SUMMER BERRIES

For the last couple years, we’ve been stopping in Duluth for lunch on our way to the North Woods. This harbor city, which we used to whiz past, is becoming known for independent-minded restauranteurs with a desire to serve simple yet delicious food from seasonal, locally produced ingredients. We ate lunch this year at the Nokomis Restaurant & Bar (www.nokomisonthelake.com) on the scenic stretch of old highway 61 just outside of town. The restaurant occupies what was once a lakeside supper club, and with its large plate-glass windows offers a spectacular view of Lake Superior just across the road.

We started our lunch with a salad of field greens encircled with a long strip of thinly sliced cucumber and topped with roasted tomatoes, thin slices of radishes, white enoki mushrooms, roasted pumpkin seeds, and Maytag blue cheese dressing. For the entrée, SJG chose a hamburger of grass-fed beef and shredded short ribs on toasted focaccia. I opted for vegetarian fare: slices of toasted ciabatta spread with black olive tapenade and layered with fresh basil, slices of red and yellow tomatoes, and quenelles of ricotta. SJG raved about the molten chocolate cake she chose for dessert, while my warm blackberry-raspberry cobbler brought back memories of my Missouri grandmother’s recipe for a blackberry dessert that was part-cobbler, part-crisp, part-buckle—a recipe I’ve never seen replicated in any cookbook. Below is an approximation of that summer berry recipe.

Missouri Ozarks Blackberry Cobbler

Berries:
1-1/2 pints blackberries
1/3 cup sugar
3 TB cold water

Topping:
6 TB unsalted butter (room temperature)
½ cup sugar
Pinch of salt
½ cup flour
½ cup old-fashioned pearl tapioca
Ground cinnamon (optional)

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the berries in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Sprinkle with the sugar and pour in the water, combing gently with your fingers.
2) Cream the butter, sugar, and salt. Stir in the flour, tapioca, and cinnamon (if using).
3) Sprinkle the topping over the berries. (If you like a lot of topping, as I do, feel free to make more of it. This is up to the individual palate, though it may prolong baking a little.)
4) Bake until done (roughly 20 minutes; check frequently just to be sure).
5) Cool briefly, and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

THE NORTH WOODS

Set on the edge of a lake in the northern wilderness, a much-loved cabin is the place we go every summer to recuperate from the year’s frenzy. We bring pillows, our favorite pajamas and fleece socks, piles of books and periodicals, and, above all else, the determination to avoid the urge to do.

This year is no exception. On the long drive north, we discuss whether or not we’ll take naps like we did the year the temperature soared into the nineties every day. At a minimum, we agree, we’ll be certain to put in twelve-hour nights, heading to bed as soon as the sun slips behind the ridge of pines to the west, leaving a rosy glow behind the canopy.

We arrive late, unpack and settle in quickly, and take a brief walk with the resident dog. Then we head to bed, adding a feather quilt to the pile of blankets and opening the windows to let in the pine-scented air. It’s very dark here, with no glow of city lights or flickering of the neighbors’ motion-detector floodlamps, and as we settle under the covers, darkness calls forth the silence of the place. It’s a still night, with no breeze to filter through the leaves, and we lie still, breathing as quietly as possible, listening for any noise that might break the spell.

The silence is stubborn, and though we anticipate a bird’s call or the crunch of a neighbor’s footstep on the gravel pathway, we hear nothing. Tired from the long day’s drive, and eager to stay true to our pledge, we drift to sleep as the three-quarter moon rises high in the black sky above.

SUMMER ICE CREAM
Every summer for the last several years, my father and I have made ice cream using the electric ice-cream machine he and my mother bought years ago. One summer they made ice cream every week from whatever fruit was in season at the moment. Their peach ice cream stands out, smooth and delicately flavored, tasting almost exactly like the scent of the fruit itself. This year, my father and I made vanilla lavender ice cream with goats' milk as the dairy base. It brought back memories of the long-ago peach ice cream with its special satisfaction of merging senses.

Vanilla Lavender Ice Cream

Lavender Milk:

1 cup goats' milk
6-8 sprigs fresh lavender

Put the milk and the lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Just before it starts boiling, remove from heat, cover, and allow to infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the milk into a small bowl, discard the lavender, and let milk cool for another 10 minutes.

Ice Cream:
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
3 cups goats' milk (or, half goats' milk/half cows' milk)
lavender milk (see above)
1 cup whipping cream
1 vanilla bean (or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)

1) Put the egg yolks and sugar in a big saucepan. Beat with a whisk until pale yellow.
2) Put 3 cups goats' milk and lavendar milk in another saucepan. Cut the vanilla bean in half and gently split each half open and add to the milk. Slowly bring just to the boil.
3) Add about 1/2 cup of the warm milk to the egg yolk and sugar mixture, beating constantly. Stir in the remaining milk. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the custard. Stirring the whole time, slowly bring the mixture again just to the boil, at which point it will be smooth and custardlike. (Just under the boil is 180 degrees F, which assures the safety of eating the eggs.)
4) Pour the custard into a chilled bowl and allow to come to room temperature. If a vanilla bean was not used, stir in the vanilla extract. Then place the custard in the freezer for about 30 minutes to make for faster churning.
5) When ready to churn the custard mixture, whip the whipping cream until just under stiff-peak stage and fold into chilled mixture. (This makes for more volume.) Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer's directions. Chill in freezer for several hours before serving. Makes about 1 quart of ice cream.

MATERNAL BODIES

Our neighbors, Peter and Gaye, have two little girls aged nine and three. The other day, Gaye and the girls were in their backyard, and as the four of us talked, the girls climbed and slid across their mother's body as she lounged on the grass. Into my mind sprang the memory of this feline mother and her offspring, who, like Gaye, lay patiently in grasses on another continent while her cubs claimed the maternal body as their own.

AMERICAN FORMATIVE VALUES: WEAVING THE AMERICAN FABRIC

My sister went to the new downtown public library recently to hear historian Neil Baldwin talk about his book The American Revelation: Ten Ideals that Shaped Our Country from Puritans to the Cold War, which was released this summer in paperback. Not particularly inspired by Baldwin himself, she was, however, deeply intrigued by the idea of pinpointing characteristic American values that shape our common personality, so when my father came to town for a visit last weekend, we agreed on that Friday to craft our own lists and to come together on Sunday afternoon to share our thoughts about the American personality. The four of us (my father, my sister, SJG, and I) sat on the back porch all Sunday afternoon, quizzing each other in detail about our lists, amplifying ideas, making connections to other related theories—all at top volume and with much manic waving of napkins and leaping about to make an emphatic point.

After hours of conversation, we had shaped a seven-page list, out of which we pulled the following top-five values, which we agreed, as a group, to be characteristic of the iconic American personality. Caveat: these are idealistic values, which, though brilliant in their allure, sometimes manifest darkly and are not experienced by all of the people all of the time. However, they are values to which this particular group feels we aspire as a nation and which we feel do distinguish us as a people from other nations and cultures in other parts of the world.

1) Individualism—the notion, inscribed in our Declaration of Independence, that each individual has certain “unalienable rights,” and that each person has the right to live up to one’s abilities and interests, as defined by self. As Americans, the tension between acting for the greater common good and “doing your own thing” generally plays out in favor of individual choice.

2) Pragmatism—the tendency to figure out a problem based on what works at any given moment rather than relying on pre-established, accepted truth; a sort of “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” approach to life; pragmatism as a school of philosophical thought was pioneered in the nineteenth century by American philosophers John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, and William James (brother of Henry James). Generally speaking, they held that experimentation, inquiry, and observation are the tools for determining “truth,” with complete freedom to re-determine and re-name any of the objects under investigation at any time.

3) Mobility—the general openness of American economic, political, and social systems, whereby individuals have ease of movement among and between groups or places. To be born in one class, in one place, among one set of people does not mean one spends an entire lifetime in that same class, place, or set of people. This plays out in a general flexibility of thought and practice—the ability of the average American to go beyond prescribed limits to see if something is doable or enjoyable. Want to paint your house purple? Go for it! Want to have salmon with chocolate (a definite no-no in French cuisine)? Why not!

4) Fusion—the ability and desire to incorporate cultural expressions of all stripes into the mainstream or to simply accommodate them alongside other options, whether it be music (blues influence in jazz, country influence in rock and roll), food (Cuban Chinese restaurants), vocabulary (street language or foreign terms that become part of everyday mainstream vernacular), or ethnic family groupings (Chinese Jewish families as one example). Our socio-cultural fabric is like a sponge--very absorptive.

5) Optimism—a “things are looking up” approach to life, whereby events are perceived to flow inevitably toward the good, the better, the best. We came up with a list of classic popular songs, such as “High Hopes” and “Accentuate the Positive,” that speak to this American tendency to avoid bad news and to express a distinct preference for "the sunny side of the street."

Try making your own list—see what you come up with!

BOTSWANA MASALA

Southern Africa is home to an intriguing mix of peoples. That part of the world often telescopes into a black-and-white paradigm, but the blend is much richer, with populations of black, white, yellow, brown and everything in between. As a result, the cuisine is varied. On safari in Botswana last month, I mentioned my interest in local foods to the camp manager's wife, a lovely young woman with family roots in subcontinental India. So one evening, she arranged for us to be served a traditional meal of eland stew--cooked slowly on top of the camp stove all day to release the meat's juices and marrow--with mounds of steaming-hot, white polenta as the accompanying dish.

