I Made Bread!

   

December 15, 2022

I made bread!  

My sister Jeanne made it a couple of times at her house in New York.  She made it look so easy.  She even made me believe we made it together, but it was all her.  I wanted to make it myself at home ever since and purchased a Dutch oven specifically for this purpose.  It’s been months.  The thought of making bread was intimidating for some reason.  Finally last night I prepared the dough and let it sit.  

The dough and the weather were both very wet this morning.  The dough was not even close to the consistency of hers.  There was a tornado warning and the water from the flooded street was inching toward my house.  Do I try to bake the wet dough or toss it and get myself and my dogs to higher ground?

But Jeanne encouraged me via text.  Add flour, just try it, your house will smell great even if the bread doesn’t make it.  The bread made it, the house smells great and the bread tastes great, but not as great as hers.

Jeanne’s bread was more artisanal looking.  Mine was more dense, maybe because it’s Florida and the weather here affects it, maybe it is because my Dutch oven is smaller than hers.  Maybe it’s because we weren’t together…

Maybe I wished to be there with her.  Maybe the scent of warm bread filling the air in her house, wafting over to my mother’s side of the house made it taste that much better.  Maybe now the idea of the scent of warm bread filling their entire house would momentarily fill the void left by my mother who was moved to an assisted living facility yesterday.  

Why was doing this alone so daunting?  It turned out to be easy really.  The hard part was dealing with new things such as putting a pot inside a 450 degree oven with parchment paper inside.  I was scared the pot would explode and the paper ignite into flames.  Flooding outside, flaming inside…

I never made bread before.  Bread was always one of those things people much more skilled at baking did.  So I had to overcome my own self doubt.  It was easy.  Just had to follow the directions.  But I wouldn’t have accomplished this task without Jeanne’s help, encouragement and coaching.

Jeanne’s words of encouragement got me through it.  If her words didn’t penetrate my apprehension, I would have thrown it away, without knowing we’d make it through, and enjoy warm bread after. 

The love and words of encouragement Twitch got couldn’t reach him in a meaningful way.  Twitch is the nickname of the DJ on The Ellen Show.  He just ended his life the other day.  He had everything and nothing because of some block, some scar, some something which made life’s hurdles insurmountable.  

It really is a hideous reality we live with - - an awareness of the inevitability of our death.  I understand why people jump ship.  It’s like sitting on death row and the angst becomes too much. So we make love, work, play, bread, chit chat and try not to focus on the firing squad ahead. 

There have been times when none of my pacifiers did their job.  Nothing lightened the load.  Only the memory of getting through past experiences gave me the fortitude to hang on through the current one.  This too shall pass.

Now we face this milestone with my mother.  Her faith got her here and will continue to help her to adapt to her new environment.  She wanted to die at home but she knows now that she needs this level of care on a daily basis.  In October while we were at my nephew’s wedding, my mother stayed home, slid from her chair to the floor and couldn’t get up. She fell twice since.

She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and Atrial Fibrillation.  She has six children.  We can’t carry each other’s burden now or when she’s gone.  Maybe we’ll share a laugh or a memory which softens the blow enough to keep going.  We can make bread and seek joy in the moment, just like mom does.  

At "Our Age"

Unless you are at least ten years younger than I am, saying 'our age' to me in conversation is a sure way to keep me away from you.

Yesterday yet another man pursuing me attempted to woo me with food.  My whole marriage all we did was eat together - - no vacations, children, common interests, fun, nothing, just dinner.  As a result, I almost have PTSD about eating with another man.  We may as well be crawling into a casket together.  

He tried to make me taste his salsa sauce right in front of him.  I didn't want to.  In fact just taking it from him was me being polite.  He gave me chips to dip.  When that didn't force me to try it he handed me a spoon.  I blamed my unwillingness to try it on my teeth (I've been having alot of work done lately and it was a convenient excuse.). He basically ignored that.  I went into greater detail about my teeth.  That is when he said, "Teeth become a problem at  o u r   a g e."  He's probably a bit older than I am.  It was at that point when I wanted to speak directly to his pants in baby talk and say, "Guess who's never going to see me naked?  YOU won't!  Yes, you!!  Never, never, never."

