The Rite Of Plum Pudding
by Judy Albrecht

Although my family was “traditional” in the lexical sense of the word, many of our traditions were loosely held. It took “Aunt” Ellen, an unrelated relative whom I adopted in my grasp to reconstruct my mother after her sudden death, to teach me the true meaning of the word.

Aunt Ellen was a dumpling of a woman, but statuesque in her demeanor. Her raven hair in no way masked her full 80 some-odd years when I first met her. Chronology was to be revered in Aunt Ellen, the culture-bearer of my dearest friend’s family, but in no way was one to attribute the antiquity of her experiences to the gracious lady who shared them. Aunt Ellen was “Miss” Ellen to the entire Seguin community. She was the matriarch of Special Education, having been the first such teacher in the town. Indeed, some of her 40 year-old “children” still visited this nurturing harbinger of individualization. But I digress. It’s just that so much of the tradition was bound in the persona of “Aunt” Ellen. She was a solid, stocky marshmellow that could envelope you totally in her hungs. She was a straight shooter in a bent body; a farseeing prophet in coke bottle lenses. I guess the latter characteristic was the most comical feature of this grand dame education. (I hasten to add that Aunt Ellen’s visual handicap was also most endearing to us all.) It’s what kept her human in her infinite wisdom of the years. Aunt Ellen would be sharing a hallowed family story, and suddenly her right eye would begin its nystagmic track into an unknown orbit. The brown disk would traverse the circumference of her socket for what seemed an eternity. It traveled the gamut of ranges, rather like our pool-sweep. To maintain eye-contact was damned near impossible at this turn of events, at least it was for me. But the listening never stopped from her audience, just as the love always flowed from the beautiful story-teller.

Indeed, half of the plum pudding ritual was devoted to the precious stories that accompanied the making. As the years progressed, Aunt Ellen’s ratio of talk to labor shifted dramatically. No one minded. Aunt Ellen’s narratives were nine-tenths of the fun. The other tenth was the obeisance this represented to the beloved task-master. Eating was secondary; culminated only by-Aunt Ellen’s inevitable pontification: “There’s no such thing as a bad plum puddin' – only good and better.” Nevertheless, we all eagerly awaited the subtle evaluative sighs that accompanied the first taste of our arduous labor.

Until I “joined” the family there was no written record of a plum pudding recipe. The only requirement for the procedure was that a person set aside an entire day and bring anything that might seem appropriate for the task. The biggest problem was finding the appropriate suet. It had to be from the kidneys! Aunt Ellen could detect the difference in texture immediately. It generally befell Aunt Ellen to go and flirt with the butcher beginning around November to insure that the correct product was available. Beyond that ingredient, the rest was pretty much negotiable. Some years the currents were good and available, sometimes not. Several years in a row one of us mistakenly brought “seedless” and not “seeded” white raisins. It took my volumnuous kitchen dictionary to explain the difference cognitively, but Aunt Ellen knew it in her soul. The latter was definately preferred. Bread cubes and spices, candied fruits of every dimension and description, and dark raisins completed the Christmas concoction. Chopping, slicing, and slivering were the order of the day for the kitchen help. But it took a master chef to combine the conglomeration of goodies. After about 4 hours of preparation, we would retire to the dining room for tea and sandwiches. Aunt Ellen would finish up her tales of her singular trip to England– the homeland of her forebearers. She would review the creamy confections sampled there. She would repeat the odd-ball goof-ups of her early (and some recent) endeavors in the treacherous field mines of plum puddings. And then she would embark upon this year’s forey into divinity. On one occassion we made her measure her efforts for publication. But typically Aunt Ellen was spontaneous combustion in her bowls. How the brown, gooey ball emerged from that explosion of ingredients is still part of the magic of the woman.

And, unfortunately, the magic died with her last spring. I still refuse to deal with the ultimate grief of what her death means to me. It’s too close yet. I can’t feel it in my numbness of denial. I can focus on the peripheral issue of the holiday, though. Christmas won’t be the same without the ritual of the plum pudding at Aunt Ellen’s. I imagine it will traverse to Aunt Mary’s or Aunt Aline’s, and a new generation of “upstarts” will write treatises to the “real” plum puddin'. But I know. The old folks know where the “real” stuff started. The genesis of the tradition is interred with her bones.