Packing lunches

I miss the road. I miss its empty purpose: 300 miles, 400 miles, 550 miles a day. I miss the ease of decision, a stop for caffeine or to pee or to find a patch of shade for a quick nap. I miss the voices of people I don't know reading to me from beautiful books, silly books, so-so ones. I miss memorizing passages and saying them aloud with the reader on the third or fourth listen. I miss playing the same songs over and over ("I've never done good things, I've never done bad things, I never did anything out of the blue") or setting my iPhone to play alphabetically starting in the Bs. I miss my friends in the West and the Midwest. I miss the sense of being wanted, of being loved, of being known. Leaving some crust on my plate after a late dinner, I apologized to my friend Gretchen who said, "I know you, Amelie. I know you don't like finishing things."

I miss knowing where everything was in the car at any moment -- my overnight bag behind my seat on top of Arlo's bag; secondary books for my book in a box left unopened most of the miles and shoved into the recesses of the front passenger well on the way back; primary books for my book having been perused at one point and then put away but still held close by, against the front passenger seat; Caetlin's snowshoes (a gift from her my first night in Ithaca) in the secret compartment under the flap of the trunk; the now-defunct cooler tucked under the passenger seat, surrounded by bottles of water which I would use to fill Arlo's dish in the car every day. I was carrying other loads, too -- some lightening and temporary, which I loved.

The first time I left Portland, I made it as far as Corvallis. I was then under the delusion that I would see my dad again some weeks or months later, that things would roughly return to normal and that I could continue on my way as planned. But driving just 100 miles in a day on a cross-country venture wasn't entirely normal. I wanted to spend the night with my friend Barb and to see her sister Julia and their families for some serious comfort. Once we dealt with the dog logistics in the back yard, Barb's husband Bruce greeted me inside with, "Who needs a cocktail?" From there he and Barb and Julia and Pat and I all piled into a mini-van, leaving dogs and children to fend for themselves. I do not remember what we had for dinner, beyond that it was shared and delicious and that the women all had versions of lemon drops. "Happy days," I wanted to toast, as it was my dad's toast. The next morning Barb and I picked up pastries for the family, first sharing almond cream croissants with Bruce and then heading over to Julia's where we had coffee and fruit (tiny pieces of nectarines she cut up for us) with our baked goods. And then she gave me a bag she had packed for my travels: David Sedaris's books on cd, a recipe for chocolate cake, two bags of Barbara's cheese puffs and one box of individually wrapped groups of Ritz crackers. They would both be riding with me -- Barb and Julia -- this way. The cheese puffs more the obvious marker of my friend, whereas the Ritz crackers were in reference to a previous conversation with Julia about the best way to eat Cheese Whiz. They were, for me, also an homage to my dad, who served us cheese and crackers whenever we visited his apartment -- regular orange cheddar or plain blue, usually with Saltines or Ritz, possibly Triscuits. This was the late '70s and the early '80s and before his move to the upper-crust Council Crest, where we tended more towards the tonier water crackers and a variety of cheeses. There was, I think, always cheese and crackers at my Dad's for a snack -- whether he lived with Sue or before and later on his own -- even in these last couple of years, without a proper kitchen, when he turned to Cheese-Its to eliminate the middle-man.

Once back in Santa Cruz, I had two days at my friend Irene's studio, a sample of what we had planned all along for my visit, working together, mostly quietly, reviewing what each other was doing when we needed to, and eating the lunches we picked up or that she packed for us. Irene made salads with leftover chicken from the outside grill, avocado, greens, feta cheese. We each had our own containers, so we ate directly from the bowls. Having someone make my lunch -- I honestly don't remember the last time someone had done this for me. This was no sandwich in the school lunchroom -- the disappointment of raisins with the peanut butter which I picked off one by one at the garbage can (convinced my dad had purposefully done this to torment me) or the thrill of a piece of candy discovered at the bottom of the bag. These were substantial salads, with multiple ingredients -- a heft of adulthood, an integrity of a packed lunch. I ate the salads with the same appreciation with which I admired Irene's homemade dresses when we worked together -- sensorial arts of different types -- and I wondered if I could try this at home. Could I finish the dress? Could I pack my own lunch?

The night before I finally left Santa Cruz, several days after my dad died, I stayed with my friend Jenny who made us supper for the second night in the row. This evening we had pasta with squash and onions, the veggies from her campus farm share. The pasta was dense and tender: Strozzapreti, or, scandalously, "priest stranglers." The morning I left she packed me a container full for the road. It sat on the seat next to me, with me not daring to eat it, anxious of making that week of being cared for by my friends in Santa Cruz disappear into my belly.

