A Hell of a Lot of Food Blogs

I've been reading a hell of a lot of food blogs lately and I'm not sure what to make of it.

I work in publishing but maybe deep down I want to be a chef. A waitress. A girl bagging groceries. A mom feeding children. All I know is that I have this gross hunger to know what other people are making when they come home at night. How the weather, wherever their kitchen may be, is contributing to their appetite. The bites of real life gone amiss but somehow winding up in the pan, close to tears, next to the onions. The secrets, if any, and there are many, to grilling that cheese and scrambling those eggs.

In casual conversation with Michael tonight, I referenced food bloggers. Under his breath and with no regard he imitated my saying it as if it weren't a real thing. "Ha. Food blogger." Like it was some slang I'd picked up outside school. "Why is that funny?" I asked. "Because I've never heard someone say 'food blogger' before," he said, and he was being honest. In disbelief I sat there. Never heard someone say "food blogger"? Am I reading so many food blogs that I am now caught up in the culture of thinking this is the only culture? I know we lie in bed at night reading vastly different feed aggregators but he's heard the word "food" and he's heard the word "blogger" so... really? A rage ran through me. What is one-third of my blog if not a food blog? What does he think I'm writing? What do I think I'm writing?

A Highly-Focused Story Characterized by its Brevity

I judged the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for the first time tonight. High school writings. Twenty-five pieces of flash fiction from the comfort of my desk and each one went down like dessert. Sad, sad dessert. I read about a room, an empty room in a derelict apartment building where a teenage girl goes to be alone because her father is angry and her mother is dying. I read about an old woman living in a nursing home who still pours tea for the daughter who never came home after being pushed out of the house to go play. I read about a boy with OCD who won't leave the house but whose mother thinks is doing just fine. About a kid longing for the day when he won't get beat up. About the mother with breast cancer; the father with lung cancer. 

I wrote about needing new pants in high school. Pants. 

A Food Poem for a Snow Day

Buttered toast is the most

Mac and cheese, Michael, please

Texas chili in my belly

Peanut butter, honey, jelly

Roasted squash for the bite

Sauce and parm will make it right  

Tea with lemon in just seconds

Bowl of berries, yogurt beckons

Fish fry, pad thai, take a bite, pizza pie

Soppressata, cutting board, soft baguette, take some more

Saag paneer, a good dark beer, warm the oven would you dear?

Noodle kugel, cottage cheese, don't forget the sour cream

Chocolate cake, it's time to bake

Grill some garlic, hanger steak

Balsamic drizz on brussels sprouts, hot smoked salmon, baked whole trout

Shot of scotch, boiling pot, do you good to never watch

Chorizo spicy with some beans

Wipe your hands right on your jeans

Chinese food, from the carton

Don't you miss the farmer's garden?

Cocoa powder in a cup, heat the milk, you know what's up

Close the kitchen, dim the lamp 

Watch some TV like a champ.

New Outlets

After tomorrow, it will have been a year since I put forth the ambitious (and vocal) resolution to write a little something every day for the next 365 days. While it’s clear I didn't keep that resolution, I do feel like I successfully captured some small and big moments of 2013. Moments that meant things to me. And this year was no joke. So much happened. Amid the general excitement of trips and weddings and babies and mortgage paperwork (ehhh, not so exciting), I think I did good on time carved out to gawp at blank screens and words I didn't love and I put in that time even when I felt drained of creative drink. When I found myself staring for too long, I ordered more coffee and I ordered more wine and I sat in more café windows waiting for ideas to materialize, for thoughts to finish and make sense, and I still did that while dying to do anything else (except mortgage paperwork). This pressured New York of a lifetime I was born into isn't going anywhere, so this year I’m going to work on shooing away the contest between my professional and creative self. There’s too much value in pursuing the things in life we care most about, the things in life that make us most happy. Even if the things in life that make us most happy feel so freaking hard. Even if it’s just slipping a single postcard into a mailbox, or a foot into a slipper. I’m going to find new outlets.

A Christmas Carol in Carroll Park

The Carroll Park bathrooms - er, the Robert Acido Park House - got dressed up tonight, all done up and transformed into a Christmastime-lit, cozy playhouse for Smith Street Stage's live radio play adaptation of "A Christmas Carol." I went by myself because Michael had a nighttime soccer game in Canarsie, but also because I really, really like doing things alone.

I slipped into the second row of three rows, slipping back just as quickly to what sure as hell felt like the 1930s. A couple of tall, prop stage microphones, mismatched patterns, brick and brass, chrome wall sconces with milkglass shades, metal pole lamps with beaded fringes, small, round mirrors. There were maybe twenty-five people housed together in just a couple hundred square feet, this including the actors, but not including the characters because seven supremely talented actors played thirty-four characters in ways I can't even begin to describe. Some read scripts, some didn't, some knew exactly when to shake a bell and slam a door, some needed gentle taps on the shoulder to turn around and take this cup. I watched a sixth-grader (Tiny Tim) go quietly, carefully up and down on a step stool to reach the microphone he needed to produce breaths perfect for the mimic of whisking Scrooge to another moment in time. It made the best sense to close your eyes and listen to each sound effect, but you fought to keep them open to witness the grace of the performance. The plink-plinking of a rake's teeth; the flapping of a thin piece of sheet metal; moving fingers across the top of a water-filled wineglass; knives crossing a plate; leather shoes slapping upon bubble wrap. All of it so make-shift, but so perfectly concocted to create that Dickens soundscape.

And there's siiiiiiiinging.

For $15, I can't recommend it enough. Go before you can't go anymore. 

