Worlds Colliding

In seven months (give or take) of trading stories with Henry, I have heard a lot about Henry’s friend from Minnesota -- the guy who, with his startlingly agreeable wife, owns and runs an apple orchard in his spare time. In the heavily Jewish enclave of Brooklyn where I grew up, we would just go out and buy our apples (in a store called The Orchard, of course), where the fruit is always shiny and perfect and somebody else has gotten his fingernails dirty to keep away the rot and the worms. Not that shopping at The Orchard is all that easy, by the way, as anyone who has ever tried to park on Coney Island Avenue would know.   

As luck would have it, our jaunts to southwest Florida coincided, and I would finally get to meet the apple orchard folks. I liked Henry's friend from Minnesota immediately, the tall bearded guy waving his arms at us from the other side of the bar. Lanky and, I could tell even from a distance, ridiculously good-natured. Even his wife exuded warmth. Lutherans, no less. I would have expected them to be quiet, more reserved, hardened by the Minnesota cold and a little bland, like Jello. Not that I'd ever buy into stereotypes.  

Dinner was filled with stories of adventure, with each of us trying to one-up the other. We Jews got trounced. They regaled us with tales of near death on black diamond ski runs and strict codes of conduct for compassionate deer hunting and scuba diving in murky waters with sharks. We fought back hard, trying to entice them over to our hotel the next day to plunge down plastic water slides into heated pools and brave the exhilarating current of a lazy river without the security of an inner tube. Extreme skiing, rifle toting hunters, meet bunny hill afficionados who think hunting is the thing you do with real estate agents. Still, we seemed to have much in common. 

They invited us over to their vacation rental for dinner the following night. They would grill. So much for the long list of restaurant recommendations my friend had given me, but I was happy to make a sacrifice to spend more time with my new friends from Minnesota. My heart sank a little when they mentioned they’d be grilling fish (I'm a card carrying carnivore), but at least it would be grouper. I like grouper. I just have a thing about catfish, which seemed to be a popular menu item in those parts. Later, I explained all this to Henry, who was a little worried. I assured him I would never offend my hosts, and anyway there was nothing to worry about as long as I didn’t have to eat catfish.  

Well, you can guess where this is going. When I said I would never offend my hosts, apparently I was lying. My knee jerk horrified squeal was a dead giveaway. Henry was mortified. There’s nothing rational about my aversion to catfish, other than they’re ugly and I avoid eating things with whiskers. I choked down a bite. I’m sure it was delicious, but all I tasted was ugly hairy bottom feeder. I moved it around on my plate as best as I could, and ultimately onto Henry’s. You can take the girl out of Brooklyn, but you just can’t make her eat catfish. 

Now that Henry and I are out of the way, they are probably sky diving and surfing and trolling the gulf waters for catfish. Back in the land of delicacies like deep dish pizza and big fat juicy steaks, I remember fondly my risk-taking meals with my new friends from Minnesota. 

Unjust Desserts

My friend thought she might bake the other day.  That, or nap, or visit her son at the cemetery. It will be two years, tomorrow, since he died. Since that day, there has been much that has made little sense, but still, nothing beats that horrific call. Nap, bake, visit your child who should be 29 years old now at the cemetery. Not your garden variety daily decision, like white or red wine, say, but her options didn't really strike me as odd.

Napping is always a good choice, but I wanted to encourage a more active form of distraction. Without even thinking, I shot back a text: BAKE. A visit to the cemetery would hardly take her mind off things. As if her mind is ever really off "the thing." I reconsidered.

It was a crisp sunny day. I have gone with my friend only a couple of times to visit Adam's grave, and only on sunny days. The setting is beautiful, ridiculously serene. Emphasis on the ridiculous, obviously. Nobody should ever have to bury a child. We drink coffee by his grave -- as Adam was wont to do -- and I glare at the bouquet of flowers and granite marking his spot, silently asking him how he could have let his heart fail him, fail my friend, fail all of us who knew him. A flower petal moves in the breeze, and I know he's rolling his eyes.

