The Kindred Spirits

Right now, on the other side of the country, in a little country house in North Carolina, my sweet redheaded sista-friend, Annie, is fighting like a champ. She has just completed aggressive rounds of chemotherapy and brain-surgery-while-awake to shrink/remove/obliterate the growing tumor in her head. The tumor is not backing down, but then, neither is Annie.

Is there some kind of firing squad line-up that has summoned all the good people to stand against the wall so that this dreaded blight can aim-fire-shoot deadly cancer rays at them? I am horrified at how many times I am hearing and seeing these precious and innocent people under attack. Most of the ones I know in my inner circle have not even touched a cigarette or taken illicit drugs. Most have lived quiet and wholesome lives, care taking others, and it just doesn't seem fair. As far as I know, right now, Osama Bin Laden is alive and doing well, and I seriously doubt he has cancer. So... it just isn't fair. I know I sound like a toddler right now, but it just isn't fair.

I grieve the prospect of a world without Annie's voice or incredible laugh. She has got to be one of the most interesting, full of life, imaginative and quirky-intelligent people I have ever known. She is the only friend in my circle who has bubbled over with glee about the revelations she uncovered while reading a book on quantum physics, of all things. I have no idea what she was talking about, but the passion for learning that has impressed me "evah so" as she would often slip and say when she let her inner Southern Belle loose.

A few weeks ago, I called her and caught her when she was waiting in the clinic for her first round of chemo/radiation. Her voice was full of light and optimism and from the chatter and constant interruptions to our conversation, I knew she had charismatically enchanted a room full of fearful patients and their families. She was cheering them on as they were being wheeled back to the room of monster-robot-cancer-killers. The tumor had caused her to be unable to "ambulate" (she loves that word) without the use of a walker. When her physical therapist wasn't looking, she told me, she did her very best "shuffle-ball-change" dance move, just to defy the rules. That's soooo Annie.

Annie is my walking tutor to all things good and Southern. She knows how to put a good scald on some fried chicken, how to serve "sweet tea" and she was there, my down-the-hall neighbor, to bail me out of my first cheesecake-gone-wrong disaster. She has drawers upon drawers of hand crafted linens, and dusty bookshelves that hold an eclectic variety of reading matter -- all of which I know for sure she has consumed. She knew of coffee houses in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia long before they became vogue niches for the yuppies to occupy. She sat still and listened in the midst of a room full of diverse conversations, able to extract brilliant sound bites from them all, which could be repeated at a moment's recall. I am convinced that somewhere deep in her closet is a hoop skirt and an invite to a cotillion. She would be ready and nothing, if not appropriate...

Annie was on the edge of 39 when she married her soul mate. She asked me to help her to hand pick her lingerie for the honeymoon. It was one of my first visits to Victoria Secret and she opened up the curtain, without a hint of self-consciousness whatsoever, to ask me if she should be seen in this: a fabulous thong-teddy. I don't think I had ever met anyone who I knew personally would be able to pull off that look, and here was Annie, not scared of being 40, not nervous or self-deprecating -- just ecstatic that she was getting to have this moment in her life after all the searching. I literally fell over laughing with her. All these years later, I still remind her to behave herself because I have seen her in a thong and might just have pictures to prove it.

Annie, Julie H. and I all met down in San Diego a few years ago, lunched at the Hotel Del Coronado. We called ourselves "The Pinky Sisters", making a commitment to not give up on expressing ourselves freely through our writing. "The Pinky Sisters" lunch was so inspirational, I began to write again, beginning this blog shortly afterwards. I did not see it coming... that I would write about this fight of Annie's. She will be upset if she thinks she made any of us feel sad or sorry for her. She just wants us all to fight beside her, cheer her on, help her cheer everyone else on, too ... so I will. I just won't let her see my tears while I do ...

28 Winters

Somewhere in the world today, the winter winds are still blowing, snow is falling and the roads are slick and icy. Somewhere in the world there are fireplaces lit and the wood burning smoky clouds through the chimneys is sending sweet aromas into the chilly air. Somewhere there are quiet places where people are sitting, hidden from the elements, wrapped up in woolen blankets and toasty socks. They are enjoying the quiet ... and somewhere in corners of the winter world, there is new love blooming and seasoned love turning the ground over for another round of anticipated blooming.

