"Nothing is wasted on the writer."

Still life with owl, food writer, and cosmic goofiness

I've been working on culinary writing today. Besides my cookbooks, I do short pieces for Relish Magazine, which is kind of like a food-only Parade, and has hands-down the two nicest, best-to-work-with magazine editors for whom I've ever written, Jill Melton and Candace Floyd ... I've just finished, minus one recipe I still need to test, a piece for them on  New Year's Day brunch. Plus I'm working on a longer food project, a reissue of a book initially published in 1972. It was called then (and will be called again) The Bean Book, and it was the very first cookbook Workman Publishing ever brought out. The new version will have twice as many recipes, and...

But I don't want to get sidetracked, nor do I want to write a long post.  What I wanted to tell you about was the story of something which happened last winter. I think it came to mind because I was in food-writing mode today, as I was then.

It was probably back in January of this year. Couple of feet of snow on the ground. I was on the phone with Tristan Toldedano, who owns the Riverview Cafe in Brattleboro, Vermont, because I was writing about the annual Localvore Challenge week the previous fall. He had catered the dinner which had kicked the Challenge off, using all local ingredients.  (It had been held outside on one of those heavenly fall New England days, at the glorious Fair Winds Farm ,  one of those days which more than make up for the long months of snow-covered months... now we are having their intoxicating spring equivalent. We also go to Fair Winds each winter for one of the best celebrations of that season, too, their annual Solstice Sleigh ride. But I digress).

Anyway, I was trying to reconstruct with Tristan, using my notes and his memory, as to what exactly he had served and how he had prepared it. 

My writing office is upstairs, and just to the right is a large maple; leafless, of course, at that time of year. Now, I don't have the world's greatest vision, but in the middle of the conversation, gazing out the window, I suddenly noticed that there was ... something on one of the larger branches the tree. Something large and... owl-shaped. Owl-shaped? But it was the middle of the day! "Hey, I said to Tristan. "Do you mind if I call you back? I have to get my binoculars, I think there's an owl right outside my window." "Of course, I'll be here," he said cheerfully. (People in Vermont seem to understand that an unusual wild-life sighting gets high priority; I suppose they wouldn't live in Vermont if they didn't appreciate this sort of thing).

I get my binoculars. Sure enough: it's an owl. I'm totally enraptured and fascinated. I watch the owl, which is maybe a foot, foot and a half tall, with buff and brown and white feathers and those fantastic otherworldly circles of feathers around those big dark eyes. I watch for as long as it stays on the branch, maybe 15, 20 minutes. The owl is turning its head from side to side, and boy, do they ever have range of motion in the neck.

I just can't get enough of the sheer amazement of watching this owl.

Finally it flies away.

Before I call Tristan back, I do what any self-respecting observer of nature would do: I Google "Vermont owl." Sure enough, first thing that comes up is the very owl I have just been watching. I learn it's a barred owl and that it's "semi-nocturnal." This isn't defined, but no need for it: okay, I saw it in the daytime and this is unusual, that's what this means. (At times, being of unusual sleep patterns myself, I would say "semi-nocturnal" applies to me, too. )

I continue reading the description. How to identify the barred owl. The physical description of the barred owl. What it eats. Its habitat. Its breeding habits.

And then I come to its call.

If you are familiar with bird identification books (or sites), the songs or cries of birds are  transliterated into human sounds, words, whenever possibly. For example, the sound of cardinals is often said to be "Pretty, pretty, pretty."

Well. Here is what the cry of "my" barred owl was described as sounding like:

"Who cooks for you! Who cooks for you-all!"

Now although this might be choice and apropos for anyone who works in the culinary field, remember that I am someone who is a relatively recent Yankee... I lived for 33 years, the majority of my life, in the South, in Arkansas. And there,  "y'all" and yes, "you-all" are common prnouns, and I'll add, extremely useful ones. (I still use them both here in Vermont, in fact. Nothing else quite works. "You guys" is an anemic and wholly unsatisfactory substitute).

Can you imagine?

How much more perfect could this be for someone straddling the Southern/Northern divide... someone who writes cookbooks?

I was just beside myself. (Well, of course. I was alone in the house. Who else would I be beside?)

I called Tristan back. "Was it an owl?" he asked. I told him it was. We talked about it, and owls generally, and his young daughter's love of observing wildlife. Then we got back to whether he had glazed the Gilfeather turnips, a Vermont variety, with honey or maple syrup.

Both sweet, but not as sweet as my life at that moment.

A few quick post-Mother's Day P.S.'s, re writing

1. The New Yorker cartoon showing the sullen college-age girl in seated in a window seat, cup of tea on the floor beside her, writing in a notebook balanced on her knees. Caption: "“Dear Mom and Dad: Thanks for the happy childhood. You’ve destroyed any chance I had of becoming a writer.”

