This year, for the first time, I'll be spending Christmas away from my parents. Instead of hopping a plane to Virginia, we'll be zooming down to Florida for the week to spend the holiday with Michael's mother and her family. It will be the first time she's had all three children together for a holiday in a long, long time, and the first time that I've been down there in a couple of years. It will be my first foray into someone else's traditions -- presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, turkey instead of ham, an apple in the stocking toe instead of an orange. That sort of thing.
For the past several years, my mom and I have been the ones to stay up late and stuff the stockings, and pile the gifts under the tree just so. Then we stay up later than that, talking about what's wrapped up, and what we didn't have a chance to get, and what time to get up in the morning. One year, she stayed up until 2 a.m. with me, helping to finish Michael's Christmas stocking (I couldn't, and can not, turn a heel.) Then we bound it off, filled it, and laid it on the couch with the four others. Due to my lack of measurement skills, his is the largest of the family's, and every year I threaten to take some stitches out so Santa doesn't have to be quite so good to him. I never do.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that of all the growing pains I've felt this year, this is the stretchiest. This is not to say that I'm not looking forward to Christmas with Michael's family, no way, no how. This is merely to recognize the immutable pain and strength of growing up, however that happens, and to acknowledge the necessary divide that creating my own little family will make.
So to that end, I'm going to regress and make a Christmas list. Nothing says 14 years old and still living at home more than pinning a list to the fridge, unless you dog-ear the pages of the J. Crew catalog and leave it conspicuously on the coffee table, ahem, so: I'm pinning a list to this wall. And this year, I am not asking for world peace.
*a decision on what sort of curtains to put up in the living room
*a way to not look like a tomato in the gym
*a living room rug that does not shed all over the place
*notions for my new sewing machine
*a haircut
*the beige and black Chanel Mary Jane flats that I got outbid on on eBay, size 38.5
*ideas for new recipes
*two weeks off at Christmas instead of four days
*an idea for a book, and motivation
*a new desk for Michael so we can organize the office/guest room
*a dog named Cain, or maybe Gerald(ine?)
*certain pundits to just go home for the holidays and leave us alone
*$20 a day to give to someone who needs it
*a night off for NMH Christmas Vespers at St. James's Church
*new headphones
And OK, fine -- health insurance for all and the troops to come home. But the people of whom I'd ask that don't seem to be listening much these days.
12.01.2009
11.29.2009
Not in the Money
Today I figured out what school district our building is in. It's a nice one. P.S. 130 is a lovely place; it looks like the sort of school that the Quimby sisters went to, but with a "Give Peace a Chance" mural on the playground. It's where I voted in November 2008, and where I didn't vote last month. If you stood in front of our building and threw a ball really, really hard, it would probably bounce off the school's front door. It's that kind of a place.
It's the sort of thing I do after we've had big life talks, like the one yesterday over a nice glass of Delicato after looking at wedding rings. After we talk about where we're moving and what we're doing, I look at houses upstate and old cars to get to them, and Craigslist for furniture to fill the house, and ponder registering for yet more kitchen stuff because what if we need a second set of things for Our House Upstate. That's how it lives in my mind -- capitalized, sparkly, creaky floors and all. I daydream of having Christmas in our house with snow in the drive, and hot summer weekends spent sleeping with the windows open, away from the city drone of air conditioners. I think of cooking for friends who have spent the day to their own devices, sleeping on the porch or walking in the woods. I think of my office upstairs, with a painted wooden desk from the Goodwill and tea tins full of pens, and a window that faces something blooming.
And then I think of the 3-hour drive back to the city late on Sunday with all the other weekenders in their Subarus, and hope that I haven't just wandered into a life-size Pottery Barn catalog.
It's the sort of thing I do after we've had big life talks, like the one yesterday over a nice glass of Delicato after looking at wedding rings. After we talk about where we're moving and what we're doing, I look at houses upstate and old cars to get to them, and Craigslist for furniture to fill the house, and ponder registering for yet more kitchen stuff because what if we need a second set of things for Our House Upstate. That's how it lives in my mind -- capitalized, sparkly, creaky floors and all. I daydream of having Christmas in our house with snow in the drive, and hot summer weekends spent sleeping with the windows open, away from the city drone of air conditioners. I think of cooking for friends who have spent the day to their own devices, sleeping on the porch or walking in the woods. I think of my office upstairs, with a painted wooden desk from the Goodwill and tea tins full of pens, and a window that faces something blooming.