By the time I texted with my revised opinion -- CEMETERY -- my friend had already decided to split the baby in threes. She would nap first, then visit Adam, then bake later. Dessert last. I was worried the nap might last too long, one of those "pull your covers over your head until the pain goes away even though it never does" naps, but I knew she would not keep Adam waiting. And, for Adam's sake, and for her own sake, and for the sake of all who know her and love her, she would bake.

I told my friend to give Adam a hug for me. He was a hugger extraordinaire; his arms would rise in an automatic semi-circle whenever he'd run into someone important in his life, which was pretty much everyone he met. Even my mother remembers watching him greet my daughter, his lifelong friend, once, when they ran into each other while we were all on vacation, as if they had not seen each other in years. It had been two days, at most.

I also told my friend to give Adam a kick in the butt for me, just because I'm still a little angry. His death was beyond his control, beyond anybody's control, unless you want to spend a lot of time Monday morning quarterbacking and still end up with him gone. I suppose I shouldn't really be angry with him, but to take it out on God would be to forget about all the good stuff that same God has bestowed upon me and the people I love. This was, for all of us, a really bad call, but I try not to be greedy. I try really hard.

My friend sent me a copy of the recipe she had chosen for the day, an odd marriage of babka and brioche. I couldn't even begin to imagine how many sticks of sweet butter she'd have to toss into her KitchenAid mixer to make that concoction work. But that's what she does. She works hard, each day, to find some sweetness in the most bitter pill.

Walks in the Park

It's tough not to like a place where everyone calls you darlin'. Not in a #MeToo kind of patronizing way, not in a way that suggests you're insignificant. Quite the opposite, actually. If anything, it's the otherwise invisible people who call you that, the waitresses and the busboys and the streetcar conductors and the check out clerks in the grocery store.

Okay, it's not just the darlin' thing that makes me love New Orleans. It's the way they do food so well. It's the chicory in the coffee. It's the perpetually buckled streets that force the traffic to move slowly. The alcohol, the music, the tongue in cheek art. It's the inevitable mosaic of humanity, even on streets lined with stately mansions.

We were walking through Audubon Park, my daughter and I, and I could not stop wondering about the gentleman in front of us. He walked at a decent pace but with a limp. He was tall and thin, with a robin's egg blue and white striped rugby style shirt tucked into his baggy work-out pants. The shirt reminded me of a shirt I had in college, in the seventies, when either those shirts were in vogue or I just dressed that way, for some reason.

I never saw the man's face, but I assumed he was older -- not necessarily that much older than I, but at least a little bit. It struck me that he was young, or at least younger, once. In the seventies, when I was wearing boyish rugby style shirts on my late blooming body, this man was young and strong, without a limp. That's what I kept thinking anyway.

I shared my thoughts with my daughter, concerned that she might think I was doing that crazy mom thing again, going somewhere in my head she had no interest in visiting. I forget, sometimes, that she's grown up now, not only wiser than I am but a person to whom I can even turn for advice. She nodded about the limping man in front of us, and told me she often wonders what kind of day people are having. Faces are generally blank, hiding the fears and the crises and the struggles of the day, but she finds herself keenly aware that everybody walks around with a headful of thoughts, sometimes good, sometimes not so much. To realize that is to know how important it is to treat people well, even in passing. How important it is to call people darlin', and how nice it is to be on the receiving end of such a random kindness.

Yesterday, back north where people tend to keep their darlin's to themselves, I sat in a restaurant, eating lunch while I worked. A young woman at the table across from me was already sipping a martini while she waited for her salad. We smiled at each other, silently. Good for her, I thought, a martini at three o'clock. When I looked up at her again, she was talking quietly on her phone, crying, using the edges of her napkin to wipe her eyes. I wanted to go over to her when she put down her phone, tell her I had one of those days last week, and would no doubt have another one in the future. I wanted to tell her it would all be okay, call her darlin'. I didn't, but I was reminded of how complicated everything can be behind a smile, or a scowl, for that matter.