My first stop was Los Angeles for a last stay with Tara, Rob, and Dex. I arrived to find Tara making what had been my favorite dish when I stayed with them in the past, a mainstay of the kitchen: frittata with caramelized onions. I like how this seemingly simple dish carries the secret of the slow cooked onions. I never have the patience to make them myself. As she sautéed them at the stove, I wished the smell would come back to me -- the sweetness of the onions, the slow burn of butter. In the morning I came upstairs for breakfast. Tara handed me a loaf of bread for toast as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to be there in the kitchen with them again. I had a slice with Nutella ("my dad died, I can eat whatever I want," I was thinking) and another with peanut butter or jam. When I was finally ready to go, Tara offered me grapes for the road. I stood a few feet away and watched her take them from the fridge, rinse them, dry them, put them in a ziploc bag. Again, a simple and natural gesture, but such care in the movement of her hands! She is doing this for me, I thought as I watched her. I ate those grapes in the car on my way to St. George, Utah that day, with every single one of them carrying something of that earlier moment in the kitchen. And for supper, in my glorious motel -- more glorious still because of its bargain -- I laid on my bed and ate Jenny's pasta, my first night on my own.

On the road two days later, I had breakfast at the Luxury Diner in Cheyenne, Wyoming -- an old boxcar decorated with maps, souvenir plastic-coated placements and, inexplicably, a small poster of Bette Davis's The Petrified Forest. Upon the waitress's advice, I ordered the pork chop with my eggs and hash-browns. To my surprise, the plate arrived with two pork chops. I was looking at my breakfast and my dinner on this giant diner-sized plate.

While I was waiting for my food, I overheard the waitress say to a 70-something man at the next table, "I'm not a mind-reader." This was an expression my dad used to use, and it sat strangely on the lips of a 30-something woman. After the grey-haired patron mumbled something, she replied matter-of-factly if not a little defiantly, "I didn't have a bad night and I didn't have a bad morning. I'm just not a mind-reader."  I was torn in my allegiances -- I felt sorry for this older man (a position I'm often strangely wont to take), who only vaguely resembled my father, and I rallied in support of the waitress, of course, who spoke my dad's words but who resembled, if only also in the vaguest of ways, me. As she passed him later with the coffee pot, she offered him a warm-up, patting his arm and calling him by name -- Frank, my dad's name. Just a coincidence, of course, which I brushed off and lingered over at the same time, relieved that they had made up. When I was finishing up my plate, wondering if it would be embarrassing to ask to take part of my breakfast "home," the waitress walked over with a styrofoam box and set it on the table next to me. For a moment, I imagined moving right through the wooden table that stood between us, as if it were only water or air, embracing her with the gratitude that engulfed me in that moment. I wanted to say, "You are a mind reader." Instead I looked at her and thanked her for giving me what I needed. Hers was, in effect, a tiny gesture -- something no doubt she does every day in skilled anticipation of her diners' needs. But she offered that white box with the ease of kindness, with a knowingness that seemed outside of the kitchen or the dining room.

I am home now. I'm not yet packing my lunches, though I did reproduce one of Irene's salads for my friend Judy. I am also trying to reproduce the dinners my friends made for me on the road, down to the Strozzapreti. They are not the same.

April 14, 1927 - August 2, 2013

I keep telling myself it's wrong to think of a cookie at a time like this. It was, in fact, the most expensive cookie I've ever encountered. The cost of a loaf of bread. The only reason I went through with the purchase, aside from the shame of sending it back to the shelf, was that originally I thought the total made it seven dollars. In fact, it was only about four, which seemed relatively reasonable. Full of oats and interspersed with chocolate chunks, with melted toffee on top and coming out of its sides, it weighed maybe half a pound. I finished it and wondered if there would come a day when I would have another. This was yesterday morning. This afternoon I returned for a second.

The night I came back to Santa Cruz after seeing my dad for the last time the evening before, I stood motionless in the cookie aisle at Shopper's Corner, weighing the possibility of buying an entire package of semi-gourmet cookies just to have one. These were the cookies I used to buy singly on Pacific Avenue, the same cookies whose warehouse marked the destination of my first driving experience after my surgery. Irene G and I went to the fabled warehouse, where the cookies were sold on the honor system for half the cost of in a store. I was so amazed by the sight of them that I forgot I couldn't smell them, though later I realized that my skin tingled with the sensation of sugar coming from the ovens and the warehouse. The night before I stood in Shopper's Corner, after I said goodbye to my dad and after I picked up my niece Katie across town and took her home, my brother offered me a plate of the dinner he'd just made. I had a piece of chicken, but refused the squash in spite of my nieces' urgings to eat my vegetables. "I'll surely have some in California," I told them. Then Katie came into the dining room furtively eating M&Ms, dropping a couple into my hand when I looked up at her, thinking maybe that was what I wanted. I followed her back into the kitchen, and she offered me more, then dropped the package into a drawer full of treats. A package of Oreos sat in the middle. "That's what I want," I told her, and took one.