And then I think of the 3-hour drive back to the city late on Sunday with all the other weekenders in their Subarus, and hope that I haven't just wandered into a life-size Pottery Barn catalog.
11.28.2009
Post-Mortem.
Today we are:
*talking about buying a new TV to replace our bus-station special
*meeting a potential DJ for our wedding
*avoiding going to the gym
*avoiding talking about the wedding
*taking very small sips of coffee
*talking about TVs again
*listening to the wind howl at the windows
*looking at furniture on Craigslist and wondering about bedbugs
I am:
*dreading going to work
*staring at my new sewing machine and wondering how to use it
*worried about the leftovers going to waste, but I'd rather that than them pasting themselves to my ass
*worried that I've been to the gym only twice this week and Thursday's macaroni and cheese already plastered to my ass will present itself to my trainer for inspection on Monday
*worried that I shouldn't worry about it, because it's my ass and no one else's
*worried that I need new jeans, but I also want to buy Christmas presents
*itchy
*concerned about the dwindling status of my stock portfolio
*wondering what color to paint our dining room in the farmhouse we'll have
*pondering the name Esme
*staring at our TV and thinking it really is a piece of crap
Scene.
*talking about buying a new TV to replace our bus-station special
*meeting a potential DJ for our wedding
*avoiding going to the gym
*avoiding talking about the wedding
*taking very small sips of coffee
*talking about TVs again
*listening to the wind howl at the windows
*looking at furniture on Craigslist and wondering about bedbugs
I am:
*dreading going to work
*staring at my new sewing machine and wondering how to use it
*worried about the leftovers going to waste, but I'd rather that than them pasting themselves to my ass
*worried that I've been to the gym only twice this week and Thursday's macaroni and cheese already plastered to my ass will present itself to my trainer for inspection on Monday
*worried that I shouldn't worry about it, because it's my ass and no one else's
*worried that I need new jeans, but I also want to buy Christmas presents
*itchy
*concerned about the dwindling status of my stock portfolio
*wondering what color to paint our dining room in the farmhouse we'll have
*pondering the name Esme
*staring at our TV and thinking it really is a piece of crap
Scene.
10.12.2009
On Etiquette.
Grandmother not pictured.Until I became an adult, my grandmother had a very strict system for birthday and Christmas presents: birthdays are for unwrapping things, and Christmases are for checks. Simple, straightforward, glorious checks, which could be cashed at the credit union, the resulting $100 taken straight to the mall and deposited into the coffers of The Limited. It was an excellent system, I always thought.
(Before I continue, I should clarify that I am not speaking of this grandmother, although she probably approved of the lesson that I am about to teach you all.)
One Christmas, the system failed. I was about 12, and we were sitting in my grandmother's living room, and my dad was in charge of handing out the gifts. As my brother unwrapped his annual gift of Expensive Wooden Train things, my dad plonked a heavy object in my lap. It was rectangular, about 2 inches thick, and wrapped in sedate green paper, and I thought: This is NOT a check.
My grandmother eyeballed me and said, "That's from me to you." I will never tell my child or grandchild that, because that, friends, is a message: Be forewarned, child. Something that you will not like at all is about to happen.
So I opened it up slowly, taking care to not rip the paper because she was watching, and this is what I unwrapped:
I heard a sharp intake of breath from my mother's corner, and my dad made some strangled noise in his throat. My 4-year-old brother, oblivious, whacked two pieces of wooden train track together over by the fireplace. I turned the book over, examined the picture of Letitia Baldridge on the back, and wondered about her hair.
"Look inside," my grandmother purred.
I opened the book. There, inside the flyleaf, was a Crane's envelope with my name on it in my grandmother's studied script. I tore open the envelope, and there was a check -- for $20. No new jeans, I thought.
I flipped through the book, catching glimpses of table setting layouts and wordings for state dinner invitations. And then a chunk of pages flipped over and revealed another Crane's envelope: this one unsealed and stamped, with my grandmother's name and address printed on the front. It was wedged in the thank-you note section.
