Making Minestrone with Monkeys

Warm the oil. Wait for that faint, sweet-hot smell of gently heated olive oil and then, deep breath, begin. First come the fruits from deep within the earth. The strong and the flavorful, heavily scented and full of their own magic oils - the onion and the garlic. Sizzle, stir and wait. Not too long, mere seconds... there it is. The garlic. Quickly now, the next layer. The hearty and the strong, roots and stalks - bright carrots and elusive but distinct celery. These are your work horses. They hold up to the heat, the longest simmerers, the taste of comfort. Throw in some salt to make them shine. Snipped oregano from the yard: pungent, peppery, furry little leaves to draw out the celery and make her dance. Cover and wait. Let the salt work its crystalline magic and coax the flavors, rooty and earthy, from these foundational elements.

A good minestrone is made in layers. When the corners are softened, it's time for the gentle greens of the fruits that grow from flowers: peppers, zucchini, green beans. These are more delicate bits, full of their own tears of joy. They need a warm bath to ease their company with the heartier roots. The stock, some tomato puree, a splash of red wine for its decadence and a little more salt. The pot is filling, these layers of flavor need time to mingle and sort themselves out. A gentle simmer and the lid goes on. Longer this time, leaving plenty of time for all to get acquainted. We wait. We wipe the counters, knead the bread. Tiny fingers dimple the surface to create divots that will catch melted butter and hold the crunch of sea salt. The focaccia goes in the oven and we dance a moment while we wait.

With a savory billow of steam, we lift the cover and check our soup so far. A sip of the broth and a sprinkle of black pepper, a pinch more salt, but not too much. These roots and fruits can speak for themselves and they are slowly assembling into a powerful chorus. We add the temperamental sopranos - fresh diced tomatoes and some baby spinach. The bass notes of cannellini beans and a handful of pasta. They rehearse together in the pot with burbles and a steady, thumping rhythm of a slow boil. The bread is done, fresh and steaming from the oven, wrapped in fresh white towels to keep the heat and the chewy, dense crust. My maestros of minestrone let it tend to itself after taking a tiny taste of its harmony and declaring it perfect.

Attention is turned to the sweets. Little, rich, decadent balls of batter - chocolate within chocolate - are carefully rolled in stark, white powdered sugar and carefully lined up on parchment paper. These little, gooey chocolate soldiers in ranks are cautiously directed to the oven where they will harden and crackle on the outside, while staying soft and yielding within. Tiny patient fingers and tongues wait until all the rolling and lining is done before they lick their sweet reward - remnants of sugar and chocolate dough. Again we wait. We smell and we linger, peeking in the oven's window through dish towel curtains, counting down the minutes. The raw taste of batter and sugar was only a tease and whetted our appetites for more - warm and fresh from the oven.

And now for the very best part. We fill bowls with lids, bag up loaves and cookies, write love notes, and load them in the car. One friend has been sick. Another has lost a loved one. Both said they were fine. We want to make them finer. The monkeys ring doorbells and dance from foot to foot in the excitement of a job well done and anticipation of being able to surprise.

A good minestrone is made in layers. The hearty and the homely work together with the delicate and fragile, they meet in common space and become sublime. A good minestrone is the hearty warmth of a rich soup with the light and verdant promise of brightness to come. It can warm you when the air is still chilly and speak to you quietly of summer days. When paired with the conundrum of focaccia - both light and airy and firm and substantial - it becomes complete. The warm yeasty pockets that were made to sop up the last of the broth, the crunch of salt to add the sea to the summer vegetables, the toothsome and the tender. And to round it out, a touch of sweetness. The dark excess of chocolate on chocolate, dipped in the flightiest of sugars to powder your lips and your fingers. The ending note of the grand symphony started by garlic and oil.

These layers take patience, they take time. They take a little bit of magic and a lot of love. They are the very least we can give to our friends.

Tangled Small Talk: The Sisterhood of the Blurt

Have I mentioned that I am a secret agent? Probably not. It's a secret. It doesn't have to be a secret from you, though. Unless you are in the marketing department of a major grocery store chain, in which case you should probably just forget you read this. It's mostly a secret because it embarrasses me. I am a mystery shopper and have earned (I am not making this up) "premier agent status" because of the timeliness and accuracy of my work. Which essentially means that when the company is in a pickle, they call me and offer me extra money to drop everything and go to the grocery store of their choosing. It is a great power I wield, I realize. Do not be too impressed. It is my academic pride that finds this whole affair embarrassing and I frequently get disgruntled that I am pretty much a digital age Donna Reed with much shabbier clothes and wonder if I should give Betty Friedan a call for some advice. Except she's dead.

