Oysters and Hot Sauce: Who Knew?

Usually, we drove all night, so our four kids would sleep for at least part of the nine-hour drive. Around midnight, quiet finally nestled around us, although my children swear they never slept for even one second on any of our many drives to North Carolina. Gary and I looked forward to those late-night drives, our low voices creating a cocoon, our faces cool in the night air, our journey seemingly guided by the luminous stars suspended above. 

"Did you see it? The falling star?" Gary asked, though I never did. He's always been luckier than I in the star gazing department. Still, together we seemed to have more than most, sailing through the night in our red Astro van, holding hands between our seats, our elbows resting on the small tv/vcr combination Gary jerry-rigged for the kids' movies and Nintendo system.

 

 

Our first stop was the Duck Deli, a tiny breakfast/sandwich/barbecue place, for big white plates of bacon, eggs, and the greatest home fries in Currituck County. In the very old days before Corolla grew big enough to have its own grocery stores, we would have stopped at the Piggly Wiggly or the Food Lion in Kill Devil Hills before we turned left on Highway 21. Balancing a bag on each of our laps, others wedged between our feet, we made our way to Atlantic Avenue, where our family owned a house.

My heart sensed the left turn on Atlantic towards the water. Sometimes we couldn't yet see the ocean, but we could always hear it. In that second, when I heard the push and pull of the waves, life sweetened. But, oh my, in the early days when the girls were toddlers and the boys still so young, the next few hours were full of up-and-down-the-stairs work for my husband and me. Schlepping the suitcases and groceries...unpacking both...making beds...guiding legs and arms into swim suits...coating wiggling bodies with sunscreen...and then...AND THEN! the beach.

We'd run down the dune, the dry sand so hot that our feet propelled forward on their own. We moved in tandem toward the green and grey marbleized sea, our toes on the frothy wave line, waiting for the first rush of cold water. All I'd carried on my back the past year slid from me, crumbling into the fine beige sand.



Between the three of us sitting in the booth at Mitchell's Fish Market today, two are headed to North Carolina and one to Vermont, two of us for a fleeting seven days and the other for a lovely collection of weeks at her family home in New England. While we talked about our upcoming fall classes and our children, our minds turned toward the promise of the sea.

"I convinced Jamie to try oysters the last time we were here," our friend Marilyn said, as we looked over the menu. "I'm going to order some, and we can share them."

Shaking my head, I admitted I'd never eaten oysters, describing the tipping of a cold, slippery oyster from the shell to the back of my throat as outside of my culinary comfort zone.

"Actually, I liked them," Jamie interrupted. I'd been imagining her just getting through the experience, holding her nose, puckering her lips in distaste.

Almost convinced, I nearly changed my mind when our waiter confided that he can't manage tossing back a raw oyster. His suggestion of sandwiching the oyster between Saltines put me off even more.

"Wouldn't that involve chewing?" I asked.

Last night,  I discovered I'm not as old as I thought I was. For the past ten months, I've been telling people I'm a year older than I actually am. This time, Gary happened to hear me. Wearing a sideways grin, he pointed out my mistake.

"Really?" I asked.

"Really."

Hmmm. So, I guess I've got a do-over. Perhaps I should live this one a little more daringly? I decided to jumpstart my extra year by trying oysters.

Marilyn and Jamie already had some on their plates. Squeezing lemon over the white flesh, they discussed which of the three sauces to use. The jagged shell between my thumb and finger, I moved my oyster from the bed of crushed ice to my plate. A squeeze of citrus and a smear of hot sauce, and I was ready.

Here's what I learned: eating an oyster is almost like doing a shot. Bring it to your mouth, tilt your head back, close your eyes if you want, swallow hard, and wait for the bang.

Oh, my!  I wasn't prepared for the clean, fresh taste of the oyster, heighted by the sharpness of the hot sauce. The oyster tasted like Corolla felt.

And then I had another.

 

.

Not Quite Done With Clairhaven Street



 





"You can't go back home to your family, 

 back home to your childhood ... back home to ...dreams of glory

 

 and of fame ... back home to the escapes of time and memory.”

 

--from Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again

 

 

 

I try to write myself home. I'm not sure what I want to do if the ink on the page creates some kind of magic portal, allowing me to open a secret door, to lift the lid off of a rabbit hole, to bend time and space.

 

Would I change how we lived on Clairhaven Street, if I could?

