I found myself this past Saturday evening awash in a warm light emanating more from the people seated around me than from the brass chandelier hanging unobtrusively above the scene below. There were thirteen of us gathered around a long table dressed in white linen, and laden with comfort food the likes of which could nourish even the most starved of souls.
The Tapdancer had effortlessly thrown together a spur of the moment dinner party with her usual flawless domestic skill. She had prepared a fennel encrusted pork loin, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a decadently bubbly, crispy-in-the corners dish of macaroni and cheese made with sharp NY cheddar. Her sister in law had brought along warm spiced apples, and her brother, his famous green bean casserole. This is not your everyday green bean casserole people. This is slap your mamma good green bean casserole. No one knows exactly what goes in it, some say crack, but you literally cannot stop eating it. I fully expect to find myself, months from now, knocking over liquor stores in order to score some more GBC. This veritable feast was rounded off with a warm, thick, fudge brownie, and hot gourmet coffee. Like I said, food to feed your soul as well as your body.
Maybe it was the wine I consumed over the course of the evening after announcing early on, "I feel like getting tanked". Maybe it was those two bottles of Pinot Noir that, at one point, gave me pause to wonder how I ended up on the kitchen floor , and Oh my God I hope none one sees me down here with cat food stuck to my ass before I can drag myself to a dark corner to sober up for a few minutes. Yes, it's always the wine, but before my unfortunate run in with the kitchen floor, I sat around the dinner table listening to the laughter and conversation reach a jovial crescendo, and was struck by just how comfortable I was (am) around these people.
This is my family, not the family I was born into, but the one I got to choose. What a gift we have in our close friends; those we surround ourselves with by choice, the ones who get to see our true selves, and in turn trust us to show us theirs. This loud, laughing pack knows me in all my guises, all my craziness, all my flaws, and somehow they're okay with all of it. Go figure.
Not everyone was there, Ms. Q had to work (she's a restaurant manager, so her weekend's are not her own), and others live out of town (Hi Cindy! Happy Belated Birthday!); but I thought of them as I paused to gather up the loose strands of different conversations, and allowed the energy of the evening to wipe away the last vestiges of the blue funk that had colored the last few weeks a dull grey. How can I possibly remain sad when there are such characters at play?
Showing posts with label the good life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the good life. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Just a few more.
Have you ever gone on vacation or visited someone, come home, unpacked, done the requisite 18 loads of laundry, but still feel like you never left? Your head is still back there, stuck in that visited place days or weeks after the rest of you called it quits. I've been back from visiting the homestead for well over two weeks, but here I sit, still perusing the pictures I took, yapping incessantly about this mundane detail or that. I don't know what's come over me. I'm not worried mind you, it will pass soon enough. But you? You, my lovelies are now going to have to slog through one last post involving the trip home. The worst kind of torture, the blog equivalent of a vacation slide show. Muwahahahahaha (queue menacing music).
Actually, it's not all that bad. No really, I promise, just a few pictures I took walking around the yard. Like this one. This little fellow is a baby osprey (he's not really that little, nor do I know if he is actually a fellow, but just run with it), his parentals were busy all week trying to teach him to fish for himself.
He was not happy about the prospects of self sufficiency, you could hear him crying from his perch most of the day. Much like I was when my parents cut the financial apron strings. "What do you mean you're not going to pay for my fifth year of college? So what if I'm still a sophomore."
Moving on. Here's one I surreptitiously shot of my brother and his "mini-me". The Niblit may have blond hair ,and eyes like his mother; but this whirling dervish,from his endless energy and mischievous curiosity, down to his infectious cookie monster laugh, is my brother all over again.
Here's a shot of the dock my dad had built, and the boat lift he insisted on installing for the boat he swore he was getting ten years ago. Where's the boat you ask? Good question. I think the money the Old Man of the Sea would have to shell out for a boat has left him on dry ground. Of course, now that the Niblit has visited and talked about his other grandpa's boat, my father has finally started shopping around for his own. Ahh the joys of grandparental one-upmanship.
More importantly, however, is what comes from out at the end of the dock (boat-shmoat). One of the all time best perks to coming home in the warmer months are these; what I like to call Tidewater comfort food.
Blue Crabs; the quintessential "session food". My brother pulled the pots that evening, cleaned all the gross stuff out of the crabs before he boiled them in water, a little beer, a little Malt Vinegar, and a lot of Old Bay. From river to table in less than an hour. It does not get any better that this. We sat for hours picking crab, drinking beer, and talking. It's better than General Foods International Coffee for celebrating the moments of your life!