When It's Right To Give Omaha Steaks To A Vegetarian

 The moment after my father died, my sister climbed on my mother.  She wasn’t hugging her, she seemed to literally be attempting to climb her.  My mother and sister are the same size so it’s sort of physically impossible.  So was the concept of my father being gone.   We were all together in his hospital room, he waited until the entire family was there and then he left. 

My sister might not even remember doing it.  Maybe this is a false memory on my part, all bets are off at a moment like that.  

In hindsight, my sister was probably trying to return to the womb in a desperate attempt to escape this piercing reality.  In situations of physical threat, we grab onto things, hide, duck or otherwise brace ourselves for it, however futile the action might be against the threat.  Still, it helps us to maintain the illusion of control.  

When a loved one dies there is nothing we can do, though we try.  Any attempt to call the person back is done with an awareness of its futility so it does very little to ease the pain.  The sense of being ripped apart feels very real.  

Happie has cancer.  I grabbed on to apricot kernels in an attempt to make his cancer go away.  Most days I can function normally, silently believing that the apricot kernels are getting rid of any cancer in his body.  Two days ago the light switch of reality was flipped on after looking at the thinning skin around his massive tumor.  It is growing and will eventually grow through his skin.

For 11 years I’ve been able to fix every problem he had.  I’ll never stop trying to fix this one too but it doesn’t seem likely.  He IS my nuclear family, my fur baby, and the thought of life without him is ________.  The day after looking at Happie’s tumor an email came announcing the arrival of a package from Omaha Steaks.  I thought it was a mistake.  Who would send a gift of meat to a vegetarian?   What seemed like a completely tone-deaf gift turned out to be about the best gift ever.  There were some non-meat things in the box too, but the intention of the gift was to make Happie happy.  

Since learning of his diagnosis about three months ago, I deliberately do things every day to make him as happy as possible.  Existing in the present moment and eliciting joy out of Happie every day are the light posts I cling to during this emotional tsunami.  The Omaha Steak gift perfectly supports this.  

Loving any of God’s creatures comes with proportional grief.  That grief doesn’t necessarily start after the loss, it starts when you know death is coming.  So here I sit crying and writing. Yesterday I walked six miles.  Other days I work out and do other things to alleviate the pain.  Some days I do all those things.  It helps but the pain is still there whether I acknowledge it or not.  

Lately, I’ve been annoyed.  Each thing that annoys me seems real and justified but it’s just a misdirect of grief.  It is the internal bad stuff using another exit, just like Happie’s tumor about to exit through his skin.   

I wanted to drink yesterday to dull the feeling.  Fortunately, there’s no liquor in my house.  It would have dulled the thoughts in my head, but the bad stuff would still ooze out in other, probably worse, ways.  So here I sit, writing and crying, with Happie’s head on my foot.  

Every day I am grateful for Happie.  Today I am also grateful for the amazing unnamed soul who sent the gift.  He’s unnamed only because he’d be mortified, I’m pretty sure, if I named him.  The ability to find a way to walk someone through an excruciating experience is a priceless gift to the person being walked through it.  I am confident karma will bless this gift giver infinitely.  Now it is time to stop crying and make Happie a steak.

I Love You.

My father once wrote a note to me and signed off with, ‘We love you.’  I still have that note or at least the photo of it.  It was the closest he ever came to saying, ‘I love you,’ or so I thought.

We just weren’t a family that said I love you.  My father died in 1994 and very gradually the phrase began to seep into our vernacular many years after that.  Today most of us have said that to each other, but still not all.  

Today during yoga class a memory of my father surfaced.  It started as a memory of how I made $50 when I was about 18.  Our neighbor hooked me up with the opportunity.  There was a boy about my age who needed a ride from Scarsdale, New York to Long Island.  The family was very, very wealthy and the houses were mansions.  The boy seemed depressed and barely spoke during the ride.  As I was in this very relaxed state, lying on the floor in yoga class, I contemplated the whole experience.  Until this moment, the memory was just the boy, the $50 I earned, the drive and the mansions.