When I was about 8, our babysitter Monica stayed with us while our parents were away for the weekend. My dad came home inexplicably early, just as Monica and I were about to make chocolate chip cookies. She promised to stay to make them with me, even as my dad was grumbling through the kitchen in a light rage. We were all afraid of my father. I can still see Monica standing at the counter, my father to her left, her back shielding us from him, creating a kind of wall for our cookie-making sanctuary. I remember that we were concerned about the possibility that the eggs were hard-boiled, so she was shaking one by her ear to see if she could hear it sloshing about in the shell. The egg broke in her hand instead, covering the side of her face. I remember our quiet mirth, tempered by our fear that my dad would become angry (over the mess? over our fun?). I don't remember what happened next. I see only Monica standing in the kitchen, a broken egg in her hand, laughing silently with my dad's back to her.

Some twenty years later, somewhere in the 1990s I suppose, another lifetime it seemed, I visited my dad at Our House, the AIDS hospice where he volunteered answering the phones. As he gave me a tour, the women who worked there greeted him with friendly kisses and flirty jokes, raving to me about the cookies he often baked for them. Surprised -- a little relieved, a little happy, a little resentful -- I wondered at the man before me. Who had he become?

Granted, I think I already knew my dad had started baking cookies. I think by that time he had been sending me some in boxes that he seemed to have fashioned himself, covering the tops of the cookies with waxed paper. Some involved Krusteaz biscuit mix and apple slices. "Is Dad sending you cookies, too?" I asked my brother Bow. "Yes," he said, somehow understanding the real question. "They're good if you eat them."

Denver pancake

I love it (and I mean this ironically) how once a restaurant becomes popular in Portland, people line up outside and literally around the block to wait in line for, say, a biscuit with chicken, Indian "street food," or organic handmade ice cream. I am opposed to this kind of dining, yet, because I refuse it, I end up feeling as if I am missing out on something fantastic. So instead of a Mcisley biscuit (fried chicken, pickles, mustard and honey) or a Vada Pav (potato fried in chickpea batter and served with chutneys on a roll), I am having a "three Bs" waffle (bacon, brie, basil -- only two of which I can taste) with what appears to be apricot jam on the side. There's no line but free wifi, and I am loving the thick-cut bacon and the idea that because it's full of savory things it's somehow less not-virtuous to eat this waffle at noon on a Monday.

I have been listening to The Pretenders Learning to Crawl on this trip across the country, an album of my youth which I used to blast on cassette in my VW bug as I drove through the streets of Portland. I had transcribed all the lyrics to "My City Was Gone" on my PeeChee, sensing the future days when the sentiment would become true. It's not that my city is gone now -- or even that it's simply no longer "my" city -- but that is has become somehow more of itself. And my relation to it is not so much that I don't fit in or that there isn't room for me here or that it might seem unbelievable I grew up here; rather, I have a sense of envy for those who live here while I know that I can't -- and so won't.

***

I've also been re-reading James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (slowly, as I started in Paris last month, after buying the prettiest new little Penguin edition in Cambridge). At the end of the first chapter, the narrator David describes why he went to Paris: "Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced." This is the flip side -- or perhaps the twin -- of wanting to escape oneself. I think that around about Denver, the escape became closer to being real, and then nearly completed after several days in California. At that point I started to think about this process now of "finding" myself, implying very much that I had misplaced myself. Mis-placed. I drive across the country thinking, "here? here?" And every once in a while I think of a postcard I kept from my first job -- a request for a book catalogue on the back of an abstract image of a woman, which read "Wish you were her." If I were her, perhaps I would feel more found now.

***

When I was applying for a semester away from college (a semester to be taken in my hometown), I went to the post office to have the envelope stamped and mailed. The normally cranky postal worker shouted, "You're not leaving us, are you?!" This was the one place in campus where people knew my name. The man who stuffed our boxes, Charlie, would call out to me when he saw me arrive to check my box. I had letters or postcards almost every day from friends and family. I kept a list by my bed of the letters I had sent. My personal record receipt was 21 letters, postcards and packages on one day -- but I knew it was a cheating sum, as it was my birthday (and, I confess, several postcards came from my friend Eva). Still, Charlie was very impressed.