 

I guess I would mostly like to be seated around our kitchen table on one of the good nights, like those when my father came through the kitchen door carrying a bag of fried shrimp from Young's Tavern, greasy circles dotting the brown paper. On such a night, though it was 10:00 or 11:00 or midnight, we marveled at our good fortune, at the beauty of  plump white shrimp inside hot, crisp breading, at the snapshot of a family sitting happily together.

 

 

 

 

 

This week, I've been lost in the past, reworking my essay about Clairhaven Street. While I can't find the word spell that will take me home again, I have learned that I can time travel on the whiff of a lilac. Today, peonies took me there. 

 

 This morning, I cut white and pink peonies from my side yard. Heavy rain bent their stalks, and the cabbage blooms pooled together into a carpet of blossoms. I cut only those broken stems, the collection of these damaged flowers combining to make something quite lovely.

 

 

 

 

Today, Rachel told me: "I want these flowers in my wedding bouquet." I smile to think of her finely-boned fingers carrying peonies bound by ribbons at the stems. 

 

 



 

She has my mother's hands. 

 

 

 

Clairhaven Street

My mother cut armfuls of lilacs, filling vases and jars in every room of our house. One vase, a blue piece of depression glass ringed by a thin, scalloped collar, held them best, the narrow base restraining their stems, allowing a lavendar and green explosion above--the thick branches pushing the blossoms haphazardly outward.  In the shade of the lilacs and forsythia grew a low forest of lily of the valley, their bell-shaped blossoms rising from leafy pod-like curls. I'd lie on my stomach and pluck them one by one, surprised at the strength of their resistance to my pulling, until I had enough to fill the tiniest of my mother's  crystal vases.

My own lilacs are on my kitchen table as I write, their dank sugar changing my patterns of thought. One of my three bushes burst this year, but still I don't have enough blossoms to fill my house. I left some to scent my yard while I drink cups of coffee on the deck, collecting myself in the dark. After I'd arranged my lilacs in a clear glass vase, I went back out to the shady section of my yard, where a small group of green leaves curved protectively around stems of bell-shaped flowers. I should have planted them when we first bought our house, but, even so, five lily of the valley shoots sit in a tiny vase on my kitchen sink helping me while I remember my mother.

 

 

Today, I'm still a little lost in the scent of the lilacs on my table. I'm writing in the kitchen, the lilacs directly in front of my laptop, and I'm struggling to stay put. The syrupy scent still threatens me, pushing relentlessly into my mind like the haphazard branches, toppling me back to my childhood home on Clairhaven Street.

 

It's like this: writers are pretty much always somewhere else. I know it appears that I'm here now (you can see me, right?), but most of me, the prime cut of me, is sitting on the low concrete wall just beneath the rose bushes on Clairhaven Street. My family will come upon what they think is me, their voices creating a forceful NOW, and I emerge from where I've been, disoriented, blinking furiously to find myself in a different place.

 

"What did you say?" I ask them, peering over my reading glasses.

 

"You aren't even listening!"

 

.Ah, if they only knew where I'd been. All I can do is try to take them back there with my words.

 

Curious about Annie Dillard's writing philosophy? Read The Writing Life.
 

I've been envious of Annie Dillard, another Pittsburgh girl, who jumped with both feet into her writing world. Once working in front of a window with an engaging view, she covered it with brown paper, blocking the invasive NOW with packing tape. What would it feel like to lose control, to give myself over to the world inside my head? I wish I may, I wish I might, but I can't do it. Instead, I am a cheater, sneaking around on both parts of my life. My own dear writing life is surely jealous of my family, but I suspect my famiy doesn't have cause to know about my affair. 

 

This weekend, I'm taking Clairhaven Street to a writing conference in Pittsburgh. I'm hoping that they will be able to smell the lilacs, too. Wish me luck.

 

 

 

The house is quiet today (the NOW momentarily at bay), and I plan to build a tunnel of words to and from Clairhaven Street. I may stay for a lunch of my father's tomatoes.

 

 

Time travel to my childhood inspires a little caprese salad for lunch. I managed to find some decent tomatoes and basil at the market, and with a little fresh mozzarella and good olive oil, you can't go wrong. My mouth waits anxiously for summer tomatoes and my own garden-grown basil, but I don't think I'll ever find tomatoes like those my father grew on Clairhaven Street. I'll probably keep looking, though.

