All alone, together

I got the shocking call last Sunday afternoon.  She told me that he jolted awake suddenly in the pre-dawn hours and just as quickly he was gone.  This prince of a man, this decent, loving husband and father had died.  Out of nowhere.  WHAT?  Weren’t they just . . . ?  Didn’t we just . . . ?  I struggled to process this dreadful information.  I wanted to rail against God.  I wanted to offer some words of comfort until I could get there, something trite, like “This is part of God’s plan, it is beyond our understanding.”  Of course, I didn’t believe that.  My rage would be directed at the ether.  My efforts to soothe would be built on a false premise.  I don’t believe there is anyone up there or out there. It is precisely at times like these that I desperately wish for some kind of faith.  There are people all around me who have a version of God.  This God provides a structure for living and dying, solutions to complex problems, answers (or diversions) where there are none.  I don’t have anything close to this.  I was never very good at science but it is all I have.

I used to hedge a little more when talking about this highly sensitive topic.  This was for two reasons: I was concerned about offending anyone and I had some mildly superstitious notion that I would leave the door open, just in case I should have occasion to call God into service in my own life.  As a younger woman, I talked of feeling “spiritual” and that I could imagine “a force greater than myself” in the universe.  I never really had any idea what I meant when I discussed this.  I thought it made me sound less off-putting to others but mostly, it made me less terrified of having no guiding light.  I would describe how we are “all connected,” relate experiences like seeing something extraordinary in nature and how this could grant access to the sacred world.  The truth is, I have seen the sunset over the Pacific, a baby moose in the Tetons, Halley’s Comet and a human child emerge from my own body.  In each case, I have thought, ‘What an absolutely stunning miracle . . . of science.’

The older I get, I am increasingly convinced of the randomness of life.  I do believe that everything always works out in the end, in the sense that we learn to cope with whatever circumstances bring.  What I mean when I say things like, ‘I am exactly where I was meant to be,’ is that it requires an active acceptance of chaos to get from one day to the next.  This is more of a mantra than some philosophical statement about a grand plan.

I challenge anyone to explain to a woman who has just lost the center of her life and the father of her young children that all will be revealed.  NO.  There will be no reasonable explanation and if the logic of it is outside our comprehension, then it is useless anyway.   What we can know for sure is that she will move forward very slowly, moment-by-moment, until it is less and less surreal.  The heavy boulder of pain will eventually be massaged into tiny pebbles that rattle around in her mind.  New rhythms will develop and her children will grow.  She might create a novel iteration of a family, not because this was all supposed to happen just exactly like it has, but because she will simply handle what she has been dealt.

For a long time, I wondered whether this lack of a divine center meant that I was a lost soul (lost brain?).  But I can tell you with conviction what it is that makes me found.  My family and friends (also considered family) are at the core---I live for them and with them in this life, in the here and now.  I do this not because it is written or commanded or foretold.  I do this because it is right and feels good and creates community.  I don’t need to understand the meaning of life to know that when someone is ripped from it too soon, it creates a searing pain.  I don’t require the threat of hell or a judgmental God to treat people with kindness.  I know that I should “do unto others” because I, myself, have feelings.  I also know that nobody is perfect and that when I fail as a human (often spectacularly), the person from whom I need to beg forgiveness is the person I have slighted.

In the tradition of my Jewish culture (and yes, for many people, Jewish religion), in the New Year we do a self-assessment and make a commitment to do better in the coming season.  One rationale for this is to ensure that we are inscribed in the Book of Life for another year.  The warning here is that God will only allow those to survive who have done good, been of service and been authentically sorry for ways in which they have harmed others.  This begs the question whether the people who have died this year somehow weren’t all they could be?  And you see how it begins to break down.

I do appreciate the concept of personal inventory, making genuine apologies (at least once a year) and being intentional about your humanity in the year to come.  This year I hope to focus on being even more available to this most treasured friend that has experienced devastating loss.  I won’t talk to her about God and providence.  I will talk to her about how powerful his presence was and will continue to be in this life.  I won’t talk to her about fate.  I will tell her that I know he is gone too soon and that nothing about this is just.  I won’t be equipped to provide any enlightenment.  But I will visit the kids, get down on the floor with them like he did, and keep his memory fresh for them.  I will do this because I love her and I loved him and this is what people do.

On Moving and Morels.

My love affair with New York City was ill-fated from the start. My husband Jake and I lived in the apartment of our dreams, but far from within our means. We had a washer and dryer. A large kitchen. Two bathrooms. A balcony with a view of the entire Manhattan skyline. My friends called it a “sitcom apartment.” Real people don’t live in spaces like those, not in New York City, especially not when they’re newlyweds just starting out. I had hoped to seduce the city with this slick and confident façade, instead I just doomed myself to working two jobs to make the rent. I worked extra hours at a coffee shop, in retail, babysitting---mostly to the benefit of my two cats, who would luxuriate all day in generous rectangles of sunlight and chatter at pigeons thru the floor to ceiling windows. After fifteen months we decided not to renew our lease. I mourned the loss of what could have been by eating: my last sandwich from the Brooklyn Larder. My last cocktail at Prune. My last espresso at Third Rail. In the days leading up to the move, revisiting my favorite restaurants and grocery stores became a bitter end to a whirlwind affair.  Visiting these places mirrored those last passionate efforts a couple undertakes before they bury their relationship, except that for my part, the breakup sex was a meatball sandwich. It all ended for good as I crossed the Verazanno Bridge in a Budget rental truck, nibbling frantically at my final almond croissant from the Park Slope Food Co-op.

We settled into our new home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, into my dad’s hunting cabin on fifty acres of beautiful farmland in Western Virginia. Though we had physically moved on, I still couldn’t get over New York. I missed the city. I still loved it there. I tried telling myself it just didn’t work out. It was for the best. I force-fed these bitter incantations to my starving, broken heart. I was still hungry.

It was what I had asked for, really. I had cheated on New York. I had always harbored farmland fantasies. When we finally left the city, we took with us the two cats, the truckload of IKEA furniture, the pots and pans, and clothes, and books. But the heaviest box was no real box at all. It was our idea of what this move should be---an imaginary vessel for our expectations, across which we would have scrawled, “handle with care” and “fragile” if we could have. Our specific idea of how we wanted our life to be in Virginia was complete with vegetable gardens, home-brewed beer, and lazy rocking in rocking chairs.  Bubble wrapped and coddled in newspaper, we hoped these dreams would survive the trip.

The move was exciting at first. For once in our lives we actually had a nearer chance of pursuing the benchmarks of rural lifestyle that are luxuries to urban denizens.  In our old neighborhood of Crown Heights, for example, hopes for a vegetable garden were limited to a forlorn terracotta pot on the balcony. There was no space for home-brew equipment in the kitchen. Between the rent and the groceries, I couldn’t spare a cent to splurge on a nice wooden rocking chair nor the time to spend idly rocking. New York City was a dead sprint. We wanted to stroll.

The expanse of time and space we found in Virginia was not unlike the void one finds in life after the departure of a loved one: Unstructured days washed over us with opportunity and freedom. Our schedules had always been measured down to the thimbleful in New York.  Now each day was like plunging into a dunk tank the size of a reservoir. We adjusted over time. We slept through the too-quiet nights with help from a rattling fan. We started a garden. I began home brewing (though it was kombucha, not beer), and I even found an old rocking chair in the attic.  Yet I still couldn’t let go of New York entirely. I needed something powerful to free me from memories of that shattered romance. I needed a rebound.

That rebound, for me, was the morel mushroom. The mystique of this cherished and hard-to-find fungi impressed my imagination and evolved into a symbol necessary to attaining “the good life.” The morel was the materialization of our new life chapter, I thought. To me it was strange and wild; a delicious and rare thing that couldn’t be cultivated, only found.

All that, and yet, I had never even tasted a morel. I hadn’t even seen a fresh one in person.  I had only hunted down websites in search on foraging tips, read about trained mushroom hunting dogs imported from Europe, and studied images of the morel’s pitted, alien looking surface from my glowing computer screen.  The closest I had come to any was in dehydrated form, which I examined through a crinkling plastic bag at the Park Slope Food Co-op. Despite this distance, somewhere between the Brooklyn Bridge and the foothills of the Blue Ridge, I began my desperate, heartsick affair with the morel. The stakes were high: For the move from Brooklyn to the cabin to be a good life choice, I really needed to find some effing morels.

Here’s the scene of my self-affirming mushroom fantasy, which played on a loop in my mind during those first hard weeks at the cabin:

It begins at dawn the day or two after a thunderstorm. The air is warm, a little humid.  The birds are chirping, the insects trilling, the whole forest lit up by a golden sunrise pouring through the trees . . . You get the idea---it’s perfect.  Jake and I are slowly walking through the woods, pausing at the base of trees to carefully overturn fallen leaves. A straw hat and wicker basket fix prominently in this dream scene, too, their charm and utility reassuring my every careful step. We round the trunk of a massive tree, and then . . . morels are everywhere.  It’s like an Easter egg hunt, except the kind for little kids where the plastic eggs are just tossed out on the lawn.  It’s like someone just smashed open a forest-sized piñata that was filled with morels. It’s like . . . again, you get the idea. Time lapse to early evening. We’re at the edge of the woods cooking the mushrooms in a big cast iron pan. Cue the triumphant orchestral music as the pan sizzles and the butter pools.  The morels are cooked and golden. The field is golden. The whole world is golden. We eat our happiness on golden toast. We’re gonna be just fine, says the dream, we’re gonna be just golden.

Obviously I had a bit of a problem. Call it morel-induced neurosis. As silly as that dream sequence feels now, I can’t forget how urgent it felt then. The only release from the pressure of that absurdly vivid idealization of my new life at the cabin was . . . to make it happen. There were no alternatives. The morel was my only ticket, my golden one shot. My hunger for this food I had never tasted was strong and overwhelming. It sent me deep into Virginia where I wandered past creeks, through thick woods, past dirt roads and hillsides. While wandering and searching in the forest we found the skull of a baby bear, a wild turkey sitting on a nest of giant eggs, a serious toad, tons of fiddle heads, a field of bluebells. But no morels. Not one.

It would be weeks before the stars aligned. Eventually the weather shifted and the ground warmed. We learned about the land we were searching on, about the types of trees and the ideal spots for mushroom growth. Then it happened---we hit the mushroom jackpot all at once. They were everywhere, just like in the dream. Huge, meaty, rich. Delicious. We returned to the cabin and cooked the morels in a skillet with butter. I ate so many but I hardly recall their taste now, it was something like bacon and earth. Like minerals and meat.