Smith Street Stage's "A Christmas Carol" (A Radio Play)

Q and J

"Q and J, I told you, Grandma, those are your hints," Michael says while driving, his cadence crawling and intentional. He is really good when it comes to speaking to grandmothers, especially his own. I am sitting in the backseat buckled up in a seatbelt, watching the sky turn pink and blue over the Brooklyn Bridge. We're headed east on the BQE. 

"Queens," she says. "I know we're going to Queens."

"Or maybe Quebec. We could be going to Quebec," I gibe. "Hope you packed a bag."

"No, no, no, Canada?" she says. "Why would we be going there?"

"I can tell you now, we're not going to Canada," Michael assures her before the confusion can settle in.

I know where Michael is taking her and, honestly, sitting backseat in the car has me feeling like a little kid being taken somewhere I don't really want to go. Especially on the weekend when I could be "hanging out with friends! just wanna hang out with my friends. ugh, you never let me hang out with my friends" - not stuck going to Saturday night mass in Ridgewood, Queens. Plus, when you're Jewish, it just feels unnatural. All those chimes. All that kneeling. 

But Michael had tucked this surprise up his sleeve for a couple of weeks now, knowing full well how happy this bitter cold car ride to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Parish would make his grandmother. This was where Father Sansone had transferred to after eleven years at Sacred Hearts - St. Stephens. He left two Junes ago, and although the new priest was very nice, he was no Father Sansone. It was a simple act, but a grand gesture for Michael to conceive of reuniting his grandmother with her old priest. I would never have thought of it.

When we get to the church, and it dawns on her where she is, her face lights up like Christmas, an analogy that literally seems appropriate here. We slip into a pew, Michael between us, his grandmother's euphoria spilling out like fragrance, to the point that it starts to feel contagious and all of a sudden, I am excited we are here. 

"Do you want me to switch seats with your grandma so she can see Sansone better when he walks by? They're walking now. I see them. See?" I say.

Michael laughs at me from under the whistles of the pipe organ because I sound ridiculous. "Yeah, I see them. No, you don't need to switch." 

We stand, we sit, we kneel. In my head, I start the beginning of prayers, but never finish them. I look around at everyone else, in their winter coats and casual shoes, wondering if some of them left the house with a chicken in the oven. Honey, I'm going to mass. I'll be back in an hour. The timer's set for the chicken. Don't touch it." 

When John and Anne renew their wedding vows after fifty years, I start to cry, I can't help it. They do it in front of family; they do it in front of Michael, his grandmother, and I. That is a long time to be married. That is a long time to know anybody. I've known Michael and his grandmother for five years. To think that one day I will know Michael ten times longer than that is scary because in fifty years it'll be 2063 and the peace, love, and happiness days will have been 100 years ago. In fifty years, will nights and memories like this one stand out? If I don't write about it, will it disappear?

Michael holds his grandmother's hand because he is not afraid to show love in that way. When it comes time to receive the host, he encourages her to walk up to the front and get it, even though I don't think you're supposed to skip the line. When she comes back, she is really affected by the woman who graciously allowed her back into the pew.

The little things.

As we file out of church, I am nervous Father Sansone won't recognize Michael's grandmother. It's possible, isn't it? Can a priest really keep all his congregants straight?

"Christine!" he proclaims when we shuffle past him. "I thought that was you!"

She is glowing, floating, beaming, gleaming.

It is one of the coldest nights yet, a bitter 20 degrees, but when we get into the car to drive to Jahn's, the "J" of Michael's "Q and J", for an old-fashioned banana split, I'll admit to feeling pretty snug and toasty.

My Blog

"I'm redesigning my blog," I said to Michael on a particularly beautiful day, a day I'd chosen to say it. We were walking briskly across the Union Street Bridge, on our way to Park Slope, to go to a friend's daughter's christening. 

"Why?" he asked.

I had my reasons of which I rattled off, as if preparing for a job interview.

"Well, it's been four years on Tumblr. I'm tired of my template. It's too fixed. I can't modify it in creative enough ways. I want people to comment. I want a site that I can look at and like looking at. I want a space to write in that inspires me to write. A space where I can see everything in front of me. I just need a change." 

"Okay," he said. 

I hate Michael's "Okays." Okay? Okay? It made me feel like I had more to prove.

"Also..." I said, starting to sound a lot like someone desperate to teach a lesson. "I take written histories very seriously. Not everyone can be an oral storyteller. Not everyone can remember the days in and the days out of their short, little lifespans. Life moves pretty fast, did you know that? If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Did you know that? And do you know who said that? John Hughes. Well, John Hughes wrote it. Ferris Bueller said it. Matthew Broderick. I think it's important that one of us, me, pen the history of our life together, of our relationship, our marriage, our faults and our fights, so that our children and our children's children can read written accounts of who we are, who we were, who we became, what we did, where we went, what we loved, what we hated, how we felt, and how we died. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Sorta."

I hate Michael's "Sortas." Sorta? Sorta?

"I think your blog is something that makes you happy, and if it makes you happy then you should find all the ways to continue blogging," he says.

Human beings are not rational, but rationalizing animals. I don't have to rattle off a list of reasons as to why I am making change. If I believe the change to be in my best interest, then that's why I'm making it. I've been writing in diaries since the 80s / journaling in notebooks since the 90s / blogging online since the 00s. It's my favorite outlet, my favorite form of exercise. It's not always fun to do, but it's always fun to have done it.

And he's right. It makes me happy.

Second Floor Columbia Street

Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, ”So that’s what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.” You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: ”Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.” Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.

“The Way We Live Now: 11-11-01; Lost and Found” by Colson Whitehead, Published in the NYT Magazine on November 11, 2001.

