Momma

I don't think I can ever love anything the way I love my mother.  A bond that runs through my blood, a love that's almost spiritual.  I think I left for California because I was afraid of that love, of that bond between us that was broken when I came out and repaired with thread and bits of Big League Chew.  I think I'm always afraid of losing her, the way she lost hers when she was 14.  I've at least got eight years on her, at least I've got text messages and phone calls.  At least I've got her cheekbones and her temper, the way I jump to conclusions and take St. John's Wort for an acute and whispering dose of hereditary depression.  And at least I have the memories of sleeping in the middle, of baths and her drawings.  She's been sending me more and more momentos to remember her by, to keep the memory alive and tangible.

My mom's a Midwesterner through and through.  Nosey and angry, bitter and prideful.  She sends me care packages of coffee and candy, jars of jam and mustards.  Nourishing boxes, care boxes.  Curated boxes that remind me of home.  She's a gothic novel, a southern gospel of the haunting romance of love.  She's Catherine at the windowsill when she sends these boxes, boxes that scare me because I left her alone.  Alone in a house too empty and filled with silence and cats.

I called her on Mother's Day and she and my father were visiting my brother in North Carolina.  My voice cracked as I drove on the 8 West.  I sipped coffee to burn my tongue so I could distract the tears from coming.  I just missed her so much in that moment.  And when the phone call ended and I got to work, I had enough distractions to keep me busy.  It's only at night when I really miss her.  The absence is like a migraine, though, dull and constant until there's something to trigger it.  Light and sound, memories and scents.  Peaches or cucumber-melon lotion.  I avoid it all when I start to miss her.

Here's to Nancy and her hugs, her laughter and her sadness.  Here's to Nancy, and the toffees she sent me and the times I'll never get back.

Wishlist, one.

one. / two. / three. / four. / five. / six. / seven. 

I have become obsessed with the idea of camping ever since I came across these amazing tents. Growing up in Pennsylvania, a lot of my friends had been camping, but never me.  In fact, it isn't until I moved to California that I began to romanticize all aspects of that which I missed out on as a child.  Camping is one of these things (I refuse to call it "glamping").

I decided to curate seven things on my camping wish list and share them with you all.  Being a novice, I'm sure I missed some of the key components to camping (i.e., boots, a coffee pot, and, you know, the tent).  But, for me, it's all about the feelings.  The aesthetics of camping.  Enjoy.

A recipe, as promised: Fromage Frais

I recently fell in love with Rachel Khoo's The Little Paris Kitchen.  I found it hidden inconspicuously at the library, on a nondescript nonfiction shelf near the check-out counter.  It was nearly serendipitous, how magnetic I found the cover, how I wanted to envision myself thumbing through this same cookbook at a cafe, in a striped sweater, a cigarette dangling between my teeth as I take notes.  I read the whole cookbook in two days, dog-earing the pages during my lunch break that I'd take in Balboa Park.  Starting slow, I began with the simplest recipe I could find (they're all simple, really, which is the true beauty of this book!):  fromage frais. Fresh cheese. I paired this easy, crumbly, soft cheese with clover honey and a fresh boule and snacked on anytime I felt a little peckish.  A perfectly sweet treat (with a little bite, if you add some salt).

Enjoy!

Fromage frais (recipe taken directly from The Little Paris Kitchen)

Makes about 14 oz

Fromage frais has a smooth, creamy taste and a subtle acidic note, making it less smelly socks and more freshly washed white linen. Of course, an additional plus is that it’s low in fat and cholesterol, but that doesn’t mean it’s low in taste.

• 2 qt 2 percent or skimmed milk, preferably organic but not UHT or homogenized • 1/2 cup plain live or probiotic yogurt, preferably organic • juice of 1 lemon (6 tbsp) • a pinch of salt or sugar • 2 tbsp heavy cream (optional)

Pour the milk into a large pot. Heat very slowly, stirring gently, until it starts to steam and little bubbles form around the edge (it should not boil at any point). This should take about 20 minutes.

Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before stirring in the yogurt and lemon juice. Leave to sit undisturbed for a further 10 minutes. Return the pot to the heat and bring the milk to a boil. Once it separates into curds (the solids) and whey (the liquid), remove from the heat.

