An Oldie But (I Think) A Goodie

I originally wrote this for "Pimp My Wry" and would have forgotten about it completely if I hadn't gotten notice of a comment (that was certainly spam). Anyway, I liked it when I wrote it and I like it now so I figured I'd repost it here. Hope it doesn't attract more spam. Hope you enjoy it.

Oh, and just for the record, I feel the same way now as I did when I wrote this.

Alice Waters, What Are You Thinking?

I’m a little bit annoyed with Alice Waters.

Oh, sure, she deserves her props for her food advocacy, for helping to raise awareness about the value of organic foods, yadda yadda yadda. I admire all that.

It’s her smugness that’s bugging me.

Did you see the segment about Ms. Waters on “60 Minutes”? The one where she cooked breakfast for Leslie Stahl?

The steps involved in preparing this "simple repast" go something like this:

• Open a restaurant in Berkeley
• Pretend it’s a co-op, but retain the majority share
• Make a couple of million bucks
• Build or renovate your kitchen to include a wood-burning hearth—conveniently at standard counter height
• Pick up some hand-forged iron spoons with really long handles
• Stock up on firewood
• Buy eggs, tomatoes, olive oil and herbs (organic, of course)
• Have your assistant build a fire in the hearth about an hour before you want to make breakfast—for me, that would be at 7 a.m., so my phantom assistant would have to get up before 6
• Chop up some tomatoes and herbs (are they organic? If not…), allow the mixture to marinate
• Slice some bread bread bread*
• Grill it
• Spoon the tomato mixture on the bread (which has been placed on a hand-painted plate that you got in Italy—part of a set of 40)
• Take a nap
• Coat an iron spoon with the olive oil (did I mention that the olive oil should come from your good friend’s grove and be organic?)
• Crack an egg into a bowl, slide the egg into the oil-coated spoon
• Walk across the kitchen to the fire shove the egg under the flames gently fluttering from the log and stand there until the egg bubbles up and cooks through
• Walk back to the counter where the plated bread/tomato thing is
• Scoop the egg on top of the tomatoes
• Serve
• Repeat as needed

This is the kind of every day food that’s perfect for a family of four or more because, really, making it creates an oasis of calm amidst the panicked searches for the missing homework and the right pair of black shoes. Those family members who are not sweating it out at the fire can make brown bag lunches at the same time. (You did include a separate lunch prep area in that kitchen redesign, didn’t you?)

“And you don’t really have to do it in the fire,” says Alice. “You can do it in the cast iron skillet on the stove.”

Well, thanks for that tip, Alice! Because, honestly, that never would have occurred to me.

The flaws in Alice's thinking are, in my (extremely humble) opinion, these:

Not everyone lives in California, with access to farmers and their foodstuffs—the only locally-grown organic tomatoes I can find right now look like they're made of styrofoam and they cost something like $20 a piece

Organic food costs a LOT—and I've got other expenses, like my mortgage

Shopping carefully for each ingredient takes time—I love meandering through my local farmers' markets (which operate in my neck of the woods from late May through November; the only food in stock after September being turnips) but since I have to also make a trip to the regular grocery store, shopping turns into a day-long event

But the worst part is, her serene self-satisfaction creates anxiety. Who can live like this? Do you live like this? Or are you wedging a trip to the grocery store in between work, getting the kids to their activities, going to the gym, doing a load or two of laundry, finding the lost homework, and refereeing arguments about who's turn it is to set the table with the chipped plates you inherited from Aunt Thelma?

Because that's the life most of us live—and we're the lucky ones who don't rely on public transport, aren't trying to stretch the food we can buy with food stamps, haven't had to visit the local food pantry...do I need to go on?

So, yeah, I admire the woman, but I don't think she lives on the same planet I inhabit.

* This is a completely gratuitous inside joke.

Kudos

My friend Phil Lemos finished the first draft of his novel yesterday. In blogging about it he wrote something that touched me deeply (for reasons both obvious and not-so-very-obvious):

"I may never get this puppy published. But at least when I'm on my deathbed I'll be able to say I wrote a novel."

To start something is easy. To prevail to the end (even if it's only the first end) is, I think, heroic when the only "reward" of which one can be certain is that the work will matter just because the work has happened.

Bravo, Phil. "Bravo!" to all of my writer friends who have finished the things they have started. And "Bravo!" to all who are still making the work happen (which is, as you all know, each and every one of us).

Check out his post here. And tell him I sent you.

Mother's Day

On Facebook, many of my friends have posted photos of their mothers in honor of Mother's Day. For days I've been reading posts about mothers who inspire, mothers who are present, mothers who are gone.

As a mother, I appreciate this. As a daughter, I am filled with longing. Rather than post about my mother, I figured the best way to deal with this longing is by sharing this snippet from my memoir.

There are days when, encountering a woman my age out in the world with her mother, I am struck by a tsunami of envy, grief, anger, sadness, bitterness (!) and I tumble, taking shallow breaths and refusing to weep until I can get my feet on the solid ground of survival, until I can grab hold of remembering that I am okay now.

Laughing, bickering, walking together in silence, even arguing. The daughter, my peer, says, “Mom!” or “Mother!” or (sometimes) “Mommy!” and I am submerged in a longing so deep I know I will never touch bottom. One look at them and I can see what these daughters have learned from their mothers, see the ways they cannot help carrying all their mothers have taught them, see that there are some things they have taken on by choice: a certain flair, the habits of grooming, the legacy of caring and guidance.