"That's so you'll always remember to be grateful," my grandmother said, her eyeballs making the bottom of my spine tingle. "I think it's just a wonderful reference book."
Then she got up and walked into the kitchen. I looked at my mother for help, and she looked like someone had just run off with her young. My dad was silently laughing in his chair, and my grandfather, completely uninterested, was reading a book on the couch. Steven put the train track down and walked over to see what I had gotten for Christmas.
Back in the car, my mother turned around and looked at me, her jaw still clenched by the insinuation that she wasn't raising me right. "Did you write her a thank-you note for your birthday present?" she said. I shook my head. It had been a busy summer, and I was at camp when she sent me whatever it had been, and really, who remembers to send thank-you notes from camp when you could go swimming instead?
My mother snorted and turned back around in the front seat. I don't remember much after that, only that I wrote that thank-you note as soon as I got home and put it in the mail the next day. And I spent the $20, I believe, on makeup.
I am telling you this because I've been thinking about etiquette a good deal recently. A few months ago in my first fit of wedding-ohmygod-WEDDING, I bought a used copy of "Emily Post's Guide to Wedding Etiquette," and spent an evening on the couch howling over What Is Proper. Apparently, after I give my bridesmaids a lovely light luncheon on the afternoon of my wedding, I'm supposed to head upstairs and catch up on my thank-you notes before I put my dress on. When introducing Michael to my parents, I really should have written them a note telling them how much I think they'll enjoy meeting him, and would the 2nd of November have been suitable for their schedules? Also, his bachelor party should be more of a dinner with his close friends, rather than a bar crawl in the West Village, and my bridal shower should have lots of pink things.
To which I say, you must be high, Claree.
Each Wednesday from now until I run out of things to talk about, I'll be dissecting an etiquette "rule" here, wedding-related or otherwise. It's not meant to be mean-spirited or to tear the Posts and Vanderbilts apart. I'm more interested in looking at why we do things the way we do them, and who says who is right, and what we should do, and why etiquette still matters. Because it does, although maybe not in the way Amy Vanderbilt says. Saying thank you matters, and your napkin in your lap matters, and the everyday rituals of life matter. I want to talk about why.
As soon as I figure out where I left my copy of Amy Vanderbilt.
10.06.2009
The F*ck It Moment
Every bride-to-be has her own personal fuck-it moment. It might be over the flowers, or the bridesmaids' dresses, or whether her future mother-in-law wants to serve pot roast at the rehearsal dinner, or if her future husband's idea of a good first dance song is "Living' on a Prayer." Everyone has one, and Meg wrote about it eloquently: "Marriage isn't perfect, and your wedding sure as hell isn't going to be. But it's going to be amazing, because f*ck it, you're there to have the time of your life."
I haven't had mine yet, which is fine with me; we're still months away and have really only dipped our toes into the planning process. But I mention this because the past few difficult months have shown me a few things, and one of them is the importance of fuck-it moments, not just with weddings, but with pretty much everything: work, eating, even enjoying the company of others. Other the past few months, I've come down with a mild case of agoraphobia, to the point where I actually get nervous around other people now. It's in part because I spend a tremendous amount of time by myself now, and also because my current schedule doesn't allow for a whole lot of time with friends, or even with my betrothed.
I mention this because I've spent a lot of time gnashing my teeth over it and the madness it's stirred within me. But while I can't change some things, I can do a few others, and one of those is to have a big old fuck-it moment.
To hell with loneliness. To hell with getting irritated on the subway; that's what headphones are for. Fuck the fear of writing again, and fuck not being happy in a situation. Fuck being unhealthy and sitting on the couch, and fuck watching what could by our last New York fall pass by outside our dirty, dirty windows. Fuck that.
A more eloquent way of putting it might be to surrender. Surrender to what you want, which is to not be lonely and alone; to be healthy; to say yes to nourishment, which comes in all shapes and sizes, and to sand down the sharp edges of anxiety. To accept the situation and deal with it. To surrender to love, and kindness, and to be gentle with yourself. That is the definition of the fuck-it moment: to give yourself a break, because happiness ebbs and flows, and will come again. To surrender is to remind yourself of that.
