Five Haiku

Which brings more peace—dog 
facing me or curled away?
Never mind. That snore.

*

I walk home from work,
Listen to news as I think:
Pasta? Stir-fry? Luck.


*

So: “the first dusting.”
Memories, hope, fantasy—
the real snow report. 


*

All those men, naked, 
having a party somewhere 
without me. That’s right. 


*

A stranger, a chat
about singers I once loved. 
Still do. But . . . what? Time. 

Un-Ordinary

A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail out of the blue from N., the daughter of longtime friends of my parents'. She had come across an essay I'd written about my family, prompting her to track me down. N. is about a dozen years older than me, and I never knew her well, largely because of the age difference, which made her an adult while I was still a kid, but I did know her parents. 

Her father and mine had met in college in the 1940s, then my father helped get her dad a job in Washington and they remained colleagues and friends for decades, even after their retirement from the government, when they both worked for a private firm for another 20 years or so. Our mothers were also close. I remember luncheons Mom would host for small groups of women friends, mostly wives of my father's colleagues, including N.'s mother. The menu might include vichyssoise or chicken in aspic or something prettily sliced like stuffed flank steak. Dessert could be plum kuchen or individual caramel custards.

I learned from Mom how to be hospitable, the value and satisfaction of welcoming people into your home and making delicious things for them to enjoy. (So why don't I do it more often?)

As N.'s parents, then mine, succumbed to the trials and diminishments of age, they fell out of touch. Her dad died in 1999, her mother in 2012, the same year my father passed away. All were in assisted living.

My mother, as I've written before, is still alive and in "memory care." I've also written here of a long-ago teaching colleague of hers who connected with me through the same essay of mine that N. read and who continues to visit Mom after more than two years. But N. is the first person to share with me in such detail the impression my mother made. Here's an excerpt from her note:

I was always fond of your parents, but I adored your mother. She was beautiful, stylish, talented, cultured, creative, articulate, and a wonderful cook. I still own and cherish some things she made for me—a knitted tea cozy, accompanied by a poem that she wrote, a patchwork hot pad, badly faded 40 years later, but still treasured, and a little collection of handwritten menus with recipes I still use.  Once she gave me a pretty glass jar filled with potpourri she had harvested from her garden.  Your mother was so un-ordinary, and I wish I had kept in closer touch with her. . . .  

Sometime in the mid-'60s, your parents gave a 12th Night party one winter afternoon after Christmas, and children were invited. Do you remember that? I can see exactly what your mother wore in my mind's eye—a gorgeous, long emerald-green hostess dress, which she told me your father had given her for Christmas. (I'm pretty sure I'm remembering that correctly.)  It was a wonderful party—lots of delicious homemade things, including candied grapefruit, which I'd never had before. 

Your mother never took the easy way out. If something was worth doing, it was worth doing to perfection. Once on my mother's birthday, your mom invited her over for lunch. My mother came home with lovely birthday gifts your mother had made—including homemade croissants in a basket with a beautiful embroidered cloth. By the way, I recall that your kitchen was all pink. Was it still pink when you sold the house?

I was sitting at my desk at work practically in tears at these lovely, unasked-for reminiscences—all, I might add, accurate. I do remember the 12th Night party. It was an open house—come anytime between, say, 3 and 6—and it became sort of legendary in the family. Mom would often say, "We should have another 12th Night party." But for all the other entertaining she did over the years—and she was essentially a shy person, a tough thing to reconcile with an inclination toward graciousness—we never had another bash like that.

I remember the green hostess dress, too—if you'd asked me what she wore to that party nearly 50 years ago, I couldn't have said, but N. helped me recall.

What I've realized reading and rereading N.'s e-mail (and we've continued the correspondence over the last two weeks) is that she has idealized Mom—and I love that she has. I think it's great.

I knew all of the same traits of my mother's that she describes, along with the more human side that everyone knows of a parent: the misunderstandings, the bathrobes, the TV dinners, the workaday. But N. saw her from a remove; maybe she even admired things that were different from her own mother (I didn't know her mom well enough to say). But what she has captured in those sentences is true—all of it. There are so few people in the world whom I have access to anymore, outside family, who cherished the beautiful things Mom brought to the world. The fact that N. went to the trouble to tell me was a real gift.

And no, the kitchen was no longer pink.

Before I was born.

Same front porch eight years later (me on the right).

"I'd Love To!"

I liked this post from the Kitchn (sibling of the equally fun and inspirational Apartment Therapy), "Go With the Flow: Simple Ways to Relax and Enjoy Hosting." (The comments are good, too.) This sentence alone is a worthwhile reminder: "Your friends aren't judging you for perfection; they already enjoy you for who and how you are, and they're just interested in hanging out."

For every reason I can think of to have guests over, I can usually think of five not to. 

