nate & me

moms are so the greatest

It's funny how, even as adults, sometimes what we really need is our mother. Perhaps its largely a result of our culture, this not quite entirely ever growing up. I've been supporting myself, other than college costs, since high school, and other than a few months during those rather tumultuous college years, have not lived with my mother since high school either. And yet, during these last dark few months, I've felt like I needed her in a way that I haven't since I was a kid. And she came. At first I was disappointed that she couldn't fly out here to New York right away, but in the end I think it worked out perfectly. Looking forward to her visit was something of a shining light in the cold and gray of winter, and by the time she actually got here (a day later than planned, due to her flight being canceled because of bad weather--and this in March, after an incredibly mild winter!), I was doing well enough to have an absolutely wonderful week with her.

We hosted an afternoon of knitting, which was just lovely. We met the professors for lunch over in McIntosh, the Barnard student center. "The professors" consist of a few old friends of my father's, with whom I've rather inconsistantly managed to stay in touch over the years, and it was a lovely hour down there in Lower Level McIntosh. They're an odd, endearing, quirky group of people, and it was good to be reminded of our mutual affection. We walked from Barnard down to 79th street and bought yarn for mom and double-pointed needles for me. Met Shanna and Nate at Genaro, a delicious little Italian restaurant on 92nd Street. Mom accompanied me to work a couple days, got to meet the also rather odd, endearing, quirky group of people with whom I work (yes, I, too, am sensing a pattern here). We went to another of the professor's apartment for dinner one evening, though this particular professor is more a dear old friend and in some ways a parental figure. We took the A train all the way down to Broadway-Nassau and met Nate at the Strand Annex, then bought sandwiches and drinks and wandered out to the end of the South Street Seaport pier to eat our lunch. Afterwards Nate showed us the lobby of the Woolworth Building, where he's working these days. Then we left him there to work and walked all the way to West 4th Street, wandering through Chinatown and Soho and eventually through Washington Square Park. We spent a couple quiet evenings at home, watching movies, eating, drinking wine, knitting, talking, talking, talking. I knit my first hat. Patternless and funny looking, but Mom seems pleased with it. I showed her how to make a stripey scarf. We had Arielle, one of my oldest and greatest and dearest friends, and her mother Adele, over for dinner one night, to me a truly magical evening.

And Mom spoiled me rotten. I think she let me pay for a couple lattes here and there, but her generosity and concern and love were overwhelming. I'm now the proud owner of the afore-mentioned double-pointed needles, and the cutest little orange colander you ever saw, and a salt cellar, and a myriad of other little tidbits, not to mention a kitchen newly stocked with juice, greens, bread, tea, cookies, yogurt, bagels, hummus, chocolate, cheese, etc. I think she was a bit taken aback at the emptiness of my refrigerator.

She left yesterday, and I miss her calming, wonderful presence already. But it was a wonderful week, full of love and connection, and I'm already looking forward to spending a week or two out in her hometown sometime this summer. And with daylight savings time already in effect this year, though I don't really think this is the only reason, the world doesn't seem so dark these days.

P.S. She remembered to bring the readers copy of the book I left in Barnes & Noble a couple weeks ago, and I am happily plowing my way through macabre descriptions of people dying of the Spanish influenza in 1918.

mixed messages

I got a quarterly newsletter from Compass Wines in the mail this evening. Compass Wines is a wonderful wine store in Anacortes, Washington, and has a vast, wonderful selection of northwest wines, not to mention an incredibly knowledgeable and friendly staff. We've bought a delicious array of wines there over the years, from the cheap, under $10 end of the spectrum, to a strange and intriguing sparkly red shiraz, to a truly amazing $40 bottle of Oregon pinot noir. The thing is, the newsletter I got in the mail today was addressed to Nathan Emily & Chris McNeil. Just as I'm trying my damndest to untangle certain things, I'm reminded yet again of the intricate ways in which everything gets tangled.

