Hanging on a curtain
But that isn't the point of this post. I want
to apologize for being an absent presence in
the blogging world. I haven't been up to
visiting or commenting on blogs. Updating
this one has become increasingly
time-consuming. Because of the software I
use, every time I have a new post I must
export the entire blog and then upload it
onto a server, a process that take about half
an hour or more. It isn't simple or quick.
Writing the posts takes a long time, too,
sometimes five or six hours. I have limited
writing time and have to start pursuing
freelance work. There are a few reasons for
this, including the fact that my husband is
about to take the equivalent of an 8% salary
cut through 21 furlough days in the next
year. (Ahhh, California!) I would also like
to chip away at longer stories and to deepen
my writing which just isn't possible in the
blog format.
I'll be a more present online presence soon,
one way or another. In the meantime, please
don't take it personally that I haven't been
by. I'm trying to be present in my own life,
figuring out a way to get beyond the longing
to immerse myself in deep narrative. To move
beyond the longing, I have to leap in or give
up. I have no intention of giving up.
Image: Rainbow in Berkeley, June
2009.
Goodbye, Sidney
Sidney enjoying the yard, late June 2009.
He showed up at a
coworker's back door on New Year's Day 1995,
a half-grown kitten who needed to get out of
the Columbus, Ohio chill. The kitty was
charming, climbed up on her husband's back
while he worked in the garage, greeted the
couple with a high-pitched mew whenever they
entered the room. But they couldn't keep him,
so my boyfriend and I took the cat in, named
him Sidney. We had a six-month-old sheltie
named Loudon and he and Sidney quickly became
buddies.
By January 1996, my boyfriend and I had
gotten married and purchased a Queen
Anne-style house in a downtown Columbus
neighborhood. We'd taken in another foundling
kitten, Zoe. By mid-1998, we were living in
separate states, scheduled for divorce. I got
the cats, he kept the dog.
Yesterday afternoon, after a long illness and
slow decline, Sidney collapsed by the water
bowl in the kitchen. My husband, son and I
rushed him to the vet to be gently nudged
into death. It was sad and it still is sad
and I don't think I can write much about it.
We will miss our sweet kitten.
Sidney and Loudon, January 1995
Sidney looking at snow ... or at a ghostly
cat? January 1995.
Sidney stretch, 2001?
The intersection of food, love, and memory
If it wasn't frozen,
processed, or heavily laced with sugar, my
grandmother didn't cook it. I have her old
recipe box, which includes many selections
from the "Kitchen of Duncan Hines," as well
as things like Pow-Wow Sandwiches, English
Liver Bake, and salad molds, recipes that are
products of the sixties and seventies. My
grandfather made the box, designed it to hang
between the refrigerator and the stove in the
kitchen at Hollywood Beach. We use it to hold
keys now. One of the first things I do when I
move to a new place is to hang it by the
front door, a reminder of a past so long gone
that it feels like fiction. I may look
through the recipes, but I never feel an urge
to actually make any of them.
When the corn
and tomatoes are at their peak, however, and
I steam a dozen ears to eat for dinner
alongside a salad of freshly-picked tomatoes,
I feel a tug on the line that connects me to
those long-ago meals. Corn on the cob with
butter sits at the intersection of food,
love, and memory for me. It has the power to
bring me back to a time before I was born, to
Hollywood Beach in the late fifties and early
sixties when my mother and aunt were still
children, before my grandfather was
injured in
an industrial fire. On late July and early
August evenings when my grandfather was
working late at the plant, Mom-mom could
be persuaded to abandon the freezer and
let the canned food gather dust in the
cupboard. She would prepare farmstand corn
and sliced tomatoes for dinner, maybe add
some sliced bread on the side. Perhaps she
was feeling as lazy as Ludlam's
dog, unwilling to turn on
the oven or chop loads of vegetables,
happy with simplicity.
It's the only meal she made that my mother
and I still talk about. When I was a kid, my
cousin and I were given weekend corn shucking
duty, sent outside with paper bags to do the
messy work of removing the husks and
cornsilk. We would sit on the white-washed
metal lawn chairs out front under a canopy of
maple leaves, kick our heels against the
grass. After passing the naked corn to my
aunt through the side door, we would wait for
the moment at the table when we could smear
the cooked kernels with squeezable Parkay. I
was fascinated by the prongs, shaped like
tiny ears of corn, that Mom-mom stuck into
either end of the cob, and studied them
between bites, felt the neat rows of
miniature kernels like braille against my
fingertips. We ate until we are too full for
anything else but a thin slice of tomato.
You probably have summer food memories of
your own, can bring back an evening lit by
fireflies, your lips stained purple by
blueberry cake. Your parents didn't care how
late you stayed up and you got to light a
sparkler even though the fourth of July had
been over for days. Or maybe you remember
your mother, already unsteady on her feet,
placing a platter of swaying Jello on the
picnic table. You swirled the first bite
against your gums, pushed it between your
teeth before swallowing and then refused to
eat any more. After dinner you and your
brother played tag in the dark while the
grown-ups drank bourbon on ice and talked in
voices too low for you to understand. When
you slipped in a pile of dog shit, they
laughed until you started to cry.
Image: Recipe from my
grandmother's collection.