The rebound worked, at least for a while. I forgot about New York and the meatball sandwiches and almond croissants and espresso. I focused instead on what was before me now. This new love affair didn't make all of my insecurities about moving dissolve, but at least it made them more palatable.

Making the Choice

Early this spring, during my morning of chores and yoga, I watched a documentary about a young woman with cystic fibrosis—the same disease that I have, although hers was much more advanced—preparing for a lung transplant. It was a tough film to watch, but ultimately uplifting. And, for that day at least, it changed the way I thought. An hour or two after the film had finished, I grabbed my keys and headed out to my car to run an errand. As I slid behind the wheel, my mind still on that morning’s documentary, I thought: I’m so grateful that I don’t have to maneuver an oxygen tank; it’s so nice to be able to move freely, without worrying about tubing and concentrators.

Immediately on the heels of that thought came another, much less happy one. But I don’t want to have to be grateful for that, I heard myself saying. I may not be on oxygen, but I still can’t walk very far without getting tired. I still can’t live a normal life, or do normal things. It’s still not fair.

And in that moment, before enough time had passed for me to so much as put my key into the car’s ignition, I had an instant of crystal clarity. This is my choice, I thought. I can choose to be grateful, or I can choose to still want more.

.   .   .   .   .

For several years, I have struggled with the unfulfilled desire for motherhood. I have always been that girl—the one who loved babies and children, the one who used to imagine a family of six or eight or ten, the one who considered twins an exciting challenge. It was hard for me, as a teenager, to realize that my disease and the fragility of my body would make both pregnancy and motherhood difficult; it has been even harder, as an adult, to wait through years of poor health, delays, setbacks, and infertility for the child I longed for so desperately. All around me, my friends conceived and mothered with ease and grace, while I was left childless and wanting.

Again and again, as the frustration and the anger and the pain drove me to what I felt like was the absolute limit of my endurance, I came back to the same truth.

This is my life, and I cannot change it.

I can only choose whether I’ll be happy, or unhappy.

.   .   .   .   .

 Years ago in mid-October, I was admitted to the hospital through the emergency room, after several days of chest pain that had ultimately grown so severe that I couldn’t even sleep. I felt like my nightmares had come true—I had to pull out of classes mid-semester, had to watch my life be completely disrupted by the unexpected turn of events.

For the two weeks that I spent in the hospital that autumn, I found myself feeling an anger I had rarely felt before. It isn’t fair, I thought over and over again. It isn’t fair that this had to happen. It isn’t fair that my life has to be different. It isn’t fair that my future is clouded with uncertainty, and I have trouble seeing past my thirties. None of this is fair.

And yet, when those weeks had ended and I was left trying to pick up the pieces of my life once again, I felt truth sinking into my heart. Fair or not, this was my life, and it was out of my control. The only thing I could control was the state of my heart: would I continue to fight the things I could not change, or would I choose to be happy anyway?

.   .   .   .   .

Late this summer, I watched with disbelief as two pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test on my bathroom counter. After such a long time of waiting, it didn’t seem real; for weeks, I felt like I was on a roller-coaster of joy and hope and fear and disbelief. And, to my surprise, dissatisfaction. Here was my dream come true, the thing that I had wanted for so many years—and yet, somehow, I couldn’t let go of my feelings of jealousy and frustration. I found myself clinging to the idea of what I had originally wanted, wishing that this blessing had come into my life years earlier. I couldn’t stop looking with envy at my friends, their homes already filling with children, so much further along this path that I was only beginning to walk.

Last month, I walked along the North Carolina coastline, trying to reconcile my unexpected feelings of frustration with the incredible joy that this pregnancy had brought into my life. And, as the warm East coast waves lapped at my feet, I came again to the understanding that I have come to so many times before:

It’s my choice. I can allow myself to be consumed in anger and pain and jealousy, dwelling on the things in my life that have not gone as I wanted.

Or, I can choose happiness. I can choose to go where life takes me; to be content with the ups and downs, with the life that I have, rather than the life that I might have wanted.

.   .   .   .   .

This choice—the choice between being happy and being unhappy—seems to confront me at all angles of my life, in good times and in bad. And every time it does, I am struck all over again by the power of this simple truth that so many wise men and women throughout the ages have known:

Ultimately, my happiness is all up to me.

How will I choose today?

Watching Weather and Red Earth

By Eliza Deacon From up here you can forget that much else exists and your view of the world is only what spreads away down over tops of trees and the Maasai Steppe beyond; at the moment much of that is impassable anyhow after early rains. It would be all too easy not to leave this place and to become deeply rooted in the red soil along with the coffee, easy to become a recluse and slowly slip off the social calender until, in months to come, people wonder whatever happened to you---not such a bad thing really.

The farm grows slowly around us and the coffee seedlings---planted earlier this year---are now knee height or thereabouts. With a nod to the aesthetics of line and form, they are planted on the contours of the hills, gentle curves that owe much to good farming practice; there is something peaceful about following their lines and your walk always finds direction because of them, although the dogs pay them no mind and have yet to learn to tread softly around fragile roots.

I walk a lot these days, frustrations like lack of power (we’re not on the grid) resulting in lack of internet---not so crucial really, except for that lifeline to the outside world---are easier to handle when you’ve been up to the highest point on the farm and squatted down in the red earth letting the view take away often murderous thoughts. I’m trying to learn patience and that all things are not always solved by another glass of wine, when you’re at your limit but you can’t get off the farm, because ‘you can’t actually get off the farm’ as the rain has made the tracks too slippery and you’ll only wrap the truck around a coffee bush if you try. All these things are good. I suppose they’re lessons if only I took the time to remember them.

Our house sits in a wind tunnel and at night the wind howls down off Kilimanjaro and roars straight over the top of us. I now see why the back side of the house is largely without windows and also why we block up the hole in the back door at night with a wooden bread board. I’ve learned, with much cursing, how to start the old cable-pull-start generator for when we need power; two hands and a firm stance are what’s needed, it’s got a mind of its own and doesn’t like me obviously.

It feels far away here. It feels like we’ve left behind a life that was easy, yes, but a tad dull. Here the challenges are not insurmountable, it’s mainly funds---or the lack of---that are much needed, as with any start up project. Our farm, a small but perfectly formed 400 acres, might soon be joined by another 800 or so. You can see that farm on the hills bordering ours, higher up and often in Kili’s clouds; out of reach but perhaps not for much longer. We moved in in July, but already the days have blurred and I don’t think back to where we were; this place wraps itself around you very quickly. It makes me wonder if we’ll ever leave. I rather hope not.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

In March of this year, Ally moved from Brooklyn to Leesburg, Virginia. While in New York, she worked as a barista and in retail in order to support her writing and acting habits. She studied classical acting in Oxford, UK, at The British American Drama Academy and English Literature at American University in Washington, DC. Ally and her husband (who is a musician and writer) decided to leave city life on a whim---their lease was up and instead of renewing, they packed up their two cats and moved into her dad's old hunting cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. When she's not pickling poisonous spiders or getting charged by groundhogs, she's a kitchen helper to food writer Cathy Barrow and recipe tester for the Washington Post. She blogs about cabin life at www.thegreencabinyear.com The big comfy armchair in my living room is upholstered in a hunter’s dreamscape. Deer, geese, elk, and moose frolic across the fabric. There are pine trees and creeks and hunting dogs. This is my reading chair, my special spot reserved for reading only actual books. I say “actual” because I think of the printed word as a material thing in addition to its immaterial narrative. A book in the “actual” sense is a specific vessel as well as a world. Sure, I love e-books and laptops, but those mediums show you too much. They take you anywhere, everywhere. The actual book takes you to only one place, to one particular story.

You also get a whole different sense experience with an actual book. You feel the flex of a page heavy with a big glossy photograph. You notice how unlike in texture and weight the rigid cover is from the pulp flecked page. You can hear the spine crinkle and see the deepness of the black ink. Let’s not forget the smell, of course…the must or dust or that of crisp fresh paper.

When learning something new, especially a physical skill like gardening or cooking, I find it particularly helpful to learn from an actual book. That’s what this column is about for me – books that are teaching me new things. As I learn to garden, to cook, to read, I find that I enjoy the flipping back and forth through pages, running my finger up and down a block of text, and sandwiching in post-it notes and neon tabs to keep my place.

In short . . . Hooray for actual books!

Here is what I’m reading now:

New Book of Herbs by Jekka Mcvicar I’ve got a thing for Passion Surfing. Never heard of Passion Surfing? Well, that’s because I just made it up. Passion Surfing is when you find someone who is really passionate about what they do and then you catch a smaller version of their wave and see where it takes you. Usually my Passion Surfs are fun for a few weeks, then glide to a halt on the shore of boredom. But not so with Jekka Mcvicar. Her wave of enthusiasm has inspired me for a really long time.

This book gives guidance in planning new garden beds, growing herbs from seeds and cuttings, and also has sections about uses for fresh herbs in the kitchen and the home. There are recipes and how-tos and manifestos for organic gardening practices. There are so many helpful tidbits of information---did you know that using a seeping irrigation system rather than a spray hose will cut down on the spread of weed seeds? Neither did I! My favorite part of the book, however, is the last section that details 100 of Jekka’s favorite herbs. Jekka and I have been hanging ten so hard lately, I want to grow every one of them!

The Wild Table by Connie Green and Sarah Scott When I moved to western Virginia from Brooklyn I became obsessed with finding a particular type of mushroom called the morel. I imagined that finding this particularly delicious and wild delicacy would free me from the heartsick feeling I’d had since leaving New York. I missed my friends, my job, and the great theatres, cafes, and bookstores. I missed the feeling of “happening”, of hopefulness, of my phone buzzing in my pocket as a pal called me up for a spontaneous after work cocktail. When I got to Virginia all I saw was the traffic and the big box stores and the laser-eyed looks directed at my tattoos. And my phone? My phone became a still and useless rectangle of regret.

Strangely enough, the morel did help me adjust. It became my beacon of hope. I didn’t need anyone calling me if I was poking around in the woods searching for fungi. Soon I took a “grow-your-own wild mushrooms” class at a local organic farm and found a cool job through connections I made there. Eventually I even became more adventurous in the kitchen, which I also credit to my love of wild mushrooms---because if you spend a whole day searching for your food, you’re certainly going to put in the effort to eat it well that night. I found myself appreciating the beauty of Virginia after all. Morel hunting truly helped me see the world in a different way. But wait . . . not that kind of different way, I’m not talking about those types of mushrooms.