2. My late father, Maurice Zolotow, telling me the story (possibly apocryphal) about when Nora Ephron's mother was dying. "And Nora and her sister Delia are sitting around their mother's bed in the hospital, crying, and, you know, very emotional, and Nora and Delia's mama --- she was a writer too, a screenwriter --- opened one eye, looked at them carrying on and said to them sternly, 'Take notes.' "

3. From Carolyn See's feisty charming, insightful book, Making A Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers, which seasons wisdom, practicality, and a little New Age-y-ness with crankiness and many exclamation points. "What if you quickly made a list of the ten most 'important' people in your life?" After throwing out some questions to prime the pump and urging you not to overthink, she says, "Quick! Write the list! That's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to try and get fancy about it..." And she begins, big surprise, thus:

1. My mother. She was beautiful and funny and she never loved me. In fact, she couldn't stand me. Goddammit!

Later, after some delightful hypothesizing and relevant digressions about who (and in the case of Phillip Roth, what... a certain "fleshly appendage") might be on other people's most important list, she makes, almost offhandedly, this remarkable comment, set aside in its own brief paragraph:

As a writer, the importance of people is inside of you. My mother's rejection is the central event of my life. Enough people have said to me, "she was just a secretary," or "She was poor, she didn't know any better," or "What does it matter what she thought anyway?" Or, "She was bi-polar." Or, "She was depressive." Or, "She was mistaken." But it matters to me.

4. My friend and sometimes collaborator, the musician-singer-songwriter Bill Haymes, traveled across three states to see his Alzheimer-suffering mother for one long weekend a month, during the years she was in a nursing home. When she was well enough, he would take her out to eat at a Luby's Cafeteria of which she was fond, and they'd also just drive around. One day, driving, there were passed by a large bakery truck, the brand name of the bread proudly bannered across the side. Bill's mother, Helen, remarked. "That's a big truck." There was a pause. Then she added, "There could be... a lot of pianos in that truck!"
     Billy and I both interpreted that as a gesture of connection, from some non-linear place in her mind. Though able to identify the vehicle as a truck, and cognize it as big, she couldn't read the sign or grasp the picture of the bread. Yet, Bill plays the piano, and she was with Bill, her beloved son (even if she sometimes didn't know who he was) and hence her synapses put it together in the charming and off-the-wall manner.

5. This is a story my mother told me, many many years ago, when she was still totally with it. Patricia MacLachlan, author of Sarah Plain and Tall, was visiting her own mother, who had dementia, in the nursing home.  Her mother  said, "I'm sorry, dear, but remind me, please, who you are?" 
     "I'm your daughter, Mom, your daughter Patty!"
     At this her mother beamed up at Patricia, giving her a huge, bright, delighted smile. "How nice, because I like you very much!"

me & my semi-famous aging mother: navigating love with fierce persistence

"Happy Mother's Day," we say, as if it were that simple. It usually isn't.

Complex, ambivalent,  contradictory, with more layers than a baklava: that begins, barely, to describe the relationship my mother, Charlotte Zolotow, and I have with each other. That it has at last grown simpler and less ambivalent in the last couple of years, as she has entered extreme old age (she's about to be 93) and I middle age, is one of the great reliefs of my life. And, I think, hers, too.

I think we will pull it off yet: when she leaves, we will be at peace with each other. The love between us, which has never been a question, is becoming more and more visible, as the matters that have made it opaque grow thinner and less obscured.(She's pictured, left, in front of the house in which she still lives, now with a full-time care-giver. This photo was taken in about 1996).

(Baklava? Where did that come from? It's layered, sure, but so are many pastries; why did the word baklava travel through my fingers, and presumably brain, to arrive on the screen? In the manner one might analyze a dream, I turn the object over in my mind.  Sweet, almost too sweet. Delicious, but very, very sticky. Have to wash your hands after eating it. And it's filled with --- nuts! How can one not love a discipline, writing, that so surprises its practitioner, by delivering stuff like this? ! )

I could write a book trying to explain this particular mother-daughter relationship; in fact I did, when I was much younger (around 30), a novel called The Year It Rained . (You can buy the paperback British edition here; or track it down used online. I prefer the former, because then I actually make a little money.)When I wrote that book, I think I was still trying to explain what went on between my mother and me to myself, much more than to anyone else. For, to the extent I figure out anything, I usually wind up doing through writing.  Now, in present-time, her and my relationship is clearer to me, as so much is. (And, Lord, I should hope so, 25 years down the line.)

A general, no doubt oversimplified rule: what makes people crazy and drives them to therapists and spirituality and self-understanding / healing / peace (if they're fortunate) , or dope or booze or other forms of attempted or actual self-obliteration (if they're unfortunate)  is the gap, among intimates --- family members, spouses/partners --- the gap between what is said in words and what is said by actions.  The wider the divide, the more crazy-making this is. 

