Mornings and Mothers: House of the World
I am thinking about mornings and mothers.
I am thinking about the time Susan made me popovers for breakfast. Not pancakes, not waffles, the two American breakfast dishes I am familiar with, but popovers. She told me in a very Susan way too, with an enthusiasm only a small, sprightly blonde Texan woman can muster at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. “We’re making POPovers!” she announced as she saw me walking into the McClures’ black-and-white kitchen. Well, it’s a kitchen with green walls, but their black and white tiles are what I always remember when I think of that kitchen.
“Oh wow,” I replied sleepily, as I took a seat at the dining table. “I’ve never had popovers before.” Susan’s green eyes lit up at my answer — she is always happiest when she gets to introduce any American delicacy to me, the Indonesian student who somehow found herself in the middle of New Hampshire. “Perfect! You’ll love them!” she exclaimed, as she grabs utensils from the cupboard. I stood up, suddenly feeling guilty I didn’t offer to do anything like Mama taught me to. “Oh here Susan, let me help set the table. Where are the plates?”
“No, no, Brea. Sit down. It’s okay.” Susan waved her arm frantically to make sure I sit back down. “Did you sleep well last night? Was Morgan’s bed okay? You weren’t too cold, right? Did you see the extra blankets I put on top of the covers in case you got cold at night?”
I sat back down, telling myself that this was the favor I was doing her. Helping her set up the table seemed like it would stress her out. “I did, I did.” I smiled and nodded my head. “It wasn’t too cold. Morgan’s bed was very comfortable.” I tried to remember whether I answered all her questions. “Thank you so much again for inviting me over here this weekend.” I added on, when a figure of Mama popped in my head saying Manners matter Manners matter. “It’s always good to get away from campus.”
Morgan is Susan’s oldest daughter, who had just graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy last summer, right before I enrolled the coming fall. We had met in the spring of her senior year, when I was visiting the campus upon getting admitted. Our parents — Susan, and my Papa — had discovered that their respective daughters were going to switch places around the world. I was an Indonesian girl about to move to middle-of-nowhere New Hampshire, and Morgan, the New Hampshire native from smalltown Portsmouth, had just gotten accepted to an exchange program in an unfamiliar city called Makassar in Indonesia.
I thought back to that weekend. When Papa took me to Experience Exeter, on the weekend for accepted students, snow still covered the grounds. It was April. “Are you sure you want to go here, Ci?” he muttered during our drive from Logan, shuddering as he saw the endless line of still-leafless trees along the I-95. “It looks like something out of those Twilight movies.” When we got to campus, we watched the boys walk around in shorts in a color that looked like pink (I would later find out it is called salmon, a hue that only seems to exist within white people) and girls in overly bright floral dresses. Papa and I shivered in our thick winter coats.
Without Papa, who was off at talks for prospective parents, I felt lost and lonely all day as I attended classes at Exeter. The students seemed so… big. Their presence towered over me, both physically, in the hallways, and intellectually, in class discussions I listened to. By the end of the day, I was ready to go back to the hotel. But when I met Papa again he told me had arranged a dinner with a parent of a current student. “Her daughter is coming too, so you can ask her questions about Exeter,” Papa said. “The daughter is going to Makassar next fall, of all places, so they want to ask us questions about Indo. Isn’t that so weird?”
I remembered stepping into Las Olas, Exeter’s version of Chipotle, and finding two, tiny blonde women waiting for us. I remembered smiling to myself as I watched a mother and a daughter, both just as talkative as the other, constantly interrupt each other throughout dinner. Unlike the intimidating giants I had seen all day, these people felt real.
Since Exeter’s campus was only thirty-minutes away from Portsmouth, where Susan lives, I would occasionally stay at the McClures’ on weekends. Susan’s mothering and delicious home cooked meals, felt like a welcomed reprieve from my usual schedule: me constantly hustling against the world of geniuses I had somehow chosen to inhabit. In return, whenever Morgan was in Jakarta, she would stay with my family. Mama would tell me on the phone about how Morgan devoured her baked mac ’n’ cheese — also a welcomed reprieve, I imagine, from Makassar’s lack of Western food choices.
Meeting the McClures was one of the reasons why my parents finally agreed to let me go off on my own. My Indonesian Mama called it, “A sign from God.” Years later, Susan would describe our families’ meeting in her American way — “Fate.”
A heavenly smell filled the McClures’ black and white kitchen, as Susan opened the oven. “Anytime, Brea, you can come to our house anytime. You know we love having you here!” Susan exclaimed as she pulled out a tray of little round buns of what I assumed to be American popovers. “I only wish we could have you here more often. But I know the school newspaper and all your classes keep you busy busy busy. I know we never saw Morgan when she was still at Exeter. And she was a day student!” As Susan started taking the popovers out of the tray, she looked at the clock. “Lily should be awake by now,” she said. “Do you mind checking on her?”
“Sure,” I said, as I got out of my seat, glad I could finally do something. I headed back into the living room and up the stairs. On the second floor I walked past little figurines from Kenya on the dresser in the hallway and exquisite Indian tapestry hung on the walls: memorabilia from the McClures’ year around the world. Their travels are the kind you hear in a story book, for where else would you find a family who just decided to take off for a year to trot the globe? With their two little girls — Morgan and her younger sister, Lily — Susan and Bill, rode tuktuks in India, camped their way through gorgeous New Zealand mountainside, and survived the catastrophic 2006 tsunami in Thailand. Alongside framed maps on the walls, books about various cultures and countries filled their bookshelves — resources for their next journey, no doubt.
Perhaps that was why I could feel at home at this house, the house of the world. Unlike so many of the Americans I had met in school — smart they may be in their own little bubbles — the McClures had a deep curiosity of what lay beyond their horizon. It was in this same desire I had first chosen to step out of my comfort zone and apply to a school halfway across the globe, instead of simply bettering my chances of getting into an Ivy League university, which is what many of my American friends were doing. I wanted to live a life of adventures, the kind the McClures have had.
I popped my head into Lily’s room. “Lil,” I called out. “You awake?” The smallest McClure popped out from under the covers. “Yeah,” Lily mumbled back to me with a sleepy smile. “I was just about to head downstairs. What’s Mom making? It smells really good.”
“Popovers!” I replied with a smile. I can’t help it — Susan’s enthusiasm is infectious. We both walked down the stairs and headed back to the kitchen. Bill, having come back from his morning yoga, was drinking his coffee and reading the Sunday funnies at the dining table. Lily plopped down in the seat next to mine and yawned. “Good morning to you too, sleepyhead,” Susan chuckled. “Want some popovers?” Lily’s gray eyes lit up, just the way Susan’s did. “Yes please,” Lily handed her plate to Susan. I wondered what Mama served for breakfast for Morgan this morning back in Jakarta. “Brea? Your plate?” Susan asked. I handed her my plate. Definitely not popovers, I thought.
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This story is the third of a four-part series titled Mornings and Mothers. Read the others here:


