August 21, 2005
I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors,
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor;
And when I die I expect to find him,
Laughing…
---
Depeche Mode
Seven and a half hours in the car has never felt so short. Everything was in order, I spent far more than should be legal on gasoline (right, me, miss conservation… ahem, road trips are road trips –sacred… you can’t fuck with a girl and her car.)
Now, last time I. and I were meant to make this trip north the newly bought car decided that it was going to misbehave badly and we ended up taking an arduous train ride north to San José (Amtrack would, for some reason, not sell on-line tickets to Oakland or thereabouts) where Becca swooped down from Concord to pick us up, and Kirsten drove down from her haunts in Mendocino county seat to spend the latter half of our spring break week with us. So, this time, my car was pre-disastered (thanks Garp!) on our trip to San Diego, so I had no car concerns taking off, despite that it has been six years, more or less, that I haven’t driven a car this far by myself. I was feeling slightly anxious about this, and then subsequently annoyed with myself for such ridiculous codependent behaviour and superfluous worry when I am a girl who likes to drive. So I bit the bullet and started off around three in the afternoon, and while I was also fearing major and disastrous stomach illness (K. told me I was way too badass for that shit) from eating a few pieces of chicken that seemed undercooked at a restaurant before having the courage to return it to the kitchen, now ill only by mental defect, for a refund. So far my stomach has proven its worth and its versatility with regard to preemptive flora (one does not spend a whole year of one’s life in Mexico City with eternal chorilla for nothing).
Self-admittedly, I am amazed that I made it in one piece, as I was not driving very well. I almost drove off the road at 80 mph, because the sunroof was open and my hair got sucked up in a wind-tunnel effect. But miraculously we made fabulous time, despite overshooting the 880 because of the precise angle of the sun which precluded me from seeing the highway advertised until I was right on top of the exit and on the far left lane. I think the speed of the trip was related directly to the volume of the stereo pumping Ani (albums that I had forgotten for several years) and me accompanying her in harmonic tapestries of sound over the roar of the wind.
After crossing through Marin County and into Mendocino, we managed to discern the unpaved path into the vineyard where Kirsten lives, and there she was, backlit in the window of her lovely, half-way remodeled 1880’s homesteader cottage. I. was fast asleep, and acted as a dead weight, slightly unwieldy now that she is practically 2/3 my own height, but I managed to transfer her from the car seat to K.’s bed without major incident and K. had a nice bottle of Eagle Point Ranch Syrah (the ranch manager’s label) ready and waiting. Long, utterly inappropriate for recorded reconstruction, conversations ensued.
Ahhhh. Vacation. We were discussing this afternoon the fact that I haven’t really been able to just do NOTHING for just about as long as I can remember, and it is fabulous to unwind, kick back and have nowhere to go, and nothing urgent or pressing or even seemingly urgent or pressing (most things generally aren’t, they just loom as if they were).
She kindly ceded her bed to us and slept on an air mattress under the stars, and I. and I were awake far before she, so we wandered about the house, made oatmeal, then I sliced citrus fruit and covered it in a thin layer of sugar and then a bowlful of orange liqueur – Patrón (note to self, not bad at all, and half the price of Grand Marnier).
I subsequently took myriad photographs, due to the spectacular early morning light and the picturesque qualities of the idyllic surroundings. We are perched on a rolling hill, with acres of grape vines all around, nested among rising mounts on both sides. There is an incipient olive grove, and a more mature one in the distance. There are old growth blue oaks that are hanging with moss, and a garden full of herbs and sunflowers.
Once K. was up, our day consisted of food preparation (when does it not?) for the evening’s party, and while we were able to scare up three eggs from the chicken coop, it was not enough, so we made a quick dash down the mountain (in car) to the Co-op to pick up more organic dairy products (yum) and free-range organic eggs (gottta do things right).
Here’s what we made (mostly K. I admit it, she had the menu planned far in advance, damn I love planners, I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl. I always turn myself over to them for things like how many kinds of dry cheeses to take on a camping trip etc.)
Ok, so we did eat brunch first, which was maple smoked chicken apple sausage and fresh orange raisin rye sour dough bread (K. has baked another one since, because we ran out). But then we put our collective heads seriously into the task at hand:
Hummus (already made to perfection prior to my arrival) with a lovely sprinkling of Sumac for presentation.
Naan. (Flat bread). Also, K. started the dough going before I was there and took it all on herself.