***

When Michael and I left second floor Columbia Street a month ago, we left hurriedly and without regret. There was no dimming of the lights, no slow close to the door, no thoughtfully chosen song playing in the far-off distance. We left like we were just… leaving, to go to work, to catch a movie. I missed the acknowledgment, the pause, of what this apartment had been for us, had done for us, had heard, had seen. Because if walls could talk, what would ours have said? Isn’t it worth noting the address where the readiness of marriage had finally felt equipped and outfitted?

Second floor Columbia Street fulfilled a fantasy of mine. The fantasy where I am finally older, with a job and a boyfriend, tiredly dropping keys on a counter, unzipping skirts and pulling on socks, pouring wine with sighs, writing rent checks in a flurry, hitting spacebar at a farmhouse table, with no television, just music and books and radio and windows, watching Brooklyn sunset light flood dark honey wooden floors, listening to rain, to hurricanes, to Jalopy banjos, to foghorns, to church bells.

I romanticize life - I will be the first to admit it! Yes, shitty shit, like scary silence and arguments and crying into pillows so he won’t hear me but probably did, made its way into this second floor Columbia Street fantasy, but that is just what lies behind a closed door. Yeah, there were nights we were too hot, days we were too cold, afternoons of resentment, mornings of insecurity, et cetera. #lifeproblems

I turned 32 over a week ago and I can barely remember conversations I’ve had thirty seconds ago. I can’t stand the idea of looking back on my life in foggy recollection. So what, so many people think. And they move on. But I can’t. I want my future histories, my children, to find written morsels of our genetic similarities so that their feelings, the intuitive way they handle themselves, my quick lip or quiet chariness, feels more endowment than bug.  

I know I am just one writer contributing to the long narrative of (low-scale) human suffering, our half glasses full, then subconsciously dipping like an old man’s bank account, or like eyesight or like time. Optimisms mottled. Considering our injuries with broken hearts, thoughts reeling like a broken fishing line. Leisurely I learn that nothing can ever be like it was. And why should it? I don’t want to stay locked in time, reliving the same awesome things. I want to move on and feel everything! The late Seamus Heaney wrote, “Capstones shift; nothing resettles right.” Not to say that it wrongly resettles; it resettles. 

In the past, our energies have burned on Union Street, in a full bed, eyes open, jumping madly (me) and purposefully (him) into what we always felt would be the rest of our lives.  In the top floor apartment of Marie and Norman’s house, we’ve sat opposite sides of a reclining couch, watching The Jersey Shore in fun horror, paying closer attention to Ronnie and Sammi’s dysfunctions than to the ones we, ourselves, were cooking up. We’ve since broken up and written long emails; we’ve since connected over ices and gone for long walks. On Craigslist I found our clean slate - second floor Columbia Street – where just a few short months later, Michael penned a message to me in the Red Hook Star Revue that read: “I’m so glad that we have Columbia Street together.” Second floor Columbia Street was a saving grace from its aggravating landlord who I secretly took lessons from in how not to be. I took Italian language classes. He started juicing and running. We spent lots of time with grandma. We learned a million things about a million things in this apartment. My name changed in this apartment. 

We’re in transition now, living at Third Street and Sackett Street, but we’ll resettle on Summit Street in the year 2014, on a date that exists because it will arrive naturally with the calendar, but on a date I can’t write down yet. I’ll have to work to treasure the meantime. Otherwise, our story will let pass the romance. And that’s not how it goes or looks in my fantasy. 

Steve Katz

On Court Street, Michael and I tore away from each other, without words, like a wishbone minus the luck. We’d taken our argument outside the apartment and into the evening hot, walking together for a few blocks before embarking on separate runs. He was taking the train to Greenpoint for a long run home, and I was taking my legs to the air-conditioned gym for mindless release. I don’t know how Michael ran that night, but I ran fast, fueled with all sorts of emotion, a state of running I will admit to missing sometimes just because of the naturally aggressive, effortless pushing it warrants. For 40 minutes, without music, I ran uphill. Then I went and cried at the mirror, ten pounds up and down behind my head. 

As a writer it seemed the perfect night to be hot and bothered; everything looked and felt personal. The sky, a mean summer orange, had given the brownstones a sick glow as if they’d been slapped on the stoop more than once, and the old, Italian ladies sitting sticky in their chairs could tell you exactly what they’d seen. I thought about the rest of my night, how I wanted it to go, how I could make this Friday night mine and no one else’s. I thought about not showering and just grabbing my bike for a night-ride. I thought about walking through Brooklyn Bridge Park and setting myself down on a bench to think about my man and our mishegas. I thought about buying a pack of cigarettes, something I have not done in years, just to blow smoke for once. As I got closer to my apartment, and closer to the idea of just showering and going to bed, I saw two girls sitting outside Jalopy, the bluegrass, folk, and banjo venue next door. 

“Who’s playing tonight?” I asked them.

“Steve Katz,” one girl said. “He goes on at 9.” 

 I didn’t know who Steve Katz was but I didn’t really care. 

“I live next door,” I pointed out. “I’m just gonna go take a shower and then I’ll be back down.” 

As soon as I said it, I felt weird for saying it, as if we were people living in a small, country town and I had just moved into the barn down the gravel path.  

“Sounds good,” the other girl said.

The whole thing did sound good, and as I showered and shampooed my hair, I felt more and more satisfied with the night’s plan. Before I left, I texted Michael: “@Jalopy.” 