Today another aspect of this memory took front and center stage.  My father, who had six kids, chose to ride with me.  He let me drive.  He didn’t want the money.  So why was he with me? My father was a psychiatric social worker.  He was a humble, probably introverted person.  During the drive that day, he managed to engage that depressed boy in a little bit of conversation, in a way I certainly couldn’t have at the time.  My father seemed so brave taking that task on.  How wildly talented he was with these mad interpersonal skills!  That's what I was thinking at the time.  

Now, on the floor in yoga class, I contemplated what he did that day.  He took probably three to four hours out of his day.  Simple math tells me that he went W A Y over my allotted daddy/daughter time, being one of six. 

He was protecting me.  He gave me this time, not because I asked for it, but because he wanted to ensure my safety.  I wasn’t scared, it was our next-door-neighbor who set this up and she knew the people well, but I guess that wasn’t enough for my father to be sure I was safe.  This was before GPS telling you turn by turn how to get from point A to B, maybe he was worried I’d get lost.  Maybe he heard the description of this troubled boy from the neighbor, and his experience with troubled children as a psychiatric social worker caused him to err on the side of caution. 

I may not have heard I love you in words from him but I hear it loud and clear now from his actions that day.

Thank you dad,

I love you too.

She Looks Better Than ME!

"She looks better that ME" is a qualifier that IS a compliment coming from someone half your age, not from someone who is your age.  This is the latest trend torturing my age averse brain.

At a party last night, a group of about six of us were talking when one man recounted a story about me to the group.  We live on the water and one day while in my boat, passing his house, I had a chat with his house guest who was in the backyard.  My neighbor told the group at the party that his house guest told him about my boat-by visit, and he described me as a young girl of about 25-years-old.  I gleefully told the group that this story was going in my gratitude journal.

Then his bitch common-law wife or whatever she is, added her contribution to the story.  She said in an attempt to identify who the house guest was talking about, she asked if the woman he was talking to was in her sixties, the decade of life she assessed me to be in.  Me and a couple of other people present gasped at the assumption.

She went on to pour more hot lava into the crater of hatred I now have for her by saying, "What?  You look great, I always say that you look better than ME," as if to imply I was much older than her but keep myself up nice.

We are the same age.

Here's what has been dominating my thoughts since:

• First, I looked up her age online. - My hatred of her solidified.
• Why does everyone think I'm older than I am?  I dress young, work out all the time and have a hot body.
• Maybe she associated me with her next door neighbor who is in fact in her 60s and has a hot body.  This is my favorite mental massage/masturbation.
• How can I devastate her as much as she devastated me?
• I'm going to church in a couple of hours reminding me to take the high road.
• How do I take the high road in such a way that God devastates her for me?
• She is oblivious to the stupid, thoughtless, insensitive things she says and does all the time, maybe I could just feel sorry for her instead.  
• Her live in boyfriend cheats on her all the time.
• No, that's not enough.  Clearly she is someone who tolerates that.
• The universe does have a way of breaking the psychic knees of people who knowingly offend me, and usually in a much harsher way than I would have wanted.  Can I count on that again universe?  This time, I think I'd just be grateful and not find whatever you decide to do too much.  I'd put it in my gratitude journal right under the 25-year-old compliment.  

The Easter Bunny and The Count

I once spent the day with Count Roffredo Gaetani. His date was a 25-year-old Swedish model who appeared in that months Vogue magazine. My future husband picked them up in the West Village (where ALL the models live) before picking me up in Yonkers, where I lived.

They were both impossibly tall, stunning, and interesting. In the few hours we spent in the car driving between Yonkers, New York and Limerock, Connecticut, the two of them conversed non-stop in the back seat in several languages while my future husband and I seemed to have already run out of things to say in the front.

By the end of the day I literally had a headache from their blinding beauty and interesting-i-ness. Roffredo went on to date Ivanna Trump before his early death in a Ferrari in Italy, no doubt a convertible, while rocking a scarf.

At the end of the day, we were heading to the Tarrytown train station to drop Roffredo and his model off to put them on a train back into Manhattan. There were a few women sitting at the station and they took one look at the statuesque duo and cupped their hands over their mouths as if they had just witnessed God almighty, THAT is how impressive these two were.