 

If you are still a little hungry, a smattering of Clairhaven Street (in very early versions!) can be found here: Tomato Whispers, Going Home, and Cutting Lilacs.

French Onion Soup

"Your due date is December 24th."

"No, no, no, no. Are you sure? That can't be right."

The doctor looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. It was 1991, and questioning medical authority was still unpracticed--especially when the questions came from pregnant women.

"It's just that I have three small children at home. I can't...I mean, seriously...I really CAN'T be in the hospital on Christmas Eve. Are you really, really sure?"

Was that pity or annoyance crossing his face?

Yes, yes, he was sure.

I'd come to the doctor in the first place--folded my clothes on the chair--wrapped the thin paper robe around me--sat on the edge of the stainless steel table, arms gripping elbows--because of my husband. Well, yes, of course, THAT, but really because of this conversation:

Me: I can't believe I've had the flu for so long. I just keep feeling like total crap. I mean, how long can this last?
Him: Jill.
Me: What?
Him: Look at me.
Me: What?
Him: You don't have the flu. You're pregnant. You should take a test.
Me: What?

Now, keep in mind that I pretty much knew I was pregnant immediately with my first three children. This time, my husband, a human being with no uterus, knew before I did. This is why I think I didn't know:
1. my oldest was sixish.
2. my second was four.
3. my youngest was, well, one.
4. my husband traveled...a lot.

After the baby was born, we spent a lot of time in surival mode: everyone safe and fed, nothing more and nothing less. (Well, there were the times that two-year-old Laura moved baby Rachel from the couch onto the floor when I went to the bathroom, that Laura drank Dimetap while wearing her bathing suit in February and the nurses at St. Clair Hospital narrowed their eyes at me while I held the baby in one arm and my poor toddler's head in the other while she vomited the contents of her stomach, that I sliced open the palm of my hand on a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil while helping Matty build a diorama of the Mall in Washington, DC while Andy wrote his spelling words and the girls pounded on their high chair trays and blood dripped on the Lincoln Memorial). [Editor's Note--these events are just a representative selection of the chaotic events that occurred in the Sunday household].

On the night of the bloody-monument incident, I looked at my babies--Matty's sweet face open with expectation with the promise of this project; Andy's red head bent over the paper, freckled hands carefully looping letters; Laura's little voice piping "Why, Mommy?" as she watched me tear the foil, squirming impatiently in her high chair; and the baby, Rachel's hands smacking the tray top, her movements sending cheerios into flight--and the deep ache of parenthood washed over and through me...this would not be the only time I would lovingly and unintentionally fail them.


In California, where golden warmth is a daily presence, where oranges mimic the sweetness of the sun, they call her Sunny. She is that, my own share of the sun, and decidely much more wonderful than a prolonged bout with the flu.







So, I'm here to tell you now that my golden moment was at the end of a day, when my babies were fed, bathed (so sweet-smelling in their soft necks), and piled around me for story time, all of us leaning into one another, through a weird blend of mother will and metaphysics morphing into one. I'd close the last bedroom door, tiptoeing away, a peaceful lullaby beating in my heart. Yeah, even if I had to bleed on the Lincoln Memorial again (even repeatedly, just like the seemingly never-ending Groundhog Day) I'd buy the ticket for that time-travel experience without hesitation.

About a week after my first boy left for college, the sweet-faced Matty of the Mall project, a bottle of Red Hot in the Giant Eagle condiment aisle did me in, his absence in my daily life made so clear to me by the fact that I didn't need to add that thick, spicy liquid to my purchases. His siblings followed suit, of course, as it should be, and my cart was less full of their wants and needs.

"What would I  like for dinner?"

Hmmm....now that's a question that took some time to answer.

My children call me for my recipes, often while pushing their own carts through grocery stores as far away as Maryland and California. (Soon, there will be calls from Helena, Arkansas, as "Why, Mommy?" Laura begins work there.) When Laura dropped her college meal plan, after she'd moved into an apartment as a sophomore, we'd spend an hour or so on the phone while she strolled the aisles of Safeway.

Sunny Rachel girl would roll her eyes, "Are you really on the phone while she SHOPS?" It wouldn't be long until I shopped long distance with her, too. Now we trade Snapchats of our separately-prepared feasts.