A ticket to hear Steve Katz play cost $25. I paid that up, and while I was at it, paid cash for a stocky mason glass of wine, which I took with me to the 3rd row pew, just short of the stage. There were maybe 12 people there, mostly older people, like a few years older than my parents. Around 9:10, Steve Katz walked down the aisle and got up on stage. He looked close to 70, with a belly and a plain, wrung out dark blue shirt. He didn’t say anything; he started to play. My eyes got hot immediately. It had nothing to do with what he was singing about (a jug band tune called “take your fingers off it, don’t you dare touch it, you know it don’t belong to you”) but it had everything to do with feeling touched by sound. Sometimes music hits me and I feel like it’s the first time I’ve been hit with it, ever. Behind me, under their breath, a man and woman sang along. In between songs, while tuning his guitar, Steve Katz told stories as if we already knew the most of it and here we were, just sitting around a fire, sharing more, and adding to them. Later on, in another pew, during a memory about the Gaslight Café on MacDougal Street, someone helped him remember the name of a guy they used to know. I thought about a million different things as Steve Katz played his guitar and sang his songs. His age, for one thing, and how the 60s were so long gone for him. I thought about his memories - the songs he would write about women leaving him; the joints he would roll and the bourbon he would pour. He sang a song to his grandchildren about prostitution and when he tried to explain what prostitution was to them, one of them looked up at him and said, “I don’t think that song is about that.” Steve Katz said, “Okay, it’s about drugs then.” I really liked his banter. I really liked that he was out on a Friday night playing in the cool of a friends-only crowd. Even though he also sang a song about most of his old friends being dead or having gone away. I liked the wooden tap of my wineglass hitting the pew each time I took a sip.

“… And that’s when Blood, Sweat, and Tears was formed.” 

Suddenly, Steve Katz said this and all I could think was… Dad…

My dad loves Blood, Sweat, and Tears. He loves lots of bands, but his love for this one has always stood out for me. We used to have a couple packed drawers of cassette tapes, so many of them scribbled in my dad’s lefty handwriting, I see them in my head. Almost 15 years ago, when I was showing him how “Napster” works (that is so crazy to write), I asked him to name me a band he wanted to look up. 

“Blood, Sweat, and Tears,” he said, immediately.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Oh man, you don’t know who Blood, Sweat, and Tears are?” Disappointment shrouded his face. “I have so much to teach you.” 

Listening to a guy my dad listened to for so many years rounded out the rest of my night. 

It’s those small surprises that can turn your night around. 

Parties

A couple of nights ago, while cleaning out my inbox, I clicked open an old-fashioned party email invitation I’d sent out for New Years Eve 2007. Rereading it, I couldn’t help but feel flushed at the wordy attempt to sound casual and cool (subject was entitled: “laid-back, no expectations kind of new years eve party at Sylvie’s”) but when I read through all the reply-alls (my life was filled with so many people who knew and knew of each other back then that the reply-alls weren’t a bother the way they are now), it was clear no one found my proposal grating. Everyone had equally dorky / clever-attempting things to write back (i.e. “zero expectations = my middle name” and “I call dibs on Becky’s bed”) not to mention they all could come, everyone was free, unfilled, ready to buy a container of hummus and their own something to drink. These days it is task enough making plans with another couple for dinner… let alone ten of them and at less than a week’s notice. It made me miss the whole party-throwing shebang. 

A week before July 4th, I asked Michael if he wanted to throw a BBQ party in my parents’ backyard since they weren’t going to be there. In my mind, it was the perfect opportunity to get back to my party-throwing roots. I’ll write up a guest list! I’ll make mini quiche! I’ll make a playlist! I’ll forgo the urge to concoct a trendy summer cocktail and instead, with one foot up against our chairs, we’ll drink our leftover wedding beer, eat watermelon and wrinkled hot dogs, and stay outside talking / laughing until my responsible adult voice breaks the news about needing to whisper now. Neighbors, I will point up, down and around. Everyone will have fun. 

“Not really,” Michael answered. 

I knew Michael didn’t have any better ideas for how we should celebrate July 4th, so I decided not to listen to him. I told him, enthusiastically, “We’re throwing a party.” And then I made him invite his friends, the ones he has left, because mine are otherwise dwindling. Seven years ago I could rattle you off tons of names – from camp, high school, Hebrew school, college, jobs, friends of friends, the entire band of a friend, boys I’d gone on two dates with – it was so easy to cull these bodies together in a room. It was the age of wanting to be where everyone was, her legs dangling off a fire escape, his back against a wall – ready to hook-up & make our connections, tell a story, and be seen. Social networking hadn’t reached that high a level of time suckage, and so we hadn’t yet begun confusing real conversations with the comments we now leave on status updates. We took cute people to parties to get them into a context, to show them who we knew and who knew us. No one was married yet. 

Like most things in life, your parties will evolve. You’ll become picky about what you’re drinking, sticking with what you like best, what won’t get you drunk. You’ll want people over in the afternoon so that you can clean up that night and still get to bed as if the whole party never happened. Without the smoke, a 2-year old baby will have you laughing. Would it be nice if that guy I used to laugh with at Thursday night poker games at my friend’s ex-boyfriend’s apartment in Park Slope came to my July 4th BBQ party? I think he’s of another time, not really meant to come back. 

I miss the old parties but can’t seem to throw them the way I used to. Why does this have to happen? What gives?

