The GD lobster bisque

A piping hot bowl of sisterly warfare

Growing up with two older brothers meant I had a pretty idealized version of what life would be like with a sister. In my mind, it was all matching costumes and choreographed song and dance numbers. I had no rationale for this fantasy, especially given some of the dynamics I was exposed to during family visits. When we did holidays with my dad’s side of the family it meant seeing my Nana and her sister (Aunt Nancy) in peak form. I regularly replay the following scene in vivid detail:

Nana and Aunt Nancy are sitting next to each other on a couch but facing forward and never looking at the other sister the entire time. Nana is wearing a white button down and white cardigan with a long plaid skirt. Aunt Nancy is wearing a yellow sweater and printed slacks.

[Please read the below in a heavy Kentucky twang]

Nana: Nancy, where’d you get that sweater? [If “Nancy” wasn’t at least four syllables when reading this, you’re not getting the accent right.]

Aunt Nancy: You already asked me that, Mary.

Nana: Well I don’t think you answered.

Aunt Nancy: That’s because I didn’t want you to say anything mean.

Nana: I won’t, just tell me where you got it.

Aunt Nancy: Fine, I got it at Dillard’s.

Nana: Well, remind me never to shop there, it’s so ugly.

And scene.

Even in elementary school, I knew enough to know that this kind of comedy doesn’t just happen out of nowhere and skipped off to repeat the entire exchange to my mother. Holidays with my mother’s family were generally more “fun.” Not because I loved my mother’s family more but because they were about double the size and the average age was so much lower. My mom was the second of four sisters and the other three were New Yorkers and always knew the cool clothes, the best products, and the right thing to do in any situation (according to them).

For a while, I was jealous of that dynamic too. They had traditions and a connection with each other that no one else did. My dad had known them all since high school or younger and there was a familiarity and sense of fun that felt so full of energy. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized how much of that sense of fun was actually just Olympics-worthy passive aggression, often directed at my mom.

My mom was the only sister with both a full-time job and kids, which apparently made her both a negligent mother and a terrible cook. The fact that we lived in suburban Philadelphia instead of the New York metro area sealed our fate as irredeemable provincials.

One Thanksgiving, when we were driving about four hours to see them, my mother was apparently not specific enough about arrival time. Getting from suburban Philadelphia to Long Island on 95N on the busiest travel day of the year was unpredictable even in the best circumstances. This was pre-cell phone days, so when my aunt Ginny pressed for an exact arrival time and my mom said something like, “honestly, if we miss lunch we can eat something cold or even leftovers, it’s fine,” she sincerely meant it.

When we arrived, a fabulous gourmet lunch was waiting for us but my mother was told she couldn’t eat it and instead was served a leftover slice of cold pizza with an “S” (her first initial) shaped out of sliced bell peppers on top. She thought it was a joke but Ginny wouldn’t let her eat anything else, or if she did it was much much later, because I remember enjoying my meal while my mother sat with that sad, shaming cold slice of pizza on a plate at the very same table.

I’m pretty sure they were green bell peppers but there would have been something pretty audacious if she’d used red and my mother was forced to sit with an actual scarlet letter.

The extended family narrative that I learned as I got older was that we lived in a terrible place (a dry town with no luxury hotel for a family of *heavy* drinkers is, admittedly, a certain kind of hell), my mother was a bad cook, and my brothers and I were terribly behaved. While none of these things were true, I do know that whenever we hosted, there was a lot of grumbling, constant jabs, and my mother’s Chardonnay consumption would spike.

Sisters would call to review my mother’s menu and make requests as well as give feedback – not because of dietary restrictions or preferences but because it wasn’t “up to snuff.” One year, when I was in middle school, there was a big blow up over the soup course. My mother was very excited to make a curried butternut squash soup. Her sister wanted a lobster bisque.

My mother stood firm that she’d be making a curried butternut squash soup.

Her sister showed up with lobster bisque that she’d prepared and brought in a cooler anyway.

This was ninja-level passive aggression because it’s essentially impossible to serve two soups; no one wants an extra course and we certainly didn’t have two sets of soup bowls for 18 people. This pre-prepared soup was so much more than “bringing a dish to help.”

I don’t remember every single thing that followed except that my mother grabbed my arm and pulled me into the guest room closet like a vaudeville barker yanking someone off stage where, with tears in her eyes, she just started whisper yelling in a very sharp staccato with overly pronounced consonants:

“I cannot believe she brought the GD lobster bisque. I told her I was making squash soup. Why would she do this?”

I didn’t really know how to respond except to tell her I was sorry and that I hated shellfish and would prefer her soup.

My mom continued not really listening to me but using me as some kind of stand-in for the sister she would never confront directly. “I can’t serve both. I can’t believe she did this.”

By the time we were out of the closet and back to the kitchen, the lobster bisque was in my mother’s soup pot getting gently warmed on the stove and I ended up microwaving some butternut squash soup at the table with everyone else.

Once everyone left, we did our traditional full family “rehash” where we all talked about the holiday from our perspectives and shared anything interesting we learned. One of my brothers tried to joke about the soup situation but my mom was not yet at a point of finding it funny. She got re-enraged sounding off about how insane it was to show up with the “GD lobster bisque” when she’d already gone through the entire menu with her sisters.

The GD lobster bisque was served at multiple subsequent holidays and, while I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway, I took some pride in always turning it down.

I may have missed out on the sister I always wanted, but I know my brothers would never weaponize soup.