have a seat

 

I'm at the stove at the adobe, stirring a pot of lima beans, cornbread in the oven, the cat in the window above the sink, his one good eye focused on the cooktop.

I'm telling W about the 2020 article by Gabrielle Hamilton on the closing of her NYC restaurant, Prune. I never dined at Prune, haven't visited the city once since I was five, unless you count the one connecting flight from there to Rome a very long time ago. But I own the restaurant cookbook and I have read her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter. I fell in love with her reading that book. Head over heels.

I'm over three years in real love with Wendy, who owns this house we call the adobe and owns the cat, plus another, but still spends most of her time at my house which we call the bistro. 

Bistro 3906 came about because I became a widow. I made good emerge from bad for my own broken self needed healing and nourishment, and I got it by providing hospitality to others. There's powerful magic in a bottle of wine and a bowl of pasta generously shared together at a table. Hamilton sincerely believes that. I do too. She brings the idea of it and her honest discoveries, lovingly full circle in her book.

I salt quartered tomatoes then fill their splayed centers with spicy coleslaw as I tell W more from the article: the painful impact of Covid forcing closure, the camaraderie that followed, the fear for what is next if anything at all. 

By then my tears aren't contained; W, multitasker extraordinaire, has given me full attention, her doe eyes looking sad, but it's sadness for me because it's pretty obvious that I'm not just talking about Prune. I have a bistro! I have a bistro which is shuttered, its future unlikely to ever be the same.  

Her book is published, mine morphing yet and yet and yet again, not unlike the virus.

Closing the article, the amazing writer/chef/owner describes the thoughtful hours she spends in her empty restaurant space, remembering yet hopeful. I don't know if she cries. My bistro may be pseudo but these tears are real.

 

Note:

(It's been a long time... feels good to be here. Thanks for stopping by.)