So it was for me 28 winters ago, when Michael joined my family on a weekend getaway to a mountain cabin in Western Maryland. We were old friends on the verge of our new life together, committed and in love, and I was on a daily vigil for a marriage proposal. I was that sure. Michael was anything if not predictable, or so I thought. He must have known this assessment I had of him and decided to defy it by proposing to me at a time he knew I would least expect it. This he did with great success, for I surely did not expect him to pop the question while I was sound asleep at 6:00 a.m., all clad in flannel with my very best morning breath to provide him the answer. It's a blur, but I think that I said "yes" to his question and found a ring on my left hand which confirmed it.

Outside, gorgeous clumps of snowflakes fell that day. We had snowball fights and embarked upon our commitment together on a winter's day, surrounded by family chaos and disarray, puddles and mud. We looked ahead to our life together with equal parts naive confidence and numbing fear. We put on our boots and bundled up against the cold and trudged away together.

I'm thinking of my son and daughter in law -- now they are in their second winter together, also trudging. While winters out here in Southern California are not that cold, there are still times when the fireplaces roar, sometimes they are fire pits outside at the beach or on a patio, and always there are moments found to huddle from the rains or Santa Ana winds with someone you love. Their road together is so new ... as if it is a pathway of fresh snow with only little bunny rabbit tracks to pock the lane.

I loved that new winter time in my life. Against the white landscape, everything is clear and crisp. Since the new beginnings there have been new babies, bundled up in snowsuits, brought into our warm home, one winter after another. There have been new friends and old alike gathered around the table, warming up hearts with soulful chatter around bowls of soup, winter after winter. We have had some sloppy wet and bitter ice storms, too -- some slips and falls, painful losses against dark gray stormy skies. Under the ground, whether it has been wet with rain, scorched by wildfires and mudslides or blanketed by snow, life has been busy regenerating blooms and blossom and inevitably, there is a concert of color that follows the end of winter year by year. The view is always spectacular when the snow melts away... eventually.

If anyone knows about winter seasons and how to survive them all, I think it is my friend, Bettie. She knows about sheltered love in a marriage that was interrupted abruptly by the storm of cancer. Bettie's home has always been my metaphor for cycles of difficult and marvelous rolling and rolling like a wheel. When her Charlie passed away, she filled in the pool in her back yard and made it into a phenomenal garden retreat... filling the potholes with plants and life. She chose to close up empty and gaping holes with life, as she has done with her own these past cold winters she has been spending alone. And every spring her flowers remember their promise to bloom. I take such courage from all of that life under the snow.

All these images come together today as I think of my children as they celebrate their first year of marriage. I feel blessed to have had these past 28 winters, not merely for surviving the cold outside, but for having the shelter inside where we huddle together with such incredible warmth.

Varnishkes and Kasha

I've never tried to make a brisket. I keep imagining a context in which I might attempt it -- but the mere thought collides with defeat when I face the reality that no matter how many ways I would try to prepare it -- never, ever, would it be like the pan that used to come out of my mother's oven. I can even see her hands, her thin and delicate, veiny skin, grasping the handles of some baking pan which we had told her to discard decades earlier. Perhaps the secret to her delectible presentation was in that beat up and scratched pan -- no one else could possibly own one like that. No one could duplicate this thing she created with those hands of hers. There is magic in that.

I couldn't make the brisket, but tonight I made the varnishkes and kasha, the side dish that inevitably accompanied the meal. I sauteed the onion and garlic, toasted the egg-coated kasha grains till they were nutty brown, stirred and mixed and tossed and seasoned. The aroma that filled my kitchen wrapped around me and cast a spell. Even the sound of the sizzle in the pan was like music to me.

It's not like you can order up this dish anywhere. If you could, I think it would be missing the fact that the draw of it is the preparation with your own hands, with the sounds of home and family, puppies playing and telephones ringing -- all that stirred together and blended into the flavors I dished onto the plate. It conjured up for me an average evening from my long-ago. Nothing special, not for company coming to dinner, not a celebration -- just an after school or long day at work welcome home.

I sat down with my steaming plate, savoring each bite this simple Sunday night. I wished I had a side of brisket, but the memory of it is just as full of flavor as I close my eyes tonight...