making the day what it can be, in the winter of should have/would have

We're frustrated. Face it. We are. Our delayed trip to see our daughter. Our thwarted trip to see the sun. Our meeting that's been canceled. Our promise we can't keep.

This is our weather, and this is our now. We've tilted our planet on its axis, so to speak, and the planet was always going to be larger, and more powerful, than we are.

Today I was to have joined Professor/Writer Cyndi Reeves and her students at Bryn Mawr College to talk about memoir. I was to have later lunched with her and her teaching colleague. After that I was to have headed down to the Philadelphia Flower Show with my husband, looked at flowers and pots, and joined my friend Adam Levine for the official launch of his glorious horticultural magazine, GROW. And finally, 8 o'clock, thanks to my brother and sister-in-law, I was to have dined at Laurel, the "intimate French/American BYO restaurant by Chef/Owner Nicholas Elmi." (Top Chef viewers will remember him.)

All of that now jeopardized, junked, postponed, terminated by all the snow that falls.

"Peaceful out there," my husband just said, having opened the door and stood, for a moment, in the white plenitude. "Peaceful." I stop typing. Can barely hear the wind. Can almost hear a train on its track. Can see no one in the street, no car passing.

Peaceful, he says.

Make the day what the day can be, I remind myself. A lesson that my son keeps teaching. A lesson that the world is demanding that we learn—again. Make the day what the day can be. In this sudden wash of white time, I will write an essay about my students, My Spectaculars, and what they teach me (and us). I will count the eggs and measure the sugar and experiment, again, with my new KitchenAid. I will read the new memoir, Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah, by my brilliant friend, Anna Badkhen, who walks the world to learn the world and who whispers one word, again and again: compassion.

Peaceful. To you, from me, while the planet reminds us how small we are, how temporary and shifting our plans.

Read more...

Reporting back from an evening out

When you spend an evening with Jan Suzanne (and the equally fun-fascinating Maureen) you throw all caution to the wind.  You stroll, for example, through the Philadelphia Flower Show and—squinting, dreaming—you watch confetti rise above the heads of apparent anemones.

Later you head to the extra super delicious Amis on Waverly Street, sit at the chef's table, and let Maureen (a star herself on the Philadelphia restaurant scene) select the evening's array of tapas.  Let's just say they served up a little eggplant, winter squash lasagna, quail, and octopus magic.

Read more...

Remain Vulnerable

I'll stop work mid-afternoon today, hop a train, and head to the Philadelphia Flower Show (but before the Flower Show, Tweed, says my friend Jan Suzanne, after the Show, tapas—that's my Jan Suzanne).  I'm charging both cameras.  I'm surveying my comfortable shoes.  And I'm recalling this quote from Forrest Gander, which I shared with you once, years ago:

“Maybe the best we can do is leave ourselves unprotected....  To approach each other and the world with as much vulnerability as we can possibly sustain.”

 I have opened myself to the possibility of amazement.  I will return with images for you.

Read more...