When I arrived in Denver -- it's been, I think, three weeks, though I've lost track of time -- I loved the familiar familiarity with which everyone seemed to greet me. Breakfast at Snooze two days in a row sealed the deal, though the first day the server at the bar already seemed like he knew me. When he first checked about my order, I told him the menu made me want to weep.
http://www.snoozeeatery.com/the-food/breakfast
And the food truly did bring tears to my eyes. I couldn't make up my mind so -- as when I first went to Santa Cruz for my job interview and had both a sourdough pancake and a piece of oatmeal molasses French toast, alongside an egg for protein -- I had both granola and yogurt (a half grapefruit on the side) and a pancake flavored like a cinnamon roll (with brown sugar in the syrup and a very light sauce around it that tasted suspiciously like reduced cream cheese). No raisins. I told my server I would return the next day for the savory, and when he saw me that following morning, he shouted, "You really did come back."

This is what it means to be known lightly -- by a name, a box, a promise to return.

***

We moved my dad into a new place this week (what's called a "memory care facility"), where he knows me perhaps more deeply, but also, because the move has taken a toll, only moment by moment. It's not that he's forgotten me (my niece said, "I think you, Daddy, and Uncle Bowman will be the last ones he forgets"); he just doesn't always know I'm here now. Feeding him half a bowl of soup today, almost the entirety of his half sandwich, three grapes, and half a piece of shortbread I brought him back from England, I feel mildly victorious -- but only mildly, as he has been a long-time member of the "clean plate club," and I hate to see him return anything to the kitchen. I am watching him sleep, fitfully, wishing I could teach him how to breathe again, more deeply now.

Places des Vosges/Imlay City, Michigan

I remember looking at a studio apartment near Tompkins Square Park in my twenties; literally just one room with a tiny bathroom off to the side, it was all I could afford on my own. As I stood in the space trying to imagine how I might arrange my stuff there, I realized that with just the one room, I would never be able to escape myself in the apartment. A strange thought, I know, but one which I've returned to again and again over the years. Filling my car two days ago with a suitcase, an overnight bag, a bag of shoes, a box of books, a computer bag, another bag of books, two bags of Arlo paraphernalia, and a box of presents to be emptied over the course of the next 3700 miles with my friends and family whom I'd be visiting, I said I was escaping the horrors that my condo building has become (remember the monster in the basement you were afraid of as a little kid? She's now living in the "garden apartment" of my building). Yesterday, as I wept at the end of the audiobook of Joan Didion's The White Album and then again as I listened to Anna Ternheim's rendition of "China Girl," I realized I was also trying to escape myself, but there I was in the car right there with me, and for the next 3700 miles (MA to LA to OR) and back again.  

Less than two weeks ago I was sitting on a park bench with Alison, my former student and Research Assistant (and designer of this blog), in the Places des Vosges in Paris. I had led her on a hike down from our little place in Montmartre all the way to the Marais, stopping for various provisions along our walk -- soft breads baked with lardons (bacon) and olives and chevre with figs, canelles from the Stohrer Patisserie on rue Montorgueil, and a lunch at a little cafe/tabac on rue Rambuteau. There she had a croque monsieur (and why not!) and I had a salad drenched with bacon, chevre, green beans, and tomatoes and topped with a fried egg. The greens were a perfect delivery system for, let's call it, the protein portion of the bowl. She had a Coke, which would become her afternoon custom on our afternoon stops (over the course of only two days, but still customs set in), and I had a cafe creme, which I would switch over the next day or so to a customary espresso into which I would pour the entire package of supplied sugar. From our outside table, we crossed the street to one of our major destinations of the day, Pain de Sucre, the bakery/patisserie introduced to me by my friend Ruby four or five years ago as the place with the best macarons in town. I would like to say that I am on an expert on many sweet things, but I can't claim expertise on macarons. However, I have sampled them from those shops often considered the best for this fare: La Durée and Pierre Hermé. And with that limited range, I absolutely and utterly concur that no one makes a nicer macaron than Pain de Sucre. We chose just four: caramel with salted butter and pistachio for me, passion fruit with chocolate cream chocolate-chocolate (or chocolat noir) for Alison. My pistachio was perfectly good, chosen for the color and for my historical love of pistachio-chocolate things (like pistachio almond fudge ice cream from Baskin Robbins). But the caramel one sent me swooning in its creamy salty buttery yumminess. The ground almonds of the pastry were transformed by the caramel and the buttercream, and the buttercream was more cream than butter. It was, in a sense, heavy in flavor (caramel has a heftiness to it by nature, I think), but the sensation was pure light. "Silky" seems a predictable cliché here, but I'd like to say the macaron was the gastronomic equivalent of silk. It wasn't that it had a silky texture. It simply was silk. Alison had a similar experience with her passion fruit. "This is life-changing!" she literally gasped. Hers was, I think, an exceptional choice. A week after this day I would be sharing a plate of macarons I brought home from Pain de Sucre with my condo-mates in Massachusetts, both of whom are not only exquisite women, but also, I think, have exquisite taste (in dogs, for instance, and textiles). They deemed the passion fruit "strange" (and it is, frankly, with its amalgam of a tinge of sourness along the bittersweet chocolate, its texture somehow not as smooth as some of the others) and proclaimed the chocolate as the best. I don't mean to judge these respective choices -- at least not morally. The chocolat noir is perfect and therefore easy to love without condition. The passion fruit is perhaps a little demanding; it asks something more of the woman who consumes it.