Fresh mint and lemon balm sun tea. (I harvested from the front garden and took care of beverages)
Tagine vegetables – I brought K. a large clay pot that we haggled over mere pesos in Tlayacapan, for this to be an authentic dish, sautéed onion, mint and hot chiles with potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and roasted red pepper, slow roasted for 6 hours at a low heat (200 degrees).
Couscous – with a harissa paste (caraway, cumin, coriander seed, garlic, guajillo pepper, thai chili peppers and olive oil) and black currants.
B’stilla – a phyllo dough assemblage with a chicken and egg melange in a Morrocan curry and cinnamon, layered with sugared crushed almonds, and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Mmmmm.
Sangría - drunken fruit, sugar, orange juice, ginger ale, ice and lots o’ red wine (my version of the half-cocked concoction).
And then… too decadent dessert:
Fresh Mulhallabia ice cream (vanilla bean, cinnamon and cardamom) K. did the custard the night we arrived, but we didn’t set it up until morning.
I made my favorite poppy seed cake, with a cocoa-cinnamon streusel, but due to a communication breakdown there was not the appropriate-sized bundt pan, so we used a little one, and another round, which worked out nicely as a place to house the poached fruit for presentation and flavor marriage purposes.
Poached farm-fresh green and black figs, and apricots (these were picked just up the road).
I finally got to meet all, or many, of K.’s northern Cali crowd, and the party was a success (how could it not be if people’s mouths were constantly full of fabulous food or busy imbibing too much alcohol???) There were also little people for I. to play with, a six-year-old boy Indigo, and she went for a swim up at the pond. All around good time was had by all, and Aiyana, K.’s 3-year-old goddaughter stayed over, so I asked to sleep under the stars and I. who had initially planned to sleep inside with the girls managed to (surprise surprise) have a last minute change of heart and slept curled up in a ball tight against me. Amazing. I haven’t slept under the stars without a tent… ever??? I can’t remember the last time if I ever have, and I have been meaning to do it, but my options are very limited and I wanted it to be a solitary (or in this case semi-solitary) experience. I was too tired, however to fully appreciate the glowing spectrum of the sky, but there is always tonight.
Again we awoke earlier than we should have but the sun was beating down in heavy handfuls and the sky was a stunning blue.
Today we were equipped with knowledge of boundaries and where things could be found so we set out, armed with only our camera and five fruit baskets. We braved the thorns and the blackening juices of the blackberry bush, picked fresh apricots (eating several while licking our juice-stained paws), Asian pears, green apples… yeah, pretty much in heaven.
And we spent another day talking, and immersed in the kitchen, breakfast was toasted naan with avocado and then another with scrambled eggs and cheese and a spicy orange peel tea. Then we hiked up to the pond where we swam and lounged about like lizards in the sun for several hours before hunger called us back to the cabin (with only a brief diversion through the grape vines, tasting the still sour fruit as we passed and a quick shake of the mulberry tree, staining our fingers and lips a deep carmine) where we had the remaining slices of b’stilla and reheated couscous (this time I thought it would be fun to sprinkle with chevrie… God bless goats and their udders is all I have to say!) I. has discovered a close second to her favorite beverage – cold water with icy – and that is: mint tea with icy. Usually kids like sweet drinks but she always prefers the neutrality or perhaps the limitless possibility of water. Can’t complain, especially when others are tying themselves up in knots over restricting their children’s diet (no need to comment on specifics).
After munching on more of the fresh fruit we picked in the morning we drove Aiyana back into town, the house was full of wonderful scents of breads in varying states of preparation, the orange-rye was baked, the sprouted wheat bagel dough rising, and the apricots halved and cooked in water awaiting further processing for their presumed canning. Driving into town we discussed the finer points of dating (ok, I know nothing, I never dated, most likely never will) but I was (again not a surprise) delving into the meaning of internet based relationships and how they work. Jeff had this theory (I am paraphrasing several months later, so I might well be totally bending his theory to my own… correct me if I’m wrong, darling… that is if your typing fingers are doing ok) that the emotional rush that you get and the deep personal connections that you make as you connect virtually, rival, if not surpass, “real” connections precisely because all other filters are stripped away and you are seeing the “essence” of the person. I agree in some ways, but I do feel that there is an important difference, or rather, an important caveat, and that is the underlying assumption of honesty (which cannot be assumed, I fear). Not to mention the fact that while someone can have a razor sharp wit that is transmitted through the written word, the actual human confrontation, face to face, day to day, might be not only mundane but even possibly horribly unbearable, because on-line, we choose only to share the best or the worst of ourselves. But what about the in between, I ask. Example: how do you know if a person talks loudly and leans into your arm in an unpleasant over-bearing fashion when he is drunk, or if she, as is my case, puts her feet up and out the window while riding in the passenger seat? These might be major impediments to a healthy relationship (I know that it may be the one thing my husband most despises about me, maybe… and if he had the chance at a do-over knowing what he knows now, wouldn’t he choose to run screaming the other way???) I am reminded of that specifically because as we drove down the mountain and I rested my feet out the open window, just shy of the mirror, and K. commented on the fact that she loved that I still do that, reminding her again, eight years later, of our famously intriguing trip across the country. Anyway, I digress, but this is indeed one of the fabulously perplexing and noteworthy topics of the afternoon’s discussion. K. also asked me what my life would be like if there were no obstacles at all, and I didn’t have an answer, but raising babies, living on a farm, baking bread, harvesting and preserving fruit, with dogs and cats and cows on a hill in Northern California is seeming pretty damn perfect to me right now.