Today I had on my secret agent hat. It looks very much like my every other day hat. Which depends on what day it is, what the weather is, and the state of my hair. Today my secret agent hat was a basic gray knit toque - the sort that are favored by bank robbers and hipsters. I felt my bowler hat was a little conspicuous, my red silk cloche has grown suddenly to Mushmouth proportions and tickles my nose and it's not quite time yet for my cream linen floppy hat. These are essential details, ones over which I agonize most mornings when leaving the house. So I and my secret agent hat dropped the Hooligan off at school and then off to a local natural foods store where I had a list of 88 items for which to collect pricing data. Glamorous, no? It involves a lot of skulking around, pretending to be reading labels while glancing at the products in question, making a mental note of the prices, then running around the corner to a vacant aisle and scribbling down the prices on my oh-so-official sheet of paper before I forget them. And repeat.

Except today I ran into an acquaintance in the midst of my duties. Actually, I was pondering the six different brands of tofu in all of their assorted flavors and consistencies and wondering why, with so much selection, was the brand I needed absent? And this acquaintance of mine tapped me on the shoulder and said hello. Startled out of my secret agent tofu reverie, I jumped and said hello. She is a lovely woman. Her daughter is in the same grade as my daughter and they live up the hill from us. We see them occasionally on our walk to school and chat a bit. Have I mentioned that my small talk skills are appalling? The last time I saw this woman, we were both hurrying our respective charges up the last few stairs into the playground as the late bell was ringing, simultaneously advising the girls to "RUN!" So as we walked back toward home, we had a few blocks to chat. We discussed the new, earlier, start time at school this year and how it is well into the second semester and we are all still adjusting. I admitted to a certain wasting of fossil fuels from time to time in just driving the jBird the twelve blocks to school to save time and tardy slips. So far, so good. One more block to go without saying anything alarming or embarrassing. I could do this. Or not. "Yeah! Sometimes I just drop her at the corner and watch her until she goes into the school grounds so that I don't see anyone because I haven't brushed my teeth and I may be wearing my husband's shoes!" This was the last sentence I had said to this woman before I bumped into her in the grocery store today.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't see you. I was mesmerized by the tofu!"
She laughed and said, "Yes, it can be overwhelming." Yes, of course, tofu can be completely overwhelming. Everyone knows that.
"I suppose it doesn't matter much which kind I buy because I just grind it up and hide it in my children's food." I don't do this very often and when I do it is more out of financial considerations than nutritional or spiritual ones.
"Well, you should try this kind. It's to be savored, though. It's delicious." She hands me something that looks like a shrink-wrapped turd.
"Oh look! Tamari soaked grilled tofu! Mmmm." Both my monkeys and my husband would outright revolt if I served them shrink-wrapped turd for dinner and told them it was "to be savored" so, of course, I throw it in my cart.

Our discussion carries quite naturally from tofu to eating disorders and our own particular neuroses and how we create worse neuroses in our children by trying to rid them of all neuroses, etc. Meanwhile, in this tiny urban grocery store we are sandwiched between the tofu and the gluten free bread and at least five other shoppers are forced to edge around us and ask us to pass them things. And then the most glorious thing happened: an event of such epic proportions that has won me a dear friend for life. We got to that awkward point in a chance meeting chitchat sort of conversation where you know it needs to end or become strange but you're not quite sure how to make an exit, especially if you're blocking traffic in prime grocery store real estate discussing eating disorders.

Brief pause, and she says:
"Well, I have to go now because I am on my period and I feel like I might fall over because it's so heavy."
I very nearly hugged her and danced for joy. I have met, in the flesh, a kindred spirit in blurting bizarre personal information in inappropriate circumstances. In this simple declaration, she freed me from ever being nervous about talking to her again. Sure, she's beautiful and fit and smart and has the curly red hair I have coveted my whole life, but she blurts things! Giddy with our new found discovery, we stood blocking the grocery aisle* another five minutes or so, happily blurting things at one another. And then, as if it could get any better, we both did an awkward about-face and trotted off in our separate directions while blurting a few additional tidbits about constipation and not showering regularly over our shoulders.

I trundled around the grocery store for another hour, collecting prices on my list and some random groceries in my cart to make it look like I was doing something, feeling no longer like a beleaguered housewife doing housewifely things, but empowered. I am a secret agent, an odd duck who does random things to help out her family, and a Blurter. I am part of a sacred sisterhood who will never show up to Pilates with a skinny no-whip mocha and a fresh manicure. We of The Blurt will occasionally schlep to school in strategically disguised pajamas and men's shoes but we will never be called upon to solicit big-ticket items for the PTA auction. We are a sacred society of the un-cocktail party, where we can speak earnestly and suddenly, with too many exclamation points of bodily functions, strange growths, or the rat we found in our garage! We are there, diverting our morning breath with a cups of coffee, giving and receiving shrink-wrapped turds which we never intend to eat, hiding our premier agent status behind a journal and a grocery list, and lopping off conversations with non-sequitur! We are small in number, but mighty in courage! Hear us blurt! We are not alone!