The Wild Table is a beautiful book filled with tasty recipes, brilliant photographs, and useful, easy to read information about preserving the morning fetch.  You can use this book even if you have no desire to go tromping around in the woods; just swing by your local farmers market.  If you are in the mood for some fungi fulfillment there’s a helpful “Wild Calendar” in the back that tells you when certain mushrooms and other natural treats are in season.

Living, Thinking, Looking by Siri Hustvedt This book is a collection of essays about a lot of stuff: desire, memory, sleep, literature, visual art. Oh yeah, and neuroscience. Can’t forget the neuroscience. (Except I do forget the parts about neuroscience and then I have to go back and read them over and over again…)  These topics might make you wonder how this book is making an appearance here, among all these other books about things you can eat. Mushrooms, herbs… ideas? Exactly!

In my journey to become a better home cook I’ve hit a few roadblocks every so often. Learning new skills takes some endurance. This book helped me reinvest in my quest to become a skilled cook because of how Hustvedt thinks about memory. She writes:  “it is clear that memory is consolidated by emotion, that the fragments of the past we recall best are those colored by feeling …” Good meals can be bookmarks in the brain.

The example that comes to mind is from my recent weekend trip to New York. I can only vaguely describe the events of that weekend as a whole. But ask me about that delicious meal I shared with my dear friend at a nice restaurant in the East Village? I can give you a play-by-play of the whole experience, not just about what we ate. I vividly remember our conversation, the energy of the room, even details of the place down to the type of air freshener that was in the bathroom. (A lemongrass diffuser, in case you were wondering.)

My dinner that night was pleasure distilled into three courses and a bottle of sparkling wine.  It was certainly a “consolidating” emotion I felt that evening – an emotion I am slowly learning to create again and again for myself, for my family, and for my friends.

The food will be for our tummies; the pleasure of eating it will be for our minds.

Mercy, Mercy Me

By Natalie Friedman Strange thoughts visited me in the days following my grandmother’s funeral. For example: while driving to my son’s preschool, the car windows open to the fine spring air, my radio tuned to an oldies station playing Marvin Gaye, I thought: “My grandmother never heard Marvin Gaye in all of her ninety-five years.”

My grandmother never listened to the radio. She never owned a record collection; I doubt she knew what a CD was. The lack of music in her life was tied up with other lacks and other losses, and those are what made me cry in my car as I turned up the radio and slowed down to circle the parking lot a few times.

I grieved for my grandmother in my own private way after she died, and this included making mental lists of all the things she had never done. It was the inverse of what most obituaries are supposed to do: rather than celebrate achievements, I was reckoning the gaps and spaces and silences and had-nots. My grandmother had never driven a car. My grandmother had never been to the top of the Empire State Building or the tip of Statue of Liberty’s lamp. My grandmother had never been to high school or college.

There were, of course, many things that my grandmother had done, things I have never done and may never be able to do. She had baled hay and milked cows and planted vegetable gardens. She had attended several births. She had seen her eldest brother return from World War I covered in lice and raving mad. She had nursed a sick mother and had buried her in a too-early grave. She had been taken to a ghetto and then to three concentration camps. She had walked out of them all alive, supported by no one. She had returned to her hometown, to a place from which nearly all her relatives had disappeared, and she rebuilt a home. She bribed a long line of greedy men to spring her husband from a Soviet gulag. She buried that husband in a too-early grave. She had crossed an ocean with an only daughter, at the age of fifty-three, to start a new life in America. She had worked in a factory, sewing neckties. She had crocheted over two hundred and fifty lace doilies, curtains, and decorative scarves, and had baked more than a thousand cakes from recipes that she kept filed in her brain.

But despite these facts, I felt that my grandmother’s life had been thwarted, unfullfilled, stunted. Perhaps it was arrogant of me to think so, I who had been cosseted by my comfortable American life, I who feel it my due and my right to have any kind of life I want,  to be happy. My grandmother did not have the gift of happiness---she was a depressive her entire life, and I often wondered if she would have been depressed even if life would have treated her more gently. Or maybe life would have treated her more gently if she had been less depressed. She used to say that God smiles at those who smile at God, but she seemed never to have had the ability to smile.

I think that she was unhappy partly because of temperament, and partly because she had been born in a particular place and moment in history. A traditional Jewish household high in the Carpathian mountains was not fertile ground for cultivating female happiness or achievement. My grandmother used to say that she was a very good student in school, so good that her teacher suggested she might be sent to another city to study at the girls’ gymnasium. Her father, my great-grandfather, told the teacher that a girl only needed to know how to put the right shoe on the right foot.

My grandmother was able to summon up her father’s exact words nearly eighty years after he had uttered them, and she repeated them to me and my sister with the frequency of those who remember and do not forgive.

So she had only what amounted to a middle school education, and yet she was one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. She spoke several languages. She could do mental math with lightening speed. She knew all the names of all the people who had lived in her village, and could trace their family histories almost as far back as her own. She remembered the exact moment when she happened to hear, over a contraband radio, that the Russian army was advancing on the Nazis in April 1945. And she remembered that the Scotsmen who marched into Bergen Belsen with the British army to liberate her and the other surviving Jews were playing bagpipes and wearing kilts.

My grandma’s fine skill at observation and her attention to detail filled her brain and helped push out some of the pain she carried around. It’s not for nothing that she was a talented craftswoman, able to knit and crochet and sew. She focused on the small things. It was only when she wasn’t busy with her hands or baking some exquisite cake that she talked ceaselessly about the past. When I was old enough to sit with her at her tiny tea table and listen, then she relaxed her hold on the small necessaries that kept her going. The sad, ugly truths came pouring out, and they were ornately detailed, too; but after a while, she would turn to me and say, “How about a tea? With lemon and sugar? I’ll fix it for you.” And out would come a delicate porcelain cup, a small silver spoon, a pretty napkin, a fragrant slice of homemade cake that melted on the tongue---lovely weapons against ugliness.

Her many talents, her skillful hands, her way with words, her capacious mind---had she been born in a different time or place, she could have been anything she wanted. She could have used her great mind every day in the ways she wanted to use it. But even that is a fantasy: how we use our minds isn’t always up to us, and that painful irony was made very clear to me as I watched my grandmother slowly lose her grasp on the details and particulars, until one day it even lost hold of the things like who her grandchildren were or where she was living.

During the last two weeks of her life, when she was barely responsive, my sister and I talked about the possibility of her death and what her funeral would be like. We knew it would conform to the strictest of Jewish Orthodox standards, because that was how she had been raised. Although women are forbidden from public speaking before a mixed-sex audience in that tradition, we somehow imagined that we would give a eulogy for her. My sister had some touching anecdotes she wanted to share, and I wanted to talk about how my grandmother had been a true survivor, a tougher-than-nails scrapper. We planned and we revised and then we laughed and said, “She’ll pull through; she’ll be out of the hospital and back to her old tricks soon.” And then she died, and the night of her death, the rabbi called our mother and asked her for details of my grandmother’s life so that he could write his eulogy, and I began to see that my sister and I would be silent at that funeral.

When the kindly people at the funeral home asked us if we would like to take a last look at our grandmother, and they lifted the lid of her coffin, and we saw her lying there looking small and pale, her mouth, without dentures, puckering inward as if she had just tasted a lemon, I wanted to shout, “THIS IS NOT OUR GRANDMOTHER! This is not my indefatigable, determined, storytelling, memory-rich grandmother!”  And I wanted to stand up where the rabbi was standing, and shout out my eulogy to the gathered guests, to tell them that they had no idea what reserves of strength this woman had had; that she had been a difficult, pained, tragic woman who had never been given the opportunity to flourish, but who had nevertheless loved us with a fierce and unwavering passion born out of the deepest, deepest fear of loss, the deepest, deepest hunger for life.

I guess this is my eulogy, this flimsy essay. It will have to do; after all, how do we ever capture, in words, the essence of a person? The complexities of a woman’s life? How many grandmothers lie in their graves with a booming silence all around them, the silence of no one knowing how to tell their stories?  And each story is perfect, delicate, ornate, like a dainty teacup, a scrap of lace, a sweet pastry, a song by Marvin Gaye.

Original image by Wrestling Entropy on Flickr

Never Forget

My husband and I bought our first home together, a condo in Brooklyn, just about two years ago. Apartment shopping in New York is certainly not for the faint of heart, something we learned after our first round of open houses. After months of searching, we found our diamond in the rough. It lacked the dining space I held out hope for and the corner windows and light our last apartment afforded, but had a parking spot and other amenities that made us cheer, while allowing us to stay in the neighborhood we had grown to love. We moved on a hot and sticky Saturday in August. After saying goodbye to the less-than-quaint walk-up apartment that we---and many families of mice---had called home for the last several years, we drove around the block to our new home, moving vans in tow. My parents arrived on cue, to help with the moving efforts.  After coordinating my sister’s move in Rochester the day before, they were on the road to New York first thing in the morning, to help with their second move of the weekend.  For three days we cleaned, unpacked, argued over where to hang each picture, and of course, ate. We drove to New Jersey to buy our first grill---a housewarming gift from my parents---and on my mom’s urging, we picked up shrimp cocktail and strip steaks, for a celebratory dinner that night.

My favorite moments of that weekend were the conversations with my mom, held over cups of coffee each morning. Long before my husband or father roused, we solved the world’s problems and tackled lingering interior decorating questions. Just the two of us. I’ll never forget my mom, sipping coffee in the perfect morning light from our eastern exposures, and telling me definitively: “You’re going to be happy here.”

I might never forget my mom’s confidence on that beautiful morning, but I have pushed it aside, more often than I’d like to admit, over the last couple years. It's particularly poignant to be writing this today, on 9/11 of all days, in this adopted city of mine that I have such a troubled relationship with. New York and I don’t always see eye to eye, to be sure, and I let that conflict overwhelm me at times. But this, I’m realizing, this is why I’m here. To share a piece of my mom and to connect with others, certainly, but just as importantly, to keep myself in check---to remember the wisdom and no-nonsense advice my mom handed out, wanted or not.

As I continue to share my mom’s stories here, I’d also love to hear from you, dear readers. How and why do these relationships, as mothers, daughters or otherwise, connect us as women?  What is your story? And will you share it here? If you think you might, take a look here for submission guidelines. Make sure to include the title of this column, "You Remind Me of Someone," with your story.

Thanks for reading---and I hope, for sharing.

