Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
In Session
David’s cousin called on Thanksgiving Day with her greetings. She was in her car, so David asked where she was going.
“I’m going to see my therapist,” she said. A beat of silence and the thought, “Oh, gee, things must be really bad to need a session with a therapist on Thanksgiving Day.”
Then she said she’d send us a picture of her therapist. When we received it, we cracked up.
David’s cousin has long been involved in equine therapy for special needs and at-risk kids, although she has curtailed that activity in recent years as she has gotten older. But on Thanksgiving she was on her way to look in on this “therapist” as a favor to the people who regularly take care of the animal.
I should have asked for the therapist’s name in case any of you need a referral. He or she looks like an excellent listener, with a friendly and welcoming expression. Given the chance, I’d gladly confide.
The holiday season can be fraught for some of us — I’m probably speaking mostly for myself here. May we all find “therapy” if we need it in whatever way is most cheerful, helpful, and beneficial to ourselves and others.
Merry merry to all.
Forbidden Parties
I have zero recollection of taking part in a Forbes digital time capsule project 20 years ago, but this week I was among 18,000 people who received an email with their words from November 2005. I wrote that the “world is in a mess,” undoubtedly referring to the violence in Iraq. Twenty years on, our world has arrived at an entirely different definition of mess, one that sickens and crushes me daily.
That day in 2005, I wrote in response to Forbes that I was missing my mother, who had died a year earlier. I recorded my worry about a relative who was struggling with deep depression. I noted that I was reading James Frey’s Million Little Pieces — before scandal engulfed the book. Then, as now, Christopher was about to have a milestone birthday and I wrote about planning a small 10th birthday party at GoKart World.
I also wrote that we hadn’t allowed Christopher to go to a fifth-grade classmate’s “Yucky Boy Party,” much to his dismay. I have no memory of why we found this concept so objectionable that we didn’t let Christopher go. I’m hesitant to ask Christopher what he recalls about this forbidden party, too chicken to dredge up my parenting mistakes at this stage.
I opened another time capsule this week at Farmers and Merchants Bank in Long Beach — my safe deposit box where, along with deeds and birth certificates, I have stored letters I wrote to Christopher every year on his birthday for 12 years. You’re ushered into a small cubicle in the bank to review your safe deposit box contents, and the bank employees probably thought they had a loony one on their hands because I was laughing so much as I read the letters.
The letters gave examples of how sunny and clever Christopher was as a child, as when he asked me as a toddler, with a practicality he exhibits to this day, “Why didn’t they just put some glue on the wall so Humpty Dumpty wouldn’t fall?”
I also teared up, reading the letter I wrote on his birthday in 2001 when he turned 6. I described his childlike wisdom about the unbroken circle of life when he said out of the blue, several weeks after the horror of 9/11, “It will take a long time to get those people back.”
My letter says that when I asked what he meant, he told me that he was thinking of the people who died in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. He said, “It will take a long time for 3,000 more people to be born.” At only 5, he seemed to have some innate understanding that life goes on even in the face of unutterable sorrow. And while we can never get anyone “back” who has left us, new life still gives us the glimmer of hope we seek in any way we can, especially now.
We’re leaving tomorrow for San Francisco where Christopher will mark his 30th birthday this weekend. We’re bringing photos, a small nostalgic gift, and our gratitude for this chance to celebrate.
You Are Having the Purple Lips
We’re back from our monthlong trip to Italy, jet lagged, still in the glow of a wondrous journey, and trying, at least momentarily, to pay as little attention as we can to our now-gonzo world.
Most delectable food: Sfogliatella in Naples. Agnolotti in Turin. Marinara pizza in Naples.
Brilliant museums: Capitolini in Rome. Museo Egizio Turin. Ruins in Pompeii.
Favorite walks: The climb to Sant’ Elmo in Naples. Treks to San Damiano and Santa Croce in Assisi.
Most beautiful swim: Jumping into the Ligurian off the coast of Vernazza.
Unexpected: Pisa’s beauty.
Not so fun: Getting up and down four flights of steeply pitched stairs with too-heavy suitcases in a Riomaggiore apartment.
Quirky pleasure: Watching bats, or pipistrelli, flit about in the gathering twilight in Assisi.
Amusing translations: We attempted our few faltering phrases in Italian, which usually made the person we were speaking to immediately switch to English. Then we had fun trying to comprehend their sometimes unusual English phases.
Examples: “Empty croissant” — that means plain, as opposed to filled with almond or chocolate.
“Early Gray tea.” I do like my tea to be punctual.
“Inside the price.” If something is “inside the price,” that means it is included.
