Honoring Your Inner Tutu: Mothers of Invention

The book’s success, along with the kids’ cooking classes she’d started teaching, got her out of her doldrums and gave her the confidence to go for her ultimate goal: filming a TV cooking show. Last summer, she rounded up the troops, enlisting her husband, a production designer, to build an elaborate set in their garage—which is no longer referred to as a place for cars and paint cans, but is called The Stage. She called in favors from friends who work in Hollywood as stylists and make-up artists to work their magic, grandparents to babysit Ruby, and neighborhood kids to act.

The finished result is The Yummyfun Kooking Series, three shows with puppets, animation, a band, and, oh yeah, some cooking. Think Julia Childs meets Pee Wee Hermann. Although Crespo could try to sell the series to a network, she’s intrigued to see just how far she might get on her own, especially since one of her goals as a mother is not to have a boss. “Ruby may grow up to hate cupcakes,” she admits, “but at least she’ll have plenty of time with her mother.”

If Vicky Grube’s daughters—a cellist and a graphic designer—are any example, Crespo shouldn’t fret; a child can’t be harmed by too much whimsy. “I remember Nell wearing canvas cake costumes and playing her cello at my parades, and thinking, ‘Gosh, this is going to be a Mommy Dearest moment,’” Grube remembers. But a few years later, when Nell did a scene from Julius Caesar for high school, she created a paper maché body wrapped in gauze, with a realistic dab of bloody. Grube knew then that the drama from all of those crazy parades had become part of her daughter’s sensibility, too.

Photo: Vicky Grube and her daughter Emma

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