Surrendering to what you want takes mindfulness and work, inside and out; after all, sitting on the couch doesn't take a lot of effort, and neither does unhappiness. So, the first thing we're going to do is to deal with the glaring problems with our eating habits, which have tarnished how we live. Because we rarely see each other in the evenings, we seldom eat dinner together anymore, and that saddens me more than I can say. It's necessitated a lot of Thai takeout, a lot of eating at desks in front of computers, and many, many more calories than we need to be consuming. So: our household is going meatless for a month. No, it's not because of the recent horrifying article in The New York Times. We've been eating a good deal of beans and legumes lately anyway because of cost (we've got about $25 between us and rent at the moment), and I was flipping through the good old Moosewood Cookbook tonight and wondered if we could do this for a while. It wouldn't hurt our wallets or our waistlines, and with the holidays coming up, some culinary cutbacks might not be a bad thing. Plus, it will make us plan meals together, which is what we both miss so much.
We're fully cognizant of how lucky we are that we can make this choice, and that is one reason why we're doing it: to determine what it is that we need to live. We need each other, that's for damned sure, and we need the love of others around us. But Applegate Farms bacon every Sunday morning, or Italian sausage simmered in white wine with Puy lentils? Maybe for a month, we don't need that, although those are two of my very favorite kitchen rituals. They'll just have to wait. For a month, maybe I don't need meatballs in my Italian takeout at work. Maybe Michael doesn't need smoked turkey on his sandwiches at lunch. Maybe we can use less, and still live well. We'll see.
So, what are your suggestions for surrendering? And for eating meatless for a month?
I haven't had mine yet, which is fine with me; we're still months away and have really only dipped our toes into the planning process. But I mention this because the past few difficult months have shown me a few things, and one of them is the importance of fuck-it moments, not just with weddings, but with pretty much everything: work, eating, even enjoying the company of others. Other the past few months, I've come down with a mild case of agoraphobia, to the point where I actually get nervous around other people now. It's in part because I spend a tremendous amount of time by myself now, and also because my current schedule doesn't allow for a whole lot of time with friends, or even with my betrothed.
I mention this because I've spent a lot of time gnashing my teeth over it and the madness it's stirred within me. But while I can't change some things, I can do a few others, and one of those is to have a big old fuck-it moment.
To hell with loneliness. To hell with getting irritated on the subway; that's what headphones are for. Fuck the fear of writing again, and fuck not being happy in a situation. Fuck being unhealthy and sitting on the couch, and fuck watching what could by our last New York fall pass by outside our dirty, dirty windows. Fuck that.
A more eloquent way of putting it might be to surrender. Surrender to what you want, which is to not be lonely and alone; to be healthy; to say yes to nourishment, which comes in all shapes and sizes, and to sand down the sharp edges of anxiety. To accept the situation and deal with it. To surrender to love, and kindness, and to be gentle with yourself. That is the definition of the fuck-it moment: to give yourself a break, because happiness ebbs and flows, and will come again. To surrender is to remind yourself of that.
Surrendering to what you want takes mindfulness and work, inside and out; after all, sitting on the couch doesn't take a lot of effort, and neither does unhappiness. So, the first thing we're going to do is to deal with the glaring problems with our eating habits, which have tarnished how we live. Because we rarely see each other in the evenings, we seldom eat dinner together anymore, and that saddens me more than I can say. It's necessitated a lot of Thai takeout, a lot of eating at desks in front of computers, and many, many more calories than we need to be consuming. So: our household is going meatless for a month. No, it's not because of the recent horrifying article in The New York Times. We've been eating a good deal of beans and legumes lately anyway because of cost (we've got about $25 between us and rent at the moment), and I was flipping through the good old Moosewood Cookbook tonight and wondered if we could do this for a while. It wouldn't hurt our wallets or our waistlines, and with the holidays coming up, some culinary cutbacks might not be a bad thing. Plus, it will make us plan meals together, which is what we both miss so much.
We're fully cognizant of how lucky we are that we can make this choice, and that is one reason why we're doing it: to determine what it is that we need to live. We need each other, that's for damned sure, and we need the love of others around us. But Applegate Farms bacon every Sunday morning, or Italian sausage simmered in white wine with Puy lentils? Maybe for a month, we don't need that, although those are two of my very favorite kitchen rituals. They'll just have to wait. For a month, maybe I don't need meatballs in my Italian takeout at work. Maybe Michael doesn't need smoked turkey on his sandwiches at lunch. Maybe we can use less, and still live well. We'll see.
