My friend is dying. No matter how many mental gymnastics my brain does, no matter how sad I feel, no matter what I do every day, this underlies my thoughts all the time.
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Changing the toilet paper roll is sometimes sort of like a spiritual practice for me–at least I try to make it a spiritual practice. Sometimes it is okay. Sometimes other people change it. Sometimes I don’t even notice it. Sometimes, when the world is throwing me a few more curve balls than I was planning on, or if I am tired, then the toilet paper starts to get on my nerves. When we are busy and we have lots of guests, we have to change the toilet paper more often so it becomes a symbol of impinging overwhelm in my life. It becomes a tangible indicator of feelings of too much life in my living.
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Some days I am overcome by love. When I pull up at the school and let my kids out, I watch them tromping off with their lunch boxes and backpacks and my heart fills up until it overflows and fills my eyes with tears. I love being married and seeing how good we can make it and how fast we can recover from when we make it bad–when we mess up and have to fix it or get over it. I read a friend’s blog recently. He was describing the death of his lover. His raw words of love touched me deeply. It was as if he opened his heart on the page–splayed open for everyone to see. It was just love. I loved him for the open-hearted love he shared. I watch my parents aging and I want to ease their way. I want them to stay eternally young like they are in my mind. I want to be able to spare them the agony of growing older. I want to protect them from the elements of time and my heart fills with love and compassion for their humanness and frailty. I love them so much and yet my love can’t keep them from experiencing their challenges. I think of two family members who got mad at me and don’t talk to me anymore. On bad days I protect myself with anger and on good days I remember that their anger can’t make me stop loving them. Memories of them fill my heart and I surreptitiously send loving thoughts their way and wish them well. I love dinner parties. There is something about the echo of laughter over food that fills my heart. I love the people I laugh with. Especially if they think my jokes are funny. I love saying I love you to friends. It was something I realized years ago. It did once go bad when I told my friend Mara I loved her in a phone message. Her husband listened...
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A few months ago, Mel spent the evening making some home-made applesauce with the apples from our tree in the backyard. He used his grandmother’s recipe. The apples are tart and small and delicious if you have a lot of time to work with them. He peeled and chopped about 40 apples and we ate all the applesauce for dinner. I remember my grandmother having containers and containers of home-made applesauce. I wonder how my ancestors managed to preserve so much food. For the last couple of years, I have been working to try to put some food away. I am shocked by the volume of food that is required if I want to eat it during the winter. I buy what I consider large quantities of things–a bushel of tomatoes, a flat of strawberries, and they disappear as I make jam or sauce. That is kind of what happened with the apples. I have been judging myself by a tough standard, I realized. I am the first woman in my family to continue in a career after I married. The women I admire who were fantastic at putting food away were housewives. If it were my job to put food away, I imagine I would be a fair bit better at it. I picture them never really sitting down, but then I think of the handwork my grandmother did–always making something–and I realize she had to sit down for that. And she watched her soap operas. I am not sure her life was quite as full as I thought it was. She had some down time I think. I spend my time in front of a computer. It is ironic that I work and feel lazy because I can’t do all the tasks women from previous generations...
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Last night we had a meal that made my top 10 list. It was a meal like nothing I have experienced. Alexandre Gauthier came to the Stratford Chefs School bringing his front of house manager and his pastry chef. Gauthier is a Michelin Star chef with a restaurant called La Grenouillère. Sela was lucky enough to be the student chef during the dinner we attended last night. It was a snowy night but thanks to some great driving by our friend, we made it. There were 7 of us who added to the festivities, and the meal was a tasting menu that knocked our socks off. I can’t tell you how many courses there were. I can never figure out how to count the amuse-bouche at the beginning and the petit fours at the end. There were 12 distinct dishes that we ate plus delicious dark bread. There wasn’t a menu, just a list of ingredients and we continually got the unexpected. What we had: there was a corn tart, a veal and sardine tartar with cauliflower, scallop and avocado roll, a souffle with crab, beet ravioli with eel, a lobster salad, lamb with broccoli puree and wheat berries, an apple curl with celery cream, butternut squash ice cream with meringue, a strawberry gelée, and a truffle that exploded in my mouth. The pace was faster than any meal I have ever enjoyed and the drama of each course kept me on the edge of my seat. I felt excited each time a new course came out. I couldn’t wait for the description of what each dish contained and had to hold myself back. The colors and textures were striking and the uniqueness of each dish was remarkable. Several of the dishes were a little intimidating–it was a little scary to take the first bite of the blood red eel ravioli. But the flavors in each dish were so deep, rich, balanced and satisfying that the food provided a thrill and a world class...
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