People in Botswana generally eat fruit for dessert, if they have dessert at all. But since the safari camps cater to American tastes, we savored a rich, dense gingerbread cake for dessert that evening. Alongside our plates, the servers placed small white pitchers of warm "pudding," or creme anglaise, to pour over the cake. Ginger is a common spice in Botswana, used both in African dishes as well as in those brought to the continent by its Indian population. In memory of that meal is this easy-to-make version of gingerbread cake.

Gingerbread Cake

3/4 cup dark honey
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup unsulphured blackstrap molasses
3 eggs
3 cups sifted flour (half white, half whole wheat)
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons powdered cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups buttermilk

Mix honey, oil, molasses, and eggs in a large bowl. Sift together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the flour mixture to the honey mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Pour the batter into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Serve slightly warm with whipped cream, flavored to taste with sugar and vanilla.

BELOW THE SURFACE

Polite smiles, yeses and nos, perhaps a few words in answer to the usual questions. Is it hot here in summer? How many cubs does a lioness birth? Where does your family live? I want more. Do you have siblings? How many? What does your name mean? Not your English name, the one for white foreigners. Your real name, the one that links you to this place. It means “not the same way.” He, our guide, is the youngest child. Seven of the eleven adult siblings are dead. They were sick, he says, when I ask how. In naming him, his mother wards off the sickness. This child will not be taken from her like the others.

We stop talking, still in our tracks, like the impala we pass each day. Alert to danger, to realities that keep us apart. Read about in books, perhaps, or gleaned from other inquisitive questionings.

The silence lingers, overtakes us. The relationship—between guide and tourist, man and woman, black and white—has no words to touch his sorrow. Yet in parting, the young guide steps toward me, leans forward with open arms. I move into his embrace, unanticipated, generous, as innocent, I think, as my questions had been. Between us, a vast landscape of human experience remains untouched. Where words can’t go, a gesture of affection has taken us below the surface, to the region where understanding lies and where hope burns. I climb into the tiny aircraft that will take me to the next camp, wiggle my fingers in farewell through the crack of the open window, and train my eyes on the waving arms below until all human form blends into the dun colors and broad sweep of the bush.

INTIMATIONS OF MORNING

Coming to wakefulness from sleep, I open my eyes. The blackness is complete, oddly rich, not unlike the smooth sheen of melted chocolate. I wonder for a moment if blindness has this same sensual depth. I lie quietly, anticipating the shapes of things to announce themselves, even if only in shadowy outline. But nothing emerges at all, only the sounds of the bush outside.

Baboons have begun to bark, the leaves of the trees rustling as the animals make their way through the branches above our tent. A lion roars, rumbling and low, in the not-too-far-away distance. The delicate chiming of bell frogs slowly diminishes, overtaken by hornbills sounding in raucous staccato. Slats of soft light reveal the framed outline of the tent windows, netted and thickly curtained to hold back the chill of night. I can pick out familiar shapes now, folds of mosquito netting around the bed, a chair in the far corner, the woven screen that encloses shower, sink, and bath. Fruit bats, calling forth evening darkness in clinking gate-latch chorus, end their song as the light shifts, rose-pink embers’ glow.

I slip out of bed, slide open the doors of the tent, and step out onto the verandah. The veld spreads before me, vast, quiet, secret. Palm trees stand tall along the distant horizon, delineating land from endless sky, and in between their dark trunks, a small orb rises, silently, swiftly, to paint the sky blood orange red.

CADILLAC MAN

Many years ago, my mother, who was Caucasian, had an ongoing flirtation with an older African American man who worked at the same nursing home she did. She was a nursing assistant there at the time, and he was….I don’t quite remember. What I do remember is that he came from Mississippi and his name was Johnny V----. He drove a big, white Cadillac, and boy was he a smooth operator. Oh, and he was married too. That didn’t really matter, though nothing ever came of their flirtation. They simply admired each other openly and entertained their fantasies without ever acting on them.

Recently, I had one of those sudden sinking feelings that hit you in the pit of your stomach. I realized that, on my birthday next week, I’ll turn 47—almost 50. I began to wonder where all the time has gone and, in answer to my puzzlings, made a mental list of what has happened to me in the course of almost five decades of living. It was a long, meaty list, of the sort the average woman of my age, race, and class might have. Still, in my mind, 50 is a big number and doesn’t quite fit my image of myself.

I must not be the only one for whom the number doesn’t fit the image. Walking along a busy downtown street the other day, on my way to buy a quick to-go lunch, I noticed an older black man pulling out of an off-street parking lot just ahead of me. He was driving a shiny, new silver Cadillac and we caught each other's glance for a flash of an instant.

I could feel it coming. He pulled slowly out of the lot, leaned casually out of the window, looked me up and down in my tight-fitting jeans and sleeveless tee, and crooned, “How ya doin’, Little Miss Blue Jeans?”

I kept on walking and said nothing in response. Instead, I fumed inwardly. It’s been a while since a stranger has hit on me in public, and I wasn’t really prepared. “I’m 50, for God’s sake,” I thought to myself. “I’m heading into menopause! Shouldn’t a woman be free from all this attention after a certain point???” But then I thought about my mother and her flirtation with Johnny V----. It's not always the case, but sometimes strangers and casual acquaintances are simply showing us their admiration, and it doesn’t hurt to nod in recognition of that fact. The fellow drove on, and I eventually cooled off. In fact, I feel a little better about turning 50. But I wish I’d smiled back at my Cadillac Man.

GUERRILLA DANCING

My friend M. has studied flamenco dance for years. She performs locally--solo and with others--and has recently joined a new group that commits hit-and-run flamenco dance. They show up at local events, more or less unannounced, put down their flamenco dancing boards, hit the “on” bottom on their boom box, and start dancing. In explaining the concept, she says, “You know, hit-and-run flamenco is kinda like hit-and-run guerrilla warfare.”

In reflecting on her words afterwards, I thought about how the radicals in our lives aren’t “out there.” They aren’t “them” or “others.” They’re our friends and neighbors and family. They’re the ones who see and practice guerrilla warfare as joyful dance, as art, as beauty. In a time when many of us feel discouraged or fearful about the state of the world, I take hope and inspiration from people like M. She’ll be dancing when the lights go out, and I hope I will be too.

AN EARLY HARVEST

June is asparagus season where I live, and every Thursday morning, I stop at the downtown farmers market on my way to work to buy a carton of fresh asparagus. I buy from the same vendor every week--a tall, lean fellow with blue eyes and a green felt hat. He's soft spoken and unassuming, yet everyone knows he has the best asparagus spears in town. If you don't get to him before noon, you won't go home with his asparagus.

I love asparagus three ways: steamed and served with a little butter and lemon juice; steamed and served over pasta with a sprinkling of fresh parmiggiano reggiano; or steamed and stirred into a favorite Asian salad called kung pao tofu. Admittedly, the first two options are simple and quick, while the tofu is detail work and takes a little time. But, the complex, full flavors of the salad are worth the trouble for this slim green vegetable, which is at its peak for just a few weeks in early summer.

KUNG PAO TOFU

Marinade:
3 tbsp tamari
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp unsulphured blackstrap molasses
1 tsp fresh, minced ginger
1 package extra firm tofu, drained, and chopped into large bite-sized pieces

1) Combine the marinade ingredients (except the tofu) in a medium-sized glass bowl. Stir to blend.
2) Add the bite-sized tofu and let it marinate for 20 minutes.
3) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the chunks of tofu on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes to an hour until dark brown and slightly crunchy. Remove from oven and cool while you make the dressing.

Dressing:
1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
2 tsp tamari
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp minced garlic
1-1/2 tsp minced ginger
1-1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp cornstarch

1) Bring all the ingredients (except the cornstarch) to a boil in a small saucepan.
2) Whisk in the cornstarch and continue stirring until the dressing thickens (just a minute or two). Set aside while you cut up the vegetables for the salad.

Vegetables:
1 bunch asparagus, chopped and steamed til tender-crunchy (about 6-7 minutes)
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 green or yellow bell pepper, julienned
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 bunch green onions, chopped
3 tbsp (or more, to taste) toasted cashews
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

In a large bowl, combine the chopped vegetables, the baked tofu, and the warm dressing. Serve over rice of your choice (white or brown basmati rice is tasty). Enjoy!

GOOGLING MY WAY INTO THE PAST

I've been thinking about people I was close to years ago, and with the aid of modern technology have googled a few of them, just to see what pops up. As a test, I started with my family. All of us bookworms, we each come up with our publishing credentials. Even a short editorial comment my father submitted to the New York Times years ago comes up with a link to the text itself. The colorful covers of the books my sister and I have written come up on amazon.com, along with the gratifying "More books by...." link. Turns out my brother, who is on the periphery of family life these days, isn't editing the law journal he helped found a number of years ago. And my mother, unforgettable in her private life, yet pathologically fearful of the public spotlight, shows up not at all. Not even her obituary.

By contrast, a once dear friend from my teen years pops up all over the Internet. Not in the field she originally aspired to, but in another, where her extreme extroversion flourishes. The love of my life, the one who broke my heart, shows up on the roster of the ski team that shaped her early adult life. Alas, no photo to highlight her dark good looks. Police detectives I once knew through social connections are quoted in local newspapers and court documents; former professors show up on university faculty rosters or on the covers of articles and books they've written; one fellow, who had the starring role in all the high school theater productions, is splashed all over the electronic entertainment world, having risen to stardom on a highly successful television drama.