late night reading

I was up until three o'clock in the morning Saturday night, which is very unusual. I'm an early-to-bed and an early-to-rise sort of person, generally, but was in the grip of a book in a way I haven't felt in a long time. After losing The Last Town on Earth at Barnes & Noble Friday night, and needing something to bring on the subway with me, I grabbed another Christmas book from the shelf: Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Finished it around midnight last night. I'm not sure I'd exactly recommend this book, though I found it completely compelling. When I was a kid I read lots of books about the end of the world as we know it, adult & young adult, disease, nuclear holocaust, the rapture. I kind of grew out of this genre eventually, until I stumbled across Alas, Babylon, written in the 1950s but published again recently, last Christmas out in Anacortes. It's a pretty good book, full of hope in the end, communities coming together to learn how to feed themselves, a nation rising from the ashes of its own destruction, that kind of thing. But The Road is made of much darker stuff. This story of a man, unnamed, and his son, also unnamed, desperately trying to survive in a world disappeared in the aftermath of war, is gutwrenching. Ash covers everything. It is very cold, and it snows a lot, and the snow is gray. There are few people and even fewer animals populating this desolation. The man and his boy push a grocery cart, one wheel coming lose, down this road. They cough a lot. Remember, there is ash everywhere, and the masks fashioned out of bedsheets don't seem to help much. The ocean smells slightly of iodine. The books I read as a child and the fantasies I had about them, though scary to me, were ultimately about the ways in which people survive. I would imagine planting more apple trees in our yard. I would think about the chickens they kept at the plant nursery not far from our house, and would think about how to get them, and raise them. I would imagine a fishery down at the lake at the end of our block. McCarthy takes my childhood imaginings to an entirely new level of detail and horror. This is a book about the way a people, an entire world, destroys itself, eats itself alive.

it's good to have a mother in a bookstore

Nate and I met after work yesterday evening at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble. We had some time to kill before going to a friend's birthday party, so I treated myself to a latte, Nate gathered up a bunch o' magazines and grad school guide books, and we managed to find a free table in the cafe. We read, we chatted, we caffeinated, we left. Only many hours later, on the subway going home, did I realize that I'd left my book there, innocently hiding under that pile of magazines. And a brand new book at that, a leftover from the pleasures of being part of a family where you actually trade Christmas lists and get the things you ask for! Chris's aunt & uncle had left it with his parents for me, and I'd just started it this week and was thoroughly enjoying it. I called Barnes & Noble this morning to see if they'd found it, but of course they had no interest in a lost book, let alone any knowledge of said lost book. Luckily, though, I was chatting with Mom this morning and it turns out that she has a reader's copy of said book and will bring it out to NY when she comes to visit next Friday. Yay! And, as Nate so succintly pointed out last night, maybe it's not a bad thing to start severing ties to this lost, if loved, adopted family of mine.

valentines day

I had a rough day yesterday. I guess I've been having rough days for awhile now but yesterday was particularly rough. Found myself on the verge of tears much of the day, or just completely spacing out, or bordering on panic. Managed to make it through the work day and to the train station. I've been finding it difficult lately to be on the subway. Too much time to think, no one to talk to, not able to concentrate enough to read, music isn't distracting enough. Got to my station, finally, and was cautiously making my way home through the snow and slush. Saw something odd ahead of me. A man, bent over on the edge of the sidewalk in the snow, taking his shoe off and brushing snow off his sock. I kept walking. You see a lot of strange things in this city and if you stopped to contemplate them all, you'd never get anywhere. Except this particular strange thing called out my name after I passed it by. It was Nate, and I suppose I should have suspected. He recognized me from the back by my bright orange scarf. He asked me to go with him to buy some flowers. We went to Ahn's and bought flowers. Went to Frank's and bought a weird, but tasty, cherry-steeped beer. Pink in colour, appropriate to the day. Nate insisted that I get some sushi for my dinner, and fixed up a plate of apples and carrots when we got home. Started unwrapping the flowers, which I thought odd. Asked for a vase, which I thought odd, but somehow I just figured he was rearranging the two bouquets into one before bringing them to Shanna. But then he said, "Emma, you should put these by your bed so that you can smell the lilies when you wake up." And I just about sobbed with love.

a brother is sometimes a strange thing indeed

christmas in anacortes, 2006

cap sante, anacortes

the boys

mom & paul's dead bird walk, guemes island, wa

christmas morning


andrew battles the cat

erik shows his hand

post dinner entertainment


city mice in the big woods

kindred spirits

northeast dinner in the pacific northwest, courtesy of paula



birthyear wine, drunk new years eve 2006

crazy felines, aka scout & miss pig

we're off to see the wizard...

