Memories of Mom: Prune Balls

After listening to “WireTap” on National Public Radio I’ve decided, at age 40-something, it’s time to finally disclose one of my most embarrassing childhood memories. I mean, if radio personality Jonathan Goldstein can talk about having to introduce his first girlfriend to his mother while said mom was sitting on the toilet, then I should be able to share my prune ball story without reliving the mortification. Hey, I can laugh about this stuff today, right? The world will not end as I know it just because my mom made me bring prune balls to the Brownie meeting when it was my turn to bring the snack…

Trying to Fit In

I spent most of grade school trying to fit in–not an easy task when you’re the only biracial kid in your class, you have curly brown hair instead of straight blonde and your name is Phoebe, rather than Mary, Susie or Lisa. It didn’t help that my blonde-haired, blue-eyed second-grade teacher hated me or that my mom was nothing like other moms. In 1942 my mom was the first woman in the state of Illinois to be licensed as a surgeon. By the time I came along, she was well into her career, worked long hours and didn’t have much time for my extracurricular activities.

She did try, though.

It Had to Be ‘Perfect’

In second grade at many schools across the U.S. it was expected that if you were a girl you would join the local Brownies troop, precursor to Girl Scouts. You got to wear a cute little outfit once a week and have secret meetings at which no boys were allowed and do stuff. My school was no different, so I became a Brownie.

Snack duty was a very important responsibility that rotated each week among troop members. When it was my turn, all I knew was it had to be special. If I was going to get these girls to like me, I had to make sure to absolutely knock their socks off with the snack I brought to the meeting. So, I enlisted my mom in a brainstorming session on one of the rare occasions she was home during the day.

“It’s gotta be something really delicious, but different from what everyone else brings,” I told her. I then proceeded to reject every single suggestion she made. I don’t remember them all, but I know she made several: Chocolate chip cookies? No, we had those last week, I said. Brownies? No. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting? (Jiffy yellow cake mix, in the little blue and white box, was a staple in our suburban household back then and was one of my favorite desserts.) Nope.

I could have brought a delicious cake for the Brownie meeting snack, but noooooooo...my snack had to be 'special.'

I remember she opened cupboards and racked her brain to help me come up with the perfect snack that would miraculously remove me from dunce status among my classmates. (Unbeknownst to my mom at the time, my teacher made me write sentences aallllll the time, such as “Lips are sealed in the room.” One of my classmates whom I reconnected with as an adult told me she used to pull my hair, too, but I don’t remember that so much.

I put a lot of stock in that snack. If I were ever going to gain any “cred” among the girls, it had to be perfect, according to my 7-year-old view of the world.

My mom knew none of this. All she knew was that I pooh-poohed every single one of her perfectly reasonable–and delicious–suggestions. So, in a fit of exasperation she decided I was going to make prune balls.

“What are those?” I asked, doubtfully. The only thing I knew about prunes was that my grandmother drank prune juice every day. It came in a brown bottle; the juice was brown; and it didn’t smell very good, kind of musty and old, like my grandma.

“They’re delicious,” she insisted, pulling a large clear plastic bag of wrinkly looking brown things from one of the cupboards. They looked like giant, wrinkled deer turds, I thought. Not at all what I had in mind for my very important snack.

Mom said something like, This is what you’re going to make and that’s final. No amount of cajoling or temper tantrums could dissuade her. Mom had run out of patience and turd balls, I mean, prune balls it was going to be.

I don’t really remember how they were made: I think she showed me how to stuff the pitted prunes (which are dried plums, for the uninitiated) with some kind of sweetened mixture of chopped nuts and sugar, then each prune was rolled in sugar (so now they looked like giant, wrinkled deer turds with ice crystals on them) and then Mom showed me how to arrange them artfully on a platter covered with waxed paper, then a layer of plastic wrap over the top and we were done! Oh joy.

Best Laid Plans…

Needless to say, my mom’s delicious prune ball recipe went over like I had showed up to the meeting with chocolate-covered cockroaches (which probably would have been more aesthetic). The girls took one look at the strange, poop-like objects on the platter and curled up their lips or wrinkled their noses in disgust. (We were 7 and not yet adept at social graces.) One of the braver den mothers politely tried one and told me it was “delicious.” I wound up taking almost all of them back home with me. Or maybe I just threw them away on my way out the door.

It could have been worse: Mom could have had me bring stewed prunes to the meeting.

I wish I could say I learned a valuable lesson about not caring what other people think or how next time it was my turn to bring the snack I wasn’t so picky and knew it was OK to bring something ordinary like chocolate chip cookies. But the truth is I was mortified. I was angry at my mother for a long time for making me take those prune balls to the meeting. (I think I quit going to Brownies meetings shortly thereafter.) And my teacher continued to harass me.

But thank goodness we can eventually grow up and get over such nonsense. Goldstein and other comedians make careers out of sharing stories about how parents and/or siblings humiliated them repeatedly as children. Now that my mom is gone, I cherish my memories of her–even the embarrassing, not-so-comfortable ones. From my current perspective I know she did the best she could and that’s as much as anyone can expect from a parent, right? God knows I put her through her paces as I was growing up and she forgave me just fine.

I tried to find a recipe for prune balls online without success. (I suspect my mom made it up.) Instead, here’s a link to a foodie blog with a recipe for stewed prunes–”The World’s Most Unsexiest Recipe.”

It’s too bad prunes get such a bad rap. I love ‘em! And I now understand why my grandmother drank prune juice every day. It still comes in a brown bottle, too.