And then there are those, who, like my mother, don't show up at all or who, more humorously, share the name of prominent contributors in various fields of endeavor. A social worker shows up as a diversity organizer, a retired cop pops up as a prominent breast surgeon, another friend with athletic skills shows up as a Swiss filmmaker.

I've heard tales of people reconnecting to long lost friends through google searches. It's tempting, but I prefer to leave the past in cyberspace, where I can touch it from a safe distance if I choose and rely on memory for the rest.

LIVING IN A COCOON
(for JF, who put it all in perspective)

"Well, you could stay home and watch TV instead," reflected a colleague as I fretted about my next travel adventure. My father and I are going on safari in June. We're heading to the Okavango Delta in the northwestern corner of Botswana in southern Africa. The game viewing there is superb, and all the charts promise lions, elephants, cheetahs, colorful birds, and everything in between. The fancy coffee table book our safari agency sent us is filled with glossy panoramic photographs of the African bush, and I easily imagined myself in the landscape, free from all worry and bother, waiting only for the next friendly predator to stroll languidly past my tent.

But that was before a friend--a travel nurse--sent me the Botswana package from Travax.com. Travax produces country reports focused on health and safety issues synthesized from data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the World Health Organization. After reading the 42-page document, I wondered why I'd paid for my safari package in full. I also wondered why the photos from the safari agency showed tourists in shorts and sleeveless shirts--didn't they know about malaria? ticks? UV exposure? What about the food and waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid, and cholera? Airborne contagious diseases such as polio, influenza, and tuberculosis? Measles, sleeping sickness, and parasites in abundance? And let's not even get started on HIV/AIDS. Turns out Botswana has the second-highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world, with an HIV/AIDS prevalence rate among adults of 37% and 33,000 AIDS deaths each year (out of a total population of 1.6 million). For perspective, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate among adults in the United States is less than 1% (0.6% to be precise), and AIDS deaths reach about 14,000 people each year out of a total population of almost 299 million people. I checked the CIA World Fact Book to make sure Travax wasn't making this stuff up. Don't breathe, don't eat, and definitely don't have sex in Botswana.

Believe you me, I ran to my doctor for a first round of innoculations (DPT and hepatitis A for starters) and for a slough of prescriptions. Because the risk of TD (traveler's diarrhea) is so high--there's bacterial diarrhea and protozoal diarrhea, so if you don't get one, you'll get the other--I came away with three prescriptions just for diarrhea: one for bad diarrhea, a second for really bad diarrhea, and a third for really, really bad diarrhea. Next week, I go to the travel clinic for the second and final round of innoculations (typhoid and polio) and to discuss which of the many malaria profylaxes has a chance in hell to work in Botswana. Turns out African mosquitoes are mutating like crazy and many are resistant to anti-malarial drugs. Great. Does that mean the tubes of 35% DEET cream I bought to slather all over my body and the giant bottle of super-toxic Permethrin I'm supposed to spray on every article of outer clothing before I leave are just an exercise in wishful thinking?

As I was ranting about all this to my sister one evening, she looked at me askance. "How did you miss this stuff?" she asked me. She writes geography books for a living and is just coming off a period of writing specifically about Africa. She loves to relay to me all the statistical data she's gathered on the countries she's writing about, so Mali's human misery index, Uganda's information campaign against AIDS, and guinea worm eradication in Senegal are daily conversational fare between the two of us. I guess I'd missed this stuff because, like most Americans, I live in a cocoon of public health splendor. An Iranian taxi cab driver once told me that the U.S. miracle is its vast and highly effective system of agricultural distribution. Now that I'm going to Botswana, I think it's our ability to manage and protect public health on a grand scale...and still have money left over to go to the movies.

NEVER NEVER LAND

I didn't really want to come to Disneyland for the annual science teachers national convention, but now that I'm here, I'm not sure I really want to leave. Everything is perfect. The weather is glorious, pleasantly cool in the early morning and comfortably warm by afternoon. The flora is in full bloom--yellow day lilies, shrub-sized clivia, paperlike California poppies, bougainvillea, azaleas, lantana, hip-tall birds of paradise, camellias and clematis as big as plates, and everywhere everywhere the gentle susserating of palms. Birds chirp high in the trees, a sociable sparrow shares my breakfast scone, and from morning til night, children squeal with a mix of delight and terror as the Disney machines, on their slightly rusted rails, hurl their occupants through space for an all-you-can-ride thrill.

There's not a speck of trash anywhere, no signs of poverty or distress, and at every turn, there's Mickey Mouse to greet you with his goofy grin. He's carved into the soap in the hotel rooms, carefully clipped into the hedges, and perched--ears only--atop the heads of most children under ten, who seem to sprout a Mickey cap within minutes of their arrival.

On the walk back to the hotel from an afternoon of convention sessions, I happened onto a Cinderella theme wedding, complete with golden carriage, white horses, coachmen, giggling bridesmaids all in pink, and a fairy princess bride, perfect in her whiter than white wedding gown and sparkling tiara. I felt an instant pang of envy; that feeling of recognizing before one's eyes a childhood fantasy made real in someone else's life. A beefy bodyguard approached me, asking in an apologetic tone if I would mind bypassing the bridal party, as the entourage was about to make its way to a garlanded canopy tent a few hundred yards away where the bride was to be married in outdoor splendor. The guard and I fell into whispered conversation, and I asked him if Cinderella weddings were common at Disneyland. He confessed that, as an employee of the bride's family, he wasn't sure of the statistics but that theme weddings were not unheard of.

"It's a whole other world out here, " I remarked in awe.

"It's lovely lovely," he grinned in response, raising his eyebrows and cocking his head in a sort of self-mocking acknowledgment of his role in this dreamland production.

Since my arrival at Disneyland, I've been wondering how to explain the appeal of the place. I think of myself as immune to canned reality, far too sophisticated to be seduced this easily. My colleagues must view me in this same light. They've been chuckling at me and my Disneyfied glee.

The monumental effort behind such a carefully manicured vision is a given, yet you don't ever see anyone laboring at it. It all takes place after hours or very discreetly in remote corners. I think it's because the vision is so smooth and tightly controlled that we fall for the fantasy. And, after a weekend of listening to science teachers at wit's end over plummeting student achievement in STEM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), over the lack of meaningful support from the highest levels of government to reverse the trend, and over distorted national priorities, the Disneyland cocoon provides respite. Tinkerbell is there to wave her magic wand to wish it all away, and for a day or two, I believe.

PARIS IN THE SPRING

Spring is the traditional season for demonstrations in France (May 1 is workers' day), and indeed students, labor unions, and citizen sympathizers have been demonstrating for a couple of weeks in Paris and in other major French cities. My father is in Paris this week, and he's been sending regular email updates. He reports that much of the action in Paris has been near iconic sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Bastille, and the Place de la Republique, which is close to where he is staying. Air, rail, and metro traffic has been impacted, and many schools and businesses have closed on strike days.

Unlike the rioting last autumn, which was focused in poor immigrant ghettos, the upheaval this time is in the urban core. It is largely a white, middle-class protest of a new labor law that extends the period of employment probation for workers under the age of twenty-six to two years (currently the probationary period is only a matter of a couple of months). During the probationary period, employers have the right to dismiss young workers for just about any reason. The new law was meant to open up job opportunities for youth (a major issue in last fall's rioting), but instead, most young people in France resist the idea of American-style at will employment. They want the new law abolished. President Chirac has stepped in, changing the language of the law a little so as to ensure that, at a minimum, employers give reasons for dismissing youth employees.

La Chef writes to me about the demonstrations in highly reflective terms. As a grandmother, she sees her grandchildren inheriting a very different world from the one in which she grew up and lived out most of her career. She sees the forces of economic globalization at work in France and says that many of the changes to French labor law, against which so many citizens are protesting, are a foregone conclusion. We agree that the socio-economic contract that has provided job security in France for more than half a century is falling apart, and that historic change such as this is painful.

In broad terms, I wonder how changes to employment patterns impact culinary traditions. In the United States, with low unemployment and a high percentage of working families, quick meals in front of the television are increasingly the norm. Eating at restaurants during the work week has become de rigueur. The number of families heading for restaurants to celebrate holiday meals is skyrocketing, and the industry is quickly adjusting. The same trends are appearing in France, where the hours-long family meal is becoming a relic of the past. French grocery stores carry more prepared and pre-packaged foods, and even Valrhona, the preeminent French chocolatier, has begun to produce and sell chocolate chips as well as standard bar chocolate for cooking. Chips are easier for the home cook, who can save time and avoid the mess that comes with chopping up the large and heavy blocks of Valrhona chocolate into manageable pieces.

I discovered a 3-kilo bag of Valrhona chips in La Chef's cupboard last fall. Although she laments the passing of "slow food" and makes her career out of preserving slow food values (local and organic production of food, seasonal eating, home cooking using only the freshest of ingredients), she loves the chips. "Easier for melting," she says. On this trip to Paris, I've sent my father to Georges Detou in the Les Halles neighborhood for a 3-kilo bag of Valrhona chips for me. I've already gone through almost an entire bag from his most recent trip to Paris in early March. The chips are perfect for an Americanized version of the French "reine de saba," a sort of molten brownie traditionally made with pulverized almonds. Below is the easy American version.