Suburbicity

For me, the (adult life) distinction between suburbia and the city was always clear-cut. In the ‘burbs you were older, affable and humdrum with a genuine taste for strip malls (you didn’t just go there, you liked going there) while in the city you were young (at heart), at one with cultural significances, and typically looking for and finding creative ways to stay out late. In my bubble, your move to the ‘burbs meant you were turning into (your) parents, grown-ass parents – or retiring. You wanted to cut the grass, you wanted to bake the cookies, you wanted to stop walking and start driving. Moving to the city meant you wanted big(ger) things for yourself – jobs, dreams, love – and you thirsted for difference. Different backgrounds, different things to say about the same things, and while I do know the differentiation line is thinning – many towns are now reconstructed to include walkable shopping streets, good transit, mixed uses, and green spaces - I am still intractable on the old-fashioned suburbs the same way someone who hasn’t been to Brooklyn since 1960 would comment on its “bad reputation.” Suburbs: bad. City: good. I’ve read too much fiction in which my suburban woman is bored, depressed, neglected, wiping her cookie-cutter hands on an apron; I’ve watched too many TV shows in which the “little boxes” all look the same, window-shuttered and monotonous; I’ve seen too many movies… actually, I haven’t… but I am conditioned to know that it is the role of the suburbs to conjure up that pejorative place, and because of those depictions, I rely on them to exist on a purely selfish level - for the pleasurable cartoon comic strip of it.

We visited friends this weekend in West Hartford, Connecticut. On a short jog through the neighborhood one morning, before I crossed the street without looking both ways (twice), before I heard the hum of the lawnmower, before I sniffed the (“I have time to make”) pancake syrup wafting down driveways, before absolutely nothing happened, a complete stranger waved to me. Forget the nod of acknowledgment or the smile of acceptance. This here was a wave that I could have stopped and counted with fingers, lasting an entire three seconds. There is energy involved in lifting one’s hand, moving it from left to right, right from left, and when you don’t even know that person’s name (or care to know it), the energy is that much greater. I’m not not a waver – I grew up waving to my own neighbors, people I recognized and felt some sort of trust for, but it was more of a one hand up, do you solemnly swear kind of wave, except a little higher up. Ah, yes, it is you, I know you, I see you there. And so you wave. But this guy didn’t know me. I reciprocated the wave and almost immediately my jog picked up its pace. On a strangely chilly Memorial Day Weekend, in a town I felt no connection to, all of a sudden I felt warmth. All because a stranger, someone I would never see again (maybe…) waved at me. The city prides itself on broadening our connections with other cultures and other people (like our neighbors), but in small, suburban towns we are taken aback by the friendliness, by the interest. Today I feel like we are excluding ourselves from everyone and everything. Michael’s car windows are tinted; I am engulfed in various newsfeeds, my eyes turned down; we all want to ride the elevator alone. 

A part of me is OK with this, and a part of me really does fear the worst, but tomorrow, on Columbia Street, in my own little suburb of the city, I am going to wave to someone. For the pleasurable pleasure of it.

Being Neighborly

There are many things pleasant about the springtime stoop-sale. 

While the weekend sunlight weaves through the open spots in the cherry blossom across the street, we garbage bag clothes, unfold the card tables, dust off my grandfather’s old theater posters, and artfully arrange mismatched mugs, old jewelry, vases, and candlestick holders. We position furniture like living rooms, hang coats in trees, remove pictures from frames. We break our twenties, then take chalk and draw big arrows on the street corners. All other days, when we are shredding our junk mail, afraid to advertise our address, it is today that we want to be found. Someone, go get coffee from Caputo’s. 

On the one hand, when our things finally begin to feel heavy, purging is cleansing. After my last blog post on how Michael only wants to wear/own two shirts, I assessed my own (gym) t-shirt situation and tossed what felt like 100 t-shirts. How fast we accumulate the same shit is kind of shocking. How fast we attribute keeping the same shit due to made-up sentiment is equally as shocking. But this t-shirt was my dad’s; but this t-shirt was a gift; but this t-shirt is so soft; but this t-shirt says UMass on it. I now have a neat stack of about 10 t-shirts on my shelf. (8 too many for Michael.) Most of them say Brooklyn on it (the pleasure of words and home rolled into one). 

And then on the other hand, setting up shop and/or perusing through a neighbor’s shop rejuvenates the spirit of “buying local.” The stoop sale is the baby of small businesses and by perching ourselves outside our own, we’re not only inviting community into our nest, we’re creating a sense of new adventure on familiar streets. We’re meeting the new family across the street that speaks French; we’re having a longer conversation with the old lady down the block who is always with the broom. Carroll Gardens had character(s) long before the neighborhood saw specialty stores for ramen noodles and smoked fish. But it’s the people that have character, that bring the character, and not the things we are looking to sell. 

We make use of the stoop and watch the traffic. The vans that slow and roll down their windows. The bicyclists that ask us to watch their bikes so they can leaf through books. The kids who inadvertently take plastic things off tables and just leave. But we say hello and thank you to everyone because there is no day better than stoop-sale day for being neighborly. 

