Color me happy

 

I had dinner with three wonderful gentlemen tonight at Tokyo Café—sons Colin and Jamie, with grandson Jacob in the middle. Of course, the boys recounted many tales of their misspent youth, but they interspersed sage advice on how to handle college—lessons they wish they had learned earlier. Jamie has long been a sushi fan, but I didn’t realize both Colin and Jacob would do so well on it. I was piggy—shared the cucumber salad with Jamie and then had salmon sashimi and beef and broccoli. All of it so good.

On the way home, Jamie wanted to stop at Eatzi’s and emerged with chocolate mousse, rich with whipped cream, banana pudding, and a blueberry cake of some sort. I could not even finish my portion of the mousse—so rich!

Tonight as I write, Jacob is studying, and Colin and Jamie are in my cottage having some sort of impassioned discussion that I have tuned out. But it is a joy to have them in the same room—and sleeping under the same roof. Well, the adjacent roof If not really mine.

Today Colin and I took Sophie to the vet for a checkup. This was a bit of a challenge for me, because Colin drives a humongous pickup, and I couldn’t figure how he would manage me, my walker, and the dog. All he would say, as I did my usual fret and wring my hands, was, “Trust me.” He had brought a stool for me to climb up to the truck—the third time I think I mastered it. Meantime, Sophie, who hates to go to the vet with memories of her two-week-plus incarceration there, behaved beautifully. She got a clean bill of health after extensive, expensive blood work.

Sophie has not, however, been behaving as well at home. She adores having my boys here. So last night she woke me to go out at two and six, to be fed at seven, to go out at seven-thirty. When Colin finally came to give her the morning insulin shot, I begged him to take her back in the house with him, so I could get another hour of sleep. Most of her trips, I am sure, were not because she needed to go potty but because she wanted attention from Colin. Now, tonight, with both boys here, she’s liable to be more difficult than ever. I guess it’s the price I pay for having them here.

Colin has been working remotely every day. This apparently is a bad week, with heavy financial deadlines, so he is reluctant to take much time off. On the other hand, Jamie, who is between positions and not at all worried about it, is devoting his life to yoga and will go to a class tomorrow and another Thursday morning. Tomorrow I will call and see if it’s a good day for us to visit my brother in rehab.

And maybe there’s a delicatessen lunch in our future. Colin particularly loves Carshon’s, where he’s been going since before he can remember. For him, no trip home to Fort Worth is complete without a Rebecca sandwich. I think I’d like a tongue sandwich, which sends the rest of my family into rigors. But I grew up eating tongue, and I like it. Kidneys too, but we won’t go into that discussion. Jamie may however sneak off to Ernesto’s for a much-needed fix.

Visiting me, both boys are returning to the city where they grew up. I notice every time I get out that things change daily—to often, it’s an unfortunate stretch of look-alike houses that make me despair for the mid-century bungalows and their history that are now gone. Here a new building, there another gone. So if I notice these changes on a daily or weekly basis, the changes they see every six months or so are amazing. Colin today saw the new TCU Hyatt Hotel which he apparently had never noticed before, even though it’s right across the street from my old office. Fun to watch them discover the changes, and yet Colin and I agreed on the drive home from the vet that Fort Worth is, as always, a pretty city. We were driving down Hulen where it goes downhill toward Bellaire Drive, overlooking lush green treetops for a good distance.

As you can gather, these are happy days for me. I am keeping up with my office—emails and the like and making a few stabs at new connections—but this is pretty much time out for me. Meanwhile, Jordan reports from San Miguel that they are having a wonderful time. Life is good all around.

Cooking for Christmas

Something about the holidays makes me want to cook. I realize that the days are gone when I’d prepare hors d’oevres for sixty at a Christmas party or dinner for sixteen or so on Christmas day. In some ways I’m grateful—I watched Jordan stress today about getting everything done and realized that I have most of my Christmas things done, without stress and at a leisurely pace. But in other ways I miss the supercharge of energy, the excitement that comes with the stress of being busy.

My girls, daughters and daughters-in-law, have taken over the cooking, except that I have to clean out the turkey because they’re a bit squeamish. But they have their own ways. One makes a green bean casserole that’s great—but it’s not the way I always did it. Jordan makes mashed potatoes—and resisted my suggestion or a new way to do them. The daughters-in-law like that canned cranberry relish (yuck! Gelatinous!) and no one would eat my raw relish. My sister-in-law has a brother-in-law (how’s that for complicated?) who loves the relish, and I’m sorry our families have grown too large to celebrate together. I will miss the turkey leftovers, though we may have some.

And my annual Tree Trimming party—I had lots of appetizers I made every year. A caviar/cream cheese spread, a cheeseball (Lisa will bring that, thank goodness), sometimes a chicken liver pate that some loved, and others hated. A curry/cream cheese spread that was a recent addition but so delicious. I think of those dishes with longing.

Tonight, I entertained for happy hour. Sue, who calls herself my Canadian daughter because her parents live so far away and she needs a local mother, brought her mother and father who are here from Ottawa—and of course her life partner, Teddy, whom I adore. I had fun preparing what I thought was a feast—imitation escargot (Crescent rolls, made into a jelly roll around anchovy butter—Sue loves anchovies), a tuna spread that Sue’s mother loved and I did too—it was an experiment and a good one. Salami, a hunk of good blue cheese, and a hunk of feta (it’s not easy to find solid pieces of those cheese—most grocery stores have only the crumbled, but Central Market rarely disappoints—they even pointed me to a blue that is akin to Maytag, my favorite which is off the market).

The feta was an experiment—I read a recipe for topping it with honey, made spreadable with just a bit of boiling water, and doing a quick broil, then serving it warm. My toaster oven has no broil setting, so I tried toasting, with foil to prevent it burning or leaking from the bottom. When I took it out, I dripped the cheese/honey liquid all over my clean pants—oh, well. But I was so nervous about overcooking, that I didn’t cook long enough. It was to be served warm, but no one ate it. Sue took it home, so I’ll have to get a report from her. I also meant to put out a tiny container of honey with the blue, but had neither the right dish nor spoon. I’ll do that another time. But a drop of honey on blue cheese is exquisite.

At any rate, putting all those things together and choosing how to display them was fun for me. Like a mini-tree trimming party. We had a jolly time, with Christian keeping everyone in laughter with tales of the night he asked Jordan to marry him and the night the cat died—the latter shouldn’t have been funny but in his telling it was. And his telling reminded me again of the many happy and funny and crazy times my kids and I have shared. As I said to Christian, it should have been a warning when he asked me for my daughter’s hand. I said sure, I thought he was the right guy—if he’d take me to buy a new washing machine. Serendipity, the machine we bought that day after lunch, fourteen years ago, just died. The marriage, however, seems set on survival.

Hope your holiday is as jolly and filled with good food. East dessert first, abandon the diet, and enjoy! I love that say, “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.”