Between bites of my macarons, which I didn't want to end, I filled Alison in on some of the details of the last year, details I had planned otherwise not to share and which, in fact, I hadn't over the course of often truncated or belated email. I hadn't seen her in nearly a year, this young woman who, to my surprise, had become so singularly important to me in my second year at Amherst. She had become one of three or four people Arlo greeted without barking. She became our kin. And I had missed her.

Filling her in on bits of the past months, my eyes welled with tears. And in taking my breath and then letting it out (so as not to cry), I wondered if I could leave those feelings there -- of loneliness and disappointment and frustration and something else I still can't describe -- in the Place des Vosges. I could imagine them disappearing, like my breath itself, into the middle of the grassy square. No-one would even notice, and I would go back to my macarons and my days in Paris with Alison, this lovely young woman who was my student and is now my friend.

What broke me at the end of The White Album is very much what made me suddenly burst into tears at the end of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Both of them end with Didion taking leave of a place: in the earlier book, it was to finally sell her home in New York and live fully in California, and in The White Album, she and her husband and their daughter visit their house in Malibu that they had left some months before and that, days before their visit, was miraculously kept safe from a devastating fire that had destroyed 197 other houses: "The fire had come to within 120 feet of the property, then stopped, or turned, or had been beaten back. It was hard to tell which. In any case, it was no longer our house." Over the next five weeks, I am driving around 7000 miles. I am not able to escape myself in that car nor even, ultimately, my house to which I must return. I will land in the places in which I used to live, temporarily or "permanently," and then I will turn around again. I am hoping to come back lighter.

Strawberry cheek

Thinking about my first return to Santa Cruz since I packed my house three years ago, I started planning what food I would eat when I was in town. Surely the Spartacus Salad at the Saturn Cafe: lettuce, tomatoes, onion, fake chicken cutlet cut into tiny bits, feta cheese, pieces of pita bread all awash in what I think is ranch dressing. I have never been able to properly reproduce this salad, so that most of the time I try not to think about the Saturn -- neither about the Spartacus nor their perfect soy burgers with sautéed mushrooms and skinny fries on the side. I forget about their vanilla shakes and even the glasses of beer which I could in fact reproduce if I wanted to. I wanted, too, to go to Tacos Morenos for carnitas tacos or even to Tacqueria Jallarta which I find to be very very bland, even while I love their tostadas piled high with cheese and sour cream. I wanted to go to Zachary's for breakfast for Mike's Mess (indescribably delicious mound of potatoes, fried eggs, bacon, scallions, more sour cream) or their French toast (round!) or their sourdough pancakes (as close to my grandma's as I've ever had) or their coffee cake of the day (please, let it be cinnamon or chocolate chip).