Reality check: We shopped for provisions. We bought 10 lbs of unbleached white flour, a perfume oil of a scent that I have been chasing since I was 14 (ironically called “love”) that I bought in Harlem when my choir sang with hundreds of others for the Earth Mass at St. John’s the Divine Cathedral in NYC. Hair-dressing scissors (K. was going to trim I.’s hair prior to her kindergarten debut, and perhaps mine too) and tweezers, (strangely mine always end up becoming someone’s roach clips and disappearing into the abyss).
We stopped at the Ukiah brewing company (which touts itself as the first certified-organic restaurant in the country) for a drink (my tummy began asserting its unhappiness just about now, so no beer) - red wine while I. dug with all four incisors into a cheeseburger (good) while we picked at a small communal plate of calamari (not so good). When offered dessert we cordially declined, our minds already set on skipping any real kind of dinner in lieu of more dessert – cake, ice cream and fruit from the night before.
Upon return I tried to get I. to take a nap – she was having none of it – but she did leave us rolling on the floor with laughter. “Mommy can I call you my granddaughter?” impish giggle.
“Well, only if you’re a freak!” I reply in the silliest of tones.
She thinks about this, and asks, “what’s a freak? That’s an ugly word. Is that a mean word?”
I laugh and explain that it is sometimes meant to be a hurtful word but that it really refers to people who think differently, I whisper conspirationally, “You know, I actually like freaks better because they challenge assumptions about how people should behave.”
And she leans in, cupping her hands around her mouth to insure the privacy of communication, “You mean like Kirsten?!!!” I nearly burst at the seams with a bellowing laugh. “Shhhhh. Don’t tell her what I said!” But of course I had to, and she laughed just as hard as I did.
Let me just say that I love being a girl. Every time I spend time with my close girlfriends I am reminded of this. We absolutely got the better end of the deal on the gender continuum, no question (meaning, not only is it socially acceptable for us to share deep emotional connections with one another and really know one another, it is encouraged). I am also reminded of how high I really should set the bar in my personal relationships, and that my friendship (and companionship) is worth more than half-assed attempts from people unable or unwilling to recognize that I am an amazing woman (her words, not mine) . Of course, this needs to be repeated like a mantra for it to have any effect whatsoever, so the longer the immersion in girl-friendness, the better the ultimate outcome.
We spent the evening cooking, talking, ripping cds (which is why I was even enticed back to my computer, but fortunately K. only has very slow dial-up and I stayed away from her computer) and sharing eros-inspired self-portraits taken with our (new, semi-new) digital cameras. K. spent several hours pureeing the apricot reduction, and shaping, boiling (in a baking soda and molasses laden pot of water) and baking bagels which had received and egg wash and then poppy seeds or sesame seeds, while I kept feeding the hungry maw of my combo drive, as it sucked shut and made crunching noises much like the jaws of a hungry beast, before it spit out the cd once more, digested and archived in my newly updated itunes. I did, of course, make the higos en almibar of which I have been dreaming ever since Rocío and I harvested them in her mother’s house 11 years ago in Miramar and we boiled them with sugar water until the figs were soft, and the syrup was thick, at which point we drizzled them with fresh cream. I could only eat one, as a sample, with the fresh un-homogenized cream that K. buys from the Strauss family creamery (I don’t think we get their products in SoCal:( because dessert had been so satisfying, but I did later (much later) eat half a bagel because I. didn’t want to finish it, having also grown tired of the mango ice cream I literally whipped up for her with K.’s magic wand (nothing unsavory)… We talked into the wee hours, conferred over a response to an on-line personals add, and laughed until our lungs were tired. All in all, it was a near-perfect day.