On Living Close to Family

Without trying to, I’ve lived close to at least one side of my family for my whole life.  When I was choosing colleges, while I contemplated far flung schools with catalog-created fantasies (strolling through crumbling stone archways at Oxford, living in a Gothic Southern mansion at Duke), I ended up at Berkeley, the school where my dad had attended and continued to live less than two hours away from.

This meant that when I got the flu my sophomore spring, my dad hung up the phone after I called and showed up at my doorstep that afternoon, bearing cleaning supplies to take care of my sick-filled apartment and chicken noodle soup to heal by belly and soul.  When I moved to San Francisco after college, my dad was there to take me sailing and out to a nice dinner after I got rejected from job after job.  When an adverse reaction to medication caused me to faint and hit my head, my dad moved in with my roommates and I for three days, playing cards with me and watching my pupils for sign of a brain bleed.  An IKEA couch that needed assembling?  Moving from one apartment to another?  Help was only a phone call away.

I live on the East Coast now, and have been similarly spoiled to be close to my mom’s side of the family, who were born and raised in Brooklyn.  My aunt has become my go-to source for intellectual stimulation and emotional comfort, popping over from suburban Scarsdale to discuss men, politics, entertainment, and life over cheap Mediterranean food.  My mom, who fled the cold of New York for Atlanta, hops on the two-hour flight several times a year, to make sure I have enough culture in my life (Broadway plays are always a must-do on the weekend agenda) and color in my clothing (“it’s so much more flattering than all that black you wear, sweetie!”).

It snuck on me as the unconsidered yet blaringly obvious fact of my move to London:  this is the first time I will be living on my own, an ocean away from my family, my points of stability and unconditional love and comfort and constancy.  I’ll have my boyfriend---my partner in all of this---but the support and interactions that come with a romantic relationship differ so greatly from those offered by family.  Yet it makes me ponder something I’ve never before factored into my thoughts or decision making (sorry, Mom and Dad!):  the value of living close to family.  I’ve chosen the cities in which I’ve lived based on their worldliness, their amazing restaurants, their walkability, their job opportunities.  While the dynamics of family relationships have morphed as I've grown older (although having my dad show up with chicken soup when I'm sick will make my heart tingle even when I'm 50), the relationships themselves have been omnipresent.  Family, so consistently, blatantly there, has unintentionally slipped to the backburner for being there in physical form.

I don’t know where Zack and I are going to move when his graduate program ends in two years.  I don’t know how much at that point family will factor into our decisions after having experienced the other end---the being far after being so close.  Do you try to live near your family?  Or try to live far away, or not factor in it at all?  I’d love to hear your take.

I Say Goodbye, You Say Hello: A Facebook Story

By H. Savala Nolan I’m in the doctor’s waiting room. I’m on the couch during commercials. I’m waiting for my latte. I’m in bed, restless. I’m waiting for my boyfriend to get dressed. I’m in the train station. I’m lined up to board my flight. I idle, therefore, I Facebook.

In moments of quiet—moments I might use for serenity, to smell the scents and see the colors of the world around me—I grab my phone and tap the icon, a plain blue square with a friendly white “f” just slightly off center. Behold: my friends. I’m idle, but they are busy. They are fawning over baby animals, baying for blood because of politics, announcing spiritual truths, loafing in tropical sun, sitting down to the best meal ever, cataloging the day’s humdrum  triumphs and defeats, staring alluringly into the eye of a camera, getting engaged, having children, praying over dying aunts and granddads. Despite myself, and despite how over-stimulated, drained, or jealous  it can leave me, I log on. I can’t seem to help it.

Everyone is ambivalent about Facebook. How can we not be? Status updates—the meat of the log-on—do one of two things: elevate the boring, or degrade the profound. Both are bothersome. It exasperates me that some friends think hundreds of people hang on edge, craving  ruminations on how much they love coffee, every day. (And yet, the prosaic is the real juice of life, how we string our days together—why shouldn’t we honor it?) I’m uncomfortable when my friends announce the death of a relative with a stroke of text—silent, clinical, hovering in ether—transmitted to people who will read, dash off sympathy, and forget. (And yet, we know people all over the world. We can’t make 478 phone calls or address 478 letters. This is how we live now.)

But here is the real trouble with Facebook: I never talk to my best friends anymore. In high school, Louise and I sometimes chatted on the phone for 6 or 7 hours a night. We talked about seniors we pined for (their leather jackets and spiky hair and the pretty girls they dated). We talked about music (Green Day and Nine Inch Nails). We talked about diets (cabbage soup) and drinking (did we dare?) and what color to dye our hair (purple). Adulthood at 30-something renders that omnipresent intimacy impossible; she produces reality television, I practice law, we are busy and live 2,000 miles apart. But even in our roaring twenties, we still spoke almost daily. Now, after the entrenchment of Facebook, it is typical for us to go nearly a month without speaking. Recently, with aching disbelief, I realized that the sole reason I know anything about her life is because of her status updates, which tend to be pithy and unremitting, headlines refreshed every few hours as if she were a newspaper. But could that be true?  To test my theory, I blocked her from my newsfeed. A month passed. Radio silence, except for my birthday, when she called. But before that, I couldn’t tell you if she was alive or dead.

At first, confirming the fallow state of our friendship chagrined me. I felt wronged—by her. What sort of person has time to broadcast her whereabouts, food and beverage intake, disgruntled moments, workouts, and crowd-sourcing inquiries upward of a dozen times a day, but cannot find time to connect with her best friend, one on one? To be sure, this isn’t all Facebook. She and I hammer out resolutions when, periodically, I feel I’m single-handedly doing the work of friendship. Perhaps we are simply growing apart. I, of course, could have called her; but why would I? I had Facebook. And so our affinity for Facebook—the estranged, thoughtless intimacy of it—allowed the primary challenge in our incredibly important friendship to become to the substance.

Then, after a few weeks, something unexpected happened: the irritation waned, and I began to miss her. I began to miss her in a way I never did when following her every move and thought online. In fact, I couldn’t have missed her on Facebook: she was everywhere, always.

Yes, I missed her, with the fresh, affectionate curiosity that used to precede a phone call to say hello. And I realized that, despite the constant “updates,” I missed my other best friends, and some family members, too. I didn’t want the curated comic book of their lives; that’s what Keeping Up with the Kardashians is for. I wanted noise,  texture, and monogamy, not silence, a screen, and a stranger “liking” what I wrote. I wanted interjection. I wanted to hear laughter and sighs, and remember that I know some voices so well I can see the speaker’s facial expressions over the phone. I wanted to see, or at least recall, familiar bodies that take up real space. I wanted the moments of silence that come, they say, about every seven minutes in a conversation. And I wanted to hear my voice, too. I needed the grounding and fruition that comes from contact, not the bargain-basement copy that comes from interface.

So I blocked everyone I’m close to. It was a strangely anxious goodbye, as if I were strapping myself into a space shuttle, only perhaps to return. My  mom, my best friend, my boyfriend. All the inner circle, and the next-to-inner circle. Gone.

But suddenly present. Suddenly, again, real. Suddenly, again, in my awareness because they are not constantly in my face. Just like a fish can’t think about water, maybe we can’t truly contemplate—or properly love—people who are always in front of us in the most superficial ways. Good though it may be to “keep in touch” by knowing my brother-in-law ran four miles today, that news is the emotional equivalent of junk food. I don’t see my loved ones when I log on, and I feel a pang of, well, love. After a few days, I think, Hey, where are Jane and Quinn and Melissa and David? How are they? What are they doing these days? It’s like letting yourself get truly, empty-stomach, slightly-on-edge hungry; then you truly want to eat! If you graze all day, you never feel hunger, and you’re never satisfied by what you eat because your eating isn’t connected to satisfaction.

Now, if I want to know what’s up with my brother, I call. And I was surprised to discover that calling was scary. It turns out that I, a social butterfly, have developed a Facebook-induced shyness. Calling feels so forward, so direct, so daunting. But only for about a minute. Then you come to your senses. You give yourself an inward smack across the cheek, and snap out of it. Afraid to call my brother? Are you kidding? I’ve known him for 32 years, and we get along! What’s there to debate? Call. And I do. And we are, as in the old days, family. It feels great.

And there is a bonus, though it’s not one Facebook’s shareholders would be thrilled to know about: I log-on less. Much less. After all, what is there to see? The photographs of puppies that my Mom’s former best friend is currently into? The engagement news of people I never liked but was too meek to ignore when they requested my friendship? The wit and attitude as my cousin’s pals outdo each other’s comments? How entirely, intensely boring.

Especially when there is a city outside my window, and sunshine, and late-summer fruit, and music, and people. My friends, my family, and myself, to be seen and heard.

What Are You Reading (Offline, that is)?

Brooke Jackson is a freelance writer, self-proclaimed foodie, and blogger recently living in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  She received her degree from Auburn University where she studied accounting (and college football).  After graduation, Brooke figured out that she favored letters to numbers and began the vegetarian recipe and lifestyle blog, Veggie Table.  On her blog, she shares simple vegetarian meals that have been tested and approved by her meat-loving husband.  When Brooke isn't busy in the kitchen, she can be found sipping coffee at the local cafe, strolling the river front trails with their dog, or photographing her adventures in the city and its mountainous backdrop. Brooke Jackson, Veggie Table New Complete Vegetarian by:  Rose Elliot I've been a vegetarian for half of my life and had to get creative in the kitchen after marrying my husband.  Cooking meatless meals for someone who enjoys a medium rare steak has its challenges.  In order to keep peace at our dining table, I read recipes to learn more about different flavor combinations and cooking techniques.  Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian was given to me as a gift, and I'm currently drooling over its every page.  With over sixty books under her belt, Rose is Britain's most influential vegetarian/vegan writer.  Her ingredients and words are so engulfing you can actually smell the aromas of each course being prepared.    This particular cook book contains hundreds of mouth-watering recipes covering a hostess' every need: sweet relishes and tangy salad dressings; veggie infused pastas and rice; made-from-scratch tarts and cheesy quiches; and delectable desserts.  Rose's ingredient lists are short and simple which works well for both the intimidated beginner cook or the expert chef.  Whether you follow a recipe step-by-step or put your own unique spin on it, this book is the perfect cooking companion.