Line a fine-meshed sieve with cheesecloth or a clean tea towel. Place the sieve over a bowl and pour in the separated milk. Scrunch the cloth tightly immediately above the cheese, like making a money bag, and twist to squeeze out any excess liquid. Now tie the corners of the cloth together to form a hanging pouch and thread a wooden spoon through the loop. Hang the cheese over a large bowl or jug (don’t let it sit on the bottom), and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight. The longer the cheese hangs, the more the liquid will drip away and the drier the cheese will become.

To serve, twist the cloth as before to squeeze out any excess liquid, then remove the cheese from the cloth and season with salt or sugar. Serve as it comes for a firm version, or beat in a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream for a smoother, creamier cheese.

Phoenix

What do we think of, collectively, when we think of the desert?  Is it desolation or promise?  Does the Golgotha remind you of death or rebirth?  The moat of Sonoran Desert that leads to the kingdom of California.  We took this path, I-8 for three hundred and forty-four miles, and the end goal was the two-bedroom apartment of our friend, Marion.  A weekday weekend, a respite from mundanity, from puppies who wake you up at five in the morning, and you sleep on an air mattress in the living room so you're lower to the ground for the baby. We left Monday night after my third day of working in my new job.  We made the plans months ago and I couldn't handle a quiet house for another day, another vacation Nolan was able to take without me.  I hurried home with no food in my stomach, but filled with the tingling sensation of anticipating an adventure.  I washed my face (as I always do when I first get home), threw on a nondescript white tee, and we dropped the dogs off at a sitters for the following nights.

A five hour ride can be deafening or it can read like a poem.  The only agonizing moments in that car ride was stretching my legs in the front seat of the Mercedes.  It was nice to fall back into place with Nolan again, to have moments of clarity about past issues, to be open with one another and not have to punctuate conversations with television, phones, or dogs that need outside.  We created an atmosphere, a mood to fall into.  It was comfortable, the silence when it was necessary, the lazy way he held my hand on the winding roads that curved into bends where signs read "Ice Cream --  40 miles ahead".  If we missed the turn for Taco Bell, we missed the turn for good.

And we drove on.  We drove for three hours before our first stop.  It was a McDonald's that blinded us with its white lights.  We had come from desert roads, where light refracted into the mountains.  Everything out there was a soft hue of muteness.  This restaurant plastic, but we were starving.  If we missed the turn, we missed the turn for good.  And it was in the silence of eating our hamburgers, sharing the fruit punch and getting more and more ketchup that I realized how lucky I was to be able to have a friend.  How rare it was for me to ever appreciate that, being usually so turned off by the thought of dependence.  But in the halogen lights of this roadside McDonald's, it felt comforting to know who I'd sleep with that night.

And when the meal was done, the trays dumped and the paper mats crumpled, we got back in the car and followed the nascent blood moon to our destination.  The sweat on my shirt had grown cold in the air-conditioned fast food joint and it clung to my skin in patches.  I put a sweatshirt on and fell asleep, curled up into myself like a circle that can't break itself open.

And as we rolled into the parking lot, looking for Marion's space, the blood moon rearing its prophetic head, I looked up to a cat on a balcony and knew we were at our temporary home.  And I fell asleep almost instantly that night, balanced on the air mattress with Nolan, sweat still clinging to me like nightmares.

On Tuesday, we woke up with Marion already gone for the day to work.  It was up to us to fend for ourselves in the Valley of the Sun.  With the morning breaking, we got our showers and stopped at a coffee shop for a quick breakfast, the McDonald's from the night before laying sideways in our usually-healthy stomachs.  Outside on the patio a woman told us about her dead son and how our cologne reminded her of him.  We sat in silence until she left and felt uncomfortable about the alienation of boundaries with the information she shared.  Nolan is Eastern European and I am reserved by nature--any emotionally-laden story is usually unwelcome to us.  It's in our nature to be stoic, self-preservation and distancing ourselves from other's responsibilities.

The day was spent at the pool instead, to make up for all the houses we didn't rent with pools included.  We were there for hours, the only ones there.  It was midday on a Tuesday, even the pump echoed in the apartment complex.  We took our time relaxing, enjoying the heat and how dry the wind felt (something we're currently experiencing here in San Diego).  We curled up under towels in the lounge chairs and napped, careful to hide the keys and our sunglasses, careful to not make tan lines and so we stretched our bodies akimbo.  We did not waste the sun, a whole city was built on the economy of it.  We worshipped Ra and studied the way steam came off our fingertips when we stepped out of the pool and stood with our sunglasses on, the deep-end being only four feet.

