“Channel A” & The Golden Rule
Picture from Split Lip Magazine.
Story: Channel A
In this first month of 2021 we’ve experienced, as a country, the various emotional and spiritual traumas and, seemingly, all of it at once, as if it were condensed into a balled-fist that’s left us dazed, awash in uncertainty about our safety and the return of normalcy, whatever that might be. When does the suffering stop and the healing begin? In this, the last week of a complex and exhausting month of conflict, I want to look at the story “Channel A” and think about how we’ve been living vicariously through our screens, and social media, and at what point the information from them overwhelms our own needs and moves us to act, not for ourselves but for others, and how the act of helping someone else becomes the healing we’ve been in need of. How can we, in our own tense moments of sadness and anxiety, help ourselves by helping others?
The greatest joy of “Channel A,” written by Melissa Lore and published at Split Lip Magazine, is that it perfectly captures the moment when everything shifts in the lives of the story’s characters. And even though they’ve already been through so much before the story begins, Lore takes us into the heart of another moment, this moment, when the pains and sorrows of yesterday are transformed into empathy for a stranger. That empathy becomes action, and what follows for these characters is life altering and hopeful.
It begins with the main character and her husband getting ready for sleep and reaching for the small tablet by their bed. It’s the viewing end of a baby monitoring system that, like walkie talkies and CB radios, taps into pre-existing wavelengths so that parents can check on their sleeping babies without getting out of bed. The characters flip from Channel A—their channel, that “shows nothing but a blank square of white carpet”—to Channel C, “the gold mine.” In bed, they watch the their building neighbor’s sleeping baby, swaddled in her crib, and while the main character’s husband begins to fall asleep she continues to watch, her eyes burning as she forces herself to stay awake watching.
“I think something’s wrong with the baby. …She’s not moving,” I say. “She hasn’t moved this whole time.”
George squints at the screen. “How long has it been?”
The main character notices something that doesn’t seem right after her husband nods off, and she worries the baby isn’t breathing. Because of what’s happened before the story begins, she wakes her husband to tell him she’s going to do something, she’s going to apartment 14-E to let them know about the danger. She knows, there isn’t much time. She gets in the elevator of their apartment building, and tries to think of what she’ll say when she gets their that won’t make her sound crazy. But, of course, what they’ve been doing is a little crazy, and transgressive, watching from the comfort of their bedroom someone else’s sleeping child which she may have to own up to. Finally, before she can knock on the door, a teenage boy comes out who the woman assumes lives there, and she tries to tell him that his mother needs to check on the baby. “You got the wrong idea, lady,” the boy tells her back in the elevator, “I’m only the dog-walker.” Defeated, on the verge of tears, she rides the elevator back to her apartment from the ground floor, feeling “exhausted,” and that she’s “incapable of saving anyone.”
The story very well could have resolved there, in defeat and sadness. It would have focused then on the quirky, somewhat creepy (but harmless) couple’s attempt to redeem their transgressions. Less about healing and moving forward with loss, it would have resolved the odd, over-the-line situation of their spying even if the story would have ended on a sadder note: ineffective, the main character returns home, enervated but redeemed in her attempt to help someone else, the child on Channel C’s life in a type of Schrödinger’s limbo.
But it doesn’t end there. Instead, we are given 234 more words that take the redemptive arc of the story into the loftier territory of hope and healing. Softly, compassionately, the narrative transcends. We find out, just as the main character returns home, that her husband was coming to find her: the baby is fine, she’s rolling in her sleep. They both admit they should get rid of the monitor, a pledge to the reader that they’ll change, that they want to move through this stage, but that they’re not ready to forego the monitor—yet. Baby steps, as it were. Together, they go into the room with the blank square of white carpet, and they lie down on the floor beneath their own baby monitor camera; they choose to face directly the source of their pain. “Maybe somewhere in this building…they’ll turn to Channel A and see us,” the main character thinks looking at the baby monitor still mounted in that room, and she wonders if “someone will come knock on our door to see if we’re still breathing.”