Holly Roberts, Alabama-based Singer/Song Writer Just Kids  by: Patti Smith Just Kids is a memoir written by Patti Smith, the “Godmother of Punk.” I could try to summarize this book, but there is so much happening that I can't put my finger on one specific premise. It's an ode to art and music, personal expression and exploration, and companionship and love. Smith moved to New York City during the summer of 1967. It was at the end of a few artistic eras such as the Beat Generation and the Warhol Factory Years, so Smith found herself riding on the coattails of many fascinating artists. Searching for her own masterpiece, she made a vow that her life would be dedicated to creating and sharing her work. On that very night, Robert Mapplethorpe, who is now an iconic photographer, made the same promise to give himself to his art. Later on, while Smith was working at Brentano’s Books on Fifth Avenue, the two crossed paths and quickly became each other’s artistic guide and muse. They searched together while creating, painting, filming, writing, and capturing life. Smith and Mapplethorpe were young artists or "just kids" on the verge of both breakdown and breakthrough. They experimented their way through the late 60's and lived on the forefront of their wildest dreams.  During her time at the Hotel Chelsea, Patti also met some of my favorites such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsburg, and Andy Warhol. NYC has always been a melting pot of sensations with a variety of people who have big dreams and enduring stamina.  Smith's descriptions are so poetically vivid that I found myself channeling her words as if they were my memories she recanted, constantly dropping the book to close my eyes and breathe.  Hooray for empathy!  Pick up this book, please!

Elizabeth Jackson, Environmental Management Consultant Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas by: Greg Child A few months ago, I read the story of Jon Krakauer's experience on one of Mount Everest's most fatal seasons and have been semi-obsessed with Himalayan adventures ever since. I love every aspect of it: the physical challenges the human body endures to climb these peaks; the devotion and sometimes detrimental commitment of mountaineers to reach the highest places on Earth; and the emotional and mental battles that altitude, stress and ego add to the journey. After listening to me share stories of the Himalayas as though I was part of the trek myself, a friend gave Thin Air to me. The book sweeps you away into a range of breath-taking mountains while sharing some of the most riveting stories of Himalayan treks. One feels the roller coaster of excitement, the heartache from the innate barriers of being in politically delicate regions of the world to fulfill their dreams, the language struggles existing in crucial relationships, the undefinable joy of reaching their goals, and the bonding and loss of friends. I highly recommend this read for those who are seeking an adventure in life.

Erica Peppers, Caught On A Whim  Life of Pi by: Yann Martel This is the story of a boy named Pi, who leaves India with his family to find a new life in Canada. While at sea, tragedy strikes and the unthinkable happens: Pi is the lone human survivor of a shipwreck and is stranded aboard a small lifeboat with an unusual assortment of companions. His only companions consist of a hyena, zebra, orangutan and Bengal tiger. Pi's courage and determination are tested as he must learn to survive on his own in the vast ocean while keeping the distraught wild animals at bay. Pi's story is one of hope, courage and self-preservation in the most unnatural of circumstances.

Natalie Waits Martin, English Teacher in Spain Killing Lincoln< by: Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard This summer I brushed up on my American history by reading Killing Lincoln. I´m sure that sounds like a dreaded 11th grade required reading assignment, but I promise this book is not what you think. There will be no exam afterwards and, unlike me, you probably won´t be asked to write a synopsis of what you´ve read. Yes, it is the true story of the Lincoln assassination in 1865, but it's also a thriller told from the perspective of both the assassin and the victim. As we all know, John Wilkes Booth was the man who shot the President. But what else do you know about him? This book takes you inside his world and details his thoughts, relationships and movements, especially in the days leading up to the murder and the days immediately following. Lincoln, on the other hand, becomes a character that you wish didn´t have to die as you are also taken away from John Wilkes Booth and into the White House to witness his conversations and fears in the days leading up to his fateful trip to the Ford theater. I found myself hoping that history would somehow rewrite itself and only wish more historic events were written this way.

The Lighted Shore

By Rebecca D. Martin I didn't think it was worth wishing for---not for another couple years, at least. No, I'm not talking about finding my lost camera (I still hold out for that) or my daughter’s missing cloth diapers (I can live without those for a while longer yet). The camera and the diapers are casualties of our recent move. I am certain they are smashed right up against each other in the depths of the unlikeliest box possible in the back corner of the basement where we won't find them till we move again next summer.

No, it was simpler than finding a picture taker or a stack of bum covers, and much more fleeting. And, for that, all the more precious. My daughter, my dear, contented daughter, played quietly and happily for an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon. Perfect girl. Perfect day. My husband and I lazed on the sofa and watched an entire episode of our favorite British detective show. I had one brief moment of guilt over letting my child flip her own book pages alone on the other side of the room for so long, but don't worry; it passed. I settled under the blanket and immersed myself in imaginative renderings of World War II England, courtesy of the BBC.

When our daughter was born, after those first couple months that launched us so far onto the further shore of parenthood we could hardly catch the smallest glimpse of the coastline we'd left behind - after all that, I really only missed one thing: Saturday mornings.

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard describes the process of waking up and the

"pictures you dream as the final wave heaves you up on the sand to the bright light and drying air. You remember pressure, and a curved sleep you rested against, soft, like a scallop in a shell. But the air hardens your skin; you stand; you leave the lighted shore to explore some dim headland, and soon you're lost in the leafy interior, intent, remembering nothing."[1]

I know this well. Those pictures you dream, that lighted shore, the dim headland encroaching. "I wake expectant, hoping to see a new thing," Dillard says. Me, too. I used to wake up in the morning and hurry to my writing desk, hoping not to be distracted before I could catch in a net of words the heightened creative thoughts from that fleeting, dreamlike shore before they got lost in the leafy interior of the conscious day. Sometimes I didn't even stop to make coffee. I'd spend an hour in front of the computer and finally come to, realizing I was ravenous.

Some friends of mine wake up differently. One says she comes fully awake the instant she's left sleep behind, clear-headed and ready to think, talk, or do. Another, a roommate during college dorm days, used to all but leap out of her high lofted bed, greeting each morning with a bound of energy and restraining herself mightily from greeting me in like manner. Because, awake in those early moments, I was still on the far side of the headland, imagination heightened, caught up in my shining morning thinkings. Addressing me was dangerous; that roommate spoke in the early hours at the risk of our very friendship. She fast learned a quiet patience with me.

The bright light Dillard describes, the misty minutes between sleep and waking, those used to be my favorite moments of the day. Those were the times my imagination ran most wild, my body felt most rested and comfortable, my creative mind thought best. On most of the Saturdays I can remember in my adult life, back when I had the luxury, I stretched out those moments as long as possible. Especially when Monday through Friday saw me at work at 8:00a.m. A slow-waking Saturday morning was always a gift.

So even before our daughter was born, I had some idea what I was going to be losing. But still, it came as a shock, a cup of cold water in the face. I was thrust into the leafy interior on the alarum note of one long, hungry wail, and the Saturdays I'd heretofore known were lost in the arrival of that other---that far better---gift. That first year, nursing her in those early minutes that used to be mine, all mine, only mine, I mourned the loss.

I've gotten used to it now. Most weekends, I barely give a thought to what Saturdays used to be like, and, somewhere along the way, I've learned to revel in the new normal: the three of us sitting on the floor together, munching granola, drinking coffee and tea, playing with puzzle pieces and books and matchbox cars. Feeding pretend cereal to Pooh Bear. Carrying disparate toys from one room to another. This is a good life. These, too, are shining morning moments.

But I'll tell you, when my husband and I get to lounge on the sofa for an hour and a half---an hour and a half!!---well. Those old, intensely creative writing mornings may be gone for now, but watching an entire movie in the middle of the day, uninterrupted . . . that doesn't fall too far short.

Today's a different day: Monday. My husband works long and hard at his office, and the two of us girls are on our own. I can tell it's a one-nap day, so I won't get in as much writing time or me time as I sometimes do. We'll fill up our minutes with other, more active things. The grocery store, FedEx, Target. A stroll in the late summer heat, play time, dinner prep. Once my husband gets home and we eat and clean up, maybe he'll sit on the floor with our daughter while I dig through boxes and drawers---again---in hopes of finding the camera before we leave for vacation next week. I’m hoping for one long, lighted shore of a beach holiday, and I’d like to capture some of those moments on film.

But I'm learning the camera's not actually necessary, nor is that indulgent, slow morning wake-up time. For now, an afternoon like Sunday's is enough. Yes, that memory will be enough to last me through many early-woken Saturdays to come. That, and the hope that maybe, some Sunday, it'll happen again. I've got another BBC episode saved in my Netflix queue on the off-chance. Till then, Pooh Bear and my daughter eagerly await my attentions.

[1] Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Harper's Magazine Press, New York: 1974. p.2

A Back-to-School Tribute

Before each school year begins, I try to center myself. I organize supplies, I write lesson plans, I memorize my schedule. These sort of tasks, however, aren’t enough and I always find myself reflecting on teaching itself, in the broadest possible sense. I came to teaching late. My first foray into a classroom in a role other than student was when I began my graduate program the summer I turned twenty-five. I felt old, and compared to many of my fellow students, I was old. One of the first things we were asked as we began our studies was to think about the teachers who had impacted us and why that was.

It’s a simple question, nearing cliché. For me, it was easy to answer. My high school Latin teacher, Miss Ede Ashworth, made me crave her praise. I was not the sort of student who yearned for a close relationship with a teacher, or to be pushed to my limits, or to be made to cry by a profound lesson a la Dead Poets Society. I was jaded in high school, arrogant about my self-perceived intelligence, and wary of adults, particularly teachers. Miss Ashworth’s skill and style penetrated my overconfidence and my (probably highly-irritating) cynicism. Her brilliance came from being able to do this without my ever feeling as though she was trying to do exactly that.

I should point out here that Miss Ashworth is a highly-lauded teacher, winning awards that have acknowledged and rewarded her preternatural skill in the classroom.  She managed to bring out the best in so many students, and she did it without seeming to modify her approach or system for any individual learners in the room.  This is nearly unheard of in conversations about good teaching where the norm is to consider the diversity of learners in a classroom and differentiate instruction as needed to reach as many students of possible. This was not necessary for Miss Ashworth---like an elite athlete, she was unfazed by changes in routine, student behavior, or fire drills, and managed to execute well every single class period.

She was teaching Latin, a language so regimented that it can turn off even the most academically-minded student. She required us to make flashcards for every single vocabulary word we learned – a requirement I hated because I didn’t feel as though I needed them.  However, other students made great use of flashcards, and I learned later that while I may not have needed to use the flashcards myself, she had cagily instilled in me the discipline of careful review and preparation. This discipline was key to my perseverance while studying Latin in college.

She told us little about herself, leaving an aura of mystery around her that my classmates and I attempted to shatter through the sort of speculation (“do you think Miss Ashworth ever watches television?) usually reserved for elementary school students. She was always impeccably prepared for class, never seemed to be absent, and could be found before and after school for extra help or to answer questions.