Americanized Reine de Saba

12 ounces Valrhona chocolate chips (American semisweet chocolate chips will work too)
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1) Melt 6 ounces (about one cup) of the chips and the butter in a small pan over low heat. (You can melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave or over a doubleboiler as well.) Pour the melted chocolate and butter into a medium-sized bowl.

2) Beat the sugar into the melted chocolate. Then mix in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla.

3) Sift together the dry ingredients and stir into the chocolate mixture, blending well. Add the remaining 6 ounces of chips (not melted) to the batter.

4) Pour the batter into a buttered 8-inch pie dish or cake pan and bake for about 23 minutes* in a 350-degree oven (for glass pans; 375-degree oven for non-glass). Serve warm with ice cream.

*Note that chocolate brownies, cakes, and cookies are best if pulled from the oven a little underdone. If overcooked, chocolate desserts become too dry. Twenty-three minutes is just about right for this recipe.

FEELING NOSTALGIC
(Piney River picnic, left, 1963)

My sister is in London until Friday. She left her computer at home and took paper and pen instead, saying she wanted to be in London the way it once would have been, free of instant messaging and satellite phone connection. I'm not supposed to call or email. I've resisted the phone call, but, of course, I've already sent her three emails, which she doesn't seem to have read, so I guess she's staying true to her vow.

With the edicts in place, it's awfully quiet around here. When my sister is at home, we talk all the time, either by phone, email, or in person. When I run out of things to say, she keeps right on going, and I say, "Uh, huh or "uh, uh" in reply, just like when we were young. I got to feeling nostalgic this morning and dug around in a closet for the white photo album where the old family photos are. I was looking for a particular image of my sister and me sitting in a pile of leaves on the curb in front of one of the Columbia, Missouri, homes. Instead, I found this picture from a 1963 picnic on the Piney River with my mother's mother (seated, background), my sister (foreground), me (in the middle), our shepherd Leki, my parents (off frame), and my mother's Aunt Maud and Uncle Willis (also off frame). It brought back fond memories of that river, where we searched for crawfish, skipped rocks, and collected buckeyes.

One summer, years after the 1963 picnic, my grandmother took my brother and me for a picnic on the Piney. She sat on the rocky riverbank to lay out our lunch while my brother and I, teenagers both, stripped off our clothes and lept off a boulder into the deep and dark waters below. My grandmother, a very proper grande dame indeed, looked up and smiled. "My little frogs," she said.

THE FAINTING

In searching for a gardening essay I'd written a couple years ago, I ran across a piece about family communications that I'd written a long time ago. It was funny then, and it's still funny now.

Donna said she'd heard about The Fainting from her sister, Rose, who'd heard about from their brother, Dan, who'd heard about it from their father, Dominic. News gets around like that in that family. The source of family information is always several people back. No one ever seems to remember exactly who the original source is, and I doubt anyone really cares. The most important thing just seems to be the news.

There was the time their mother, Virginia, moved back into the house on Peters Square with Dominic. I think that news came from Rose, who'd heard it from Virginia, who'd actually been invited by Dominic. Donna was surprised by that one. After all, only twelve years had passed since Virginia and Dominic's divorce--and Dominic holds a grudge. His most recent outburst had been the threat of police action if Virginia ever stepped foot on his property. But, maybe twelve years is, after all, long enough to erase--or at least to dull--the sharpness of bitter memory. Donna said maybe it was loneliness. Or old age. But most probably, it had something to do with eating habits.

Virginia liked to test already-proven formulas, and the Greenway housing coop experience was no exception. She left Omaha in a hurry, speeding back to Minneapolis, her mother's old black Buick crammed full of belongings, the typing table and captain's chair firmly strapped to the top. Rose went with her for the ride. Donna says it was for the money--Virginia paid Rose to miss work at the library.

Rose didn't stay in Minneapolis for long, but Virginia did. She moved into the Greenway coop, into the room where Fran had lived when Rose was there. Actually, Rose moved in after Fran did. Fran had greeted Rose at the front door in her dirty long johns and ill-fitting robe. Fran's mother had given the robe to her at Christmas. Fran wore it out of guilt, or perhaps in the false belief that love had guided her mother's choice.

Shortly after the move, Donna went to visit Virginia in her new room at the Greenway. All the treasures that had been stuffed and wedged into the old black Buick were there, neatly arranged around the room. A few new postcards were tacked up onto the freshly painted walls, and handstitched quilts had been rolled onto wooden dowels to serve as curtains. Donna said Virginia could turn a storm sewer into a home.

Donna and Virginia ate breakfast out near the high school that morning. Virginia picked at an omelette--she always had a nervous stomach--and Donna slammed her thumb in the doorjam of the stall in the women's bathroom. She lost part of her nail, but Virginia still made her pay for the meal.

Donna says that Virginia's parting gesture after breakfast was a finger up the nose. Typical, and mostly in fun, but partly serious. Donna and Dan and Dominic had plans for dinner together that evening, and Virginia--as always--felt left out. Dan said she'd been talking a lot about marriage recently, mostly because she wanted a color television. And a good meal or two, which is how it all started, really.

A few months later, Donna called Dominic, who told her that Dan had told him that Virginia had reported that she'd fainted at work. The doctor attributed the fainting to poor eating habits. Dominic and Dan swore it was the strictly enforced vegetarian menu at the Greenway coop. Donna said it was more like a lifetime of cigarettes, coffee, Coca-Cola, and a five-pound bag of sugar every week. No one could agree on the cause exactly, but four weeks after The Fainting, Virginia showed up at Dominic's door, was invited in, fell asleep on the couch, and hasn't left yet. At least that's what Donna says she heard from Rose, who heard it from Dan, who heard it from Dominic. And he should know.

WINTER BLOOMS

(flowering cattleya, left)

My cattleya is in bloom. It hasn't produced flowers since I bought it several years ago, inspired by a visit SJG and I took to an orchid garden on a wintertime trip to Key West. When I bought the cattleya, the plant was in full bloom. But after the flowers faded and dropped off about a month later, it didn't produce a single bud or bloom again. I followed all the greenhouse directions--occasional on-schedule feedings, regular waterings and spraying with distilled water, perfect placement in an east-facing window with sheer curtains to filter the morning light during winter, and an under-the-trees outdoor life during the summer when natural rains could feed it. With no results.

I seriously thought about throwing it out. My mother, who had a magical green thumb, grew orchids with my father when I was young. They built a basement greenhouse, where they kept many different orchid varieties, bringing them into the dining room as they came into bloom at different times. When a plant gave up its annual blooming life after several years, they threw it out and replaced it with another orchid. But I couldn't bring myself to throw out my cattleya. Even though it wasn't producing flowers, it was still alive, and I couldn't bear the vision of trash can suffocation. Instead I moved it all over the house, including into the basement for a couple of winters, where even there it refused to give up.

Earlier this month, my sister casually mentioned a Swedish friend's wife, who grows orchids--in Sweden of all places. It's cold and dark there, yet this woman's orchids are blooming profusely now under what is described to me as neglectful care. I decided to try a version of managed neglect. I brought my cattleya from the basement and into the bathroom, where I placed it on the floor near the radiator and away from the windows. I figured the room's humidity and indirect light would bring miracles. If my approach didn't work, I promised myself, I would finally throw out the orchid.

But it did work, and the cattleya has been in bloom for about a week, with another four or five weeks to go. I think I'll bring the cymbidium into the bathroom tomorrow.

SWIMMING TO SERENITY

(Photo at left of the Roman pool at the Parc Monceau in Paris, courtesy of my father)

In the winter months, after it's become too cold and icy to ride my bicycle to work every day, I change my routine of exercise to include weekly swimming sessions at the downtown pool. I usually go in the midafternoon, when the pool is quiet, and there's only me and the Eastern European ladies in their swim caps and giant floral-patterned swimsuits. One time, in the steam bath after my swim, I ran into one of the ladies drinking a clear liquid from her flask. "That's a great idea, to drink water in here," I said to her. "I'm drinking vodka," she replied, and we both chuckled.

Although swimming is an exercise for the body, I find that, for me, it's primarily an excercise in meditation. Energy slows with each exhalation into the water, moving inward with each stroke. The exterior world begins to fall away, and I listen to my breathing as the water streams past my body and flows out through my nose and mouth with each forced out-breath. I imagine it must have been like this in utero.

I've never been a fast, powerful body in the water. In fact, years ago when in graduate school, I took a thrice-weekly swimming class at the university's Olympic-sized pool. One of the surprise! goals of the class was to increase speed and power, so at the beginning of the first week of class, we buddied up and counted the number of laps we each could swim in a five-minute period. I swam 18 laps. At the end of the semester, we again buddied up and counted laps for the same amount of time. Every one else in class had increased their capabilities by a lap or two. I again swam 18 laps.

I think this means that my potential as a swimmer is what it is, and that there's something in me that doesn't want to swim fast and hard. What I do want is to hit my stride, whatever that may be on any particular day, and to view life from a water creature's perspective--with that funny feeling of solitude and extreme insularity, even with other bodies in the water. One afternoon at the university all those years ago, swimming laps in the slow lane, I rotated onto my side for an inhalation and made contact with a woman swimming over and on top of me. As I held my breath to wait for her to clear my body, I wondered why she hadn't chosen one of the fast lanes. Swimming, of course, does have a competitive side, but drowning your fellow swimmers in the slow lane seems to go beyond the pale. Feeling the power swimmer had violated some common code of water life--whereby all swimmers respect solitude and insularity--I felt frightened that day, unable to regain my meditative rhythm, and got out of the pool at the far end of my lane. I like to tell this story to the lifeguards at the downtown pool. That way, I figure they'll remember me and look out for me in case anyone else tries to overpower me in the slow lane. But no one ever has and my pool-life serenity has only that one blemish.