In my comfy chair, with my feet up and my eyes closed, I walk next to my girls, sharing recipes. Later, a little bit of me shows up at far-removed dinner tables, sometimes at four different spots in one night!

Look! There I am.

On a weekend like this, when Mother's Day temperatures threaten to take us back into the chilly zone, and I long for that long lost golden hour, it's best to comfort ourselves with some French Onion Soup. The most glorious French Onion Soup I've ever "ohhhheeeddd" over spoonful by spoonful, I ate at a little bistro in Paris situated across the river from Notre Dame (but within perfect view of its spires), and just down the street from Sylvia Beach's legendary bookstore--Shakespeare and Company. The best version I've made myself is fashioned after Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's creation; she concludes her beautiful step-by-step photographic instructions by saying "It’s everything, is what it is."

When my children were little, I often made French Onion Soup in the crockpot. I like this new version better, and when they call me for the recipe, here's what I'll tell them:

There will probably be tears. [Editor's Note: Feel free to substitute a mental image of the Lincoln-Memorial incident here.]



Things will probably get a little messy. [Editor's Note: Feel free to insert "Try, try, and try again" or "I think I can...I think I can..." here.]

 

 

 

Quality counts. Buy the good cheese. [Editor's Note: Feel free to subsitute "To thine ownself be true" here.]

 

 

Don't cook with wine that you wouldn't drink. [Editor's Note: Feel free to substitute "I hope you dance" here.]

 

 

 

 

Hot cheese fixes everything. [Editor's Note: Feel free to substitute "I will always love you" here.]

 

 

  Here's Pioneer Woman's recipe for everything.  Enjoy.

Einstein, Say It's So

The outdoor rotunda, Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Railway Station

The Broadway Limited left from Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Railway Station around 1:06 a.m., the hour late enough to make my mother cranky about having to drive me downtown. We'd park under the great rotunda, never looking up at the circular patterns of terracotta-colored stones topped by centered slices of glass. Later I'd think about the lovers who parted from or joined to each other under this shelter all because of these tracks, the cumulative comings and goings, the damp jackets where faces had buried themselves in angst or relief. Then, though, I thought only about getting to my destination, maybe trying to sleep a bit through the night's journey, nodding off but shaking myself awake as every station was called, each clackety-clack of the rails taking me closer to him.

Imagine if I'd only looked up!

After the saying goodbye (I'm going, I'm going, I'm going!) and the thrilling sound of "ALL ABOARD!," if I was lucky enough, no one would sit next to me. Twice I remember not being lucky at all, sitting once next to a girl who was actively determined to save my apparently sorry soul before the train pulled into Trenton. Another time, I spent the entire trip turned fully toward the window in an effort ward off my seatmate, who was trying his best to "accidentally" touch the curve of my breast.

The Broadway Limited rounding Horseshoe Bend in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

When the conductor called "NEXT STATION STOP, ALTOONA!" ..."HORSESHOE CURVE COMING UP!" I never failed to rub my eyes, turning sleepily toward the window, to watch the train nearly meeting itself as it rounded the great bend.  Altoona was midpoint, or a little over, in my trip. From this point on, I was fully awake, anxious to be free of the train, to be jumping down the three iron steps, to be scanning the crowd for his face, to be kissing and falling and spinning and losing myself in the suddently very solid fact of us.

While Gary's strengths don't always include being on time (When we got married, I told him the ceremony was at 1:30--when it was scheduled for 2), he never was late to meet the Broadway Limited. We rode back to campus in his roommate's taped-together green Dodge Dart, feeling ourselves becoming invisible to the world. For the next 72 hours, there would be only two.

One of the many Princeton arches. Imagine your back curving against its stone, face rising to the one bending to you.

"Princeton was a great place to be in love," I tell my husband from the back seat of our rented SUV. Our oldest son rides shotgun because of his long legs, and three of us sit hip to hip behind them. We are making a lunch stop in Princeton, having left Philadelphia on route to Fairfield, Connecticut as we follow Rachel's college lacrosse team that's come East for Spring Break.

Gary drives down Nassau Street slowly, ostensibly looking for a parking spot, but I can sense he's searching for something else . He eases into a parking garage that wasn't there the last time we visited, and we spill out into a crossroad where our past looks haughtily at our present.

"We may not have lived up to your expectations," I whisper.