There! You made it! The blurb at the end of the post. The final phrase that tells you there are no more boring vacation pictures to wade through. We are now moving on. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you deserve it.
Yay! That's the end!
Actually, it's not all that bad. No really, I promise, just a few pictures I took walking around the yard. Like this one. This little fellow is a baby osprey (he's not really that little, nor do I know if he is actually a fellow, but just run with it), his parentals were busy all week trying to teach him to fish for himself.
He was not happy about the prospects of self sufficiency, you could hear him crying from his perch most of the day. Much like I was when my parents cut the financial apron strings. "What do you mean you're not going to pay for my fifth year of college? So what if I'm still a sophomore."
Moving on. Here's one I surreptitiously shot of my brother and his "mini-me". The Niblit may have blond hair ,and eyes like his mother; but this whirling dervish,from his endless energy and mischievous curiosity, down to his infectious cookie monster laugh, is my brother all over again.
Hang in there guys, you're half way through.
Here's a shot of the dock my dad had built, and the boat lift he insisted on installing for the boat he swore he was getting ten years ago. Where's the boat you ask? Good question. I think the money the Old Man of the Sea would have to shell out for a boat has left him on dry ground. Of course, now that the Niblit has visited and talked about his other grandpa's boat, my father has finally started shopping around for his own. Ahh the joys of grandparental one-upmanship.
More importantly, however, is what comes from out at the end of the dock (boat-shmoat). One of the all time best perks to coming home in the warmer months are these; what I like to call Tidewater comfort food.
Blue Crabs; the quintessential "session food". My brother pulled the pots that evening, cleaned all the gross stuff out of the crabs before he boiled them in water, a little beer, a little Malt Vinegar, and a lot of Old Bay. From river to table in less than an hour. It does not get any better that this. We sat for hours picking crab, drinking beer, and talking. It's better than General Foods International Coffee for celebrating the moments of your life!
There! You made it! The blurb at the end of the post. The final phrase that tells you there are no more boring vacation pictures to wade through. We are now moving on. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you deserve it.
Yay! That's the end!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Scar Tissue
Highway 17 is the four lane scar that runs the length of Gloucester County VA, puckering the landscape with strip malls, car dealerships, and corrugated steel mega-churches. I marveled at how altered it had become over the years. Old landmarks were gone, and the Super Wal-Marts of the world had arrived to swallow up wide expanses of wild country bramble with hellish, heat rippling asphalt. A typical but none the less heartbreaking scene these days.
Gone was the old mill house turned rollerskating rink my friends and I haunted all through Jr. High. Gone was the dirt road to nowhere we had,in high school, affectionately christened "The Zanoni Screw Stop". It was there, in breathless curiosity, I touched "it" for the first time. Oh yeah, I was a bad girl.
Yet as I turned off the highway, down the back roads of my youth, the rural landscape seemed for the most part intact. It was still that strange mixture of farm country,and wide brackish rivers that have supported "watermen" and their families for centuries.
I sat in the parking lot of the marina situated on the edge of the York River lost in thought. It was here I had spent every summer from age 10 to 20 in the community pool. This was the place of my first summer job, and and a few years prior, my first summer crush. The job was as pool life guard, and it was the first I truly "wanted", so I took the certification class at the nearby coastguard station. I spent 6 weeks the previous January dragging grown men ,"coasties", twice my size out of the pool in mock drowning scenarios. Not as bad as it sounds, actually. The crush was a boy, not much older than my 14 year old self, who was staying with his family at the marina. On their house boat. The thing had a piano in the living room, I kid you not. We spent a week of summer afternoons on that boat, listening to "The Best of Bread" and necking on the couch. His kisses tasted like salt water and Chapstick.
From the marina, I drove down to the beach where I played out my childhood. Time folded in on itself, and I was four years old again. Sitting on the dock on a warm summer night, wrapped in my beach towel, and munching fruit loops out of a plastic baggie. Watching enthralled, as my father and his friends caught blue crab with bits of string, bait, and a net; I believed he was magic. To my four year old eyes, my dad could do anything.