When I did my student teaching, my cooperating teacher told me that he believed there were two core qualities that every teacher must have: she should love the subject matter and appreciate the joys and challenges of working with young people. Miss Ashworth’s love for Latin was palpable---she drove us all over the state to participate in the Junior Classical League, and she ran a yearly Foreign Language Week at school that was driven primarily by her sheer enthusiasm. She had us do art projects about the Romans, she had us travel all over the tri-state area to museums to see relevant exhibits, and she made sure that her students took opportunities to share their knowledge of the language with others. And, even more importantly, while she had very high standards for both academic work on behavior, I remember not one moment when she seemed disdainful when we were rowdy, unfocused, or both.

When I was a senior, I was the only student that year to enroll in Advanced Placement Latin. Before the year began, I wondered what it would be like to be in a one-on-one setting. Would it be odd? I was nervous, because part of what Miss Ashworth did so well was treat all of us remarkably warmly, without ever creating too much familiarity. It ended up (unsurprisingly) being the best learning experience of my high school years. Her gentle guidance as I tried to decide which college attend (never saying what I should or should not do) helped steady me. The intensity of the AP curriculum and how desperately I wanted to please her led me to work incredibly hard and reap the rewards.

Thus, as I begin each new school year, I think back to what it was like to be in Miss Ashworth’s classes. I am not yet a fraction of the teacher that she is, and likely never will be, but her example often inspires me to think more critically about how I am approaching both my students and the subject matter. I ask myself what she might do in a particular situation, and I realize now how much work, dedication, and attention to detail went into all of those seemingly effortless lessons. Each time I sneak in explaining a Latin root into one of my classes, I feel the same old excitement that I used to feel in the windowless classroom that she made crackle with language. Although I had no idea at the time that I would ever be a high school teacher, I am forever grateful that I was able to spend forty-eight minutes every day for four years watching her work.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Rebecca D. Martin is an essayist and book reviewer in Southwest Virginia. She's also a wife and a mother, a reluctant meal planner, a relaxed home keeper, and an obsessively avid reader. Her work has been published in The Other Journal, Kinfolk Magazine, and The Lamppost, and she is a staff writer for The Curator. She writes about books and domestic culture at www.rebarit.blogspot.com. When longtime friend and fellow writer Carrie Allen Tipton and I get together to talk books, especially books with nuanced considerations of family and homemaking, we can’t say enough. So here are in-depth reviews of just two books that are on our shelves lately. We hope you enjoy them!

Rebecca D. Martin Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Our bags were packed for vacation. Our small family prepared to set adrift and let the sand and waves and salted air breathe a simpler, richer life into us. I zipped the final duffle bag, sliding Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea into the top.

Morrow Lindbergh knew what we were after: the “spontaneity of now; the vividness of here” that would strengthen our small family. In this thin volume, organized by meditations on a handful of seashells (literal gifts from the sea), Morrow Lindbergh’s connections flow from an interesting 1950’s cultural critique to early Feminist philosophy to her own struggle maintaining a balanced, introspective life while housekeeping and caring for a family of seven. I hoped her thoughts about home and family, culture and womanhood, work and writing, nature and the sea would set my own thoughts on a good course for our beach week.

I also approached Morrow Lindbergh with some reservation. Here was a complex woman. She lost her first child in a horrific kidnapping and murder. She married early Feminist thought with troublingly hardlined notions of feminine identity. Her husband was a mid-Twentieth Century aviation icon who held racist ideals disturbingly in line with the Nazis. In later life, both Anne and Charles admirably championed environmental protection and preservation. She learned to fly planes when other women merely stayed at home. She recognized staying at home to raise children as a choice, a noble one. This was a woman who had things to say. But did I want to hear them?

I discovered I did. One of the significant and unexpected gifts I gleaned from this book was a sort of readerly humility, a willingness to keep listening to the end, whatever my responses page by page. And in the end, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a person I genuinely liked, whether or not our worldviews aligned.

There are, indeed, many treasures to be found between the covers of this book. At times, Morrow Lindbergh’s prose grows pedantic, but in other moments it shimmers with a lovely, rhythmic give-and-take, and leaves the reader with gems, most notably her thoughts on simplification: “Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions.” Or, “What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it – like a secret vice!” Or, prescient of our current information age’s pitfalls (and she didn’t even have a Facebook account!):

“We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The inter-relatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold.”

There is a kindred understanding here. I feel challenged to return home to our normal-paced autumn life and consider how I might simplify (a slimmer Facebook newsfeed, for a start) – and how I might love my family better in the process. Yes, I’m glad Gift from the Sea made its way into my duffle bag, and I’m glad I could overcome some of my hastier judgments in order to glean some of Morrow Lindbergh’s sea gift insights for myself.

Carrie Allen Tipton

A Southerly Course: Recipes and Stories from Close to Home by Martha Hall Foose

Someone else will have to review this lovely book as a cook. I am reviewing it as a homesick southerner. Martha Hall Foose’s recipes and stories emerge from her deep love of southern culture, a sentiment which I share and which remains a source of puzzlement to both of us.

In the introduction, she muses over why southern foodways exert such a hold on her, profoundly realizing that “it is perhaps because we Southerners are homesick for the place in which we still live.” Her poignant longing for the very earth on which she stands connects with my own desire to stand there once again. Like Foose, I was raised in Mississippi; like her, I left to learn of the wider world; unlike her, I return now only in my mind and twice a year for holidays. But her book has helped me undo my own exile this summer, to come back home again.

I first came to know Martha Hall Foose’s work at a cold Christmastime, the right time to snuggle under a quilt made by my great-grandmother in Arkansas in 1936 and read Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook. This, her first book, hooked me with its ingenious cocktail of stories, recipes, tidbits of culinary advice, photos, and mini-essays. I wasn’t the only one; it won the 2009 James Beard Award. The writing was elegant and funny and, thank heaven, deeply unconcerned with speed, ease, or health. The recipes called for mayonnaise and deep fryers, and celebrated regular afternoon libations.

In A Southerly Course, published in 2011, Foose expanded on this successful formula. Marked by her blend of formality and informality, its dishes run the sociological spectrum from congealed salads for bridal luncheons to crawfish bread for tailgating. Its arrangement in five sections, corresponding to the courses of a proper dinner, emphasizes her formal training at the French pastry school École Lenôtre. Ingredients such as mirlitons, sweet potatoes, and crawfish highlight her fusion of indigenous southern staples with highfalutin’ techniques. Unconcerned with political correctness, the author draws heavily on the hunting culture of the Mississippi Delta, her childhood and now adult home. She speaks of a world of monogrammed serving utensils and ladies’ luncheon clubs.

In her recipe for Custard Pie, dedicated to fellow Mississippian Eudora Welty, Foose said that Welty helped teach her that “you don’t have to leave the place that you love and know, that it is not a prerequisite that to understand home you must exile yourself to gain perspective.” For me, leaving birthed fresh perspective on the traditions, people, landscape, and culture that I grew up with a few states east of Texas, where I currently live—and which is most definitely not the South.

A Southerly Course reminds me that though I may live in exile, there are many paths back, through word, image, palate, and most especially, through memory. And if I keep flipping through this book long enough, I might just try my hand at the crabmeat casserolettes. At least I can eat well while I long for home.

Lessons from a conference...

Dearest Clara,

We’ve been on the go a lot, both with and without you, these last few weeks.  Most recently, I was in New York again, but this time for a conference.  I seem to have a lot of those---some for my day job, and a lucky few just for my own interests.  Conferences can be a little intimidating, a bit like the first day of school.  And when those presenting and attending are people whom you’ve long admired and want to learn from, you always wonder what your place is.  You wonder if you will be brave enough to talk to people.  And you’ll always wonder what you’ll say as you work up your nerve.   These are the things that have helped me in these kinds of events:

• Bring lots of business cards: It’s a great way to break the ice and it’s a great way to have something to talk about.  And bring more than you think you’ll need---you’ll give them about because you meet people, because you have to leave one with your luggage, because you’ll want to leave behind your contact information, or enter to win something.  Just have lots---I promise you’ll use them.
• Know something about those speaking: They took the time to prepare a presentation, so take the time to prepare and learn something about them.  That way, if you have the opportunity to meet them or sit next to them at part of the event, you already have a few things you can go to when making conversation.
• Remember most people---even if they don’t show it---are just as nervous: Don’t be intimidated.  Everyone else is outside of their comfort zone too.  Introduce yourself, bring others in if you see they want to be part of the conversation, and don’t sweat it if a conversation doesn’t go the way you planned.  Try to be an even more friendly and approachable version of yourself, and be inclusive.
• It’s okay to take a break: Sometimes conferences and events can become overwhelming---they’re full of people we don’t know, and hopefully new ideas we haven’t seen.  It’s tough to be always “on,” and the days can become long.  It’s okay to duck out for a few minutes into a corner or quiet space, or even take an hour back at the hotel to decompress and reset.
• Go to more than one! Believe it or not, these things get easier over time, and when you’re a repeat visitor, you always know someone too, which makes for smoother sailing.  All of the sudden, you become the person that others come to see.  A few events a year where you’re exposed to new people and new ideas are good to stimulate your own ideas---choose wisely but make the investment!

Now back to the sessions!

All my love,

Mom

No, it's not a compliment

I think about street harassment nearly every day, because I am harassed nearly every day. This is the reality for women who spend a decent amount of time walking around outside---even more so for women in densely populated urban centers. And I live in Manhattan, so . . . yeah. Nearly every day. Most days, the harassment is mild. A smacking of the lips as I pass, a low whistle, an obvious up-and-down with a creepy, slow nod at the end. These are the days when I think that hey, maybe it's all in my head. But then there are the times I'm followed, or told to smile, or surrounded, and I know that the milder stuff is just in a different place on the spectrum.

And before you go telling me that this is all a compliment and I should be grateful for the attention, a few things: anything that makes you feel threatened is not a compliment. Any time someone reacts to you ignoring them by calling you a bitch or a slut or a whore---all of which have happened to me---that's not a compliment. And trust me when I tell you that this happens to nearly all women, no matter what we look like. (I have lost nearly 100 pounds in the last year or so, and the only change is that instead of being called a fat bitch when I ignore men who harass me on the street, I get called a slut. So creative!)

No, it's not a compliment. It's a power play. It's a way of reminding women of what we already know: our bodies are public property, and are vulnerable to violation at any moment. (And before I hear the cries of misandry and, "Well, then, how am I supposed to approach the ladies at all?", let me cut those off at the knees with this handy, dandy guide.)