1. My place is so small. In Manhattan it would be considered enviable in both size and amenities, but in Washington it's just . . . small. Nevertheless I love it and find it utterly charming and cozy, and most everyone who sees it says the same thing. So where's the problem?

2. I'm vegan. Even though becoming vegan three years ago was one of the best—and most fun—things I've ever done for myself, I imagine that people I invite wouldn't be satisfied with what I serve or would consider it weird, no matter how delicious it is to me or how good a cook I am (which is pretty good).

3. I have a dog (half of the time). If it's one of my alternate weeks with her (or if I'm not planning to have her but a change in the custody schedule means that I do), what if a guest doesn't like dogs or is allergic, or what if she's underfoot the whole time? That hasn't happened yet.

4. I can't decide who to invite or how many or whether to mix friends. Some of the best, most relaxed times I've had as a host have been when I've had just one person over. So maybe that's my sweet spot and I should stick with it. Why the self-imposed pressure that I should be having larger groups over?

5. It takes so much time to plan and prepare. Yes. And meanwhile the calendar pages continue to turn. Isn't that time, too?

Begin Agin?

If you glance over at my blog roll on the right, you’ll see something called Begin the Vegan, a very short-lived project I started when I went from vegetarian to vegan about two and a half years ago.

Ask me today what’s one of the things I’m most passionate about, among the most fun elements of my life, the subject that’s part of my consciousness pretty much every day, and being vegan—planning dinner, shopping for shoes, buying a rug, picking a shaving cream, and did I mention planning dinner? (I love to cook!)—would be at the top of the list. Yet I haven’t blogged about it since July 2010.

I knew it was perhaps overly ambitious to start a second blog when this one had just come back from a dormancy of 15 months (and has since endured another lapse of almost a year). But I was game to try, and for a few months it helped me articulate my feelings and discoveries about my dietary evolution—which have continued unabated since then (of course they’ve continued—they’re feelings!), though one wouldn’t know it. I just hate to think it appears I’ve lost interest.

What I’ve lost is the impetus, and the courage to start again with the very real possibility that I could stall once more. Then I’d have two sputtering engines in my literary driveway.

In the meantime, I might have written about a get-together with college friends a year and a half ago where I brought a delicious vegan cake I made in honor of our collective 50^th birthdays, and the first thing one friend said when she tasted it was “How many eggs are in this?” Or the next get-together with those friends earlier this year when I made the same cake (because one friend had missed the first gathering), and the cake was an embarrassing, damp-centered dud. But I bit my tongue and remembered Julia Child’s culinary admonishment from her fabulous memoir, My Life in France: Never apologize!

I could write about D., who has been nothing but accommodating as he himself has evolved to a mostly vegetarian diet since knowing me and a vegan-friendly (and appreciative) attitude toward my cooking in the last two to three years.

I could write about the fun (and frustrating—Candle Cafe, I’m talking about you) cookbooks and blogs I’ve discovered. (I’ve added a few of my faves to the roll here.) The things I’m willing to compromise on (ratcheting down to merely vegetarian when dining out with friends or as a guest at someone’s house, afternoon tea with D.) and the things I’m not (meat!). Or the fact that my sister and brother-in-law recently became vegan for reasons of their own and what it’s like to have compatriots in the family even as I try not to let others in the bloodline feel self-conscious about their own cooking, which I can still enjoy (see compromises above).

I could blog about all of this. But I haven’t even looked at Begin the Vegan in nearly two years, until today when I went there to see when my last post was.

So why am I blogging about it here?

New Yorker cartoon from NewYorker.com.

"Passing on Your Left"

Today I searched for a post from five years ago because I thought it might trigger an idea for an essay. It didn’t, or hasn’t yet, but I ended up reading a number of entries from the summer of 2007—I haven’t gone back to read old posts in the longest time—and I was pleasantly surprised to see how witty and fun they were. Not that I didn’t think they would be; I just had lost touch with that whole habit. 

I had quite forgotten what it was like to ramble on about this and that in my life, and how comfortable I seemed doing it—all the weaving back and forth in time and from post to post and link to link. I think I trusted myself more in those days to let my mind go where it wanted to. That might be a healthy place for me to get to again. 

So I didn’t get inspiration for an essay (the story is five years old, after all), but I did get inspired to write a new post, which you (someone? anyone?) are reading now. The last time I blogged was in January, and I thought this time was really going to take. Sigh. 

Maybe I was meant to be led back here today by thinking about that lunch with an old high-school classmate in 2007. 

Today might be the quintessentially beautiful Washington spring day. Clear blue sky, ’70s. I spent time in this park again with a vegan cupcake (the best vegan cupcake in Washington) and cup of coffee after eating lunch at my desk. 

I’ll bike home on the folding bike I bought for my 50th birthday last September. I really should have blogged about that when it happened. It’s one of the greatest additions to my life, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have blogged about five years ago. Perhaps I will at some point. 