I was not prepared for the tsunami wave of nostalgia that rushed over me as I revisited my old stomping grounds. I did not expect to feel anything but ambivalence. I had run away to an out of state college, eighteen and angry at family and friends who I imagined had never understood me. I had left heartbroken over a boy I loved with blind teenage passion, but he was selfish and cruel, and left me unsure of myself. I was more than ready to leave this small hick town where I felt invisible, and blamed everyone for making me feel that way. It was easier that way, easier to look outward rather than in.
I drove for hours, from place to familiar place, and the overwhelming sense folding around me like that beach towel was of home. For the first time I felt free to enjoy the memories of growing up here, even the painful ones, without them being blurred by the bitter film of regret. This place, for whatever it's worth, helped shape the person I am today, and I am grateful.
Gone was the old mill house turned rollerskating rink my friends and I haunted all through Jr. High. Gone was the dirt road to nowhere we had,in high school, affectionately christened "The Zanoni Screw Stop". It was there, in breathless curiosity, I touched "it" for the first time. Oh yeah, I was a bad girl.
Yet as I turned off the highway, down the back roads of my youth, the rural landscape seemed for the most part intact. It was still that strange mixture of farm country,and wide brackish rivers that have supported "watermen" and their families for centuries.
I sat in the parking lot of the marina situated on the edge of the York River lost in thought. It was here I had spent every summer from age 10 to 20 in the community pool. This was the place of my first summer job, and and a few years prior, my first summer crush. The job was as pool life guard, and it was the first I truly "wanted", so I took the certification class at the nearby coastguard station. I spent 6 weeks the previous January dragging grown men ,"coasties", twice my size out of the pool in mock drowning scenarios. Not as bad as it sounds, actually. The crush was a boy, not much older than my 14 year old self, who was staying with his family at the marina. On their house boat. The thing had a piano in the living room, I kid you not. We spent a week of summer afternoons on that boat, listening to "The Best of Bread" and necking on the couch. His kisses tasted like salt water and Chapstick.
From the marina, I drove down to the beach where I played out my childhood. Time folded in on itself, and I was four years old again. Sitting on the dock on a warm summer night, wrapped in my beach towel, and munching fruit loops out of a plastic baggie. Watching enthralled, as my father and his friends caught blue crab with bits of string, bait, and a net; I believed he was magic. To my four year old eyes, my dad could do anything.
I was not prepared for the tsunami wave of nostalgia that rushed over me as I revisited my old stomping grounds. I did not expect to feel anything but ambivalence. I had run away to an out of state college, eighteen and angry at family and friends who I imagined had never understood me. I had left heartbroken over a boy I loved with blind teenage passion, but he was selfish and cruel, and left me unsure of myself. I was more than ready to leave this small hick town where I felt invisible, and blamed everyone for making me feel that way. It was easier that way, easier to look outward rather than in.
I drove for hours, from place to familiar place, and the overwhelming sense folding around me like that beach towel was of home. For the first time I felt free to enjoy the memories of growing up here, even the painful ones, without them being blurred by the bitter film of regret. This place, for whatever it's worth, helped shape the person I am today, and I am grateful.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Dirt Therapy
I am not one for yard work, of any kind. As I've said before, any kind of outdoor, pick up a shovel and dig, kind of activity was viewed as being cast down into the lowest level of hell. I must be growing up or something (don't tell anyone!), because on Saturday the strangest thing happened. I went out and worked in the yard, voluntarily, and liked it. Ol' Bill (my father) would be so proud.
It was completely a spur of the moment thing. I was sitting on the couch mid morning Saturday, sipping my third cup of coffee, and watching a movie I had DVR'd earlier in the week (those who know me will be surprised to hear it wasn't a death movie). As the movie finished and the house had gone quiet, I started feeling kind of melancholy. I can't put my finger on what the problem was exactly, it was more a general sense of being bored, lonely, and restless. Normally I would have followed that particular rabbit down the rabbit hole and spent the day listening to Sad Bastard music, watching more movies (death ones to boot),feeling sorry for myself, and eating things I shouldn't. Yeah yeah, I know, welcome to my inner sanctum of crazy.
But I didn't. I had been talking about turning an old wooden sandbox left by previous owners of the house into an herb garden for a while,like for three years, but had never gotten around to the actual doing. So this past Saturday, when faced with a long afternoon of throwing cheese doodles at my face, and wiping tears away from my eyes with orange stained fingers until I looked like some deranged crazy lady with a bad spray on tan, I decided to do something a little different.