On the way to the train Roffredo spotted a Mexican restaurant and wanted to have dinner there. It was one of my favorite places but I was secretly happy upon discovering the restaurant was closed that day. I was happy because their jet-setty glare coupled with the fact that my future husband 'surprised' me with this trip, only allowing me 20 minutes to get ready - - not nearly enough time to load on the necessary ego fortifying make-up, hair, and clothes and to compile a list of conversational topics & tidbits to not feel like an ugly idiot next to them was exhausting. I felt like a slug with a salt cloud drizzling steadily above me all day.

As we drove away from the restaurant toward the train station, the back seat got very quiet. After a long pause Roffredo said, “I bet they had delicious enchiladas.” I can still hear that one sentence in my head in his sexy Italian accent.

Roffredo was a count, and nephew of Gianni Agnelli, the richest, most influential man in Italy till the time of his death in 2003. Roffredo dated a string of gorgeous models as well as Ivanna Trump and at the time of our outting was starting to build his own empire one Ferrari dealership at a time. Still after that day, in spite of contentious power struggles and deals between Roffredo and my now past husband, the thing that first comes to both our minds when Roffredo's name comes up is, “I bet they had delicious enchiladas.”

There was something so cute about how disappointed Roffredo was. Maybe that's why this moment, that one sentence lamenting the enchilada he would not have, is the imprint he left me with. He was the embodiment of what every man wished to be/have and every woman wants in a man - - he even greeted women with, “Hello Miss” as he kissed your hand with nary an eyeroll in sight.  Still the void this missed enchilada created in him made him an every man right then.

There is just no telling what your lasting imprint will be in anyone else's mind. I see people all the time on Facebook putting tremendous effort into presenting a certain image when it's clear that their imprint is 180 degrees away from that image.  I wonder what mine will predominantly be, and if my father is surprised at the one he left behind...

My father's biggest imprint in my mind is Easter.  At 23, while living in a tiny apartment in White Plains, I woke up Easter morning, looked out of my tiny window to see a big Easter basket sitting on top of my red Hyundai. I'll never forget that feeling because it was just as exciting as any Easter morning as a child when I would suspend my then* rudimentary understanding of physics to gleefully accept that a bunny rabbit hopped into my house with six Easter baskets, each about three times his/her own size, in the middle of the night before finishing his/her deliveries to the rest of the children of the world.

My father was a psychiatric social worker who taught me how to analyze dreams. I learned because he would patiently analyze mine whenever I asked. He would analyze them and explain how he did. That is a very valuable tool I still treasure but it's second to Easter. My father would take all six of us kids to the beach on summer weekends to give my poor mother a break. All-in-all he was a great father. I really miss him, especially on Easter Sunday.

He'd answer any question and typically hand us a book along with it. He tried to teach us lessons and was a stickler for no elbows on the dinner table. He taught us all to drive. I'm sure as a father he had some sort of a Top Ten list in his head of the skills, morals, knowledge, habits, etc. he wanted to impress upon his children by word, example or both. I wonder if he had any idea his biggest imprint would be his job as the Easter bunny. I guess the reason his Easter duties stand as his number one imprint is because although he left many valuable imprints in my mind, Easter is one he left in my heart.

* It's still rudimentary.

Black Don't Crack Rosie!

"Can I ask you a question?"

When I hear that my heart drops because I know what's coming.  The woman* asking this time takes her place in Zumba class right beside me.

Why don't I just answer, "NO!" ?

Would that shut people up???!!!


THIS IS SUCH A RUDE QUESTION!!!    S H U T    U P !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Does anyone ask anyone else how much they weigh?

Now today, there was a fleeting moment of bliss because my deflection of choice today was, "How old do you think I am?"

She answered, "31."

My gleeful reaction caused the woman to say, "Ah I nailed it!"  At that my glee reached its' pinnacle for about one second.

Now I really get into Zumba and we were just starting class.  This was great because it cut the chit chat off and it was a distraction from the flurry of thoughts that follow even a blissful moment like this:

• She was obviously being kind, how old does she really think I am?
• Will she become obsessed with finding out for sure?
• Did I put my last name on the sign in sheet?  Ever?
• Will she ask again?
• Is she watching me during class and thinking my skin looks older than 31?
• Will she tell anyone else my 'age' which will cause them to challenge that?

*In hindsight, the fact that this woman is black makes this a bonus compliment.  I guess Rosie don't crack either!