“You are having the purple lips” is what Pietro, crew member on a boat in Cinque Terre, said to me before chivalrously offering me his jacket when he noticed that I was cold.
Ciao, everyone.
Ruins
As we’ve traveled through Italy, I’ve been reading “God in Ruins” by Kate Atkinson. The title is derived from the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “Man is a god in ruins.”
I’m thinking of ruins not only from this novel, which deals with lives shattered by WW II, but also from hearing Springsteen’s lament, “City of Ruins,” in my head. I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid daily news dispatches about the ruin of our democracy. David said plaintively the other day, “Maybe we shouldn’t go back.”
We took the train from Naples to Pompeii today to tour the ruins where, thousands of years ago, people went about their lives unaware that catastrophe would obliterate everything in an instant.
Last week in Rome we surveyed the ruins of the ancient civilization that once lay beneath the city.
We laughed when we overheard an American woman in a cafe say, as she indicated the tableful of beers and Aperol spritzes, “Would you rather do this or look at more stones?”
We’ll look at more stones before we head back to the U.S. We’ll be thankful that we know to take nothing for granted. We’ll trust that some things can’t be ruined.
That’s a Bunch of…
Today we arrived in Bologna, Italy’s gastronomic capital. The city disavows any connection to the namesake American meat that was a staple of my grade school lunches.
In my strict vegetarian years — a rigidity I’ve since somewhat relaxed — I never missed eating steak or hamburgers, but I occasionally craved a lowly baloney sandwich. On backpacking trips in the Sierra when meager rations after days of strenuous hiking sometimes weren’t sufficient to get me through the night, I’d lie awake in my tent, ravenous, thinking of yes, baloney sandwiches. I don’t know if these yearnings were a desire to relive childhood or simply evidence of my complete lack of culinary sophistication.
While the thought of eating baloney in Bologna amuses me, I won’t embarrass myself or risk the locals’ ire by asking for any Oscar Meyer products while I’m here. I’ll savor the Bolognese delicacies and be filled with gratitude for these travels with David.
Tiny Bit of Joy
I’m thinking of my father today, born on this date in 1918.
I like the fact that in this photo he looks amused, almost happy. I don’t remember him ever expressing either humor or delight. I can’t know what happens to us when we leave this life, but I like to think that wherever he is, my father is now experiencing peace and joy for all eternity.
See What Happens
Randy Newman’s “Political Science” is running through my head this week, funnier and more apropos than it was 53 years ago when he released it. The song starts at 0:58; check the delicious, sly hint of a smile that plays around his mouth as he sings.
I wish I had a smidgen of Newman’s brilliant wit to deal with two aggressive encounters I had in the last week with people who proffered their opinions unasked and naturally, with no inquiry about what I thought.
The first occurred the other day in what I call “Jumping Around” class at the Y – a mix of different exercises, dance moves and weightlifting for older women.
In this very large class, the woman next to me, who I had never seen, commented that she hadn’t taken a class with this instructor. She proceeded to announce that she retired from working in an office with her husband, a physician, and then went on to declare that he retired because “he was going to be forced to prescribe the abortion pill, and he didn’t want to do that.”
I never met this person and didn’t know her name. I certainly hadn’t asked for her views or her husband’s outlook. I kept my face neutral and said, “Oh.”
There was more — there always is — about his role as a Catholic deacon and her assertion that college students regard “sex as a recreational sport and use the abortion pill to get rid of the mistake.”
I didn’t respond, but if I had, I would have wielded a cudgel and said that I’m glad her husband retired if he thought women should be forced to give birth because no one with that view should practice medicine. I would have added that it’s a good thing women are now out of the way of his harm.
But I didn’t. When the instructor told us to start marching, I marched away.
A couple of days later, I ran into one of Christopher’s elementary school teachers in the grocery store. I hadn’t seen her in 15 years, the last time in that very same market. But our meeting didn’t consist of pleasantries. She asked what Christopher was doing, and when I told her that he lived in San Francisco and that we had just visited him there, her face clouded.
“The last time we were there, we were ashamed,” she said.
Oh, here we go, I thought.
“What happened?”
“There was just so much,” she said, with a wave of her hand. She offered no description of what “so much” looked like.
“We tried to go to the wharf. We tried to go to the business district,” she said.
She didn’t explain what impeded her, and I didn’t ask if she had let the lies about needles and feces in the streets of San Francisco ruin her enjoyment of this magnificent city.
“When was this?” I asked, but she couldn’t remember exactly, only that it was “when everything started to go south.”