I threw on some grubby clothes and went outside armed with mighty farmin' tools, and proceeded to lay waste to the weeds and small trees that had taken root in my sandbox. I then made the suburban pilgrimage to Home Depot for gardening soil and plants. I have to say the plant selection there is sad sad sad sad sad. It's the vegetative equivalent to a puppy mill. But I found a few quasi healthy plants and a butt load of potting/gardening soil, loaded up the Toyota and headed back to the homestead
Dirt Therapy. Who knew!? I had the best time pulling weeds, lugging crap around my yard, and digging my hands in cool, rich, pungent soil. I found my head clearing and my thoughts slowing down, until all that I was left with was me and my garden. I may have even talked to the plants as I carefully placed them into their new digs. When I had finished my body was stretched and tired, but in that buzzy energized way that makes you feel kind of high. All those feelings of purposelessness had disappeared, and I had spent the day getting closer to the person I want to be. I was a filthy, sweaty mess, but exceedingly pleased with myself; like a first grader bringing home her first attempt at writing her name.
"Lookie what I did!"
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Bright Side
It's the day before Thanksgiving, and as I read through my past blog entries I can't help but feel like they focus on more of the negative side of things. I'm okay with that, it's what I needed to say at the time. But, given the time of season, I thought it would be a pleasant change to focus on a few good things in life. Things I am profoundly grateful for:
Health - I am a healthy person. I have all my teeth, and I can walk, talk, laugh and love unfettered by injury or disease.
Hearth - I have a home, and all the comforts there in. Heat, water, food, and a couple of furry critters to keep my feet warm during cold winter nights. There are many, too many people out there with no home, no safe haven to retreat to at the end of the day, who will go hungry tonight, and every night for their foreseeable future. This is usually the time of year people focus on being generous to those who go without, but once the season passes, that focus blurs and fades until next season. I am guilty of this myself. I now challenge myself to not take what I have for granted, and to find ways to give of myself through out the coming year. Care to take that challenge with me?
Family - As much as my family can drive me bat shit, I'm thankful that I have them. We may be spread out up and down the East Coast, and across the country, but we are all connected by love and history. We always find time to gather during the year,and during those times we are kind and supportive of each other's endeavors (though my father's support sometimes feels like lecturing, Ol' Bill means well). We've also welcomed a new member of the clan this year. Welcome to the family, Breck!
Friends - I'm not even sure I have the words sufficient enough to express myself fully - I have been lucky enough to find a second family in the friends I have. I can honestly say I would be lost without them. They are the people I turn to for strength when I have none. They are the people I can be my true self with, and never feel judged or censured. They are the people I can be silly with and laugh with until I literally pee my pants( You haven't heard a joke until it's told by Ms. Q - she even cracks herself up.) I am grateful for each and every one of you.
Ok.. so there it is. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there in the blogosphere (Hi Flutter!)If you like, Id love to hear what ya'll are thankful for this season.
Health - I am a healthy person. I have all my teeth, and I can walk, talk, laugh and love unfettered by injury or disease.
Hearth - I have a home, and all the comforts there in. Heat, water, food, and a couple of furry critters to keep my feet warm during cold winter nights. There are many, too many people out there with no home, no safe haven to retreat to at the end of the day, who will go hungry tonight, and every night for their foreseeable future. This is usually the time of year people focus on being generous to those who go without, but once the season passes, that focus blurs and fades until next season. I am guilty of this myself. I now challenge myself to not take what I have for granted, and to find ways to give of myself through out the coming year. Care to take that challenge with me?
Family - As much as my family can drive me bat shit, I'm thankful that I have them. We may be spread out up and down the East Coast, and across the country, but we are all connected by love and history. We always find time to gather during the year,and during those times we are kind and supportive of each other's endeavors (though my father's support sometimes feels like lecturing, Ol' Bill means well). We've also welcomed a new member of the clan this year. Welcome to the family, Breck!
Friends - I'm not even sure I have the words sufficient enough to express myself fully - I have been lucky enough to find a second family in the friends I have. I can honestly say I would be lost without them. They are the people I turn to for strength when I have none. They are the people I can be my true self with, and never feel judged or censured. They are the people I can be silly with and laugh with until I literally pee my pants( You haven't heard a joke until it's told by Ms. Q - she even cracks herself up.) I am grateful for each and every one of you.
Ok.. so there it is. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there in the blogosphere (Hi Flutter!)If you like, Id love to hear what ya'll are thankful for this season.
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