*This sort of aisle hogging behavior, when conducted by others, sends me around a bend I don't like to visit. I completely realize the hypocrisy in this. I would, however, consider not getting upset if the aisle hoggers were of the Sisterhood of the Blurt. I would probably just blurt something random at them.

I Have This Friend...

I want to tell you about a friend of mine.
She is a tough lady. One of those gracefully tough ladies that manages to be made of bedrock and still keep her mascara straight. She works full time, helps tend to her paraplegic son, volunteers for just about anything that needs to be done. She's a woman of faith. She teaches children's Bible classes, she brings food and comfort to people who are sick or just need it. She's the one who will send that card, make that phone call, give that hug. She owns a cabin in the foothills of the Cascades, and that's where you'll find her every weekend. In the summer she goes hiking, white water rafting. She invites great hordes of people out to share her little piece of paradise with her. In the winter you'll find her splitting wood, still hiking, and puttering along the river that runs through her cabin's back yard. She's the one with a smile and a kind word. She can find a true compliment to give anyone, not just an "aren't you sweet" but something real, something specific, something that means something to the recipient. She's got the biggest laugh. Some of her biggest laughs come at her own expense. She's just one of those people that you are both proud to know and want to be.

Did I mention that she's 71? She's more active at nearly twice my age than I am, and it shames me. She would be the last person to shame me for it, though. She would be one of the first to praise my efforts and cheer me on.

This past week, she walked into the doctor's office with troublesome indigestion and walked out with pancreatic cancer. I feel like I'm the one who has been hit in the guts. It is the beginning of the end for her.

I gave her a hug today and cried. I told her how sorry I was, that if there was anything I could do to please let me know. These are not adequate words for someone who means so much to me. These are not adequate words and only the paces we go through, the things we repeat when something so large, so painful, so menacing eats the vocabulary we use with each other. So I say them and hate myself for using the same words that everyone else does. For using words that don't cover half the distance of my grief.

But she's a gracious woman. She returned my hug and shared my tears, and then she gave me these words:
"I don't want you to cry over me. I'm scared, but I am at peace. I've spent this week looking over my life and I can honestly say that I don't have any regrets. There are a couple of things that I ask myself: Could I have done more? Probably. But I did the best I could at the time and I'm all right with that. I don't know what's going to happen to my body or when, but I feel good now. I'm alive now. I will be alive until I'm not, and that's OK. I'm so blessed to have had a chance to get to know you and your family. Don't cry, honey. I really feel at peace. We'll just see what happens next."

I don't have the words. I can't paint the swelling lump of cold that rises in me. I can't describe the way she melted that lump and it has leaked out my eyes. I don't have sufficient words. But I do have this friend. This strong and graceful friend. This friend who has shown me in so many ways how to live, and now she's going to show me how to die.

Choose An Identity

This is not an actual photo of me.

In the movie, You've Got Mail, Tom Hanks has this voice over scene in a designer coffee chain where he's talking about the modern obsession with fancy coffees. It's been a long time since I've seen the movie (I was so disheartened when I got my hair cut like Meg Ryan's in that movie and instead of looking like the adorable girl next door, I kind of looked like Elvis Presley. I digress.) but he comes to the conclusion that our exacting coffee orders are a way for us to be someone. I'm not just some poor schlub waiting for overpriced coffee, I'm triple! nonfat! venti! cappuccino! (Incidentally, I am so not that. I am Double Tall Latte, should you ever be buying.) That scene never fails to crack me up because as my husband likes to say in his "Dr. Phil guest" voice: "It's funny because it's true."

As society becomes more homogenized, we find ways to delineate ourselves, stand apart a bit. In high school, I had a lot of friends that went to British schools and wore uniforms. The point behind the uniforms being that it is less disruptive socially to just have everyone wear the same thing. Except that even so, you could still tell who was "cool" and who was not. Things like whether or not you pulled up your socks, or how close to askew your tie was became status indicators. We can't help it. We're hierarchical animals. We seek out others who resemble us and we use tiny, sometimes trivial clues to identify our comrades.