We stayed in the water until it was time to meet Marion, to see the Lana Del Rey concert and drink a little.  It was exciting to be outside in a new town, a new city that looks both built-up and torn-down at the same time.  We waited in a bar, drinking beer and cranberry-vodkas until the ticket takers let us come in.  It was fun to open up, to relax, to not have to be in any workplace setting and laugh with old friends, recreating moments from Pennsylvania, recreating feelings of belonging again.   The night ended at a waffle house and we were stretched out on the air mattress by midnight.

By Wednesday morning, it was time to go.  Nolan and I packed everything up and retraced the 8 all the way to home, stopping for coffee and nothing else.  I work for a large hotel business and never take the vacations I witness, so it was nice to have a break in my week, to see an old friend and to feel loved again.  By three, I was back to cleaning the house, doing a load of laundry, and picking up Elsa's messes.  I was back to reality, back to home.

PS, A few recipes will be coming soon!

Easter Sunday.

It was 1998 and I was seven.  We visited my grandmother's grave for the first time.  In a rippling field, in a small valley in Indiana.   Forty-five minutes from Cincinnati and silent as a lamb.  I held my mother's hand, dressed in paisley and wearing a clip-on tie from the dollar store, we watched the barley sway when we breathed and tears splashed on my hand, having slid unchecked down my mother's cheek.

It was Easter Sunday then, and we were driving past after an egg hunt and it wasn't intentional to stop, but we did.  We stopped and held our breath when we recognized the name, etched into stone.  It was nondescript, Norma's grave, and it was us who gave it any significance.  It had stood there since 1980 and was probably going to still be there for a hundred years.  That's the thing about Indiana--even the most dead things there have a more cast-iron constitution than anything living in California.  Salt of the earth, you could die from their kindness.

My pockets filled with gold foil chocolate coins, clanging with change in broken plastic eggs, meticulously counted and stashed in my breast pocket, that was the Easter I knew there was heartache.  I could read it on my mother's face.  The only thing Protestant about my mother was her work ethic, everything else was superstition to this woman.  But she was wondering, bartering, trying to make sense of it.  If Jesus came back, why hasn't she?

They're both nameless, God and Norma, and that's the only thing they have in common.  We call her "your mom" when addressing my own.  It's an alienation of propriety to call her "grandma", even if we wanted to.  Instead, my siblings and I sit and wait to hear any recollected memories of her from our mother.  We know she liked As the World Turns and her husband was a drunk, that she liked peanut butter and was poor as dirt.  But every Easter, I can't help but think of this woman, this shadow of ourselves, laying in the ground somewhere east of the Mississippi, and how she never even knew I existed.

And I thought of her this week.  I made a prayer to the sky, to God and to her in heaven.  I made a prayer to the gemstones I keep in a satchel, her body part of the ground now.  I wanted to cover all my bases.  I wanted to thank her for her work, to tell her that I like peanut butter, that I know what it's like to be dirt poor.  I wanted to relate to this woman.  And I just couldn't.

So instead I worked.  I wake up at five thirty now, to ensure greeting guests and supervising the breakfast hour.  It was busy for a holiday, which kept me there until dinner time.  I drove home on an empty road and found Nolan and the dogs outside on the patio, music playing and eyes sleepy from the sunlight.  Ham was waiting, potato salad made, eggs boiled.  It was all done, done for me, with nothing to worry about but myself.

And so we ate.  We ate and laid on the couch, lounging in akimbo postures to accommodate two dogs on our ikea Kivik couch, bought when it was just us.  It was peaceful, it was easy.  I called my parents and they had dinner at Bob Evans, dessert at a local shack that serves ice cream just up the road from my old high school.  I said I was sorry I couldn't be home for the holiday, she said she was sorry the card was going to be late.  It was easy to forget all she did do for me, but even easier to forgive a late card here or there.  My mother works as a candy maker now, so Easter entails 13 hour days for her; no apologies needed. 

But for us, in our tiny house in San Diego, we snacked on bread, took alternating naps, and wished tomorrow wouldn't come, so we wouldn't have to go back to work ever again.

These were naturally-dyed eggs made from coffee (the brown ones), paprika (yellow), and grape juice (grey-purple). I love the rusticity of their coloring and the way they feel like home.