August 22, 2005
9 am
“Don’t go back to sleep,” she commands.
“I’m not,” I yawn, wiping the morning tears and sediment from the corners of my eyes.
She looks at me with the sharpness of an eagle at its prey, but with the gentleness of a person in love, and smiles sweetly, “Mommy, what does it feel like to be a grown up”
“… uh, good question, I don’t know, what does it feel like to be a kid?”
Morning mussed hair frames her face, she sighs, resting her chin in her hand, against her knee as she looks up at me from the floor to the bed, “like the same old thing every day.”
I laugh to myself, I couldn’t have said it better.
She begins by waving her arms in interpretive motion, “When I’m a grown up, I’ll feel like I’m out of my place, like the trees blowing in the wind, and the leaves falling from the trees, and two people sitting underneath them…”
Help! I’ve created a poet! Ah yes, certainly it is good to live this way, “art is why I get up in the morning.” And who can complain when the person delivers her art so lovingly, and selflessly day after day? Today Becca and Adrian are coming from the city, so it looks like another good day to come. Looking forward to our breakfast of fresh bagels, cultured cream cheese (more like Mexican sour cream or crème fraîche) and lox. We also used some of the cream cheese to start another round of our own culture so maybe tomorrow there will be more ready.
Well it is 9 pm and B. and A, still aren’t here yet, but we don’t care because we are listening to the Beatles White album on our second round of blackberry mojitos, freshly napped, (at least me), showered and hair trimmed post-pond excursion. Today we picked fresh plums off the tree on the way back. And I made my very first incursion into the world of nori rolling. I suppose what we made could be called sushi, if only tangentially because we used fish (canned salmon) fresh cucumber, pickled ginger, and scrambled egg with tamari.
I was proud of my first rolling attempt, I think I was limited by my fear of failure, but K. is such a wonderful friend because she has absolute faith in my cuisinistic ability, and my roll stuck. Just another reason why we have no need for restaurants because we can definitely eat far better at home. Dinner is on the table and it is a replay of the couscous with a stir-fried concoction of kale, tomatoes (K. canned last season) onion, garlic and gourmet chicken sausage (not home-made).
August 23, 2005
Almost time to get back on the road. Today was yet another day in paradise, I slept outside again, and this time was able to enjoy the stars for a while. B. and A. came in late, after we had polished off about 6 mojitos each, and were dancing around to 80’s music. That became the theme for today, after, of course B., A. and I. discovered a barn owl and a baby rattlesnake on their excursion to see the pigs and we met our dorkdom quotient by breakfasting over the new American Heritage dictionary’s Indo-European word etymology section for a good long time.
Once again we walked to the pond, and while A. practiced his good fathering skills, B, K. and I sang new wave brit pop songs at the top of our lungs. (Yes we are a cultural product of the era in which we were raised, so sue us). We devolved into chanting Madonna’s “Express Yourself” (which we still knew by heart) and trying to scare up lyrics to Milli Vanilli’s “Blame it on the Rain”… I could go on, but I fear I may embarrass us by expressing more than we are willing to share. On the way back we harvested five pints of blackberries and while lunch preparation went on, K. used her brand spanking new food straining apparatus for the second time to separate the seeds from the pulp and thusly make a marvelous blackberry jam in time for us to take some home. She also armed me with a bottle of Petite Syrah from the ranch and a Mead that she had herself brewed and bottled (not for the drive).
We ate an incredible salad with a lemon-tahini tamari dressing and quinoa pilaf with tomato and basil.
So we were set for the the trip, but sad to leave nonetheless. I would have liked to stay another few days, but we both needed to get work done, and B. and A. were on their way to Yellowstone for a road trip before he goes back to Brasil (fingers crossed for permits and such to come through) and B. begins her new fantabulous job with Google (now everyone will be ribbing her for trade secrets… just kidding). We left by five and the 430 odd mile drive home was without incident (there was music, a sleeping child and a nice breeze as I hurtled through the darkness) and we made it in just over seven hours. Of course I came home to unpleasantness (mostly emails from boss-like figure, but not entirely). But today is a beautiful day, and I. and I still get another few days of vacation before I chain myself to my desk or my kindly dubbed Yggdrasil and she begins kindergarten, and the relaxation and self-fulfillment factors have yet to be whittled away.