I think back to the gentleman in Audubon Park, limping, in the robin's egg blue and white striped rugby style shirt. That's all I know about him, which is really nothing at all.

Diff'rent Strokes....

A guy walks into a bar. It's Henry, actually, and I'm with him. It's Friday, it's colder than a witch's, um, broom, and there's no good reason to be doing anything other than sitting at home under a pile of blankets. But it's Friday, and this bar is the kind of place where they remember you even if you've only been there a few times, and before you've even made a dent in your layers of outerwear they've started making you a drink.

Friday evening in a bar is like a DMZ between weekday and weekend. This one isn't my usual neighborhood haunt, so I can make up my own stories to attach to the anonymous faces. Not that I really know the truth about anyone's story, even the folks I see all the time, but in somebody else's "local," I get to start from scratch.

It was crowded, but I was happy to just watch and imagine. The bartender let us know who was just waiting for a take out order so we could stake our claim to the next open stools. I hovered next to an odd looking guy who immediately mentioned how cold it was outside. I smiled politely in agreement, though I did note it was winter. He mentioned the cold a few more times and I agreed a few more times. His pizza arrived and I told him to stay warm. He reminded me again how cold it is, and I smiled and took his seat.

The owner told me they call that guy "the weatherman." Go figure. Henry wanted to know if they have nicknames for everyone. "Only the annoying ones," he told us. I thought about all the nicknames I've acquired over the years, and I felt a little uneasy. Some people are so annoying, though, he told us, they don't deserve nicknames. That's when he told us about Hazel, which is not her real name but not a nickname either.

He printed out a copy of Hazel's last receipt for us. It was about 18 inches long. Veggie Panini. Price: $0.00. Hazel had complained about something, which she usually does, and her veggie panini was on the house. Which I suppose made sense anyway, because here were the "specs" (with capitalization and punctuation as they actually appear);
NO cup marinara sauce,
NO spinach,
NO tomato,
NO carrots,
NO onions,
NO zucchini,
NO basil,
NO olive oil,
NO salt!!!,
No pepper,
No seasoning,
No oil or basil on bread,
No salt no pepper no seasoning,
Extra peppers,
NO SIDE,
No mushrooms,
Do Not Cut,
Red Yellow Peppers,
Fresh bread,
Don't cut,
Don't overcook.

A vegetarian nothing burger. As far as I could tell, peppers on bread, but no pepper. Supposedly Mr.

Hazel is nice, so his order must have been the next item. Basil Chicken Panini. $8.25. They should pay him, just to keep her home. Maybe the smiling and benevolent Mr. Hazel knows something about Hazel that the rest of us don't see, cannot even imagine. Anyway, who am I to judge? Given the choice between Hazel's pepper sandwich with no pepper and the jar of "pickled pigs lips" I saw on a shelf in New Orleans the other day, I'm with Hazel.

Every bar needs a Hazel and a weatherman and a bunch of people like me and Henry who are just transitioning over from day to evening or from weekday to weekend. And every person should have a place or two to walk into, especially on a cold Friday night in January.

"O" -- Say, Can You See?

Almost ten years ago, I joined my cousin, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law, who had flown in from both coasts, at a taping of an Oprah show. It was my cousin’s birthday gift from her husband, who somehow managed to parlay some magical connections into four tickets. I’d like to think I was there because I’m a favorite cousin, but I’m pretty sure the fact I live in Chicago had something to do with it.

At the time, I could take Oprah or leave her, leaning a little bit toward the latter. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to be included in the weekend adventure, which promised to include lots of wining and dining and girl bonding.

If anything, my tendency toward the negative was enhanced the moment we arrived at HARPO studios, where security was so tight it made the TSA look amateurish. Like everyone else, though, we waited like cattle, first in one holding area and then in another, while imposing (and quite handsome, I might add) security guards watched over us like hawks and admonished us constantly about cell phone use. We all obeyed — we were too intimidated not to. Well, except for my cousin, but that’s another story for another time.