But somehow I hadn't thought about my friends' cooking, neglecting to imagine Nancy's Noodles or breakfast at Irene's. I hadn't thought of the possibility of oatmeal: the thickest, creamiest oats I'd ever had, the grains opened as wide as possible. Irene added a dab of yogurt and jam (strawberry-rhubard, handmade of course). Why hadn't I thought of adding yogurt to oatmeal myself, I wondered. Two hours earlier I had awakened to Chad mixing something that looked quite horrible in the blender: a smoothie which, as it turned out, was made of bananas, strawberries, apple juice, yogurt, and kale. "It looks disgusting," I told him, but I had a glass, and of course it was delicious, sweeter than I could have imagined given that it was bright green. What is gastronomically more virtuous than starting the day with kale? Sunday night, while I was snuggling with her six-year-old son Max, Irene finished a batch of apricot jam. Monday morning I awoke to the green smoothie again, this time followed by a fresh crepe with the fresh jam. Chad makes these crepes almost daily; Max's was filled not with jam but Nutella. I kept insisting he finish his breakfast before going to school, but I was told, "My parents are not the kind of parents who say that I have to eat all of my snacks." "I honestly do not think that's true," I responded (secretly hoping, in fact, that he would not finish his crepe so that I could steal it after he left; I would have to time it right so that Chad wouldn't toss it before I had the chance. This kind of worry is borne of the fact that, as I've been told, my sense of food is based on a model of scarcity; it's as if I'm an ex-con, guarding my plate "on the outside" with my arm crooked around it). Crepes, fresh jam, green smoothies, Nutella in the cupboards -- this house was awash with the possibility of happiness.

I had tacos and the Spartacus salad my first day in town. On my last I had polenta and eggs at Kelly's Bakery, where Nancy convinced me to take a box of food for both the plane and home (a chicken sandwich, two toralfa chocolate cookies, a chocolate crimpy, a tiny quiche) and then loaded me with a box to open when I got to the airport (full, I found then, of fresh macarons, which I doled out one day at a time in Northampton). As with the Saturn, I try not to think about Kelly's; I surprised myself to realize I'd forgotten about the crimpies (shaped like a brioche, but denser, as if made with milk, and filled with delectables like chocolate or almond or olallieberry jam) and the toralfas (a subtle chocolate cookie with slivered almonds on top; it occurred to me that recently I had been trying to reproduce these with a Swedish recipe, forgetting why I craved them in the first place). I try, too, not to think about Max too much, as I worry he will forget me someday soon. But when I saw him that Friday afternoon, he leapt into my arms, as he has every time we've greeted each other after a long absence (except the first time, after I'd left Santa Cruz and didn't see him again until three months later; he sat in a corner at his aunt's house in Queens, where he ignored me until he couldn't help it any longer). Saturday morning after his dad left and his mom was still in bed, I made him bread with strawberry jam and a side of goldfish crackers. Now when I think of this child I love, I see him with a strawberry thumbprint on his cheekbone. He was running on the streets when suddenly he stopped in his tracks and burst into tears for a reason I can't remember. I saw the strawberry stain then -- just beyond the tears streaking down. All I wanted in that moment was to kiss that little patch of pink on his cheek. Instead I stood at a distance while his mom tended to his tears, picking him up into her arms.

With Gusto

Why am I spearing these green leaves with my fork, stuffing them into my mouth? I'm eating with gusto. It's not the gusto of joy but of a kind of desperation. Desperation for my vegetables? To get this food finished? To have eaten rather than to eat?

A week ago I was dancing at my college reunion. I rushed to Providence, missed dinner but not the drinks and the stuffed mushroom caps in the freezing tent outside. After a beer and a mushroom I went into Sayles Hall, the place where I'd seen Jessie Jackson speak in the 1980s -- I remember internalizing the cadence of his voice as much as the content of his speech, so that by the end I was carried into such a frenzy that I almost didn't know what happened except in the realization that something had happened. Dancing more than two decades later in this same hall transmuted me, too. It wasn't so much the rhythm of the music, though it was that, too. It was partly the scotch that I drank with my friend Sue in honor of our dead mentor. It was at his memorial service -- held, I think, in this same hall -- that I decided, finally, to go to graduate school. I'd been toying with the idea, and then all of a sudden I knew. So it was an impulsive decision borne of years of indecision.

I mixed my drink with other kinds of sugar. The first tray a server brought round was lined with tiny chocolate mousse cakes. I took one that looked like it had a hint of orange (it reminded me of a delicacy called Amélie, sold at Pix, a Portland patisserie that used to be around the block from my brother's house). I didn't taste any orange -- it was just a dense pure moussey chocolate, the thickness of cream without any air to lighten it. I would have preferred to eat just half of it, but I didn't know what to do with the rest (it was so pretty and so delicious that it seemed like it would be rude to forsake it). So I ate it for the sake of eating, not unlike my frantic spearing of greens today. Next came by a tray of bon-bons: small chocolate balls filled -- I checked with the server first -- with ice cream. These were generously sized treats. In another circumstance I might have better appreciated the thickness of the shell, a solid wall of dark chocolate surrounding vanilla ice cream. But all I really wanted was to taste and feel the iciness of the cream in my mouth. As I finished mine, I wondered if there were more to come.

