Chapter 41
Edelweiss
When it comes to the weather, February is an unusual time in the San Francisco Bay Area. While the rest of the country suffers in continuing freezing cold and torrential rains, snows, slurries, slushes and black ice, out here the weather tends to run nice and mild (don’t get carried away, we have to cope with the lack of a summer every year from July to September). In our neck of the woods, the East Bay, Berkeley is heavily gardened and with a micro-climate that hardly ever freezes, it supports an incredibly wide diversity of plants that shouldn’t be growing this far north from Bougainvillea vines to Meyer Lemon trees. As a result, in the middle of winter things begin to push out of the ground and buds start to show. Magnolias show the first signs of life, flower bulbs push small green hoots through wet dirt and in the death of winter life stirs again.
This pastiche of resilience helps us deal with the real truths. That summer is a way’s off, the Super Bowl is over, the 49’ers still suck and local stone fruit is still a long long ways away.
The winter pre-spring was different from the others and without beating the subject to death, it was all about the economy stupid. We hadn’t found the bottom of our financial barrel yet and the public was approaching a stunned collective George Romero dead zombie status. There was a palpable impending sense of panic and doom that invaded every conversation. How much lower could the market go? Would the credit crunch turn into a credit freeze? Who could fix the mess? Certainly not what we had hoped for when inaugurating a new president. Was this some sick kind of revenge being foisted upon this man for having the audacity to run and then wine? Who knew.
This plethora of happy happy joy joy thoughts contributed to a broad general sense of malaise and made sure that no one and I do mean no one wanted to talk about jobs. Jobs? What jobs? Those people who had them were holding on by their fingernails and those on the border were being annihilated from the workforce daily as corporate American seized upon this opportunity to wield a meat cleaver to their payrolls and fire the old and infirm (thanks again guys, first you set this recession upon us and then you set out to fuck as many of those that are still left standing as you can as fast as possible. Nice work.).
There was a positive factor that came out of the brutality of this situation. It was the clarity it brought home about my chances of going back to work. When you are staring at chances that are less than zero, there is little doubt about the odds of making progress anytime soon. Believe it or not this is a good thing. It takes away the fear that maybe you aren’t doing enough networking, reading enough ads, signing up for meaningless social networks, applying for jobs you either don’t want or will never get and speaking to enough headhunters. Those facile steps towards the unobtainable goal of permanent employment just didn’t matter at this stage and I gratefully tossed them into the temporal rubbish bin where they belonged. This was alternately liberating and explosive, because it cut loose many of my remaining anchors to the working world and left me floating completely without a day-to-day structure. Simply put, there is no point creating a list of things to do when there are no entries.
That is where the practice of Manful Meditation saved my ass. It gave me a structure to look forward to. It gave those empty days meaning. It gave me something fulfilling to do with those wide open blocks of time. You see, at this point every Monday was no different from Friday and the Fridays were not much different than Saturdays. Except that during the weekend, she who is not around much was around a bit more. On Saturdays, between errands, yoga classes, phone calls home with her family and catching up with the NYT’s that littered her side of the bedroom, I would catch a glimpse her of her blond ponytail and black sweats now and again as she moved rapidly in and out of the house. “How are you honey,” she would ask, not waiting for my reply. When that clock struck nada, I found myself heading for the solace of the mancave and the internal healing of my meditations. I didn’t know about the results yet, but day after day, I kept going back for more.
Following the dad meditations of the week before, I was well on my way to a predictable choice of subject for the next go round. The oh so familiar and comfortable chatter I overheard that Saturday afternoon between she who still has a mom and her own just brought the obvious choice home. Like I needed much motivation to figure out what the next set of meditations would be, the answer was so obvious. So that afternoon I plunged right on into the deep end of this personal pool.
A man’s relationship with his mother is the subject of a book not a chapter in one. Make that several books. For as many stories as there are to be told, there are equally as many complex sets of emotions between mother and son. Not to mention the variety of relationships between them. And now, as I sit on the well-worn meditation cushion, beginning my own mom meditations, my mother, is looking spiritually over my shoulder and wondering plaintively, so this is what you think of me? Tell me mister, what is my meditation doing at Chapter 41? What took you so long? Is that how important I am to you? Is that the best you can do, to put my in your book after your father, after baseball and traif hamburgers? Oh I can see her finger pointing at me right now, j’accuse, it seems to say to me, j,accuse.