Unlike all the other audience members, the four us wore black, which meant we would not be given front row seats. Or get called upon for a question. We sat in a side section, invisible as  sand on the left flank of a giant peacock. I was relieved; I would not feel compelled to look enthusiastic for the cameras. I could even fall asleep if I felt like it.

I don’t even remember what the show was about. What I do remember was I had heard that at the show taped right before ours, everyone had walked out with a brand new Kindle. We got a a little bag of beauty products. I’m guessing the show matches the swag.

What I remember most, though, is how my feelings about Oprah changed. She was relatively heavy at the time, stuffed into a stylish canary yellow suit and gorgeous but sadistic pumps. During breaks, she removed her shoes, and looked desperate to remove the suit as well. No matter what, though — whether the cameras were rolling or not — Oprah worked her butt off. She was masterful with her guests, and she was masterful with her audience. It was as if we were in her living room, and as much as she clearly yearned to put her hair in a ponytail and scrub the layers of makeup off her face and slip into sweats, she chatted with us, joked with us, connected with us, treated us as guests should be treated. And, when a segment seemed less than perfect, she squeezed back into the shoes and did it again, without complaint. I understood, then, why Oprah had become an empire. She had earned it.

I have no idea whether Oprah should or could or even wants to be President. As far as I’m concerned, the bar is so low now just about anybody I know would be a better pick than the one we’re stuck with. But I am hoping that we, as a country, have at least hung on to enough dignity to never again turn a presidential campaign into a celebrity casting call.

After the taping, the four of us were invited for a brief audience with Oprah — part of my cousin’s amazing birthday surprise. Oprah came to greet us, noticeably and understandably exhausted, still in her television duds but her makeup slightly melted. We took a picture, four invisible grains of sand flanking a brilliant and rare bird. I’m sure we could do worse, but we deserve more than stagecraft.

Dark Hours

The best thing about going to a 4:30 movie (other than it was a really good movie) was that Henry and I felt young. Even though nobody flinched when we got the Senior discount. (For the record, I just got grandfathered in, so to speak, as the true Senior's companion).

In the garage, we got detained helping an elderly couple -- he had a walker, she was wearing some sort of oxygen mask -- get into their car. I've told you before, Henry is pathologically kind, and folks in need seem to find him, like homing pigeons. We didn't mind the hold up, except that the movie was about to start and we didn't have tickets yet. Luckily, when you're way on the younger end of the Senior crowd, a leisurely walk up the stairs is just as good as a sprint, and we managed to snag ourselves some decent seats.

The movie -- The Darkest Hour -- opened silently. Well except for the rustling of Henry's popcorn bag and the occasional loud wonderings in the elderly audience about why the sound was off. Eventually, the on-screen dialogue began, Henry finished his popcorn, and I settled in to lose myself in whatever thoughts the story conjured up. I was in Britain in the early 1940's, an ordinary citizen plodding through my ordinary days in a slow motion fog while a madman was getting dangerously close and a bunch of stodgy old white men determined my fate. Somehow, a fat ornery guy in a pink bathrobe took the helm.

I'm a bit rusty on my history (if I ever really knew it in the first place) and I'm terrible about remembering the details but the past fascinates me in its extraordinary potential for repetition. We humans have a fairly limited repertoire; the styles change, the technology changes, the "buttons" get bigger -- but the cast of characters remains constant. Unlikely heroes, wisdom in simplicity, folly in supposed wisdom, and a surprisingly delayed reaction to a building avalanche of evil.

We live in dangerous times, and we need a fat ornery guy in a pink bathrobe to take the helm. Somebody with a brain and a heart. At the very least, we need a malignant narcissist who lacks any shred of decency to be removed, before it's too late. We need someone who would ride on a train with regular people without fear of infection, with a true desire to hear what they think. We need someone who might seem cruel in his demand for perfection from his secretary but will tear up when he learns her story, and will take time to explain what's going on behind the scenes, when she knows enough to be frightened but not enough to understand how frightened she needs to be. We need someone whose spouse, behind the scenes, loves him despite the sacrifices she has had to make, or maybe because of them, and knows better than anybody that he is the best person to take care of everybody else. Somebody whose wife doesn't recoil when he grabs her hand, whose wife is able to keep a loving smile on her face without the help of Botox.