I came across this delightful blog (or really blogs) today and want to visit it more. Part of it is something called the Betty Crocker Project, an admitted rip-off of (or riff on?) Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia thing (I know that was the book and movie name; can’t recall her original blog title at the moment), but this couple is creating vegan versions of every recipe in the Betty Crocker Cookbook. They have their own cookbook coming out next year; I read about the blog in the publisher’s catalog. 

I just thought of a bunch of things to blog about. What does it mean when you have to make a mental note to put something into words at a later date? One thing it means: The bike lane awaits.

"Good Night, Prosecutor": Ten Good Things

As I slowly resurface . . . ten good things since late March, the point at which my life reached overload:

1. Riding the Vamoose bus back from NYC on a Sunday night in April, D. and I eating still-warm H&H bagels with vegan cream cheese and scallions from, of all places, Zabar's (who knew?) and doing the Times crossword. As D. said, speaking for me, "It doesn't get better than that."

2. Please Give.

3. Finding four perfect-condition Stangl "Fruit and Flowers" teacups and saucers with a creamer and sugar bowl for only $26 at the Bethesda Op Shop, my first pieces in that pattern. The fact that I found them not in an antiques shop but in a mostly junky thrift store—and on a day when I was actually thinking I probably shouldn't even bother going in because this place only has junk—was a sign that I should get them. So now I seem to be collecting two patterns—I already had a Bachelor Button coffee service. D. has an almost complete set of Thistle. Though he introduced me to the line, I was the first to buy, last summer in Provincetown. I said to him, "It's the only thing we're competitive about."

4. Great Sage.

5. Taking Dad to a real barbershop for a haircut (instead of waiting for the next time someone comes around to cut hair at his assisted-living facility), putting an extra cushion we brought with us on the seat, telling the barber how to cut his hair . . . and remembering that about 45 years ago he he did much the same thing for me. And seeing what a pleasure it could be, amid his daily existence of mostly tedium and dozing, for him to be out in the world surrounded by male voices and be matter-of-factly yet expertly groomed.

6. The trip to New York itself.

7. During a mostly agonizingly dull eight weeks of grand jury duty, volunteering one day to read the role of the prosecutor when we were hearing the transcript of previous testimony in a case we were considering (the actual prosecutor read the role of the witness), and not only enjoying the heck out of it but receiving numerous compliments from fellow jurors. "Good night, prosecutor," one said to me at the end of the day. It reminded me that several years ago I thought about volunteering for an organization that records books and articles for the blind. Maybe I'll revisit that when things calm down more.

8. Slice some onion, sauté it in olive oil till it's soft, add some chopped green cabbage, cook it some more till the cabbage is softened to your liking but still a little crisp (in other words, nowhere near sauerkraut soft), season with salt and pepper, and stir in a little Dijon mustard and a sprinkling of fennel seed. Improvisation transformed into inspiration.
9. For the first time, on one of my days off from grand jury duty (to which I was committed three days a week), coming into work on an intense deadline day when I was just barely keeping up and saying to a colleague, "It's good to be here"—and meaning it.

10. One thing that never changed: that hour or two between Patsy's early-morning walk (usually between 5 and 6 am) and the time I have to get up for work, when the two of us get back in bed and breathe together—even better when D. is there, breathing along—knowing we have just a finite time in that peaceful state, but not yet willing to start the day.

Winter Weekend

I didn't have to do any digging out during the snowstorm, because I'd taken my car in for service Friday morning and was allowed to leave it there after the work was done (though how and when I'll be able to get it home from the suburbs and find a space to park in my neighborhood, I'm not sure). Others in my condo beat me to the shoveling on and around our property (about which I feel somewhat guilty). My ventures outside have been mainly to walk the dog -- multiple times a day -- so I've seen the snow's nature, in the air and on the ground, change over the last two days, like a a body blooming, coming into its own, slowing down, then yielding to the onslaught of footprint and tire.

I baked and cooked -- pancakes, muffins, bread, pasta with avocado and tomatoes, Irish oatmeal with apples and cranberries. And I ate.

D. and I have been apart, separated by the weather, like lovers on separate continents, though we're only a handful of miles away. He's finally on his way over as I type, having braved the roads, the Metro, and the icy streets.

Mom and Dad's phone service and cable -- their only connections to the outside world unless one of us is visiting -- were out for a time, but they're back up. This weekend I had a good excuse to have no obligations to them, other than checking in (when it was possible). So I had that rare thing: a weekend at home, where I got to walk and sit and doze through full cycles of sunlight and dark; scents of breakfast, lunch, dinner; the intermittent scrape of shovels on pavement, like an animal's insistent pawing to be let inside.

Next Door

While this will interest only a small segment of my already minuscule audience (if that), I have started another blog to chronicle and reflect on a recent change in my life. Feel free to pay a visit. Or not. Who knows, I may build a whole different audience there: the neighbors next door.