SHAPING EACH OTHER'S LIVES

Humans, as social creatures living in community, shape the lives of those around them. I know that in principle I've influenced the lives of people around me, loved ones and strangers alike. But it's hard to see that influence, and it's a rare event when any one of these people has actually confirmed or described to me the impressions I've made on them. If they've done so, it's usually been under unusual circumstances or in a moment of emotional fervor. I view these confirmations of human impact on other lives as a sort of footprint, proving that we have passed this way and have left certain recognizable signs in our wake.

Just this weekend, my young neighbor friend Gracie, who's almost nine, unwittingly showed me one of my footprints. SJG and I had invited Gracie, her mother and father, Gay and Peter, and her little sister, Bronte, to our house for a rib feast to celebrate Gay's birthday. We prepared the ribs the two-day way, marinating them overnight in spices, grilling them briefly the next afternoon, and finishing them in a two-hour steam bath in the oven. To please Gracie and Bronte's palate, we also made our favorite macaroni and cheese recipe; cole slaw rounded out the meal. We left the choice of dessert to Gay, and she opted for chocolate mousse. I made the mousse well in advance, to give it time to chill and set in individual glasses, with plans to serve each glass with a dollop of whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

After we'd finished the main meal, I called Gracie into the kitchen. "I need your help with the whipped cream for the mousse," I told her conspiratorially. She raced into the kitchen after me, and I handed her an old-fashioned set of beaters, the kind that you turn by hand. They fit neatly into a cylindrical ceramic container and work perfectly to beat small amounts of whipping cream and egg whites.

Gracie looked puzzled. "What are we going to do with these?" she asked.

"We'll beat the whipping cream with them and put a little spoonful on top of each person's mousse," I explained as I pointed to the small glasses of mousse in the refrigerator.

"Oh," Gracie replied. "I thought we were going to squirt the cream out of a can!"

"Nope," I replied. "We're doing the real thing." I poured the whipping cream into the ceramic container, placed the beaters on top, and told Gracie to start turning. "You can switch hands if you get tired," I explained.

Gracie dutifully began to crank the beaters, and within seconds wondered if her work was done. I showed her how to lift the beaters to check the consistency of the cream, and she went back to her work, checking frequently and switching hands as her eight-year-old arms tired. In due time, she exclaimed, "I think it must be done. It's getting really hard to turn this thing."

And indeed the cream was ready to spoon onto the mousse, after which Gracie sprinkled each one with chocolate shavings. She carefully placed the glasses of mousse onto a serving tray, carried it with great delicacy into the dining room, and placed it before her mother. "Mom, I beat the cream!" she cried with girlish pride. In a flash, I saw my footprint, saw through Gracie's excitement and pride that I had offered her a way to use her human powers to transform something ordinary into loveliness.

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

My sister is a writer. These last few months, she's been working on a book about Morocco. In her background reading, she ran across a lovely poetical work called Desert Divers, by Sven Lindqvist, translated from the Swedish into English by Joan Tate. Desert Divers is part travelogue, following Lindqvist's journey in the latter part of the twentieth century across North Africa, mostly in Morocco and Algeria. It's also a reflection on personal and political memory, the ways in which we supress some things, lie about others, and aggrandize the rest. What sustained my interest, though, is that he tells his story through an exploration of a handful of French writers who were drawn to the Sahara, which reaches up into North Africa, during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

One of these writers was Andre Gide, whose book L'immoraliste takes place in part in Biskra, Algeria. A novel about liberating the self from societal constraints, it's a book I remembered reading in graduate school twenty years ago. I became dissatisfied relying on Lindqvist's retelling and interpretation of Gide's desert drama, so I ran upstairs to the study to pull out my copy of the book from my lawyer grandfather's bookcases, which I've inherited from my mother. As I thumbed through the well worn copy of the book, reviewing the notes I'd scribbled to myself years ago in the margins, I was caught by this passage, which defines what it is to be an artist:

J'ai toujours cru les grands artistes ceux qui osent donner droit de beaute a des choses si naturelles qu'elles font dire apres, a qui les voit: "Comment n'avais-je pas compris jusqu'alors que cela aussi etait beau..."

In English, this more or less means:

I've always believed the great artists to be those who dare to give the right of beauty to everyday things, which lead those who see them to say afterward, "Why did I not understand before that this, too, was beautiful..."

By these standards, I think my mother was an artist. I have a vivid memory of her making toast for me one morning many years ago in her apartment. It was a lengthy process, and I marveled then, as I do now, at the way she held everything required for toast making in complete reverence--the slices of homemade bread, the toaster, the creamy butter and the knife she used to spread it with, the white Limoges plate she chose to put the toast on, the crisp linen napkin she spread across my knees. It seemed so easy and natural with her, and when I went home after that visit, I tried to replicate the experience on my own. But, without her there to promote the artistry, it wasn't possible. All these years later, I see that I have inherited something of her eye for beauty. And I try to stay true to her intuitive understanding, expressed so succinctly by a Frenchman before her, that art and artists lie right before our very eyes.

TOO FANCY FOR THEM

Every now and again, I play cards with three former colleagues with whom I used to play cards at lunch every single workday. We would gather at the kitchen table with our sack lunches at precisely 12:30 and play for an hour. Known for too much table talk and stretching the rules wildly, we paired off and bid our tricks, screeching with glee as we trumped our competitors or caught them short a trick. One coworker, who never joined in the game , routinely complained to our supervising editor about the noise we made. Periodically, email reprimands would come our way, and we would play cards in whispers for the next few days. But invariably, the sheer fun of the game caught up with us, and we were back to our noisy antics.

This weekend, the four of us gathered for cards for the first time in about a year. We all have demanding jobs and live far from each other in the farflung corners of the metropolitan area. One of the group, who has two young children, drives in for cards from a neighboring state, where she and her husband are refurbishing an old farmhouse. She's the most serious card player among us, and loves to win. I'm always nervous when she's my partner at cards. I'm a somewhat sloppy player, no good at counting cards and prone to erring on the side of risk. She, on the other hand, knows where every card is and wins by careful calculation and cautious but accurate bidding.

The friend who hosts our card parties is very generous. She always serves lunch and rarely asks us to contribute to the feast. This time, though, we volunteered, and she suggested I bring the dessert. At first, I thought about bringing the chocolate-apple tarte I'd learned to make in Paris this fall. But SJG tells me it's on the unusual side, and these friends have conservative palates. So I decided to bring my favorite American dessert--oatmeal caramel bars. It's a recipe I begged one of my neighbors to give me. She's always reading church cookbooks and the glossy recipe booklettes at the grocery store check-out counter. A steady flow of marshmallow bars, bakeless pies, and cookies with every chip imaginable come our way from her, and the oatmeal caramel bars are my favorites.

Over lunch, as we talk about my culinary trip to Paris, my card-playing friends compliment my blog but agree that all the recipes were way too fancy for them. "I didn't even know what half the words meant!" says the serious card player. We laugh, and I think of my paternal Aunt Lina, who said the same thing. I'm glad I brought the bars. They're a hit, and this time, I'm on the winning team at cards.

OATMEAL CARAMEL BARS
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
1 cup finely cut oatmeal
32 caramels
5 tablespoons cream or millk
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 chopped nuts (I like pecans)

1) In a mixing bowl, combine the butter, brown sugar, salt, baking soda, flour and oatmeal. Stir until butter is absorbed.

2) Pat about 3/4 of the mixture in the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish and bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

3) Meanwhile, melt the caramels and the cream.

4) Sprinkle the chocolate chips and the nuts on top of the oatmeal base. Cover with the melted caramels and then the rest of the oatmeal mixture. Bake 20 minutes more.

REFLECTIONS AT 75

My father turned seventy-five this month. He likes to think of it as three-quarters of a century; it sounds more momentous that way. My sister, SJG, and I had a small dinner party to mark the occasion, complete with party hats, noise makers, and a sparkler candle on the birthday cake. As a way to tap his thoughts about what it means to be seventy-five, we asked questions about his life, some serious, some not. Here are his reflections from that evening.

FAVORITE FOODS: bananas, coffee, and fruit pies. “I’ve always liked comfort,” my father says, reflecting on a weekend Boy Scout trip in Milwaukee in the 1940s where he was the only one who came with his bathrobe, coffee pot, and galoshes in tow. It rained the entire weekend.

FAVORITE ACTRESSES: Anouk Aimee, Madeleine Carroll, and Catherine Deneuve. He still gets a faraway look in his eyes remembering a chance encounter with Anouk Aimee and Albert Finney on the streets of Paris in 1970, when we, the children, were all little. He loves that Anouk and Albert turned around to stare at us, and he spent the rest of that trip roaming the streets near where we’d seen the star couple, calling out, “Anouk! Anouk! Where are you?”

FAVORITE CHAIR: A low-seated wicker chair known as a “cannibal” still sits on his front porch. He bought it in Salisbury, Maryland, in 1957 and loved it because it was a little unusual, yet very comfortable.