“Another person, any other person, would suggest turning off the monitor and going to sleep. But George looks at me with the stricken face of a million unfulfilled wishes. They are endless, the wishes. They never stop.”
The need to heal from emotional and spiritual damage is both reflexive and confusing, like groping blindly through the dark in search of something necessary. Even the way back is hidden from you, and the way forward is difficult, impossible to navigate. Along the way, we try to make sense of what we’re feeling and figure out how to deal with abstract and subjective pain.
The main character, still full of sadness from her own loss, has transferred her maternal feelings and “unfulfilled wishes” into the sleeping baby on Channel C; she manifests the source of her sadness into the world which allows her, in her panic, to act in a way that would have saved her own child. By transferring her fears into the world and then acting against them, she’s working towards healing herself, and her husband’s, emotional wounds, something that will certainly take more time off screen. And the story doesn’t want us to think they’re sadness is resolved. In fact, it insists against it. She wasn’t ready to fully commit to knocking on her neighbor’s door because she couldn’t fully face the fear she’s manifested, and they’re both not ready to give up the video to Channel C just yet. But it’s a start, and we’re shown that. They’re willing to enter their child’s room and spend time in the place where their pain began, acknowledging the source of their sadness and grief.
The final grace of “Channel A” is that it, too, is a portal into the lives of other people, but for us, the reader. Like the main character and her husband watching Channel C, we live vicariously through the first-person point of view of the story, and in a similar way, we watch them and are moved through the story. At first, we may have been uncomfortable with their spying, even bothered—an emotional “buy-in” that connects you to the story—but we come to feel a deep welling of compassion for the couple, an empathy that spills from us into the story and then back again. We recognize in them a pain we’ve felt, and the wish that someone could have helped us. There’s probably been a moment, or moments, in our lives when we transgressed or willingly crossed a line because we needed to make sense of some sadness or fear, and by acting for others in the way we wished someone else would have done for us, we acknowledge both their suffering and our own, addressing both through action, and working towards our own healing by doing what the characters in “Channel A” do, these two people trying to navigate a tragedy by helping someone in a situation they’re all too familiar with.
Cocktail: The Golden Rule
“I wish I’d managed to become friends with the woman who lives inside. She would open the door and let me listen to her baby breathing. She would rest her hand on my back as we stood in the doorway, the warm scent of wet diaper in our noses. There would be a rustle and a sigh, and she would say quietly: See? Everything’s fine.
When I apologized, she would say it was no bother. I understand. I don’t know what I would do if...”
This week’s cocktail is called The Golden Rule and inspired by the act of doing for others what you would want them to do for you, just as the main characters in “Channel A” do for their neighbor in 14-E. It’s a mix of Seedlip Grove 42, Ginger and Green teas, a Bitter Stock, Lemon and Grapefruit juices, and sugar, all of which is clarified through a very old technique known as milk punching or milk washing. The drink is clear and soft on the pallet, and a little sweet with a subtle bitterness, too, that rounds the taste in all directions while the ginger tea and Seedlip provide some spice to balance it out.
Milk washing has been recorded as far back as 1711 in a recipe written by Mary Rockett. Milk washing (or a clarified milk punch) is a process through which the proteins in dairy are curdled with acid (citrus). The curdling removes strong flavors and cloudy sediment in the punch, leaving a clear and (purportedly) shelf-stable liquid that has had its original flavor only slightly altered. The science and process is similar to the French technique of using egg whites to create clarified consommé. In the late 1800s, after Charles Dickens had died, they even found gallons of clarified milk punch in his cellar, perfectly preserved and safe to consume.
Milk punch usually uses strongly flavored teas and wine, flavorful spirits and spices, and citrus, all of which are toned down through the process. What remains are often notes of spice and smoke, sweetness, and half as much bitterness (or even less). It’s also silky on the pallet thanks to the milk, as well. (You can use coconut milk [not coconut cream] if you prefer, and it will impart a coconutty-ness along with making it vegan). The main mechanism for the curdling is the citrus (or acid), which can be adjusted to fit the punch, from lemon to lime, even vinegar can be used to kick-start the process. Milk punches are usually made in large batches and for good reason: they require some effort to strain the curds out and because it will last indefinitely in the fridge, you’ll want to balance the effort with the return.