Just over five hours now until Chris and I will have to say goodbye to Nova, lock up our door, and head on down to the subway station, at which point we will probably watch many a Lefferts Boulevard A-train pass us by while we wait for a Howard Beach A-train to whisk us away to jolly JFK. Not that I'm complaining, it's just that I'm pretty excited about Christmas this year and want to be out there in Anacortes already. All seven of us. Yes, that's right, poor mom & Paul are a mere 19 or so hours away from being inundated with east coast brats. Should be a thrilling, if slightly anxiety-producing, week.

art installation, Project Row Houses, houston, texas













courtesy of the new york times

chickpeas

I've been stewing chickpeas this fall. There's something truly amazing about the notion that you can take a bag of something so completely inedible as dried beans, and so easily (if not quickly), turn it into something so utterly delicious. This is also a really, really cheap way to feed a crowd. This amount served three, with lots o' leftovers for lunch the next day.

1 lb. bag of dried chickpeas
lots of water
some salt, or a bouillion cube, or chicken or veggie broth
an onion
a few cloves of garlic
some dried herbs -- sage, herb de provence, oregano, whatever you've got around
a piece of cinnamon stick
one can diced tomatoes

Rinse chickpeas and pick over (there really can be little tiny stones in a bag of dried beans!). Soak them in water for as long as possible, at least a few hours if not overnight. You can also cover the chickpeas in water and bring to a boil, then let soak in that water till it cools.

Rinse and cover with fresh water (I used water along with some chicken broth) by a couple inches, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and let 'em simmer. Peel and quarter the onion and toss that in. Peel and smash the garlic cloves and toss those in. Toss in the cinnamon stick, though if you're not big on cinnamon, fish it out after a little while. Simmer for a long time, depending on how tender you want them, but I'd say at least an hour and a half. Getting on towards the end of all this, throw in some herbs (whatever strikes your fancy, though I'm partial to chickpeas & sage myself) and maybe another bouillion cube, and some salt & pepper, and maybe a little cayenne, and the can of diced tomatoes, with their juice. Let simmer some more. They're done when you say they're done, and when the water has thickened a bit into a stew, and the onions and garlic are so boiled that they've practically melted into the cooking liquid, making a truly delicious broth.

I served this over rice, topped with chicken thighs browned in butter, then simmered in a small amount of white wine & chicken broth, sauteed garlic, and red pepper flakes. The remaining wine, of course, had to be drunk with the meal as well.

late night indulgences

I have a small, yet embarrassing, confession to make. Chris went back to school yesterday and Nate was off gallavanting about town, and despite having every intention of going to bed early so I would be all bright eyed and bushy tailed for work this morning, I failed miserably. TNT, that marvelous channel for Law & Order reruns and not much else, was showing Titanic last night. And it's not like I hadn't seen it before, this ridiculous, aggravating, and yet in moments strangely moving tearjerker of a movie, yet here I found myself raptly watching that great old ship go down until the wee hours of the morning. And paying the price today at work, let me tell you. It doesn't quite translate to the small screen-- though the acting may be a bit less whiny within the smaller structure of television, all those amazing rushing gushing torrential water scenes lose a lot of their power as well, of course. Small comfort, but at least there was no one around this time to berate me for giving away the end by mentioning that it's hard to watch a film in which you know many of the people are doomed before that movie ship even sets sail. I know it's been almost a century since she hit that iceberg and went down so hard, but still, had we so little sense of our collective history that at least some amongst us had forgotten her until Kate & Leonardo acted out their wee American drama of little-rich-girl-meets-down-and-out-artist on the ship of a thousand dreams?

A dear friend of mine was, many years ago, somewhat obsessed with the Titanic, to the point of joining a Titanic fan club of sorts, I can't remember exactly what it was. I think I teased her quite a bit about this at times, not quite getting her fascination. But there was a poem that she quoted, written by a man whose name I have forgotten, about man's essential faith in his own inventions, and the eternal and ongoing collapse of this faith. This friend of mine had a baby boy last week, an adorable, round little thing. I'm not sure when I will get to meet this child, being so far south in North Carolina that to me, sadly, he seems almost in another world. But I hope that this this boy child inherits his mother's childhood love of majesty and beauty and grace, her ability to get lost in a story who's ending is tragically already known, and yet question in disbelief and rage the inevitablity of that ending, and her compassion for those lost.

christchurch, nz

presidential highway, nz

moeraki boulders, east cost, south island, nz







christchurch




nathan vs. duck (battle of wills over carrot cake)

beautiful tree, christchurch botanic gardens

nz's national symbol