The New Season

One day you're wearing flipflops and the next day, you're rummaging through your closet for a fleece. I guess it's fall. Even tonight's dinner--pasta with chickpeas and a salad of raw kale, ricotta salata and a lemon shallot dressing--says the summer is over. Gazpacho, my summer fave, no longer is the right taste. How many days before we give up on fresh tomatoes altogether?

Family Dinner

I had dinner really early tonight. Not six o'clock but five o'clock. Well, I was sooooo hungry having had nothing to eat but a smoothie at 11 am after my workout.

Eating that early reminded me of when I was a kid. My dad, an old time family physician i.e. the kind who made house calls, had office hours every night at 6:30 which meant we had to eat dinner by 5:30 so he could be ready to go downstairs and see his patients, all of which were our friends and neighbors. At the time, I didn't think it weird at all. We got to eat while it was still light out and in the warm weather there was plenty of time before bed to go out in the alley and play. Best of all, I was excused early from Hebrew School which I had to attend two afternoons a week. My dad would make a special trip to bring me home before class was over and it was truly a sweet pleasure to say goodbye and know that I didn't have to sit there for another half hour.

At home, dinner was always three courses. An appetizer of grapefruit, carefully sectioned, or a slice of melon; a simple but tasty roast with vegetables (none of which I ate at that time) then dessert--jello or pudding or Tastykakes direct from the freezer. My mother's culinary creativity didn't really emerge until she fell under the spell of Julia Child, like so many women her age, soon after her first trip to Europe. By that time I was off at college and learning my own way around the kitchen, thanks to the Joy of Cooking, the bible for me and my roommates. I think our favorite meal at that time was beef stroganoff which involved a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, I remember.

Like my mom, I moved on and graduated from Erma Rombauer. The bookshelves in my current kitchen hold a host of cookbooks, reflecting my culinary progress. There's my very own copy of Julia Child's masterworks, splattered with gravy and splotches of oil, my Silver Palate phase, my Asian period, my Italian obsession and now my vegetarian/natural foods regime. (Guess who led me there?) The one topic you won't find covered in my cookbook collection is dessert. I don't do cakes or pies or sweet things. My mother's recipe for tannies, what our family called butterscotch brownies or blondies, can never be recreated by me. . . except in memory.

Dreamland

I love to dream. Good thing, too, because I dream a lot. Epic dreams shot in technicolor with lots of characters in complicated plots and lots of action. Sometimes I wake up exhausted from my night's dreaming--so much energy and creativity expended to bring me my nightly feature entertainment. I'm writer, actor, director, set designer, costume designer, producer all rolled into one.

I love, too, how dreams are such a compilation of seemingly random details retrieved from deep within my mental storage cabinets. The raw material I have at my disposal each night is endless and the freedom to use it is boundless. Such power I can exercise--bring people that I have loved back to life, kill others off with impunity.

All that doesn't necessarily make for restful sleep every night but I would hate to give up my capacity to dream.

Let Me Entertain You

Last night, I had the pleasure of hosting a dinner for some 25 fabulous women. It was really easy thanks to the delicious food provided by Sweet Pea Nourishment aka Liz Solms. The women were all members of the Host Committee for One Night Only, a great party on Friday, October 2 that benefits Women's Medical Fund, the only organization in the Delaware Valley area that provides direct financial assistance for low income women and teens who need a safe and legal abortion.

Without the right and the means to control one's reproductive history, women are truly slaves. That may seem like a draconian statement but to me it is a fundamental and deeply felt belief. Maybe it's because my reproductive history encompasses almost the full range of possible experiences: I've had an abortion; I have a biological child; I've had a miscarriage; I've had fertility treatments; I have an adopted child. But at every moment, I was free to make a choice unconstrained by financial considerations or government restrictions.

The women and teens who come to Women's Medical Fund don't have that freedom to choose because they don't have the money to pay for a safe and legal abortion. It's as simple as that.

September Delusions

It's days like today and yesterday that make me think, just for a minute, mind you, that summer in the city might not be half bad. Then I remember trudging down Broad Street during the dog days of August and being assaulted by the hot smell of urine and sweat and god knows what else rising up from a subway entrance. No way I'm giving up Maine.

Last Day

Our last day in Maine and, yes, it's another classic blue sky/fresh air/acres of diamonds kind of day. I took one more long run down the road and got a picture perfect view of the whole presidential range at the turn on the way back. No snow yet on the top of Mt. Washington. I'll hold that view in my head when I'm back in the city and jogging down Spruce Street.

I stayed up late last night in front of the fire finishing my book--another serious tome about Nazi Germany. I didn't want to schlep it and its depressing subject matter home. I didn't dream about Hitler, thank goodness. Instead I had a beautiful dream about my brother. Steve and I were traveling together on a bus and when we got to where we were going I suddenly found Max, looking young and healthy and wearing a beautiful blue shirt, the color of the sky. We hugged and kissed and I kept exclaiming, "He's here! He's not lost." The dream woke me up but I closed my eyes immediately and willed myself to go back to sleep where I could see him again.

This was THE Perfect Day

It started out with a one-to-one yoga session with Kerry on the dock. The lake was perfectly still and just six feet off the dock I could watch three large loons swim and dive while I moved from warrior to downward dog to child's pose. Blissful.

The rest of the day I spent on the deck reading, only moving my chair to follow the sun. A short break for a lunch of homemade gazpacho, my summer favorite. The sun danced on the lake; an occasional motorboat disturbed the calm; once in a while a soft wind moved across the surface setting the diamonds dancing.



Heavenly.

Coming to the End

The nature gods are granting us perfect end of season Maine weather, perhaps a reward for all the suffering we endured--the endless rain, the cold--for most of June and July. Days are crystal clear and crisply dry, ideal for a long run or just sitting on the deck. The nights are cool, perfect for a roaring fire, late night stargazing and lots of cuddling. The moon is almost full now and so bright and golden. When I wake up in the middle of the night, moonlight is streaming into our bedroom from across the lake and I can't go back to sleep until I watch the moon sink behind the trees and settle into the lake.

This morning, Marlene and I walked around the lake, some 11 miles. It took us about 3 hours. When we started, there was truly not a cloud in the sky. But when we walked up Mayberry Hill and turned into Powhatan Road for the final stretch, a few white clouds straggled harmlessly across the sky.
I guess we're lucky this year that Labor Day is so late but it already feels like fall to me perhaps because we never got too much of a summer--just one short hot spell right before the wedding. Let the record show that I did jump in the water more than once that week--Liz is my witness--and actually swam around. With temperatures dropping to the low 40's at night, it's way too cold for me now. Next year.