If you make this, you’ll need a nut milk bag or cheese cloth that will fit around the opening of a large container, of which you’ll want two, and a small mesh strainer you can place a coffee filter in for the final filter. The curds that remain after straining are delicious, too, especially in the non-alcoholic version and perfect for use on charcuterie board or spread on toast.
Recipe: The Golden Rule
3oz Seedlip Grove 42
2oz Ginger Tea, over-steeped*
2oz Green Tea, over-steeped
2oz Bitter Stock**
1oz Lemon Juice
1.5oz Grapefruit Juice
2oz Simple Syrup
2.5oz Whole Milk***
Mix together all the ingredients except for the milk.
Pour the milk in a separate container.
(Some milk punch recipes call for heating the milk beforehand but I’ve found, through testing, that it doesn’t make a difference. You can do this by microwaving the milk in 30s intervals and stirring between so the milk doesn’t scald.)
Pour the drink mix into the milk and give it a quick stir; you should see little flakes or chunks floating in the mix, which will look cloudy at first. DO NOT pour the milk into the drink mix; it won’t curdle correctly and you’ll be left with a cloudy drink after filtering.
Let the punch sit in the refrigerator for about 8 hours, or for as long as you need. After some time, the mix will separate and the curds will sink to the bottom, making the process of straining them out much easier. (If you use coconut milk, the curds will float to the surface instead. Sorry ‘bout it.)
Once separated, set a nut milk bag or cheese cloth over a large container and slowly pour the mix through it so that all of the clarified drink at the top passes through easily before pouring the rest of the curds into the cloth. Once the curds are in there, you’ll just need to wait until it’s strained itself through, which could take a few hours.
(Some recipes call for a second filtration over the curds in the cloth. I don’t usually do this but if you want, or feel the need, to then gently lift the cloth and curds, set them over a new container, and slowly pour the mix over the curds again, making sure not to disturb them and not filling it above the curd line. Note: this will take significantly more time but may lead to an even cleaner product. I usually don’t find it necessary.)
Let the strained cocktail sit for an hour or more so the small silt that passed through the cloth will settle, then pour through a coffee filter to remove most of what’s left. There will always be a little bit of solids that may whirl up when you disturb the drink, but you’ll never feel them.
Refrigerate the drink until you need it.
Notes: *To over-steep the tea, microwave 8oz of water and add two tea bags and steep them for 6 minutes in a microwave-safe container; after 6 minutes, put the container and tea bags back into the microwave and heat for 2-3 minutes (or until boiling again). Let steep for another 6 minutes, then strain. This will add a bitter tanic note that the milk punch will mostly remove but adds to the layers of flavor.
**In a pot on the stove add 10 cracked juniper berries, 8 cracked green cardamom pods, 3 lemon peels, and 2 lime peels; add 2 cups of water and raise to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature before straining. This will taste similar to unsweetened tonic water.
***You can use 2%, or even 1%, milk, but the less fat percentage the less flavor and texture the milk will add, and the greater chance there is for getting a cloudy final product. And, yes, you can use chocolate milk, but I wouldn’t for this drink.
“The screen lights up the room, ghostly blue gray. There is a ripple of cosmic interference, and then the baby is back, motionless and perfect. I press a finger to the screen.”
From “Channel A”
Recipe: Channel B
3oz Gin, Citrus Forward
1oz Orange Liqueur
2oz Ginger Tea, over-steeped
2oz Green Tea, over-steeped
1oz Lemon Juice
1.5oz Grapefruit Juice
2oz Simple Syrup
2.5oz Whole Milk
Follow the same steps as the non-alcoholic version, above. The curds will be BIG boozy, but you can still eat them.