I like to think that somebody, or a group of somebodies, or maybe all of us who just ride the train or disappear into our invisibility every day, will rise up and stop the avalanche before it's too late. I want to be around to properly claim my Senior discount, to watch with envy as young kids in their late fifties and early sixties sprint past me. I think about this, as I sit comfortably in a movie theater, munching on popcorn, hoping the whispering will stop so I can pay attention to the story, and everything it conjures up.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, Sorta

Henry and I were out having breakfast the other day, New Year's Eve morning actually, the last Sunday of 2017. Henry is the guy I have been dating for six months, although his name is not really Henry, but I thought I'd protect his identity for a bit. I've written about Henry before, as an unnamed "friend," which is beginning to get on his nerves, I think. At my age, I feel silly using the word "boyfriend" -- Henry's boyish charm notwithstanding -- so the pseudonym, for now, is my best option. 

This isn't about Henry, though; it's about Sunday breakfast, one of life's greatest pleasures. Well, I suppose it's a little bit about Henry, since we have enjoyed lots of Sunday breakfasts together for six months, but if anything, it's about Sunday breakfast with Donna. Donna is her real name, and I think of her as a friend, a girlfriend even, though I have only met her twice. Well, met her once, then saw her again, to be more accurate. 

Just after Henry and I ordered our eggs last Sunday, I looked up and saw Donna coming in, though I could not for the life of me remember her name. As politely as I could, I pointed her out to Henry. He was skeptical. He hasn't grasped, yet, that I'm rarely wrong. 

A few weeks earlier, on another Sunday at a different breakfast joint, Donna had apologized as she squeezed by our table to settle in on the booth side, next to Henry. She seemed a little self-conscious about her ample tush, which I assured her was much tinier than she imagined. What I noticed first about her was her perky crimped bob and her broad smile. What I noticed, after a few minutes, was that she was eating alone. I can be friendly sometimes, and Henry is pathologically friendly. We struck up a conversation -- about kids, and books, her age -- early seventies, and maybe even the weather. Nothing special, but Donna made an impression. 

I kept my eye on Donna on this New Year's Eve Sunday, building my case for Henry. It's the same lady.  Alone. The perky bob. The warm smile, even with nobody smiling back at her. Henry was on board, and we spent much of our precious breakfast time trying to remember her name. We weren't even close, it turns out, but let's face it, Henry isn't even really Henry. 

When she got up to leave, I told Henry we needed to hurry, because she would not pass by our table. I feel like I know Donna, or at least I know how self-conscious she is about her tush, and I could see the path that would lead her in our direction was narrowed by a large man in a chair pulled way out from his table. I was right, of course; she took the long way around. Henry and I grabbed our coats and intercepted her. She remembered us -- though not our names which, like I said, is not important. 

Donna told us that her husband had died, quite suddenly, 22 years ago. I did the math -- that would have put her in her early fifties. Donna decided, 22 years ago, that she would take herself out to breakfast every morning, because otherwise, she feared, she would spend the rest of her days in bed, curled up in the fetal position. She was, I suppose, desperately trying to fill the void. I don't know what the rest of Donna's day looks like, after breakfast, but I am quite certain that, in filling her own void, she has filled a few others. She delivered hugs to all the waiters on her way out, and she touched our hearts, for the second time. We are determined to find her again, when we go out for our Sunday breakfast.

It was a perfect start to an  auspicious New Year's Eve. Breakfast with Henry. Me, eating what Henry refers to as my "Seymour omelet" -- eggs with lox and grilled onions, my father's favorite. No Bloody Mary, but life's not perfect, and Donna was there to round out the feast.