I can feel us here, still here, and while I'm glad for all that is, I want to weep for all that's lost. Would I sell a little bit of my soul to be young again, my long hair swishing mid back, the skin around my eyes smooth and taut, our married life yet to be, hanging before us like a glossy ripe plum? If our youth is fossilized anywhere, it is here.

And, if Einstein was right about the fabric of time, our past, present, and future exist simultaneously. Might an 80-year-old Jill be tapping her way down the street? Today, I'd be happier to find the 20-year-old Jill, who could be walking across campus after a Cat Steven's concert, the fingers of her left hand looped in Gary's belt, his arm slung proprietarily across her shoulders. Dorm windows open to the May air, a mash-up of "Morning Has Broken" and "It's a Wild World" floats above us.

If it were late enough, we might hear our young selves calling "HOT DOG MAN!", desperately in search of the vendor peddling steamed dogs and buns at 2 a.m. Sometimes we ate at The Grotto, a tiny storefront decorated with white fencing and plastic flowers, where candles dripped down the sides of rope-wrapped pot-bellied wine bottles. At The Grotto, we ordered either eight-inch club sandwiches or featherweight gnocchi (I've judged every dish of gnocchi by The Grotto's standards since then). We often tripped down dark stairs to a basement bar called The Annex where we'd drink Sicilian Kisses (Southen Comfort and Amaretto) until I spoke only in Spanish. Then we'd order the 99 cent ham and cheese special to bring back my English. Once we lunched at The Nassau Inn, our tureens of clam chowder served on a table carved deeply with initials of long gone boys and men. I believed the silver pitcher of cream served with the soup prophesised our future.

The Peacock Inn



If there is a place in which our younger selves could manifest, it would certainly be the Peacock Inn. Set back from the bustle of Nassau Street on Bayard, the Peacock seemed to be a spun-sugar house, lit from within. Was it our future selves climbing the steps,already transitioning into our next, more formal stage? We dressed up for those dinners, ordering wine, holding hands across the crisply-clothed table set along a curved wall of windows in this glorious old house.The details of what we ate have faded, but my fingers remember the silver's heavy curves. We walked in tandem, slowly, me crying a little at the end of our Peacock nights.The next day I'd again board the Broadway Limited, this time moving too quickly backwards, clack-clackety.

Nothing like a good old cup of Joe to bring us back to reality.

Today, our present selves are meeting old college friends, Bryan and Audrey, at P.J.'s Pancake House, one of the few eateries that hasn't changed much since Gary and Bryan graduated in the seventies. We sat in the corner nook, our younger selves crowding the booth, all of us catching up over P.J.'s best.

The corner table at PJ's, where we rubbed elbows with the past.

Rachel may have had the best plate: Eggs Benedict...

 

...with a side of strawberry pancakes!

Peach Melba

My parents first took me to Las Vegas when I was 14. We were an interesting trio set loose on Sin City, the land of champagne fountains, pasties, and the Rat Pack. My mother was in the habit of wearing a wig then, a strawberry blonde 60's bouffant.(After that initial trip, we stopped at the Grand Canyon [an educational sidebar to cleanse my Vegasized brain?]. Posing under the tree for a photo, Fritzie caught the puff of hair on a branch, lifting it just enough so that everyone on the tour bus could have snapped a shot of her stockinged head.) My dad, 18 years older than my mom, grey-haired and spectacled, wore a black-and-white checkered sports coat and favored whiskey, neat. Their youngest child, fourteen years old, I spent hours in front of the mirror lining my eyes in black and checking out how my legs looked in those white hot pants (yes, the pants were HOT, but this phrase now becomes a test of how old you are...if you know what hot pants are, then you are riding the soul train, honey!)

I learned a lot on that first visit:

1. Even a 14-year-old can get into the Playboy Club if a proper tip is given to the maitre 'd. According to my dad, you can fold a fiver so that it appears to be a twenty.
2. It's possible to sneak past security to Dean Martin's room in the Riviera Hotel, where you can steal a glass from his room-service tray. (When your mother dies, forty years later, you'll find that glass in her china closet.) It is also possible to give money to a bellman in exchange for information about where Dean Martin parks his car. You can wait there, with your mother--because of your mother, to take pictures of a startled Martin and his golf partner.
3. Mascara melts when the thermostat rises above 103.
4. My mother shouldn't drink more than two Singapore Slings.
5. Women still throw panties at the fat Elvis, and apparently no one has told this Elvis to lose the white stretchy jumpsuits.
6. When you are 14, a pretty nice world exists in a paperback copy of The Godfather, an ice-cold Tab, the cool well of  a pool, and a brown and white polka dot bikini. (Did my parents KNOW what I was reading?)   

