all days can be rainy

It was some moment, probably in Game 4 of The Stanley Cup Finals, that caused W to say it. "You really are a silver lining girl."

I tucked that away in my little pocket of compliments.

Flattery in this vein hit strong because it had my mother written all over it. She was the single most positive-thinking person I have or will ever know. Her umbrella was always, always upside down.

Neither of these - not W's words or my mom - were on my mind at the counter in the post office, buying stamps. I wanted something different; not only my usual American flags or Mohammed Ali or the blinding gold sunflowers that reminded me of the July and August heat yet to arrive.

I settled on Dahlias.

Undecided though, on how many to buy, the clerk informed me that stamps were going up next month. "To 82 cents, she said."

She paused.  Avoided eye contact. "I'll take two sheets," I said.

It came naturally to me to add, "I still think it's pretty amazing that you can send a love letter to someone across the entire country for just 82 cents."

"Right?!" Unexpected from the expected exasperation, the clerk said she thought she would post a sign of that at her station next month (when the assumed verbal onslaughts start).

Guess W is right about me. Looking for a silver lining comes to me honestly. Easily. And how odd that I finally sat down, unplanned, to post this on my birthday. Thanks for the pennies, Mom...






Pennies from Heaven, 1936
Arthur Johnston music/Johnny Burke lyrics

i chose cavatappi

In the same vein as Jacques Pepin's fridge soup, I often make pantry pasta salad. The bulk of the ingredients come from the pantry, though there are refrigerated items as well. My pasta dish likely leans a certain way because my pantry is normally stocked with those items, whereas your storage shelves might be filled with other options. 

The salad is never quite the same each time. I may use dandelions if I have them, or cilantro in place of parsley. Maybe make a version with radishes and walnuts. Get it? Basically, a by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of dish.

Last week and last-minute at that, I tried to look at my choices with fresh eyes, and this is what came together rather nicely for our weekly cul-de-sac Happy Hour. A few ingredients are given in quantity or weight, but this is a common sense recipe. Add however much of each item as you like.

Pantry Pasta Salad

1 pound dried pasta (shapes rather than strings)
2 cans five-ounce each, albacore
Olives, black and green, sliced as preferred
Peppadews, several sliced (pimentos would be a good sub)
Golden raisins, soaked in rum for a while, then drained
3-4 scallions, white and green parts
Salt & Pepper
Pine Nuts, toasted
Parsley, chopped Italian
Vinaigrette, 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil,
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (I followed a 3 to 1 ration)


Cook pasta to al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water. (Salads are the only time to rinse pasta!) Drain well.

In a large bowl, flake the tuna by hand then add half the pasta and half of the remaining ingredients. Toss with half the vinaigrette, then repeat with the remaining half of everything.

This makes a buffet table size bowl. Reduce or increase quantity. Leftover refrigerated salad should be brought to room temperature and may need additional dressing added.

my red velvet journal

It is not anything I would wish for anyone to endure: infertility.

My journey was private, most of it not shared even with those closest to me.

Mine was very much a lonely, solo trip.

Once you have children, your life will never be the same, my mother would say. She loved my sister and me without question, but if given the choice in hindsight, I think she would be honest and decline having kids.

I didn't have a choice at the time, but if a little farther into adulthood, I was granted a do-over, I too would decline the pursuit. No regrets.

The yearning years were painful though, and it was sometime then when I ran across this lone stanza. It sucked me in and I tucked it in a journal where it still resides. Eerie that at the time, the house which wished to be a home was a late 1800's farm style two story, with a stairway visible the minute you entered.  

                As I was going up the stair

                        I met a boy who wasn't there

                                He wasn't there again today

                                        I wish that he would go away 

Bastardized version from the poem, Antigonish

by William Hughes Mearns

why me?

 "I cried, out of helplessness and delight,
because for a moment life gave me more than
I had any right to expect."

I once read that Pat Conroy said his sister didn't speak to him for a few years after he wrote The Prince of Tides. That has stuck with me, so it is with tremendous but ignored trepidation that I share this. The dearest in my world will recognize themselves though maybe not each other.

Earlier this month, I wasn't feeling myself.  I knew I was physically fine, but I felt as heavy and as stuck as a boulder in concrete and I didn't know why.