The good news is that I finally feel like this is something people are talking about. The fabulous Hollaback blogs started the conversation. You can submit your street harassment stories to them---along with photos, if you've got 'em---and trust me when I tell you that the support you get from your fellow commenters will be tremendous.

And in the if-you-don't-laugh-you-have-to-cry-because-it's-so-apt department, we have The Onion's recent post, entitled "Weird, Area Woman Wasn't Harassed Today." Let's just say they get it, proving once again that satire is this era's truest form of news. I don't want to spoil the punchline, or anything.

Chiming in from abroad is a new documentary from Belgian filmmaker Sofie Peeters. Peeters interviewed harassers for the film, which explores not only the impact of the behavior on women, but also the particular class and social issues at play. She found that confronting the men and listening to their stories led them to show her a greater deal of respect; that said, women shouldn't have to confront the men who threaten them in order to be able to walk down the street without feeling victimized. But, you know, progress is progress, however small.

It's pretty awesome knowing that all of this is out there. But it hasn't really changed my experience a whole lot. Just the other night, at about 10:30, walking from 84th to 86th Street on Broadway (a "good," if quiet, neighborhood), I was harassed three times. Once by a man who walked up behind me and whispered, "Sexy baby," once by a man telling me, "It doesn't hurt to smile," and once by a man who simply looked me up and down and licked his lips. I suppose I could have confronted them, but in the moment, it always seems safer to keep walking.

I hope my friends' daughters are never able to say the same.

Photo: Henry Tonks, Woman Walking on Sand, ca 1910

What August Means Now

By Carrie Allen Tipton For those invested in academic pursuits, August marks time like no other month. It speaks of newness and transition in a way that other folks more readily associate with January and its resolutions, or October and its changing leaves, or March and its budding limbs. August’s gift (or curse) of hyper-awareness of the passage of time blesses (or afflicts) tiny kindergartners no less than aged professors. Whether you are on the making or receiving end of a syllabus or book list in the upcoming educational year, the month delineates for all school-oriented persons the End of Something and the Beginning of Something Else.

As a student, this weird blurry month, neither fully summerish nor yet fully schoolish, meant shopping for clothes, finding color-coded folders, looking for the precise metric specifications of binders stated on the supply list, searching for a new and cooler (is there such a thing?) lunchbox. In the university years there were the added tasks of purchasing football tickets and meal plans. After many years of dutifully carrying out these sorts of instructions, I became a professor and began giving them to others. The road to this position was long and many times I have questioned whether it was, in that extremely charged yet vague term which indexes a host of existential presuppositions, “worth it.” Suffice it to say that it required many years of very long hours of single-minded focus and a willingness to live below the poverty line for the better part of a decade. Fine. It was over now, and I was professoring. In this new capacity, my old friend August meant screening books for readings lists, determining test schedules, building online class modules, anxiously checking electronic enrollment in the hopes that a course wouldn’t be canceled, dodging onerous committee work, applying for travel funding, and plotting out research goals.

For twenty-eight years, then, some version or other of me was essentially still Going To School every fall, and August meant what it always had: a physical and cognitive return to the educational premises. And then all of a sudden this year August stopped meaning anything like it once did. In late spring, I became pregnant with our first child. Let me, as I used to say to my students during lectures when an idea required further explanation, hit the pause button here. If this were an academic article, you would now be treated to a lengthy footnote about how I’d always hoped that if I ever had a child, I could stay home with it until it was school-aged. This was a simple and uncomplicated desire that could afford to remain simple and uncomplicated as long as it was theoretical. While there was no viable life-partner in the picture, such a decision was lodged (like so many of my academic ruminations) in the realm of abstract thought, and so it stayed for all of my adult life until I met my future husband two years ago, a mere year into my professorial career. And based on my longstanding desire, prior to our marriage, we agreed that I would stay home with the wee ones if wee ones ever materialized, at least in their early years. I would try freelance writing, editing, and perhaps some online teaching.

It would make a lot of sense, we figured, since I was quite unhappy as a professor and earned proportionately little money for my trouble. Pace Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose insightful article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic, but the thought of trying to have it all has always seemed to me quite exhausting. I just wanted some of it, and the part of it that I wanted changed as I walked through different seasons of life. So the decision was in place long before the baby ever was. It was still abstract and simple and uncomplicated, until the day in early April when two drugstore tests set the pre-arranged plan into motion. As I began the process of disentangling myself from a tenure-track job at my university, I felt liberated from unfulfilling employment, eager to spend the fall months prior to the baby’s arrival immersed in my beloved writing, and proud for being willing to run screaming from the ivory tower after three years of soul-searching that showed it to be an ill fit for me. I still do feel those things, and harbor no golden nostalgia for the frustrations of the career path I left. But what I do harbor is a giant question mark about who I am now, especially while my daughter is still an “inside baby,” and who I will be in the remaining months of her gestation, and who I will become as she emerges, and how we will become something together. Abstraction, simplicity, and lack of complication are rapidly eroding as I find myself in the midst of a new kind of August, and I have had to learn all over again what it means this year.

So far it has meant knowing, for the first time in my life, the months spanned by peach season, and that early August represented the final window of opportunity for capitalizing on the soft round spheres. I made a peach ricotta tart and did not make a syllabus. It has meant starting yoga classes, in the middle of the day, to help with my achy joints and to communicate with my girlie, my changing positions a sort of Morse code telegraphing her to be strong and peaceful and that I will try to be strong and peaceful for her. I sat in a roomful of people with legs crossed on rubber mats and did not sit in a roomful of people in pre-semester meetings. I measured for and ordered drapes and marched through Ikea looking for mounting hardware. I put up sheer taupe curtains in our living room and did not put books on an office bookshelf. I wrote and wrote and wrote and did not aim to produce a single article intended for a peer-reviewed journal. I am not sad, but August is feeling weird.

An entire book has been written about the difficulties and joys of either combining motherhood and academia or leaving the latter for the former, so I should have known that August wouldn’t sit right this time around. Reading Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life assured me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling dazed disorientation as I walked out of the halls of academia into the blazing sunlight of other paths. Of course it made sense that I was losing my emotional footing in the bright light of August, which every other year meant that I should be walking into the university instead of away from it. I still can’t see quite where I am headed and am only accepting, day by day, what this August means. To borrow the phrase of an incomparably greater wordsmith, T.S. Eliot, “in my end is my beginning.” August has always at its heart represented new beginnings for me, and although something large and weighty has come to an end, many other things have now begun. And when I think of this, I think that perhaps, after all, this August is not so very unlike the ones that have come before.

Why You'll Never Be Good Enough: Bodies in Magazines and Media

When someone compliments me on my appearance, I don’t believe them. OK, not all the time—but sometimes. I fully realize that this is reactive and silly, and I know that my occasional lack of confidence can be especially irritating to my boyfriend, who compliments me more than anyone else—why can’t I just take it? What, do I think he’s lying? Analyzing my instinctual reaction, in conjunction with the discovery of this recent study by University of Nebraska – Lincoln professor of psychology Sarah Gervais, I realized that often, a positive impression of my overall image triggers a negative array of thoughts, each little thought corresponding to a single part of my appearance that I don’t like. That single part is measured against an abstract composite ideal of female beauty and, invariably, falls short. Loop back to brain: “How can this compliment be true in light of this [clearly imperfect body part/feature]?”

Gervais's findings are intriguing, and while the headlining statement—Men Are Seen as People, Women Are Seen as Body Parts!—is a little sensationalist, there rings some truth in this statement. The images of women and women’s bodies that inundate us in the media—be they celebrities, fashion models, or disembodied legs/lips/torsos—are perfect. More and more, they converge towards a singular, mythic body that is flawless, without fault, and unworthy of a single criticism. What this does for women who don’t have that body (read: pretty much everyone, including most celebrities and fashion models) is inconclusive, but I’m willing to bet it's pretty negative in the aggregate.

Recently, former Us Weekly editor Janice Min wrote about her struggles with the unrealistic post-baby weight loss expectations that she believes are culled from media representations of celebrities. She realized that, when she had her baby, shedding pounds at celebrity-rate was close to impossible, especially considering the coterie of assistance most celebrities have at their disposal (trainers, dieticians, stylists, money). Jezebel was correct in pointing out the irony that this was coming from an Us Weekly editor—and not just any editor, but the one almost principally responsible for making post-baby weight loss celebrity stories in-demand over the course of the 2000s.

Considering Min's complaints (and her resulting diet book “for real women”), I’m stuck on a quote from a Daily Nebraskan story on Gervais’s study. According to both Michael Goff, senior lecturer in advertising at Lincoln, and Jan Deeds, director of the Women’s Center, media is merely a reflection of our subconscious objectification of women and not its cause. “Advertising doesn’t do anything magical with that (process),” Goff says. “It just exploits it.”

This feels like incredibly wishful thinking. If advertising isn’t the cause, that implies its blamelessness. Then what is the cause? Society? The dominant culture? The male hegemony? Is not advertising a part of society, a part of culture? It is certainly one of the most visible, most visual, and most recycled elements of our culture. How can the images that it continues to reproduce be blameless in our construction of gendered images and, consequently, our own self-image? If anything, these things are cyclical, absent of a singular “root cause”. I’d like to lay at least some of the blame at the feet of ad execs and women’s magazine editors.

I’ll end on this note. On “Project Runway” this week—an exploitative reality show that provides a window into the image-obsessed fashion world and uses stick-thin, pliable models and that I nevertheless absolutely love watching—the designers were challenged to create looks for “real women” who needed a makeover. Ven, a 27-going-on-50-year-old male designer with, let’s be honest, a bit of a paunch, was dismayed that he got the “largest” woman, and complained to anyone who would listen about how it was so unfair that he, a designer of women’s fashions, should have to work with proportions like these. When Tim Gunn asks what size his client is, Ven rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t know—a 14?!” Then he describes her proportions as “off.”

When we create an impossible ideal, and when that ideal is hammered into our consciousness by the fashion world, by magazines, by celebrity photo shoots, and—very often—by post-production manipulation, we all end up being “off,” and we all feel it. If advertising and pop culture are a reflection of our values as a society, then our values as a society are also reflections of our intake of advertising and pop culture. The cycle is end-able.