“That wasn’t our experience at all,” I said. “The city was beautiful. We spent time in gorgeous parks we’d never seen. San Francisco is filled with young people who are very successful.”
I asked about her children and grandchildren. In an odd, tone-deaf response to this simple question, she said she was “worried about” her grandchildren “being indoctrinated when they go to college.”
Maybe it’s a bit of irony that we were in the cracker aisle.
I should have urged her to focus her worry about her grandchildren’s welfare in a world that abridges civil rights, destroys the environment, and relishes cruelty to the least of our brothers and sisters.
Next time I’m assailed with this kind of ignorance and lack of social grace, rather than demurring and keeping silent, maybe I’ll drop the verbal big one and see what happens.
Politics on the Cake Platter
We held an impromptu dinner party Saturday night with my brother and his friend Lourdes, and Lourdes’s niece and nephew, Gloria and Alonso, who were in town from Mexico City. I charged Richard with picking up dessert and said we’d take care of the rest. The dinner came together at the last minute, so I pictured dessert as store-bought cookies or ice cream. But Lourdes’s niece Gloria is an accomplished pastry chef, and she arrived with this gorgeous flourless chocolate cake made with toasted almonds — she baked it in the kitchen of the house in Newbury Park where they were staying.
Lourdes holds dual Mexican and U.S. citizenship and lived in the U.S. for 18 years before returning to Mexico City some years ago. Her niece and nephew, both of whom are attorneys, have traveled to the U.S. from Mexico since they were small children. But this visit was different, they told us.
This time, federal agents took them aside and asked them not only the usual questions about why they were here in L.A. and how long they would stay, but also demanded the address where they would be staying. They felt nervous about disclosing this information. They were relying on friends’ graciousness for their accommodations and didn’t want to cause any trouble for them even though they were doing nothing wrong.
Taken out of the line and shunted to a separate area for further interrogation, they were told they had to produce evidence of a hotel reservation, and they also had to prove that they had a return flight. They also had to establish that they had money. This hostile, antagonistic reception had never happened to any of them before in the decades that they’ve been tourists in the U.S.
Gloria said that during the nerve-wracking experience, she focused on her mother’s advice to always keep a “cabeza fria.” She didn’t let her face or demeanor betray any of the anxiety she, her brother, and her aunt were feeling. Finally, after what seemed an interminable time, they were let go. “That’s awful,” we said, and David joked that they wouldn’t have the same trouble Sunday when they return to Mexico, but that the feds would probably hustle them right along as they leave.
During the dinner, our Mexican guests described their long-ago vacations in the U.S. with their parents when they visited Disneyworld in Florida, drove Route 66, and foraged in markets for M&Ms, an exotic treat that wasn’t sold in Mexico when they were kids. You can get M&Ms in Mexico now, Alonso told us, but only plain and peanut flavors. So when they come to the U.S. they still seek out M&Ms in coveted varieties that are unavailable at home, like cookies ‘n’ crème and caramel.
The flourless chocolate almond cake was heavenly. After everyone left and we were cleaning up the kitchen, David remarked that we should have apologized to Lourdes, Gloria, and Alonso for the shabby, rude treatment they received at the hands of the agents at the airport. I hope they found some limited-edition M&Ms to take home, perhaps the only sweet thing about their visit this time.
If You Have No Daughters
Hot-cross buns!
Hot-cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot-cross buns!
If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons;
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot-cross buns!
I’ve been on the hunt for hot cross buns for several days and had to accept defeat today. After making the rounds at four different markets and finding none, this morning I walked to Alsace Lorraine, a local bakery. It was as if I’d gone looking for a rotary phone or a floppy disk.
The owner told me, “I used to make them but nobody would buy them. I’d have trays and trays left.” She pointed out, “The younger generation doesn’t eat them.”
Hot cross buns indicate the end of Lent, marked with a cross to symbolize the crucifixion and laced with spices once used in embalming. They’re studded with citron to denote the bitterness of Christ’s time on the cross. My mother would buy them every year, and I know my craving is part of missing her as I always do.
I last found hot cross buns two years ago. The supermarket variety was sort of like a dinner roll with raisins and a sugar cross, not nearly as delectable as those I recall from my childhood. Nonetheless, I was happy to find and eat them, not realizing they would be the final batch I’d ever buy or eat unless I made them myself. Yesterday I watched an entire New York Times Cooking video by Genevieve Ko on how to make hot cross buns. Baking isn’t among my skills, so I quailed at the prospect even though she made it look so easy!
What traditional foods will you eat — or miss — as part of observing Easter or Passover this weekend? Wishing all a peaceful and delicious time.
The Green Side of the Grass 