Of the Ilk

Michael is of the ilk that clothes don’t matter, if you care about your clothes, you should be ashamed of yourself. I attribute this extremism to a few things: a) the farmer’s mentality that is all up in his blood; his dad was raised on a farm in Funks Grove, IL where a lone pair of coveralls was enough to get the land tilled in time to ring the cowbell. b) the years after grad school living in Islamorada, FL where it was perfectly acceptable to go talk business in Kino Sandals and a shirt donning palm trees. c) Little Lanky Michael Brown in the 80s and 90s did not come to class wearing the latest anything. If that (truly) bothered him at the time, I wouldn’t know, because today it is only referenced with pride. I should also mention that he is 100% colorblind, a guy who sees most things, both literally and figuratively, in black and white, a familial trait inherited from his mother’s father. Sometimes, when I feel like choking myself up, I will stop to think of Michael in a colorless world, unable to appreciate the green of my eyes, the blue of the sky, the red of the radish. That is, until he says something like: “I think I can get away with owning 2 shirts.” This statement brings fury and depression to my door. No, you cannot get away with that, I think. While I know the self-effacing t-shirt is a go-to wardrobe item for most men, I imagine most men like to at least rotate through a decent selection of them. Plus, the t-shirt you wear to the gym is not the same as the t-shirt you don’t wear to the gym. Am I right? To my disadvantage, I failed to marry someone who believes in adhering to what the wife says and wants. I suppose that’s fair considering I’m not going to just do what the husband wants either, but in this case, I really think he should consider wearing wear more than just 2 shirts. When we first started dating in ‘08, he had just returned to Brooklyn from Islamorada, and I couldn’t get him to stop wearing shirts with fish on them. But at this point, I would die for the return of the fish shirts, because those shirts at least boasted a collar. What I’d give to see a collar again, and not a shirt featuring sweat-wicking or odor-reducing fibers. With color-limited vision, I imagine Michael knows his limitations when it comes to dressing himself and/or buying new clothes, which is why, as his wife, I am happy to dress him. Sadly, he won’t allow for that. What makes this difficult is that we’re talking about an attractive man who can wear just about anything and still look good. He’s like a paper doll cutout I am forced to set aside while I stare longingly at the templates for hats and pants. Let me dress you, Michael Brown!

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Ali Brill had (real) Doc Martens. Anne Linder had (Super) Nintendo. Laura Goldberg had (her own) set of house keys. Amanda Staiano got (professional) manicures. Danna Weber had an older sister (who knew about sex). I had plenty of things but none of those things. I always wanted what I didn’t have. (To a degree, I still want what I don’t have.) We are who we are. I have a funny story to tell. (And I’m probably paying the price for it today, I’ll never know.) And it’s about wanting something I didn’t have. (Glasses.) I was 9 and I wanted glasses. I wanted glasses because my dentist told me I couldn’t have braces. I couldn’t have braces because I didn’t need braces. (What did he know?) I was on to the next best man in a white coat: my optometrist. Just a normal day getting my eyes checked is how I played it. I lied frequently as a kid so lying about letters I saw during the visual acuity test was going to be a breeze. But I jumped the gun and called As Ws and Ps Ks when I should have been calling Ds Os and Es Bs. I was given a prescription for glasses but I was also given a pirate’s eye patch to wear with them. The patch would help my one (ridiculously) weak eye get stronger. If I recall correctly, my mom paid a whopping $100 for my (fake) glasses. I hated wearing that eye patch, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I had faked the eye test. She’d be mad and I’d get punished. And I was still banking on (real) Doc Martens. I had to wear the patch. I wore it over my left eye. I remember watching Wheel of Fortune one night and thinking: If only I could see the letters! If only I could see the letters! I couldn’t see the letters with that damn eye patch. As if 4th grade life wasn’t hard enough (with Lenny Soberman stealing my hat), now I had to sit through class wearing an eye patch. No one said: “Hey, nice glasses.” My 4th grade class picture has me sitting front row, wearing (way too) circular blue frames, high-tops, and a black vest with pink rosebuds right where the nipples go. (Anne Linder loves this picture.) I really thought I fared a chance at looking cool when the glasses rolled around, but it’s never what you think is cool that makes you cool. Ali Brill wasn’t cool because she had (real) Doc Martens. She was cool because she watched movies like Back to the Beach. Anne Linder wasn’t cool because she had (Super) Nintendo. She was cool because she loved drinking milk. Laura Goldberg wasn’t cool because she had (her own) set of house keys. She was cool because she had freckles. Amanda Staiano wasn’t cool because she got (professional) manicures. She was cool because she was Italian. And Danna Weber wasn’t cool because she had an older sister (who knew about sex). She was cool because she was the first one to think of freezing lemon Ssips juice packs to eat with a spoon. Or so I still think. Who knows what cool is anymore?

Like a Bike Ride Down Ocean Parkway

At the airport, on our way to St. Maarten, Michael turned to me and said: “Know what you should write about while it’s fresh?” 

Two weeks later, to think that my reminiscence of our wedding day could ever shrink and fade like an old photograph seems implausible. If a normal weekday-workday were filled up with as many brilliant moments as February 24th, 2013 was, I’d be a walking burst of sunshine sifting through a daily grind that no longer felt like a grind. Morning commutes into SoHo would have me smiling bright at strangers and my street cart coffee would taste like cappuccino in a cobblestoned piazza. An overflowing inbox of bolded emails would all say one affable, amorous thing after the next, and conference rooms would be reserved not for meetings but for further merriness the cubicles only failed to contain. Peking duck cones and Pigs-in-the-blanket would fly around on platters, making pit stops at my desk first before moving on to the President. The Join.me numbers got dialed to get you to join me on the dance flo’. But these are not the workdays we are given. And if they were, how would the really good ones stand out? Stay fresh?

There’s no such thing as a difficult conversation on your wedding day, thank god. Nothing needs be worked out, analyzed, reported on. You are there to commit yourself to the one, new person you now love the most in life and to be surrounded by the ones who can attest to loving you almost as much. I can’t really begin to chronicle, nor do I want to chronicle, every split second that made up this wedding day, but like an old photograph will help do, I feel like writing up a slice of life into its moments. 