Looking Forward: Rethinking the Ladder

Growing up, my vision of “going to work” was extremely narrow. I pictured myself click-clacking down office hallways in high-heeled shoes. I imagined sitting at a desk lined with silver picture frames, shuffling endless stacks of papers, a telephone receiver balanced on my shoulder. The job itself was never entirely clear but it was obvious that the woman I would become was successful, powerful, and very, very important. Cut to the present. Most days, you’ll find me perched at my dining table, typing away at my computer next to a window that overlooks my building’s disarrayed jungle of a backyard. There’s not a silver frame or leather briefcase in sight, and I don’t own a single business suit. My uniform of choice usually involves a vintage dress and bare feet---no click-clacking heels for me.

As a relative newcomer to the freelance world, I realize that while I’m extremely lucky, my career is far from what the average New Yorker would consider “successful,” “powerful,” or “important.” It’s challenging, exciting, liberating, unconventional---but lucrative? Glamorous? Cosmopolitan? Not quite.

“If you really pushed yourself,” a friend very kindly said to me recently, “you could go so far. I see you running your own business. You could be a total power player at the top of your field.”

Of course, this was a nice thing to hear. Surprising, but nice. There’s a reason I’ve chosen to sacrifice certain things, however---a steady paycheck, employer-provided healthcare, the comfort of a routine---in order to follow the path I’m on. It’s because in the past year, I’ve thought seriously about what I want to prioritize. For some people, that might be the pursuit of a high-powered career---and I think that ambition is wonderful. For myself, though---and it feels a little funny to admit this---having a successful career is just not that high on my list. I have goals, of course, and I hope to always be involved in creative projects throughout my life, but as far as being a “power player”? Putting in long hours at an office? Moving up the corporate ladder? It’s just not me.

I like to think that my life doesn’t have to conform to a traditional image of success to be successful. I'm willing to sacrifice a higher-paying job and a certain amount of security to pursue what's meaningful to me.

When I look back on my life in forty years, what do I think will make me happiest?

Having traveled.

Having had adventures.

Having loved.

Having been a good mother.

Having been a student of music, food, art, and culture around the world.

Having taken risks.

Having helped others. 

Sounds successful, powerful, and very, very important to me.

Mimi

If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still hear my grandma’s voice. I can see her standing at the stove, frying eggplant, and explaining to me how it was done. She never divulged much more than a little bit of this, a little bit of that, always followed by Capisce? It was one of the only Italian words she remembered, and I loved repeating after her. Ok, Grandma---I understand.  My grandma---Frances Camelio Panzer, known lovingly as Fritz---was born in Italy, sometime around 1915. Her birthday, or more precisely, her birth year, was always a source of confusion. She lied about her age until the end, and fittingly, my mom realized after-the-fact that we might have misstated her birth year on her tombstone. Her own mother died when she was a child, and soon after, her father set off for the US---for Rochester, specifically---where his sister lived. The rest, as they say, is history.

Even though her command of the Italian language was limited and her memory of her birthplace hazy, my grandma made me so proud of my heritage. Growing up, I thought everyone’s grandparents grew all their own fruit and vegetables in their backyard. Strawberries, peaches, tomatoes and zucchini mingled with rose bushes and bird feeders in their postage-stamp-sized yard. My grandma and her sisters canned the peaches and tomatoes, and the rest of us enjoyed the fruits of their labor all year-round. I can still taste the perfect sweetness of those peaches.

Family came first, something my sisters and I learned from a young age. Thursdays and Sundays were reserved for family dinners, and my grandparents came over each week, red sauce, dessert, and other treats from their yard or the public market in hand. Without fail, my grandma made a beeline for our basement, to get started on our laundry immediately. What she didn't finish left with her and returned soon after, stiff as a board, but smelling like sunshine and fresh air---like home. My mom used to yell at her, "Mom! Can't you sit down and relax with us?"---a phrase that my sisters and I found ourselves repeating to our mom years later, eyes rolling, as she endlessly straightened and dusted and swiffered while at each of our houses. My sisters and I were forced to take piano lessons for years, and our lessons just happened to coincide with Thursday dinners. While we painstackingly worked through our lessons, our parents and grandparents sat at the kitchen table, drinking their coffee and enjoying their own mini-recital. Luckily for them, two out of the three of us---myself never included---remembered to practice each week.

For more years than I can remember, we took a family trip to Disney World. My grandparents must have been in their 70's at the time, yet they didn't miss a moment of the action. From Disney to Epcot to Breakfast with Mickey to luaus at night, they kept pace with the rest of us. When my parents went away on a much needed kids-free vacation each year, my grandparents came to stay with us. We woke up to our grandma in the kitchen, fresh pancakes and Caro syrup on the table. Slim her entire life, her theory was "everything in moderation," paving the way for bacon, alongside those pancakes, more often than not. We spent the week enveloped in her hugs and kisses, and $20 bills appeared at our dinner plates each night, courtesy of our grandpa.

We have pictures from Christmases through the years, my sisters and I tightly clutching our new Cabbage Patch dolls. Each year, my grandparents stood in line for those prized and always understocked commodities, showering us with these spoils and more. I remember my mom telling us one year---a statement that has since been burned into the front of my brain---that Christmas didn't start for our grandparents until we got to their house. We were, quite simply, the center of their lives.

My grandma was lucky enough to hold this role for more than 25 years. Though they traveled extensively in their golden years, my grandparents never missed a soccer or field hockey game, a school play, a graduation, a holiday.  My own mom unofficially became a grandma---a Mimi to be precise---5 years ago, when Rachael was born. Though not tied by blood, this didn't seem to matter to either of them. She was Mimi, plain and simple, and it was clear from the start that she was made for the role.  Rachael and Mimi had their routines---their "things"---when they were together. In more recent years, my mom was known to pull up a dining room chair, letting Rachael climb on to "help" with the measuring and the mixing in the kitchen. My sisters and I laughed, as we recalled being banned from the kitchen growing up, our mom telling us it was easier for her to just do it herself. Rachael liked to join my mom upstairs, jumping on the beds while my mom tried to straighten around her. Before they came back downstairs, Rachael would ask for some of Mimi's special---and expensive---lotion, and my mom always obliged. Rubbing her little hands together, Rachael declared it was mmmmmmm...deeeelicious!---just like Mimi taught her.

My nephew joined our family two years ago. My sister and brother-in-law gave my parents a card the Christmas before he was born, to announce their news. It stated, simply, "Merry Christmas to my Grandparents." I'll never forget my mom's reaction upon opening that card---the initial gasp, the tears, the hugs. She was going to be a Mimi again. Even at 70, and even with a full-time job, she found the time to stop by my sister's house most nights after work. She checked in on her sweet baby---her Chunka---and without fail, tidied up while there. She told me that she'd do the same for me some day, just as soon as we moved back to Rochester. No pressure, of course. For a year and a half, she was my sister's first phone call when Hudson was sick, when they needed a babysitter, for parenting advice. Now pregnant with her second baby, I think my sister must feel the sting of my mom's absence in ways the rest of us can't quite imagine.

I never doubted that my mom would be my first phone call when I had children of my own, that we would take family trips to Disney World, that she would know how to soothe my babies when I wasn't able to. I always trusted that my children would know the sound of my mom's laugh---that laugh that filled up the room and then some. That I would get the chance to see the pure joy and love in my children's eyes someday, wrapped up safe in my mom's arms. Everyone says that our kids will know their Mimi because she lives on in us, because we'll tell them her stories. They'll learn to not sweat the small stuff, to look for the first cardinal of the season, to make a wish on the Thanksgiving turkey's wishbone. On some days, this makes me smile. But then, on other days, I want to kick and scream at the loss, both my mom's and her grandchildren's.

There's a saying about best laid plans, but boy, did we have plans for my mom.

For our Mimi.

Finding Home

My husband and I are nomads. A fun game on a quiet Friday evening involves, “If you could live anywhere, where would you live?” Answers have included large cities, various countries. The answers have surprised us, terrified us, and comforted us. Then for a bonus round, we choose which furniture we would take. I suppose this has shown that we really hate the majority of our furniture. Especially the couch we bought for $50 from a woman off Craig’s List in Seattle. Although I liked her; she had two rowdy boys, and lived in a run down little cape cod in what turned out to be a fairly expensive area of town. Being a nomad is harder when you are a parent, and own a dog. Rentals don’t want you. Everywhere seems too expensive, and then there is a whole other emotional element. The biggest differences we have had in parenting is our perception of it. Becoming a mother brings out your hidden desires and biases. Who knew I could never live in a split level (gag)? Or that he likes cities and apartments, but couldn’t live in them with two kids and a dog? Or that the random homeless guy on our street would scare me so much more once I was pushing a stroller? Giving birth opens up so many hidden vulnerabilities in you.

We are looking for home. I constantly wonder, does everyone else go through this? This constant search for the place where the best parts of their childhood and adult selves converge? Are we just over-thinking it? Ever since we moved back to Florida, we both knew that it wouldn’t be permanent. Being pregnant with a second child now, makes me remember aspects about my own childhood. We talk about our favorite things. So many of mine revolve around the seasons. There was apple picking in the fall, and pies to be made. Pumpkins, and chilly October evenings perfect for a light jacket and a fire. Snow, and sledding, ice skating, trips to Chicago. He remembers big family gatherings, being close to his cousins, and the smell of the country: “Kind of gross, but nostalgic too.” We both ache for home. And then these things need to combine with our adult biases. We like good organic food, strong coffee, interesting people to hang out with. We are looking for all the best parts of a city, without the city prices. Does such a place even exist?

We’ve started to look at houses in his home town, a small middle of nowhere town in Pennsylvania. It’s quiet, and people live there forever, including most of his family. Driving around at night, the streets are silent, the streetlights hazy. It’s the kind of place where people rarely lock their doors. I didn’t know places like it still existed. And the houses, oh my, the houses themselves are enough to overcome the small town-ness of it. Great big 1800’s houses with period details, hulking doorways, towering ceilings. Houses with a history. Houses I could write my novel in (creative people work better in places with higher ceilings).

We have discovered that we are emotional real estate buyers. To love a house is more than the sum of its parts. It’s the feeling at the front door, finding all the best hiding spots for hide and go seek. It’s all those little quirky features that make it yours. I grew up on Lake Michigan in a cold windy town in Northern Indiana, in a drafty house built in the 1930’s. It had a laundry chute that ran down to the basement, and a drop down ironing board in the kitchen, inside a narrow little cabinet. My parents sold that home years ago, but the second they found a house in Florida with an ironing board just like it, they fell in love. Sometimes it’s all the little things that you remember. It doesn’t matter that I have never seen my mother iron on it, although I did many times as a child in Indiana, it’s the memory of it all.

But tell me, what is home to you? A smell? A memory? Have you found it, or are you eternally searching?