I stopped that line of thought cold. It didn’t feel good. Truth was that there was just as much wrong as there was right to be found in my relationship with her. But thinking about the guilt driven parts of her character was not what I was after that February morning in the still and quiet of the mcave. No, this time I wanted to focus on something good, to remember my mom in a positive way. I didn’t want to think about her death and her eulogy, like I just had just done for dad. Instead, I consciously tried to guide this meditation to something good, to focus on a perfect mother/son moment.
That is where it stopped. So I sat. I sat and I tried. I tried and sat. I tried really really hard to find the good in her. When I did, there was a lot of resistance and nothing came to mind for a long long time. So I took another approach. I just thought about her without a path in mind.
I started with her looks on a given day. A moment came easily into my mind. I am seven years old. We are waiting for a bus. The bus is not coming so she does something completely out of character. She lights a cigarette. She believes that if she lights a cigarette a bus will come. Unexplainably, this seems to work and I see the green MTA bus coming up La Brea Blvd. I am short, my head barely comes to her waist. I look up at her, she is thin, her brown hair is up pulled into a bun. Her blue eyes are strong, bright. She is wearing a long red knit dress, black simple shoes.
Now I am able to focus on her mood, her demeanor and her spirit that day. What was it about this moment that made my mom special to me? No answer comes to mind. But in this meditative moment all of the complexity of my life falls away and for just a moment, I am a seven year old boy standing at a bus stop thinking that my mom is so cool because she can make a bus show up anytime that she wants just be smoking a cigarette. I sip these thoughts like a 23 year old Zacapa rum in a warm snifter. It is viscous, it lingers in the back of my mouth full of burnt caramel and molasses notes. I end my meditation there and start to focus on dinner. She who is a social beast has invited 4 couples over and I have no idea what I am going to make. Then I remember a dish that mom loved so much.
A recipe for mom. Portobello Fritters with Aioli from Rivoli Berkeley, the favorite dish of the latter years of her life and still one of ours.
Aioli
– 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
– 1 egg yolks
– 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
– 1/4 teaspoon salt
– 1/2 cup pure olive oil
– 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Vinaigrette
– 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
– 1 tablespoon minced shallot
– Salt to taste
– 1/2 teaspoons pepper
– 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
– 1/4 cup pure olive oil
Fritters
– 2 cups all-purpose flour
– Pinch of salt + 1 tablespoon
– 2 eggs
– 1/4 cup water
– 2 cups panko bread crumbs
– 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
– 1/2 pound stemmed Portobello mushrooms, cut into 1/2-inch strips
– 2 cups peanut oil for frying
– 4 cups loosely packed arugula
– 1/4 cup thinly shaved Parmesan
– 1 tablespoon rinsed and coarsely chopped capers
INSTRUCTIONS: Aioli: Whisk together garlic, egg yolks, lemon juice and salt. Gradually whisk in both oils until mixture resembles mayonnaise. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Vinaigrette: Whisk together vinegar, shallot, salt and pepper. Gradually whisk in both oils until well blended.
Fritters: Combine flour and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk eggs and water until frothy. In a third bowl, combine crumbs, thyme and 1 tablespoon salt. Dip mushroom strips, 1 at a time, into flour, then into egg mixture, then in crumbs. Transfer to a cookie sheet. May be done 3 to 4 hours ahead.
Heat peanut oil in a large saucepan to 350 degrees. Fry mushrooms 6 at a time until golden brown. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain.
Toss arugula with 9 tablespoons vinaigrette. Divide among salad plates. Top with hot mushrooms. Scatter Parmesan over salads. Mix capers with remaining vinaigrette; drizzle over mushrooms. Serve aioli in individual cups for dipping.
Used with hoped for permission and big thanks to Rivoli if they do.
Some Mom music (stuff she liked).
Que Sera Sera. Dorris Day.
Edelwies. Julie Andrews.
How Much Is that Doggie In the Window? Lita Roza (a one hit wonder).
Theme From Exodus. Ferranti and Teicher.
The Lonely bull. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
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