FAVORITE SPOT ON EARTH: The Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. He heads to the center of the garden where children play with rented wooden sailboats in the pool of the garden’s large fountain. He remembers trying to rent a boat there himself many years ago, and the concessionaire said the boats were only for children. When my father said he had his children with him, which he did, the man replied, “Then bring them over here!”

CREDO: Cherish good memories and forget the bad ones.

FUNNY MEMORY: In 1963, my father was teaching in Ada, Oklahoma. One day after lunch, he went out to the garage and there, standing on top of our 1957 blue Buick was a stray goat. It had wandered off from someone’s farm, and my father was somehow able to return him to where he belonged.

FAVORITE SUIT: A brown wool suit from Gimble’s department store in New York, where he lived and went to New York University in the 1950s. It was a single-breasted suit that cost $13. He wore it everywhere, to work, to social outings, and even to bed. Many years later, our mother threw it out.

FAVORITE BOOKS: We asked the standard question: If you could only take three books to a desert island, which three would they be? He chose:
--The Leopard by Giuseppe de Lampadusa, the biographical story of the Prince, Don Fabrizio, who is moving into his old age as the Italian state begins to form toward the end of the 1800s. It’s a story of how individuals face historical transitions, and my father admires the Prince for knowing that his time has come and gone, and that the future belongs to the next generation.
--the Bible (mostly the Old Testament and Revelations). He likes the monotheistic pagan God of the Old Testament--capricious, vengeful, unpredictable, funny—as a reflection of the vagaries of human nature.
--Shakespeare’s histories. Like the Old Testament, the histories seem to him an accurate reflection of human nature.

PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT: He is most proud of the ways in which he acted as a check on the powers of the central administration at the university system for which he served out his professional career as a professor of political science. Power is a force, he says, which, without checks and balances, corrupts.

FAVORITE PETS: Melek (Leki), a German shepherd we had in the 1960s, and his cats Kanga and Roo. He says he loves his cats because they are companions and love to sleep on the couch as much as he does. And, he got them from the humane society as a two-for-one bargain. They had been at the humane society for so long (several months) that the humane society—which wanted to adopt them out as a pair since they had come in that way--reduced the adoption fee by half. In the end, it wasn’t the bargain that convinced my father. It was the fact that, as he was walking out of the building, having come there for a dog, Kanga reached out of the cage and batted my father as he walked past. The cats chose him, not the other way round.

FAVORITE MEMORIES OF HIS CHILDREN: There are three of us, and we each have classic moments in family lore that my father cherishes.
Me—I’m the star of a family movie from the 1960s in which I try for several long minutes to pull a wagon out of the garage by the handle. The wagon is somewhat blocked by the car on one side and the wall of the garage on the other. Lacking sophisticated spatial relations, I go at it unsuccessfully from every possible angle, while my sister sits patiently in the wagon itself. Eventually, I tire of my fruitless maneuverings with the handle and manfully drag the wagon out of the garage by pulling at the sides.
My Sister—is renowned for pulling up a peony plant by the roots at my fifth birthday party. We were each meant to pick a peony flower, which are always in bloom for my June birthday, for my father’s movie camera. Dressed in a layered chiffon dress, I carefully pick a bloom from the row of plants and turn to smile at the camera. My sister, in a matching dress, tugs at the bloom, which will not cede. She continues tugging, harder and harder, pitching backward onto the ground as the plant comes out of the ground. She stands up grinning proudly for the camera, holding an entire peony bush—roots and all—in her hands.
My Brother—My father remembers him as a small child, beating happily on pots and pans with a wooden spoon under a table in our dining room on Orton Court, one of the early family homes. About his children, my father says that we are like clocks. We all tell different times.

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT
(for SJG, who helps me with the obvious)

My neighbor Bill across the street puts up outdoor Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving every year and promptly takes them down on New Year’s Day. I’ve begged him to leave them up a little longer, at least until Epiphany, when the Magi reach Jesus in Bethlehem. But he doesn’t see the logic in my reasoning and climbs up on his aluminum ladder every New Year’s afternoon to take down the lights while his wife disassembles the artificial Christmas tree indoors.

I’m always saddened to see Bill’s lights come down. At this time of year in the Upper Midwest, with only seven or eight hours of daylight, the ropes of light strung along gutters, draped over bushes, and placed in windows are testaments of faith, of awareness that the darkness is only temporary. Light, and the life it brings with it, will return.

Two years ago, SJG slipped on ice and tore the quadricep muscle of her right leg right off the knee. The diagnosis was slow to come, and in the period between the accident and the surgery to reattach the muscle, SJG spent many days at home, unable to bend or raise her leg unassisted. One evening, to lift her gloom, we drove slowly through the neighborhood to see the holiday lights. Our favorite display was a large house by the park, the house with the “Protect the American Family” sign on the front lawn that summer. Every bush and tree was strung with cream-colored lights; giant red plastic candles glowed from each window; and all the gutters, downspouts, and porch railings shown like green frames into the night. We returned home feeling hopeful.

Like many people in our neighborhood, that family leaves the lights up well into the spring, as a sort of insurance policy against eternal darkness. They counterbalance Bill and his eagerness to get his lights back into their box in the basement. And they are reminders that light can be a kind of choice, an act of will.

My siblings and I cleaned out our mother’s apartment together after her death. At first, we were frightened to enter her apartment, fearful of what we might find there, the memories, the forensic detritus, the mountains of possessions. Yet, over the days ahead-- a kindly neighbor bringing coffee and treats each afternoon--we fell into a routine, laughing one minute, weeping the next as we made our way through the layers of our mother’s life. One afternoon, the music blaring at full volume, we came together in a desperate clutch, like magnets, my sister in the middle, my brother and me on either side. We went wordlessly back to our tasks, and eventually, we’d emptied the apartment—dropped off charitable donations, placed mounds of trash curbside, loaded the rental truck with precious items to bring home. As I took a final swipe of the wet mop across the kitchen floor, the sun began to stream into the room, filling it with a golden glow. My mother had spent years filling every corner of her apartment with belongings, blocking the light with plants and window coverings. It had always seemed such a dark place, and in that moment, I realized, with surprise, that it was not naturally so.

In the years since that day, I’ve come to think that we make our own light, and it takes care and attention and a good dose of faith to maintain the flame through the dark hours until the morning comes.

POT ROAST WEATHER

Truman Capote remembered a beloved aunt, Miss Sook, in a short story--almost a prose poem, really--called A Christmas Memory. Every year, as the weather grew cold in rural 1930s Alabama, Miss Sook would exclaim, "Oh my, it's fruitcake weather!" thus initiating a frenzy of Christmas baking of individual fruitcakes for the strangers she thought of as friends.

I've never liked fruitcake, but reading about it through the mist of Capote's nostalgic reverie for a world and a youth long out of reach, I almost do. Perhaps it's the way he describes Miss Sook's devotion to the task, the effort of rounding up the ingredients, the boldness of sending one of the cakes each year to President Franklin Roosevelt, the joy of getting a letter of thanks on White House stationery. Perhaps it's the way his memories seem to twin my mother's reminiscences of summers in southeastern Missouri as a girl, where the changes in season brought persimmons and walnuts, blackberries and honey. One summer, long after my mother's girlhood, my brother and I visited our Missouri grandmother. She took us blackberry picking; or rather, she sent us over a wooden fence into the pasture where the best blackberries grew. "Watch out for the bull," she said, as she handed us our pails. "He's a mean one, but he won't charge as long as you keep to your business."

I loved my Missouri grandmother. She knew all the birds and all the flowers in her part of the world, and she not only ironed her bed linens, she starched them too. At the top of the steps leading from the kitchen to the second story was my favorite bedroom in her house, which was her parents' before her. It had a three-quarter bed--not a double, not a queen, but somewhere in between--in whose crisp sheets I would fall asleep with the windows open to the magnolias and the scent of the damp earth below.

She was a hard woman, though, with a rigid outlook on life, and my mother's sensibilities--so fluid and so highly attuned to nuance--were generally outside her mother's scope. I don't know that they liked each other much, but they had a fierce, dark love. The sort of love that creates a tension without which a person collapses from lack of self-sustaining support. I sometimes think my mother began her final collapse the minute her mother died.

After my mother's suicide, my sister and I went to the same Italian bistro every Tuesday night for two years. The fare there is simple--pasta salads, fettucine alfredo, green salads, minestrone, stromboli, pane cotta for dessert, and even a very un-Italian Key lime tarte with shavings of white chocolate on top. We spent hours over our dinners, remembering our mother together, repeating the same stories over and over, laughing at her wild humor, raging at the wounds she'd left, weeping for her suffering and for ours. This December, the third anniversary of our mother's death, we realized we hadn't been to the bistro in months, maybe even a year. So the Tuesday evening of the anniversary week, we met for dinner there and ordered Tuscan pot roast.

At first, it seemed an odd choice. But every December, I give blood in memory of my mother, and since I tend to run low on iron, I eat a lot of beef in the week or two before the scheduled blood donation. So, that night, Tuscan pot roast was the obvious choice. It was delicious. Cooked slowly in a tomato-garlic broth and served with horseradish, the meat yielded under the slightest pressure of the fork. We ate in almost complete silence.