Instead of waiting for more, Sue and I headed to the dance floor for this Funk Night reunion. Dancing was so easy -- it was dark and I kept drinking and, for a while, I didn't care if I had a "partner." I wondered why I didn't go to Funk Night every weekend when I was in college and thought maybe my life would have turned out much better if I had. I could have been like the other college girls, meeting all the boys I would never have the chance to get to know now, setting up prospects for my future. I danced for nearly three hours. I didn't want to stop, except that I knew I had to be up early for the graduation at the college where I now teach. I had parked a block from where I used to live at Brook and John, so my walk to my car was the walk I'd taken night after night when I was in school -- through the Green, across the fraternity quad and past the Ratty, down Thayer, up to Brook and over to Williams -- but it didn't even occur to me to feel like myself of those days.

I'm not sure what I feel like these days either. Yesterday I ate a noodle salad so quickly that by the end I thought I might be sick. Where did that speed come from? What need is it chasing?

Dreaming lemons

Where does this begin? Could it be with the turmoil my building-mates and I have been experiencing throughout this past year, coming to a head this month as we prepare to actually go to court together? From the moment we each met, we have bonded together against tyranny, and in recent months our bonds have grown exponentially. I think I have always felt strongly about being a good neighbor. It's that golden fucking rule that I just can't shake. In my first Brooklyn apartment I brought in the mail for my downstairs neighbor with the hacking cough while he traveled, possibly as a spy, I thought (was it The Economist that made me think so?). I was doing it because he asked, because I was glad he knew he could ask, because I wanted to be a good neighbor, but he gave me $100 when he was gone once for over a month. I thought I should return it, but instead I bought a beautiful green silk dress with a drop waist (it was the late '80s) I'd been eyeing in a shop, which I could otherwise never afford. I thought of him and the enormous stack of mail on the second floor landing whenever I put it on. Years later I gave over much of my garage in Santa Cruz to my next-door neighbor so she could sort out her mother's things. But that was only quasi-neighborly, as I began to resent the fact that my garage was never fully my own after that. Still, she believed in being neighborly, too, and she packed my car for me (she was extremely economical with space), leaving the perfect opening for Arlo to lie diagonally from the back seat to the exact spot where he could lean against my arm as we drove 3000 miles across the country. I've certainly depended on neighbors, too -- Arlo's girlfriends, for instance, who lived upstairs from us in our first Northampton apartment, who would take care of him when I went out of town (and who could move into my living room for the AC when they did so). But the neighbors in my current building have become something else. It's the intensity of the situation certainly -- our collective insistence that we must act collectively -- but I'd like to think that we would still do as neighbors do: help each other with our respective dogs, bring in packages and mail, unload cars when one's hands are free, pick up odds and ends for one another when grocery shopping, store each other's stuff in our garages when needs be, have spontaneous dinners together, leave a chocolate rum cake at one's door for Christmas, bring the extra wine.

But this also begins with the winter chill. In spite of my long-held desire to live amidst four distinct seasons, the origin of this is somewhere amidst my longing to be in California these past weeks. I've missed the warmth of my friends, the winter rains, the abundance of citrus. And because of this wintry New England chill, Arlo took a fall on the ice this past Friday. Running after his friend Opie, he hit a frozen patch and landed on his left hind leg, bloodying his lip when he went down. He limped for two days. I couldn't figure out a way to raise his back leg for him while he rested -- would that even help a dog? -- but I did think at least he should lie down as much as possible. Yesterday I thought he was deserving of company in his convalescence, so I curled up next to him on the couch and took a long nap.

As I slept, I dreamed I was in my local co-op buying groceries. It had been completely redesigned in my absence, and I couldn't find the greens I was looking for. As I wandered around, I caught sight of the produce section, and from a distance saw two perfect lemons left. As I looked at those lemons -- with an overwhelming desire for them -- I could imagine their taste and smell. I could imagine opening them up, and I could see a flash of juice bursting forth, my eyes instantly watering. But as I got closer, a man with a child on his shoulders thoughtlessly picked them up and put them in his basket. I was bereft as I imagined my imminent life without those lemons. And I could feel suddenly the distance of 3000 miles between this New England co-op and the California I took for granted spread before me.