I am standing in the shoe aisle at Marshalls, surrounded by the hodgepodge of footwear from last season, the season before, the overstocks of the latest fashions cast off by a ritzy department store. A woman in a Chanel jacket, crisp white blouse, black trousers, tasteful gold chain gleaming against her Florida tan set off with the just-right-shade of red lipstick reaches for a pair of flats. She drops them on the floor, wiggles her right foot out of the shoe she is wearing, revealing manicured toes under a veil of nylon. As she slips her foot into the new shoe, the fingers of one hand pressing lightly on the edge of the shoe rack for balance, she says, “What do you think of these, Liz?”

“Um,” I say, startled that she knows my name.

“Let me see, Mother.” Her Liz steps into the aisle. They look at the shoe, considering it carefully and so they do not see me looking at them, considering them carefully. The daughter is wearing a nearly identical outfit (though she has on jeans), her hair is slightly more modern version of the mother’s bob, the diamond on the daughter’s left hand set in platinum rather than mother’s gold, both have short rounded nails with French manicures. “They look just like the one’s you’re wearing,” this other Liz says, and they lift their heads in mirror image timing and laugh.

I leave the store and when I get into my car I have to take ten deep breaths before I can even think about turning the key, starting the engine, maneuvering out of the parking space, driving myself home.

Exhale

Today, everything was something other than I anticipated.

When I got to the grocery store, expecting a crowd, instead I found a parking spot immediately and hardly anyone in the aisles. Once I was done, however, two drivers played chicken with their big SUVs, inching forward and angling toward the space as I loaded my bags into my car.

My usual source for cooking gadgets and paraphernalia did not have the one thing I needed; I had to go to the paper goods store that I don't particularly like instead.

A phone call I'd planned for never happened.

Then my internet and phone modem failed. Five hours of my day was spent on this.

There was also this, however:

When I pulled in to the parking lot of the cooking gadget store, my mind registered some oddness that made me pause, let go of that one thing I needed for a moment, focus on the world around me.

At curbside, where the road met the parking lot, just by a small island of grass and dirt, was a bird of prey. Feathers streaked with muted gold, fierce beak, sleek head scanning and, clutched in its right talon, a rather large bird of some sort. Feather and down scattered, tumbling over the asphalt. Other birds swooped and clamored. The bird of prey—a hawk? probably a hawk, though those golden feathers...—noticed but didn't seem bothered at all.

Just as I aimed my phone to take a picture, a pickup truck pulled into the lot, stopped a few feet away. The bird took off, flying low, its catch dangling. The guy driving the truck rolled down his window. "I wanted to take a picture but I guess I scared it away!"

"But we saw it," I said. "We both know we saw it. How cool is that?”

Multimedia Blogging

As an experiment I decided to post a selection from the reading I did at my graduation residency. My impulse is to apologize and explain and make self-denigrating comments, but I'm going to resist that impulse and just let the words stand.

I Am Not A Poet

Poetry appeals to me for so many reasons—such a disciplined form, the world stripped down to only the essential words—but it's not my form; I'm too verbose, I think.

In observance of National Poetry Month, however, I figured I'd share a poem I wrote a few years ago for a class.

✤ ✤ ✤

For Marian Fisher, 13

Only sunlight illuminated the room,
the dust from the chalkboard sparkling
as it settled on the wood softened
by a hundred sweepings, the thousand footsteps
of the children rising to their lessons.
Five times
one, two, three, four, five
ghosted in the milky gray sweep of erasure.

On the blue sky day they were called
to reciting, they were called
to their reading, they were called to their sums.
Always ready,
Marian said “Me first.”

The milk had been delivered,
his children hugged tight then
released with words of love. Then he
went to work, backed his truck in
for the delivery
of his unimaginable emptiness.

Out of the blue sky day came
the checklist, the wire
the guns, the strange length of wood
and his unimaginable emptiness.

Only sunlight illuminated the room,
the scent of fear quavering
as it settled on the wood softened
by a hundred sweepings, the thousand footsteps
of the children rising to their lessons,
Two lines,
one assembled for dismissal, one assembled in
a row by the chalkboard
with its milky gray sweep of erasure.

Out in the blue sky day the police were called
to awaiting, they were called
to their duty, they were called to their guns.
Inside, ready,
Marian said, “me first.”

Five times
one, two, three, four, five
ghosted in the crimson red sweep of erasure
and his unimaginable emptiness.

✤ ✤ ✤

Here's a little more about Marian Fisher: http://www.marianfisher.com/

SuperMoon

We went to the beach to watch the moonrise, arriving as the sun was setting in the west. The parking area that faces east was as full as it would be on a summer day; some people sitting in their warm cars, leaning forward and scanning the horizon. Photographers had staked claim to each bench along the sidewalk that runs the length of the beach, their cameras sporting long lenses mounted on tripods. People were sitting on the sand and on the seawall, leaning against trees, standing by the water's edge or on the rocky shoreline.

All of us looked east.

We walked out on the wooden pier. After the sun had fully set the wind dropped for just a moment, then picked up again. We shivered and wondered to one another where the moon might rise. "Is the sky brighter over there, behind that island?"

Then there it was. A sliver of orange shivered at the top of a cloud bank. The sliver became a crescent, became an arc, became the full full moon. It seemed to pause, as if it knew we had been waiting, as if it knew we were watching.

There was a clatter of shutters opening and closing, opening and closing; a few flashes. And: "Oh!" And: "Woooooooooowwwww!" And: "Beautiful."

Mostly, though, we were silent as we remembered, again, that this wonder was part of us and we were part of it.