A couple of nights into our trip, after hearing Rodney Dangerfield "get no respect," we discovered the Riviera Coffee Shop, Open 24 Hours. Imagine this at 2 a.m.: a threesome of small burgers served with crispy shoestring fries (before sliders were "invented"!), a towering turkey club layered with classic blt ingredients, a quivering slice of lemon meringue pie served with steaming Joe in mugs stamped with gold curlicue Rs. Dinner food at the shows wasn't memorable, although the list of offerings printed on creamy paper and orders taken by tuxedoed waiters who called me "Miss," left with me a lust for white-tableclothed "fancy" restaurants.

Probably because I was 14 and could wear hot pants, I ordered dessert every night. One night, I discovered Peach Melba: a short dish of vanilla ice cream, the slightest coating of bean-speckled white rising up the glass, cradled by a promiscuous peach half seemingly floating in a puddle of sugared raspberry puree. I was a goner.  

 

 

The way the story goes is that in 1892 Auguste Escoffier, the legendary French chef at the London Savoy, whipped up Peach Melba in honor of La Nellie Melba, a celebrated Australian opera singer. Escoffier, ever the lover of women, created this dish for her (according to his biographers, he honored many women in this way--much to the consternation of his wife), thinking Peche Melba to be as lovely as Nellie's voice. Escoffier served the dish to Nellie in a swan carved from ice, but I can testify that it is just as enchanting without the swan. If I ever have to order a last meal, I know what dessert will be.

 

A few years back, Gary and I found ourselves in Paris, blinking in surprise at our good fortune. We fell down the proverbial rabbit hole (or should I say lapin?) one night while drinking martinis in a little Southside bar. Celebrating a turn of good luck, after a year or so lost in the desert, we let the cold gin numb our tongues and create frosty rivers down the backs of our throats. We were stunned to find ourselves suddenly nearly alone in the bar, crowds gathering on the street. Joining them, we followed their gazes upward to a double rainbow, shimmering in watery lines.

 

"I have to go to France," Gary said, taking my hand. "You're coming with me."

 

With the pressure of his hand on mine, all of my excuses lost themselves.

It's true that there are no fat women in Paris. Books have even been written on the subject, making claims that lithe limbs are the result of small plates, but I've seen these women at the cafes, their heart-shaped posteriors planted in wicker chairs facing the promenade, ice cream and slices of chocolate spooned into their pretty mouths. Here's a news flash...French women eat dessert. Every day.

Just like a craving for ice cream, Paris gets into your head--Hemingway's moveable feast and all. Sometimes, when the city fades a little in my mind, and I can't smell or taste its flavors, I read about it, and je peux parler français again. If you find yourself needing a little Paris, pick up Elizabeth Bard's Lunch in Paris.

 

 

Or visit her blog Lunch in Paris for updates about her continuing love story with her French husband,  young son, and all things French.

 

Recently, Bard and Gwendel opened Scaramouche Artisan Glacier (English subtitle: Adventures in Ice Cream) where they craft sinful confections together in Provence. Here they seem to have conjured Escoffier and Nellie.

 

 

 

Want a bite?

 

Window Gazing

My step was lighter then.

After school, after I'd dropped my briefcase on my bedroom floor and laced up my tennis shoes, after some sort of dinner (often for one), I was out the door and up the long curved driveway that emptied onto Bower Hill Road. At the top of the hill, my walk turned into a jog, then a run, and I focused on the repetitive sidewalk squares as I pounded past the synagogue, the Catholic grade school, and the entrance to the community pool. About 30 minutes later, I’d turn back, this time at a slower pace, letting my muscles cool down. I walked leisurely past the single-family homes whose lawns butted up against the sidewalk. I took note of these homes every night, chronicling and charting changes and additions: the newly-cut grass, the half-cleared picnic table, the colorful whirligig spinning in the small garden. The homes nearest the crosswalk were simple brick ranches, mostly pale yellow brick, now and then interrupted by the roughness of deep red, three steps leading to their concrete porches, overhung by patterned aluminum awnings. As I got closer to my complex, the houses grew, expanding into two-story stone constructions. Poppies and purple puffs on long stems waved in flower gardens, and redwood planters barely contained tumbling blooms. A cool darkness was just starting to fall, and sugary yellow lights clicked on up and down the street.