So, what are your suggestions for surrendering? And for eating meatless for a month?
9.09.2009
Life List
As a general rule, I am not a believer in lists or schedules. I forget to turn the pages on the calendar, and every wedding list I've made thus far has gotten lost. So I'm putting this list where I can't lose it. It's some of the things I want to do before I go, inspired in part by Maggie, and by the knowledge that I am completely, irrevocably 30. There's no time to lose now!
Some of these goals are tiny and free, and some are huge and potentially quite expensive. But given the hope that I'm going to be here for a good long while, it's nice to always have something to look forward to. They're not in any particular order, although the first one is certainly the most pressing at the moment.
1. Marry Michael
2. Write a book about the couples who got married at the Little Church Around the Corner
3. Learn to sew
4. Adopt a child
5. Publish short stories
6. Earn a culinary degree
7. Finish my master's thesis
8. Hike through Patagonia
9. Move west
10. Stock a liquor cabinet full of good bourbons
11. Take my daughter to Paris with Amy
12. Institute monthly potluck suppers with friends
13. Be able, again, to do that yoga pose where you balance completely forward on your palms
14. Learn to sing, or at least carry a tune
15. Meet Emmylou Harris
16. Learn how to make really excellent jambalaya
17. Let my hair go totally gray
18. Own a farmhouse that has a giant porch
19. Make peach ice cream
20. Take Michael to Zanzibar
21. Visit Australia
22. Have a dog
23. Learn to play the banjo
24. Do a job that helps to free people from something that is hurting them
25. Hike the Appalachian Trail like my dad
26. Go camping with my family again
27. Read all of Steinbeck
28. See Moscow
29. Spend a lot of time in India
30. Tea at Claridge's
31. Finish "War and Peace"
32. Flesh out my idea of the horrible superhero family
33. Read a play or story that Michael wrote
34. Remember people's birthdays
35. Montreal with my brother
36. Visit Banff
37. Take a holiday on the Royal Scotsman
38. Get my health in order: teeth, eyes, exercise
39. Drive across the United States
40. See a concert at the Ryman
41. Get all my old college friends together at the beach
42. Make Christmas stockings for people who don't have them
43. Waterfalls in Costa Rica
44. Tea in Morocco
45. Get my scuba diving license
46. Learn to speak Spanish and Arabic
47. Learn to play the piano
48. Take my family to Antarctica
49. Learn enough about baseball to explain it to a kid
50. Write a novel
51. Organize my photos
52. Visit the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia
53. Spend one day a week learning how to cook new things
54. Dinner at Antoine's
55. Nap in a hammock in the Bay Islands
56. Drive from San Francisco to Seattle
57. Visit Rwanda
58. Dinner at Chez Panisse
59. Write food articles for The New York Times and Gourmet magazine
60. Find one person and write a book about them
61. Relearn the tenets of algebra
62. fall fires in our backyard, friends in lawn chairs, dogs roaming
63. Go one week without using a computer
64. Do micro-lending
65. Drive down the Seward Highway
66. Buy a house in the North Carolina mountains
67. Donate a percentage of our income each month
68. Go back to Turkey
69. Paint and make curtains for our guest room
70. Make the bed every morning
And that's what I've got so far.
Some of these goals are tiny and free, and some are huge and potentially quite expensive. But given the hope that I'm going to be here for a good long while, it's nice to always have something to look forward to. They're not in any particular order, although the first one is certainly the most pressing at the moment.
