can talk perfectly.

So I learned over several years about her youth and my family and the more I learned the more impressed I was and the more I realized what a truly strong person she was.

And I tell a story in the book that years ago when she first went to work at Ma Maison and was first working with Wolf I visited

LA. I was living back in New York at this point and she was in Los Angeles. I walked in the back door of my parents’ house. I knew she’d been doing this in the food world, but I hadn’t been home since she’d started. I watched her and she was chopping, you know the way real chefs chop something at that Star Wars Warp Speed kinda thing. Kim: Right. I can see it in my minds eye. Peter: And perfectly. I was watching her, not just in awe of her mechanics, but there was this remarkable sense of peacefulness about her and serenity. I really thought to myself, she’s now a different person. She used to say to me, she never had to see a shrink because she worked out all her problems while she was chopping, baking, cooking and doing all these things. That was her peace. Kim: It’s so beautiful. You know what I found

interesting and I’m curious about it, what was the attraction that your mom had to your dad because they were pretty different kind of people. Right? Peter: My parents met when they were 14 years old in summer camp and they were married until my dad died. He died young at age 67. So they were still together quite a while. They were married at age 21 .They survived my dad being in the Army and

WWII, gone for three years. And then he was a struggling actor and didn’t make much money for a long time. So they went through a lot of different stages. They had an insanely good marriage. I mean, it was kind of startling. They just loved each other and they liked each other. And what was very interesting to me also, and I talked to my mom about this is she had been a stay at home wife and mother until she was 53 and went to work at Ma Maison. Everyone thought my dad would not react well, he was used to being catered to and it’s not that they didn’t have things in common they just had very different personalities. My dad was very outgoing. My mother let him be the the star of the family and people assumed he was the strength of the family. I learned it was my mother who was the strength of the family. She was the one with the iron will and the steel backbone. But when she was 53, she said, I wanna do this. And he didn’t hesitate he said, that’s wonderful I approve a hundred percent I’m thrilled for you. Wow.

Suddenly he was alone three nights a week and my mother actually became a star in the food world. My dad told me later that he knew it was time for her to change. It was time for her to grow. She’d been growing for decades. Each decade, my mother got stronger and stronger. And he said it was time for her to really move on with her life and become a new person. And he was confident enough that he would love the new person she was becoming as much as the old person she had been and of course that’s what happened. And it was mutual. Kim: I love the differences; they’re both very multifaceted people and yet they understood each other and there was an understanding. Peter: Well, there was a perfect simpatico. You know, my dad was wildly funny and he was a very talented writer and became a talented television director and producer. And he was very flamboyant, an overpowering personality. And my mother was very quiet.

People thought she was meek. She never was, but it took a lot to realize that it wasn’t meekness that kept her quiet it was just strength that kept her quiet. And she was a huge support for the family. And once she went to work at Ma Maison and became

this figure that she became in the food world, she also realized that she had a lot to offer younger people. She stayed friends with people who were much younger until she was in her nineties. And they would come to her for advice, especially in the seventies, they were going through divorces or they were going through sexual identity problems, whatever and my mother was very non judge judgmental and she would just give them sound advice. She became this sagacious person. Kim: Peter, I know you have to go, but could you talk a little about bringing your mom’s friends and loved ones all together at the table that one last time. Peter: Well, what I was hoping to do with this book was to create this fantastic feast while my mom was still alive. And the idea was to bring together Wolf and Nancy Silverton and the chefs she mentored and who mentored her. But also, as I said, she had friends and loved ones from every decade, teenaged to 80 something years old. I wanted to create this feast to really bring everyone together.

My mother died before I was able to do this.

So instead, this great feast was for about 75 people at her Memorial. And what was nice about it in a strange way, although I wish I had been able to do it when she was alive, was that she knew the way everybody felt about her. It was really clear. So this just turned into a huge celebration. The way she would’ve loved it to have been, it was not a mournful service or a memorial. It was just a pure celebration of people eating much of what I made and for 75 people which is reasonably difficult. We just had a feast. We drank my mother’s favorite wine. We drank my mother’s favorite dessert wine. My very favorite thing about the evening was when there were about 20 people left and we were just a exhausted and swigging the dessert wine, overlooking Central Park at a friend of my mother’s apartment, that’s where we held it. Incredible fireworks went off and it was like a final end to my mother’s life. It was just this insane celebration. People thought

I arranged it, but it was a concert that was in the park. It was just like what life is to be, celebrated. So it was a perfect ending. Kim: It’s a wonderful read. Get My Mother’s

Kitchen just in time for Mother’s Day. Peter: Oh, thank you so much Kim.

Kim Carson

Kim is an Author/Podcast/TV/ Internet personality. Watch and listen for her on WGVU TV’s Kalamazoo Lively Arts and J. Schwanke’s Life In Bloom. Learn more at kimcarson.online and fb.com/kimcarson