I resist being pigeon-holed because I like to believe I am a unique snowflake. Not really. I resist it because I am claustrophobic. I believe it is unfair to boil people down to a few outstanding characteristics and think of them only in that way. I put off blogging for nearly a year because I had no idea how to fill out the profile information. I can put a list of my favorite activities: cooking, knitting, sewing, playing with my monkeys, long walks in the rain, listening to music, reading books, writing nonsense, stalking people, taking naps, learning intensely personal information about relative strangers; and it leaves a very incomplete picture. It actually paints a picture of some sort of deranged old lady. (Or old man, as the email spammers seem to believe I am. So many solicitations for golf memberships, penis enlargement and AARP memberships.) I also resisted the label "mommy blogger" because while I love being a mom (or Mama, never Mommy) it doesn't entirely define me - a fact for which I have fought hard these last seven or so years - and while I will write about my monkeys from time to time, that's not all I write about. The profile is like the turned down socks on the private school uniform - one look and you just know whether that's someone you'll be friends with or not. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

One of the many wonders of Facebook is that it is an opportunity to hear from people you would otherwise never have bothered to keep in touch with. You get to hear who had a crush on you twenty years ago, who used to be afraid of you, who thought you were fabulous way back when. It's kind of like bookends on all those old insecurities. But one of the most amazing things about some of these Facebook reconnections is that people I haven't heard from in decades will pop up and say "I always respected so-and-so about you" and they are things that are still pretty true today. It's that link to something other, something prior. I have friends that I keep around because they knew me before I donned the identities of wife, mother, contributor to society, adult, taxpayer, etc. And oddly, they still know me now.

After this month of blogging every day and connecting through BlogHer, I am once again amazed at the ready connections that people make. I have been stunned speechless (almost) that some of the things that have been rolling around my noodle have hit a nerve with other people. I have been surprised and delighted to find so many wonderful bloggers out there doing just what I do - just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. I don't even know a lot of their real names, I don't know what they really look like or where some of them live, but I know what we have in common.

One of my very best friends from college came about because we both ended up in the same coffee shop one night completely fed up with ourselves and the people around us. We went someplace quiet to talk for a few hours and that few hours turned into all night. It wasn't really until we watched the sunrise from my car that we remembered that we were actually two distinct humans of different genders and the awkwardness that can arise from that. But until then, we were just two sets of ideas, eager to share, our words being our only identifying characteristics, and the comfort and sweet release of honest, uninhibited communication. I've thought about that several times over the last month of "meeting" new bloggers and reading new blogs. It's that same meeting of ideas and experience without the complications of "real life" but somehow, real life seeps in and you get a far fuller picture of people than if you simply met them on the street.

I laugh every time I leave a comment on Blogger because it always instructs me to "Choose an Identity". It cracks me up because I did that ages ago. I could be anyone I wanted to on this little blog of mine, but over the last month, I've discovered that I can't be anyone except who I am. I'll enter my log-in name and my blog address, because I know that Blogger isn't really asking me an existential question any more than Facebook is really asking "What's on your mind?" (although I must admit to a certain amount of mischievous desire to create alternate identities just for fun). My mom always says "You can't hide who you really are for very long." A notion that's both scary and liberating. Even when we try to hide behind intellectualizing or humor or whatever, who we are leaks out between the cracks. So this intense month of daily posting is over for most of us (I signed on for December because I need external motivation sometimes) but my hope is that the connection continues. Stay tuned. There will be a lot more crazy leaking out through the cracks and if you're very careful, you just might catch some magic out of the corner of your eye.

What If Wednesday

What if?
whisper slips
winking wordless
distant misty
dream shores.


What if?
screams
choked sobs
sweats
opens up the night.


Above is a cheery little poem fragment I've been working on for exactly a year today. I came across it in my journal and thought... what if? What if we play the What If Game today. If nothing else, it's an exercise in imagining alternate universes. Might come in handy if someone is writing a sci-fi novel this month. So here are a few that have been kicking around the noodle. Feel free to add your own. Feel free to provide answers if you have them, too.

There's a handsome devil

What if Florida had declared for Gore in 2000?

What if, like in a dream I had once, I had a small hand growing out of my left index finger that gave me advice?

What if the whole world simultaneously decided that Kim Kardashian has nothing to do with anything?

What if all my Facebook "friends" were actually all in the same room together?

What if my dad had gone to Canada instead of Viet Nam?

What if wishes really were horses? Can you imagine the smell?

What if I had married the first person who asked me?

What if I ate only bean nachos and sushi for the rest of my life?

What if my kids were horrible and annoying? Would I know? What if they really are and I just don't think so because I'm their mom?

What if suddenly there was no more electricity, ever? What would we all do?

What if someone actually read this blog and commented on it?