Afterward, as we mopped up the juices with our bread, we began to recall pot roast recipes. There aren't really many, and they're all a variation of the same key ingredients: a cheap cut of beef, carrots and potatoes, and a liquid of some sort, all cooked slowly in a roasting pan at a low temperature. My mother, a gourmet cook, always swore by Lipton's onion soup mix in her pot roast. But the pot roast recipe I like best is from Elizabeth David, an English woman who wrote a number of classic cookbooks starting in the 1950s. My mother's French cooking was pulled straight out of Elizabeth David and Julia Child, and she passed her love of them to us. In her memory, at pot roast season, I'm making Elizabeth David's pot roast (which she calls a "daube").

POT ROAST (or Daube)
4 -6 ounces bacon, cut into cubes
1 tbsp olive oil
a large onion, sliced
3-pound beef roast (a cheap cut is fine)
2 cloves garlic
a bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, and a bayleaf tied up with cooking twine)
8 ounces of red wine
8 ounces of water or stock (beef, chicken, or vegetable)
2 tsp salt

Begin to saute the bacon in the olive oil in a large cast-iron dutch oven. When the bacon fat begins to run, add the onion. On top, arrange the beef and cut lengthwise into thick pieces. Add the garlic and the bouquet garni. Heat the wine separately and pour over the beef. Let it come to a boil and continue cooking for about 3 to 4 minutes. Add about the same amount of water or stock and bring to a boil again. Add the salt. Place the dutch oven in a 300-degree oven and cook the beef for about 3 hours. Serve with potatoes. (No need to thicken or reduce the juices in the pan. They'll be delicious as is.). Serves about six people.

14 DECEMBER 2005

Today is the third anniversary of my mother’s death. It’s a number, a passage of time, about which I feel not dissimilarly from my attitude toward my weight—it doesn’t reflect how I feel. These things—grief and thoughts about one’s weight—exist outside of chronology and physical space in a psychic world that has its own rules and realities. And yet, inhabiting time and a physical incarnation, we humans tend to try to force statistical quantification upon our psychic truths, as a way, I suppose, to contain what would otherwise be too wild, too unimaginable, and therefore too unmanageable for our everyday lives.

My mother bought a revolver in late September 2002. Just two and a half months later, on 14 December more or less, she lay down on her bed in her favorite pink nightie and pulled the trigger, bringing an end to many years of slow disintegration, both physical and psychological. We’re none of us sure precisely what drove her to end her life on that particular day, and over the last three years, I’ve arranged and rearranged what I know about my mother to come up with scenarios to explain her action.

What I am sure of is that she was a person less inclined than anyone I’ve ever known to contain and quantify psychic truth. She wanted her realities unmediated and in full measure; she sought out the unimaginable. Perhaps that’s why her suicide is so hard to swallow. Not because it is tragic and violent, but because it shines a light on my own inability to imagine it. In some ways, I admire my mother’s tremendous courage in ignoring rules and taboos and social strictures. Her capacity for imagination was boundless. Yet I also wonder at her inability to factor in the suffering she left in her wake; at the many ways she could break your heart. Mostly, and especially today, I simply miss her.

A KING BY ANY OTHER NAME
(Miko, left, in his first week with us)

Our new cat, whom we originally called Melchizedik, has had a number of name changes since we first brought him home last week. He's Miko now, which means "king" or "deity" in Japanese. We came up with the name somewhat by accident, not knowing its meaning at first. When we discovered its regal significance, we knew we'd hit on something. Melchizedik is also a king, so this feline was meant to have his royal name. And Miko fits him. He's sure of himself, and like a lovely Japanese print of a single fruit blossom, has a calming stillness. Here are the other names we considered, if only briefly.

Melchizedik, or Meli for short--He was dubbed "Mel" at the Humane Society, and we thought it could have been a diminutive of the name of this grand, biblical king. But it was a little too grand for this cat, and Meli never rolled off the tongue very well.

Lou--Our friend Malina mentioned this as a name she'd rejected for her cat. But it made us smile because it reminded us of a favorite character in a Woody Allen movie about a third-rate, has-been lounge singer by that name who's two-timing on his wife with a mobster's mol named Tina Musante. He makes it big at the end, and he has a big heart all along. My father wasn't so crazy about the name, so he added "Baby" afterward. Lou Baby.

Tiger Lily--This was the name that the neighborhood kids gave Miko, when they thought he was a girl. We considered keeping the name, but he's not as tough as the name implies.

Jack--A simple one-syllable name that SJG and one of my coworkers loved. But Miko's not a one-syllable cat.

Pinky--For Miko's pink nose, ears, and foot pads. This only lasted only a few minutes, though we liked the connection to "Adam's Rib," one of our favorite movies. " ' Pinky' ...with a "y" for him, "ie" for me," says Kate Hepburn to the judge, after she and Spencer Tracy have erupted into a spat, with private overtones, in the courtroom.

Karen Black--Another short-lived name, with resonance all the same. Miko is slightly cross-eyed from a certain angle, just like this marvelous campy actress from the 1970s. A good friend and his boyfriend are Karen Black groupies. They went to Massachusetts not too long ago for a Karen Black one-woman show. She was on the same plane when they flew home, and they got to introduce themselves to their idol.

Baby--For his sweet-tempered nature, and because it struck us as a name a Southerner like Truman Capote might give to a pet

Kiki--For the Greek owner of a Greek grocery store we frequent. This didn't stick either.

Mister--"Mister Mister" rolled right off the tongue, but we kept thinking of the rotten character by this name in "The Color Purple" so it didn't last.

And finally Miko, which is sticking and seems to fit. He's started to look up when I call out "Miko," so I think he's got his name.

MELCHIZEDEK

He’s been watching us since April, from his perch on the neighbor’s small balcony, from the other side of the fence surrounding our yard, from the driveway across the way. We’ve seen him chasing rodents, catching birds, and hunkering under the eaves to stay out of the rain. One bitterly cold morning last month, SJG saw him running across the street. It was 4:30 AM.

It’s been a now-and-again affair. Days and weeks have passed without a sighting, and then he’s back for several days in a row. By this summer, the neighborhood had all become aware of him, and emails flew back and forth about his vicious nature—chasing away ducks from backyard ponds, fighting with other cats, keeping birds away from feeders. But I always sensed a gentler side. Gracie next door—she’s eight years old—is in agreement. She gave him a name--Tiger Lily--thinking he was a girl.

Once, this summer, I approached very slowly, cooing in low tones, and he let me pet his smooth white fur. Another afternoon on a damp fall day, I saw him crouching under a low bush in the back garden. I put an entire can of tuna on a plate on the ground a few paces from him, retreated, and watched him gobble up the treat. But I hadn’t seen him since I left for Paris at the end of September. SJG wakes up in the night worrying about him. We leave the side door of our garage open, in case he comes our way again.

The night before Thanksgiving, I dreamt that I had him in my arms, while SJG kept our brown poodle Buddy at a safe distance. And then, the day after Thanksgiving, Buddy began a particular kind of insistent barking that usually means there’s a squirrel on the window box at the front of the house. SJG looked out the window, and there was Tiger Lily, meowing from the porch steps next door.

Tuna is a seductive lure for felines. I offered him a little container of it, talked to him in low tones, and after he’d eaten it all, gently lifted him up and into the crate SJG had waiting. He’s been to the Humane Society for a physical and other tests to make sure he’s healthy, and he’s now sound asleep in my study on the thick fleece shawl my mother gave me for Christmas years ago. We’re calling him Melchizedek, or Meli for short, after the biblical king “without father, without mother, without descent.” He came to us out of nowhere, lodged in our dreams, and will hopefully become part of our family.

BARBECUE HEAVEN

I had barbecue when I was in Kansas City (KC), Missouri, this weekend. It's barbecue heaven there, which, even if you didn't know your history, might be apparent as you land at the KC airport, where black angus cattle graze in pastures bordering the tarmac. The historic cattle drives to the railyards in KC have passed into our national lore, and though the stockyards are long gone from the city, the taste for barbecue remains.

KC-style barbecue is slow cooked over a hickory fire. The meat falls off the bone and doesn't even need the embellishment of sauce, though it's commonly served on the side. After a trip to Santa Fe last year, I became intrigued with dry rub, slow-cooked barbecue and quickly mastered the technique.

The recipe below isn't a KC barbecue recipe. It's a recipe that made its way to New Mexico with Basque sheepherders there. I offer it in tribute to the slow-cook dry rub method, which is worth the trip to the spice store and the time it takes to make this heavenly barbecue.

SLOW-GRILLED PORK

Dry Rub Ingredients:
1 TB ground ancho or New Mexican chile peppers
2 tsp ground dried chipotle or other medium-hot chile
2 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano, preferably Mexican
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp dried sage

Marinade:
1-1/2 c pineapple juice
2 TB vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves, minced

Meat:
1-3/4 pound to 2-pound pork loin, spare ribs, or baby back ribs

Directions:
1) At least six hours before cooking, or the night before, stir together the dried seasonings in a bowl. Place the meat into a plastic bag (or a couple of bags if you're doing the ribs), pour the marinade mixture over the meat, and sprinkle about 1-1/2 tablespoons of the dry-rub spice mixture into the plastic bag. Refrigerate.

2) Take the meat out of the refrigerator forty-five minutes before cooking it. Drain off the marinade and discard, place the pork on a platter, and rub the rest of the dried spice mix onto the meat. Let the meat stand at room temperature, uncovered, until time to grill.

3) Fire up the grill and turn it to a low setting. Place the meat as far away from the source of heat as you can and let it cook slowly for about an hour, turning fairly often until done. If you can keep the heat low enough (300 degrees Fahrenheit), you can extend the cooking time up to two hours, for even better effect.