I awoke almost immediately. The day before, I had brought up a package from our upstairs neighbor Marta addressed to the rest of us, but "c/o" my next-door neighbor Ted. Wanting something upon waking, I wondered if he'd distributed the contents. Still half-asleep, I opened my door, and there was, indeed, a bag for me with a note. I brought it inside and started to unwrap the gifts in the bag, each in different colored tissue, each revealing the same present: lemons upon lemons!

I don't know what I wanted the lemons for in my dream. But this bunch will become marmalade. I am now thinking of the near future, imagining the thickening mass on the stove and the taste of lemon on toast. 

My date, M. Brillat Savarin

New Year's Eve 2012. New Year's Day 2013. This is my dinner: two clementines, three different kinds of crackers, a few slices of two-year aged white cheddar, and a small wedge of Brillat Savarin; followed by ginger snaps out of the box and somewhere between two and five small squares of medium dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt.

Should I have had this two days in a row? It was meant to be my single-woman celebratory New Year's Eve meal after a day of travel, coast to coast, door to door, with a stop at the grocery store in between. The Whole Foods in Brookline, MA doesn't sell wine, there was no parking at the little Russian liquor store, and I thought I had a bottle of white at home anyway. I did not. But no matter -- the meal was better without.

I alternated between different kinds of crackers, with slices of clementines in between. I had old school Wheat Thins (low-fat, as they give a better crunch), a long multi-grain and very thick cracker but just one, and a few round thin-as-wafers crackers from an exhorbitantly expensive box (where is the cracker aisle at the Brookline Whole Foods anyway? I picked these up in an act of desperation after searching the store twice; they were near the cheese, which I think accounts for the price tag). The round crackers could be mistaken for thin styrofoam -- or possibly Communion wafers -- if you briefly held them in your hand or glanced at them on a plate. But in fact they are quite perfect. They are first of all perfect in their imperfections in shape: not round but almost spoked like tires, with edges that a child could likely work off of in order to create an octagon, or maybe a dodecagon if she or he were very very careful. These crackers don't melt; they have more weight in the mouth than you might first think. I had imagined them as delivery systems for the Brillat Savarin, as I thought they would be delicate, barely perceptible beneath the cheese. And they were, of course, alongside the Wheat Thins and the multigrain one. As I experimented with combinations I found they also met the cheddar well -- the cheese holding almost the same weight as the cracker and having almost the same exact color. The other thicker crackers were also quite nice with the Brillat Savarin, which too surprised me. I had worried it would be overwhelmed by those wheatier crackers, but it held its own. I could taste the cheese as a separate thing as I crunched each cracker -- light as cream with the slight pungency of a brie yet sweet at the same time, growing softer (and creamier) as my meal progressed.

At this moment I am not sure what is better than this very very fancy cheese, named for the physiologist of taste. But eating it alone would surely be a great error in judgement. I don't mean like me-alone, single woman with dog on New Year's Eve, but alone without other tastes alongside it. Yet as someone who is alone, Brillat Savarin seems wholly appropriate. There are no worries about portions, no idle (or serious) chatter to distract from the moment of devouring it. (I did share bits of the rind with Arlo, who sat quietly beside me on the sofa, barely noticing my declaration that I would treat him as a king but rather seeming to expect it along with the cheese, which for once he did not beg for.) Of course the clementines also made sense as a companion -- the light punch, the refreshing bit of juice. And these clementines were quite perfect: I peeled each in one swoop so that I had two tiny empty oranges on my plate at the end. The ease of their rinds meant their texture was also just right -- not a dry slice in sight. But the ginger snaps were a revelation. Ideal as a follow-up to the cheese, the ginger at once cleansed my palette and filled it entirely with flavor. I admit: I started the ginger snaps two-thirds through the dinner so that I could share them with the cheese. The chocolate, though, came at the end, alternating with my last cookies. This particular bar has become my go-to chocolate: the chocolate itself is completely smooth, while the nuts add texture and the salt gives flavor to both.

In my past months of better eating, I ask again if it was the right thing to also begin the new year with this same meal. I determined it was not a symbolic act tonight, as it was last night. Tonight I ate it over again purely because it was delicious, with my experience of last night as a guide more than a crutch. Thus knowing the twists and the turns of this little marvelous meal tonight did not detract from my pleasure. The only difference was more in color. Last night an orange plate which marked the revelations and the brightness of the meal; tonight a deep red plate -- another celebratory color, yet for me also darker with experience. I finished my bar of chocolate (only two squares were left), and, for once, I read the little poem that graced the inside of the package, these lines in the middle:

Love coming is omnipotent indeed,

But not Love going. Let her go.[...]

Stevenson's lines give me hope for the future -- future loves, future tastes.