Nerves got the best of me at exactly 4:44am Sunday, 2/24/13. My stomach in knots had me up in the dark from those minutes forward through the morning, at which point my tongue was aflame from all the fresh ginger I’d been chewing. I sat in my living room, looking out the windows, and breathing deeply. My friend, Rebecca, had stayed the night with me while Michael slept at his parents’ house, and as I looked back at her sleeping soundly in my bed, all I could think about was how thankful I was not to be alone in the dim before sunrise. Rarely do I feel sick but when I do I get scared that the feeling will never go away, that I will need to push through life feeling nauseous and woozy. At 6am, with hot tea and deep breathing apparently not on my side, I texted Sackett Street for parental suggestions that one day I know I will have down pat and under my belt, ready for doling out: Fresh sliced ginger, bananas, crackers, lots of water to stay hydrated. Don’t go for a run this morning. Done and done. Sunday morning turned into a mending test. Could I feel better by the time I had to walk the aisle? I thought back to the night before the Brooklyn Half-Marathon, last May, when all my energy went to nipping a nasty sore throat in the bud. I worked and worked at ridding it, practically willing myself to feel better, having silent conversations in my head with God, ridiculous stuff. I can’t push natural remedies enough. (Although I’ve never gone the quick fix route.) They’re real and they work. Apple cider vinegar mixed with water. Bananas. Blueberries. Crackers. Fresh ginger. By noon, I was good to go. 

Four hours later, sitting in the back room of the Green Building, surrounded by my best girlfriends and guyfriends, minutes before walking out into what I’d been daydreaming about for the last 5 ½ months, God said “just kidding!” to our conversation and hit me with knots. It’s normal, everyone said, and an L&B’s pizza bite attached to a toothpick was handed to me. Comfort flowed through my body at that point. Right! L&B’s pizza bites. Outside the back room, these were being served to everyone – a little “welcome to the wedding!” pre-ceremony nosh and one of our first wedding brainstorms Michael and I had stamped our feet down with approval. And we’ll serve L&B’s! Yes. Obviously. After a morning of straight up ginger, water, and bananas, L&B’s had never tasted this good. (Well, maybe it had.) In that moment, the real cure for my nerves had been familiar, memory-lane food. 

Call me an emotional eater, but that quick nosh swung me back 4 ½ years ago to the springtime bike ride Michael and I took from Carroll Gardens to L&B’s. It was our first time bike riding together, and our relationship was still so new that I remember still trying to impressively dress. The weather was too warm for skinny jeans, but I threw them on anyway. After some sticky pedaling to 3rd Street to pick him up, I found him wearing a full-on bicycle-racing suit, filling water bottles, and pumping air into his tires. We went back to Sackett Street to not only change into shorts… but to get my helmet, too. Safety before beauty, I guess. (My mom can thank him for that.) We biked along Ocean Parkway talking about things I wish I could remember (perhaps I should have written them down) and finally ended up at L&B’s, eating squares outside, sharing spumoni, and feeling Brooklyn. We took a picture that day and I’ve had it framed ever since because it was a good day. A really good day. Looking back, it was the brief realization that I could be (and should be) as comfortable as I ever want or need to be with him. Shows need not be put on.  

I thought about that as my parents walked me down the aisle. Even though ceremonies, by ritual significance, possess somewhat of a theatrical quality, I really wanted ours to feel like that bike ride down Ocean Parkway. It totally did. 

Romantic Feelings Reciprocated

February 24th, 2013

The Green Building

I didn’t grow up dreaming of my wedding day like a lot of young girlies do. I dreamt of having boyfriends and romantic feelings reciprocated, but never did I go so far as to picture a wedding day. When Michael and I got engaged 5 ½ months ago, my first thought was to throw a picnic table party in the vacant lot next to our apartment. We’d do it in the summertime, hire my friend’s band to sing and get everyone sweating, make toasts with Brooklyn beer and my father-in-law’s wine, throw a slideshow of photographs up onto the concrete wall of the building when the sun started setting. Neighbors wouldn’t complain because it’d be like a good, old-fashioned block party. But it was September and we didn’t want to wait until next summer. Why wait? I’d like to chalk it up to being far too in love to have to hold out until the dog days, but in reality it was because neither of us wanted to mask an entire year with planning a wedding. Decisions can be made. You just have to make them. Some can even be made in a matter of minutes. Lucky for us, we knew we wanted to keep the celebration in the neighborhood. The Green Building sat smack dab between our parents’ homes – it was the perfect event space – and what could be better than walking to your own wedding? We had a cloudy Sunday all to ourselves after a rainy Saturday of not a whole lot. Our invitation called February 24th a day in the “hazy shade of winter” and that’s what it felt like. Cold, but not too cold, March felt right around the corner, and I got away with leaving my stockings back at the apartment. From our second floor windows I crouched down to steal better looks at Michael, suited up, down on the Columbia Street sidewalk. Once outside he looked even better - him in Palermo pink, a skinny black tie, clandestine skulls and crossbones in a place I won’t give up. His presence felt good and warm, like it always does, and the knots in my stomach got a head start on unraveling. Later on, standing up in front of so many people in an effort to declare romantic feelings reciprocated, life was only made easier because Michael was up there with me. I could never have gotten married without him. 

Because it's Fun

In faithful English teacher fashion, for Michael’s birthday yesterday, his mom wrote him a poem. She was up at 4am Saturday morning anyway, wrote it, and was done by 6:30am (she said). A piece of Word doc taped into the card whose commercial printed sentiment read: Happy Birthday tough guy. It was a lyric poem dressed up with rhyme that Michael read aloud to us (his family), each word enunciated with mock (“These landmarks are very confusing – a birthday, a wedding, teams losing / They sometimes are sad / And sometimes are glad / And often they robe you of snoozing”) was clue enough to his grandmother to keep reaching into her bag of murmured “Madonna mias” after each stanza’s rest, if not before.

“How do you spell rob?” he asked his mother. 

“R-o-b,” she answered. 

“Because you wrote ‘robe,’” he said, reaching across me to kiss her hand.