4) If you've chosen a pork loin, let the meat stand for 5 or 10 minutes to seal in the juices. Then slice thinly and serve with tortillas and your favorite salsa or whatever else you commonly serve with barbecue. Serves four.

SEEING IT ALL

I've never mastered cold weather fashion. Had I the resources and the guts, I'd wear fur. In fact, I saw the coat I want in a shop window in Paris last month. I liked it because the fur was on the inside, with an elegant narrow strip facing out where the coat closes in the center. But, fur is frowned upon where I live, and I'm not up for that particular battle.

So, on Friday morning when the cab arrived at 5:50 A.M. for my ride to the airport, I debated. With high winds, only a light dusting of snow cover, and temperatures in the single digits, it was cold. Normally, I'd go for layering, with multiple sweaters and several scarves under the heavy wool coat I inherited from my father-in-law. He was a big man, over six feet tall and close to three hundred pounds. I've never understood how he actually fit into the coat, but I love the weight of it and am glad to have it. I usually then stretch a lime green fleece band over my ears, top it with a bright red wool hat from my father, slip my feet into thick Smart Wool socks and sensible Rockport hiking boots, and complete the ensemble with black wool gloves. It's a comical get-up at best. But, since I was heading to a trade show in Kansas City (KC), Missouri, where it's much warmer, I opted for more fashionable attire--an elegant black top coat, leather gloves, and the new low-heeled black leather boots I bought in France last month.

The cabbie was on time--never a guarantee--and we fell easily into conversation. I'm always intrigued by the stories cabbies have to tell, and I asked mine about the longest ride he's ever been asked to undertake for a paying customer. I imagined he'd tell me about a trip to one of the neighboring Dakotas, but instead, he recalled that when he first came to the United States (from somewhere in eastern Africa), he lived and drove a cab in Nashville. One day, a woman with three large suitcases hailed his cab and asked him to drive her to New Jersey. He wondered why she didn't simply fly there. It would be much less expensive than the $1,500 he'd charge her for the journey.

The woman answered with a long story about high blood pressure and a failed Internet romance. She'd come to Nashville that day to meet the man whom she'd been dating electronically for a year. He had dumped her the minute he met her in person, and she wanted to go back home. So my cabbie accepted the proposition, with the proviso that they would convoy with a friend who wanted to drive a new car to his girlfriend in New York City. The woman agreed, and the three of them set off that day.

The trip to New Jersey from Nashville is about fifteen hours, and the woman sat quietly in the back seat of the cab the whole way, smoking one cigarette after another. When they stopped periodically for gas or a meal, she refused food and drink, and never once in fifteen hours used the bathroom.

Somewhere in Virginia, the trio ran into heavy fog. Suddenly, a deer leapt onto the road, taking out the headlights of the cab and damaging the front grille. Wanting a police incident report for insurance purposes, the cabbie and his friend pulled over to call for help. The woman became visibly agitated, shaking uncontrollably and demanding that she and her bags be deposited down the road a stretch, where the cabbie could pick her up later. Though perplexed, the cabbie did as she requested while his friend called for help. The police arrived, the cabbie got his paperwork, and the two friends were on their way in short order, picking up the woman at the agreed-upon spot.

The rest of the trip passed without incident. The convoy crossed into New Jersey, and the woman directed them to her suburban home. As they drove up to the house, three large men in black suits--three very large men--moved forward shoulder to shoulder across the front lawn. The woman, completely calm, seemed to be expecting the giants. She stepped out of the car and pulled out her bags. One of the black-suited behemoths stepped toward the car and said to the cabbie, "Get out of here now. And don't look back."

In a flash, it all came together. This was a drop. Drugs, cash, the cabbie could only guess. He took his payment--$1,000 in cash, the rest in a personal check (which later bounced)--turned his car around and didn't look back.

In wide-eyed wonder, I exhaled. "Wow," I said. "You guys see it all." The cabbie chuckled ruefully in agreement. We wished each other safe passage and parted, he to another fare, me to the KC-bound DC9, which roared down the runway, lifting up into the skies as if we weighed no more than a feather.

RIOTS IN FRANCE

These last two weeks, a few friends, colleagues, and family members have expressed relief that I’m no longer in France and am back home…safely. They’ve been reading about and watching scenes of the urban violence that has gripped the French nation since the end of October. My father and I left Paris just as the violence was beginning; we weren’t actually aware of it until our return.

Those around me are kind in expressing relief for someone they care about, me, and in talking about the violence in France, they are bringing up a subject they know I care about, France. I point out that the violence has been confined to the immigrant ghettos that ring French cities. Tourists haven’t been targeted, and they never venture into those areas anyway. But I’m a little puzzled by the shock and surprise, even confusion, that I sense in conversation about the situation in France.

The riots in France come from within the economically and socially isolated postcolonial immigrant underclass, largely African and Muslim, in whose communities unemployment is more than three times the national average. The ugliness of racism, substandard housing, and harsh dealings with the police are daily realities. Additionally, the violence is set within the context of posturing for the upcoming French presidential elections in 2007, in which the ascending tough-talking Right offers what many view as inflammatory, insulting commentary about the immigrant communities in France; the more moderate centrist candidates talk of dialogue and action plans.

In thinking about what any kind of so-called action plan might look like, I’m reminded of the shared philosophy of former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who, in separate venues, both spoke recently of the political and human wisdom of extending generosity toward, of offering opportunities for those who face social and economic destitution. They both point out that, without hope, despairing people, whether rightly or wrongly, often turn to violence. And in many cases, as in France this month, that violence is turned inward onto the troubled community itself.

When I read about the riots across France, I see individual faces in my mind’s eye. Faces like the Arab men at the cybercafe around the corner from our Paris apartment. They run their own small business and are knit into the socio-economic fabric. But I wonder what they might turn to, what any one of us might turn to, had we no investment in the community in which we lived, no hope, no sense of a loving and promising future. I’ve seen it up close. My mother fit this exact profile. Her despair turned inward. She bought a revolver, and on December 14, 2002, pulled the trigger and ended her life.

RADIANCE

For my mother, who would have been seventy-one today

As my father and I help the chauffeur put our bags into the back of the taxi mini-van, the boulangere (baker) and the man from the papeterie (card and paper shop) next door to us step onto the sidewalk on their respective sides of the street to wish us bon voyage. I feel a pang. My efforts to befriend my neighbors in Paris have paid off, and here I am leaving them behind. With a promise to return next year, I step into the taxi, and we head off to the airport for the flight home.

On the airplane, my father and I eat the sandwiches and the sables (sugar cookies) the boulangere had packed for us that morning, watch movies on our individual video screens, and try to sleep. Now and then, I crawl over my father into the aisle to stretch and make a walking tour of the cabin. In the back of the plane, two seated flight attendants look up as I come toward them, move their legs to make room for me to squeeze past, and go back to their woeful tales of debt and family treacheries. Looking out the window from my seat, I wonder if home will seem any different. Or will it be as if I’d never left?

My father is a man of the moment. When we set foot on American soil, he’s left Paris far behind. Walking out of the customs area and toward our connecting flights, he stops a complete stranger to get the details of the World Series, which took place while we were in Paris. I’ve read in Le Monde that the Chicago White Sox had won, but he wants more than that. And the young man my father grabs is friendly and obliging. He tells us about the games, and by the time we finally part, he’s shared half his life story and gleaned as much of ours. I know I’m home. Immediate intimacy is not the French way.

My father and I part with little sentimentality. We hug and agree to call each other when we arrive home. I watch him as he heads off to catch his flight. He doesn’t look back, though I watch him until he’s out of sight.

The final leg of my journey comes with a West Virginia accent. The man in the row behind me is from that state and is terrified of flying. He informs anyone who will listen—and that’s half the airplane, since he’s talking at top volume—that he’s got ahold of his seat cushion, just in case we go down. As we land, safely, he exhales with obvious relief and exclaims, “My God! It’s flat as a pancake here! Donch’all have any mountains around here?”

Home doesn’t seem to have changed much, but I can tell that I’m seeing it differently. I’d somehow overlooked what a friendly lot we Americans are, easy with strangers, quick to laugh, sure the fellow next to you will want to hear your tale.

And when I return to work two days later, people do want to hear my tale. They ask about the cooking, the weather, traveling with my father. Peggy, hired just before I left, has an office next to mine. She loves Paris and wants to hear the long version. So I tell her of not just loving, but of being in love with Paris, of the joy of speaking French and deepening my mastery of the language, of learning new culinary techniques, of exploring new corners of the city. She interrupts me mid-sentence. “My,” she observes. “You’ve got such a glow!”

Her words catch me off guard. They take me back to the final conversation my sister had with our mother, just two weeks before our mother’s death. In that conversation, on the phone, my mother had said she hadn’t always known what life was all about. “But,” she told my sister, “I’ve come to see that it’s all about radiance.”
My sister expressed shock. “You’ve always known that!” she insisted, trying to impress this fact upon our mother. “You taught us that.”

My mother lived a life of radiance from start to finish, never going half measures on anything. It’s true that her glow was dark, as often if not more than it was brilliant, but she always shone. And to the extent that radiance is a form of love, of being so full of something that the surfeit comes out as brilliant energy, I sometimes think I can feel my mother’s radiance, from the other side, and I want to believe that today, on her birthday, as on every other day, she can feel mine.