I wasn't sad or depressed. I went about daily life. I enjoyed wine and food as I always do, and W made me genuinely laugh every single day as she always does.  Yet I had lost every whisper of my usual lightness of being. My internal ache had not yet localized. I was exhausted but didn't need sleep.

Very late one Sunday night I received a message from my friend I call The Intuitive. I love her. I fear her. She has juju. She has that type of juju I often wish I had and sometimes give thanks that I don't. 

She was checking on me, my energy popping up in her orbit.

I clarified that I was fine, though most everyone around me wasn't, and that I had even cancelled evening plans with W because I absolutely had to crash on the past Friday afternoon. Feeling the weight of the world, I escaped and indeed, slept like a rock for a few hours.

Could the tumbling down of my energy have been relayed to her?

My sister, though she is miraculously recovering so well from a recent stroke, remains foremost on my mind, but the number of people around me who are struggling, sick, or healing, is not exaggerated. 

People I care about deeply are enduring hardships and heartaches: 

-A dear ex-student/friend (born blind, smart as a whip, suffered a stroke a few years ago, recently became suddenly immobile) is in the hospital/rehab from pneumonia and a blood clot. Separate issues are requiring the future surgical removal of an eye.
-This student's angelic mother who cares for him and a husband newly diagnosed with Alzheimer's, is stretched to the max.
-Another ex-student, out of state, is transferring from one nursing facility to another, after months of living shelter to shelter, with no family support. He is limited to light perception and has many health issues.
-A friend with MS has had two difficult knee surgeries with extended rehab following each.
-A neighbor friend just lost a step-daughter, and not too long ago, her brother died.
-A neighbor/friend has had three heart procedures and a skin cancer removal scare, all in a very short period of time.
-A friend is engaged in stressful and expensive diligence to support her beloved pet in the dog's aging stages of kidney disease.
-A friend is depressed.
-A friend in the midst of a perfect storm of life: expensive house repairs, blood pressure glitches, numerous dental procedures, car severely damaged by an at-fault driver in a parking lot.
-A friend who is 96 and visually limited, is happily still living independently but with very few visitors and whose heart breaks missing the days of big family gatherings.

There but by the grace of God, go I.

Putting pen to paper always helps me sort things out. I am perceptive but I am not an empath. What I was experiencing, taking in so much concern for so many people, is what I will term thriver's guilt; steps removed from survivor's guilt, but still very, very real and very, very heavy.

Maybe for the first time, or the first that feels authentic, I fully embraced the ethos of the Serenity Prayer, and have made peace with my helplessness. 

Blessings and good health to everyone.

William Bryant Logan
The Jumping Dove
House Beautiful, December 1992

she did a thing

Jimmy's Food Store has always owned our hearts.

It was where W first flirted. Where then, after my head finally stopped madly spinning, we hung out many times in the cramped front space, drinking four dollar cups of wine with a loaf of good bread and thinly sliced smoked mozzarella. Occasionally olives and such. Occasionally a sandwich from the deli.

There were paper plates, napkins, and bottles of olive oil & balsamic vinegar on the narrow shelf at the front windows. Help yourself...

Those were the days! Those glorious days before Covid put an end to the intimate antipasti tables which have never returned. But Jimmy's is still our place and W still continuously flirts with me in any given, wonderfully cramped aisle we very leisurely peruse. 

Yesterday we popped in, designed as it usually is: order our wine and if possible chit chat with the beloved staff a bit, then check out the produce. We always buy tomatoes but the rest just depends. Sometimes it's great organic potatoes or local garden squash. It turned out that afternoon we chose three large green tomatoes to fry, and zucchini for a quiche I'll make.

Being a holiday weekend, the store was busy but W managed, against my pleas not to, to pull an owner aside with her special request...

Young Tony didn't hesitate to oblige. He led her to the front's interior window bar which he thought would be perfect. It is! He even offered W a pen for initialing, obviously aware of this romantic worldwide tradition. 

Though our hearts are forever bound to this iconic place, and we need no proof of our bond to each other, the Love-Lock allowed to be placed where it is, means so much. So, so, so much. We have permanently marked our spot very publicly yet so privately.

We enter and we'll greet it. We exit and we'll blow a kiss. I'll forever be grateful to Jimmy's for this; one of many genuine gestures we've been gifted from them across the years.

And as for W... I'm thrilled she ignored my pleas. I'm grateful. What an amazing gift!

I pray she never stops flirting.