We sat and laughed at her ode – a piece of writing that probably sounds easy to compose (once it is composed) but I secretly know how that verse goes. I used to write so much poetry. Or as I labeled it in my twenties, poetic prose, because I didn’t take enough poetry courses in college to feed my confidence, or knowledge for it. I always wrote out of a combination of needing to write so that I could feel justified in a deep well of juvenile-turned-adult feelings, and to keep hold of my life and remember the details because whew! I’ve hung around in a lot of smoke. I also wrote to provide myself with a practiced script of sense, not necessarily for the listening ear, but for my love of clarity and brain-tease. (I will sooner try to write something than attempt a math riddle.) I know I’m not alone when I acknowledge that writing is hard. Writing something that you like is even harder. Someone I used to know once told me my writing was lazy, that my snippets of language were teasers of something better and that I was too afraid, too indolent, to move them into something larger. At once offended and found out, I knew this was why I did my best to avoid poetry workshops and writing groups; criticism felt like an unleashed beast I never had the spirit to wrestle. (Still working on mustering that spirit. Any advice?)

I loved Michael’s mom’s poem. I love that she wrote it so early in the morning on the day of the birthday and I love that she printed it out without proofreading. It gave us something to laugh about. It reminded me of another reason I write: Because it’s fun.

Sunday's Closure

It was one of those mornings where I was up real early, not because I couldn’t sleep but because I was done with it. Closure hit my dreams as the stories folded themselves up like accordions and my next move was only to put on winter socks, assemble the stovetop coffee drip and look out my Columbia Street windows. The Battery Tunnel, the auto repair shop and the buildings and billboards of Red Hook sat quiet caught between sky and snow, and not a single footprint or paw print, had made its mark. Unlike yesterday, which felt like an outdoor whirlwind of going places and seeing people, there was nothing to do today except enjoy the coffee and let the morning crawl. Michael was not far away. Like me, he was up early, if not earlier, doused in blanket and wearing headphones, tuned into a podcast. It makes me so happy to be marrying another early riser, someone with an appreciation for the morning. I had a small crafts project I wanted to do, maybe even finish, that I knew would go great with my coffee and so I set myself up at the kitchen counter and started working on it. I was making 16 handmade cards of exact width and length. Materials called for scissors, glue, paper, and the mind zone for repetitious exercise. Forty minutes into the morning, inspiration for a blog post hit and I immediately grabbed my laptop and went to go sit in the rocking chair by the window. It was one of those mornings when everything seems perfect, it is almost strange – the coffee is strong, the sunlight is dripping in slowly, you love your fiancé, it is Sunday, you are inspired. I wrote a long post, a sentimental one, one that I thought about circumspectly and with care. I choose my words like I move my chess pieces and this post had been a good game. And then it happened. With one faulty click of a key that I wish I could remember what, my post was gone. No draft saved, no remnants of sentences, nothing. And like that, the singing bluebirds of Sunday morning fell out their nest and died. After I was finished breathing hard in Michael’s arms, I got mean and said: “I hate Tumblr.” He quickly snapped: “Don’t hate on something that’s your own fault.” I thought about that for a minute or two, after slamming my laptop closed, after whipping the blanket-wrap I was wearing around my shoulders all morning onto the bed, after angrily washing a fork I saw in the sink for no real reason other than to have something to do with my hands. I had two choices. I could finish off Sunday as an angry, sad, and uninspired person, or I could finish off Sunday as if I had sipped really strong coffee, turned pretty paper into handmade cards, enthused a great piece of writing, and then cooked a delicious February soup. (I have a kale, sausage, and red lentil soup simmering on the stove now.) Even though my post from this morning doesn’t exist anymore, I feel good knowing that it once did. 

What Makes You Feel Like a Grown-Up?

You show a kid this picture and ask them what they like best about it and I bet you they say the fish tank. (See the fish tank?) That’s because kids don’t appreciate table runners, adults do. (Certain adults.) I crowned myself an adult this weekend when I swept this gorgeous thing across my farmhouse table, and dressed that shit up. Apologies to Michael who wouldn’t know a table runner from a marathon runner, but man do I love this apartment accent piece. Yes, an accent piece. I’m an adult now, and this adult thinks about accent pieces. When I was a kid, I was tearing out Absolut ads and taping them to my walls. Were those my “accent pieces”? I don’t know. All I know is that my mom used to yell at me for taping anything to my walls, let alone ads for vodka. You’ll take the paint off! she said. I wonder what else needs to go atop this table for me to really feel the adult bone. Candlesticks? A basket of fruit? Do I need to spread my bills across it? When I was in college, I had this shared vision with a friend of mine of what the life of an adult looked like. It went like this: I come home from work. I am very tired. I am wearing high heels. I take them off. I drop my keys on the kitchen “island.” I pour myself a glass of wine. I am dating someone, and that someone wants to give me a neck massage. It ended there. (Perhaps with good reason as it sounds like a scene from a  chick flick that I very well might stream off Netflix tonight.) What makes you feel like a grown up? Is it the decisions you make? The money you save? The writing you read? The table runners you love… 

LEGO Story Trauma

I didn’t know where I was going with my LEGO structure, but I was desperate to come up with something. At first I thought I was building some sort of locomotive, but then all of a sudden I was building a very, very tall scooter. (Did it mean I’d always wanted to ride a very, very tall scooter? I didn’t know.) But I kept changing my mind, kept picking up and touching each tiny piece faster than my brain could puzzle together what I wanted to build. I was waiting and waiting for the one right LEGO to inspire the entire construction because I really wanted something about its configuration to change lock, stock, and barrel, and it was nearly impossible to put into words what. Looking back, I was dying for the story to tell itself.