1. Marry Michael
2. Write a book about the couples who got married at the Little Church Around the Corner
3. Learn to sew
4. Adopt a child
5. Publish short stories
6. Earn a culinary degree
7. Finish my master's thesis
8. Hike through Patagonia
9. Move west
10. Stock a liquor cabinet full of good bourbons
11. Take my daughter to Paris with Amy
12. Institute monthly potluck suppers with friends
13. Be able, again, to do that yoga pose where you balance completely forward on your palms
14. Learn to sing, or at least carry a tune
15. Meet Emmylou Harris
16. Learn how to make really excellent jambalaya
17. Let my hair go totally gray
18. Own a farmhouse that has a giant porch
19. Make peach ice cream
20. Take Michael to Zanzibar
21. Visit Australia
22. Have a dog
23. Learn to play the banjo
24. Do a job that helps to free people from something that is hurting them
25. Hike the Appalachian Trail like my dad
26. Go camping with my family again
27. Read all of Steinbeck
28. See Moscow
29. Spend a lot of time in India
30. Tea at Claridge's
31. Finish "War and Peace"
32. Flesh out my idea of the horrible superhero family
33. Read a play or story that Michael wrote
34. Remember people's birthdays
35. Montreal with my brother
36. Visit Banff
37. Take a holiday on the Royal Scotsman
38. Get my health in order: teeth, eyes, exercise
39. Drive across the United States
40. See a concert at the Ryman
41. Get all my old college friends together at the beach
42. Make Christmas stockings for people who don't have them
43. Waterfalls in Costa Rica
44. Tea in Morocco
45. Get my scuba diving license
46. Learn to speak Spanish and Arabic
47. Learn to play the piano
48. Take my family to Antarctica
49. Learn enough about baseball to explain it to a kid
50. Write a novel
51. Organize my photos
52. Visit the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia
53. Spend one day a week learning how to cook new things
54. Dinner at Antoine's
55. Nap in a hammock in the Bay Islands
56. Drive from San Francisco to Seattle
57. Visit Rwanda
58. Dinner at Chez Panisse
59. Write food articles for The New York Times and Gourmet magazine
60. Find one person and write a book about them
61. Relearn the tenets of algebra
62. fall fires in our backyard, friends in lawn chairs, dogs roaming
63. Go one week without using a computer
64. Do micro-lending
65. Drive down the Seward Highway
66. Buy a house in the North Carolina mountains
67. Donate a percentage of our income each month
68. Go back to Turkey
69. Paint and make curtains for our guest room
70. Make the bed every morning
And that's what I've got so far.
7.22.2009
Atomic Number 29.
I've been in a spot, people. A funk, if you will. It started with the rainy summer we've had, and a longing for a day at the beach that I will not get for a good while. My house is a wreck; the dust bunnies have risen up in revolt and are now taking on the piles of recycling for household dominance. June's clouds have taken up residence in my living room, and they hover over the couch from which I cannot seem to get up.
I've been absent in the things that I know that are good for me, like cooking, or exercise, or writing -- what gets me out of my head and clears the clouds, I've neglected. A couple of big changes have come into my life recently, and I'm not adjusting well at all. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that my day-to-day routine has been flipped completely upside down, and in ways I wasn't prepared for. Therefore, couch.
In some sense, I think I've gotten less resilient as I've gotten older, as if the Teflon coating I had as a just-graduated-from-college girl has melted off. I feel like I'm cooking with a new pan now, one that takes a little more care to work with, like a piece of Mauviel. I have a small saucier hanging on my kitchen wall next to the spice rack; I bought it at E. Dehillerin one November day when I had an afternoon to myself, and a brusque little man in a big green coat picked it out for me off of their dusty pegboard wall. He wrapped it up in brown paper, and I walked back to our hotel with it stuffed in a plastic sack, reveling that no one who passed me had any idea of the treasure I was carrying. Whenever I look at its little stamp on the side that says "E. Dehillerin Paris," I can smell the duck from Le Petit Pontoise, and I can feel a macaron in my hand. I try to look at it a lot.
Anyway, I don't really want much to do with Teflon, and a Mauviel pan, if you take care of it, will last a lifetime. Learning how to cook with a new pan -- where its hot spots are, how much oil you need, whether the handle will burn you -- can take a few tries before it clicks and the pan is an extension of your hand. But once you find a good pan, you take care of it. It's fitting, I suppose, because I'm working on things right now that I want to last a lifetime -- my health, and good writing habits, and a fast-approaching marriage. The good things I've found, I want to take care of in the very best way I know.
So I'm learning how to cook with this new pan, and how to take care of it. I'll let you know how it goes.
So I'm learning how to cook with this new pan, and how to take care of it. I'll let you know how it goes.
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