 Oh, how I loved to look into the windows, drawn by the emanating light like an insect. I don’t remember the sum of what I saw, save for some white lace curtains, an abandoned game on a dining room table, and a set of rich maroon velvet chairs.  I longed to curl my back into the dark plush, to roll the dice and count off spaces, to own the view from inside the lace-trimmed windows, to be part of the circle within. The soft light cutting into the near darkness comforted me, beckoning. I usually stopped at the last house nearest my own crosswalk, a rambling Cape Cod sided in white with red trim, the entrance just off kilter a bit to the right of the sidewalk. The door was a red beacon, and I had to stop myself from touching the elaborate floral wreath encircling the engraved knocker. 

Now, so many years later, I still window gaze when I pass through a neighborhood at night, the windows again backlit with promise, though more elusive. Then, I could outrun life to grasp a little of the light in my palms, to roll it and form it into something of my own. I knew just a little about loss, but nothing at all about the deep wistfulness that would follow.

 

When Gary and I looked at each other across the sticky table at Cain's Saloon and decided to get married, I told him "our daughter will have your eyes."  He foretold the future (some of which has come true, but, boy-oh-boy, he shouldn't give up his day job). His sweet "we will" list included taking me to New England, to visit the homes of Twain and Hawthorne and Thoreau. (It's probably an English major thing, this desire to stand where they stood, to breathe whatever molecules remain, to collect their discarded words, to fold up their shadows in my notebook.)

Well, we went a lot of places, but New England wasn't at the top of the list. Hold on: I'm hitting the fast forward button.

We're driving from one rink to another for the Hockey Night in Boston tourney, our turquoise Astro van bumping over roads crossing through Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

"Stop!" I yell.

Whenever anyone says anything unexpected (let's make that just plain says anything) in our family, all six of us jump into the conversation with loose lips: 

"Are you sick?"
"I'm going to be late!"
"Quiet, kids, I can't hear your mother!"
"What's going on?"
"Why won't anyone tell me what's going on!"

"Gary! Pull over right now! It's Robert Frost's farm!"

And so it was. Quietly unassuming, with no gate or box office, Robert Frost's farm rose like a mirage in its white-boarded simplicity.

 

 

But we had promises to keep, so I stood rooted in the gravel at the side of the road and breathed him in. My children had spilled from the van, looked at the nondescript farm house, and then at me through skeptical eyes.

My own eyes were fixed on the upper window. the one whose wavy glass framed the room where Frost retreated every day to write.

"It's a house, Mom."

Apparently my children haven't inherited my window gazing gene.

The next year, we made it to Mark Twain's Hartford house, a curved, spinning kind of house tucked into trees (his neighbor was Harriet Beecher Stowe!),

 

where I wanted to slip a book off of his library shelves and make myself comfortable at his table with a cup of tea. Maybe he'd join me in spirit, if I did.

 

 

The docent looked a little nervous, so we retraced our steps to the visitor's center, where we had tea at the Murasaki Cafe.

 

Last year, Gary and I flew to Boston to watch our daughter, a senior at U.C. Davis, play lacrosse. "Well, I made a mistake," he said, "but I think it might be a good thing." It turns out that a miscalculation in dates gave us an extra day, which we spent in Concord, visiting the homes of Hawthorne, Alcott, and Thoreau.

 

 

 

"See, I keep my promises!"

Before we walked the Concord sidewalk leading to Orchard House, where Bronson Alcott trimmed bed legs to match the slope of a crooked floor, to Hawthorne's pink house, that he exited through the back door and climbed the hill so he wouldn't run into Bronson, to Emerson's white square home across the street, where the Transcendentalists gathered, we ate a fine and hearty lunch at the Colonial Inn (which was Hawthorne's grandaddy's home).

 

We sat by a window and feasted on puffy omelets and chicken pot pie.

 

I like to think that the rustic chicken pot pie (such tender chunks of chicken in thick cream sauce--the crust kneaded and stretched over the dish--bright green peas, carrot coins, and ridged slices of celery coating every spoonful) was also a comfort to Hawthorne's family who might have eaten here,
 

 

and that someone might be gazing wistfully into this window as she made her way home, after first running hard, then slowing to take in the sights.