Such gaps are hard to even get, let alone take apart, let alone recover or heal from. I deeply believe it can be done, and that to do so is vastly liberating. But not without effort. We're too close to such gaps to see them, and they're sometimes abysses;  we may not want to see them, being afraid we might fall in and never emerge. And they affect us most at particularly vulnerable periods of our lives: we're young and are pure unadulterated emotion, without comparative experience or analytical skills to back away, or we've just gone through some major life-tragedy. (Picture, left: CZ in a quiet moment, at her 90th birthday party. Photo, David Koff.)

My mother is a wildly talented, well-known writer of children's books; she was an equally talented, incredibly generous and insightful children's book editor at Harper-Collins (then Harper & Row; and before that  Harper & Brothers) for fifty-some years. She was and is much beloved by the many authors she worked with, including Paul Zindel , Francesca Lia Block, and Paul Fleischman. She has always been respectful and supportive of my talent, too. And oh, did she ever have the most gracious manners! And she was beautiful, too, though she never thought so at the time. (To right: a happier moment at that same birthday, which she shares with her sister, my Aunt Dot. Dorothy, in yellow, was turning 95 that year! Photo, David Koff).

(Recently, looking through a scrapbook I made her, she scrutinized a picture of herself and said thoughtfully, and utterly without guile, "I don't remember being that attractive.")

On the other hand: well, for now, let's just say there is another hand. One to give, one to take away. Until recently, but pretty much only within the family, Charlotte poured out major, almost excessive,  generosity... but always, if you bit down on what was offered, there was a hook: bitter, sharp, ready to slice your your tongue or pierce the roof of your mouth.

This is hard for people who revere my mother to hear --- there's an interesting discussion of this re The Year It Rained, the novel I mentioned above, at a post called "The Polarizing Express"  (It's an  excellent, thoughtful blog called Collecting Children's Books , by Peter, a writer, reviewer, collector, and cataloger of same). But as for me, I think love and anger often coexist, as extreme selflessness and extreme selfishness sometimes do. (This picture, taken in 1998, was when I accompanied to Charlotte to the award given in her name, the Charlotte Zolotow Award, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  I'm at the far left, CZ next to me. This is one group that definitely falls into the "we revere Charlotte" category.)

This  --- public graciousness, undeniable talent, and a lot of private anger, manipulation, love, and controlling behavior ---  is how it looked to me for a long, long time. Until fairly recently, but thankfully, thankfully, not much now. I grew up; she grew old. Things are different now. 

Some poems of mine, then; never intended for publication. This first batch dates from the period around 2002, 2003, 2004; when she was, in old age, starting to lose it. For awhile, all her worst qualities (victimhood, a tendency towards melodrama, rage, manipulation, control) took over. For the first time, this side of her was visible to those outside the family (friends, caregivers - she went through seventeen of them in three years!).

That it was somewhat validating to me to have others finally recognize (with shock) this side of her at last,  was the saddest, most bittersweet victory you can imagine; not victorious at all, just sad. And as it fell to me to "fix things" --- to retrofit her house after she fell and broke her hip three times in one year, for instance, oh, it was difficult. I was still grieving Ned; I felt bereft, beleaguered, adrift. My mother was angry all the time. I was traveling back and forth from Arkansas for some of that period, then from Vermont to Westchester, New York, a four hour drive each way...

One day, back in Vermont after a particularly hard week, I had a latte at L.A. Burdick's (a fabulous cafe and chocolate shop about twenty minutes drive from my home). Pen and notebook in purse, as  almost always. Without conscious forethought, I began to write, and found myself spinning out mother-related haiku after haiku.

What I saw as her point of view:

numberless problems
shall I start counting for you?
my life's very hard

if you understood,
you'd agree, clearly love me.
I'll explain again.

call me when you've got
some real time, an hour, two:
not this pissant call

I love you dearly
surely you could improve things
if you would only try

Grandly creative,
my daughter. Too bad
she won't fix my painful life.

Doesn't fit. You're wrong.
No one is doing their job.
Sure I'm unhappy.

And, imagining how outraged she'd be at my statements about this:

my daughter places
mean words, bitter sentiments
in my mouth. Tragic.

And my own frustration, futility, anger at not being able to make things better, nor to stop caring or get some emotional distance:

I'd gladly give you
what you want. But it's always
changing, never right.

She: perfectionist
busy redefining what
perfect is. Trouble.

I can't get no, no
satisfaction. Is it Mick?
No, just Mom again.

My intentions are
honorable, misguided;
parenthesis (doomed)

I'd like to give you
what I feel: two cats purring,
breakfast, yoga.

And this, perhaps about both of us:

Why want what you don't
have? Human nature? Greediness?
Refusing to see?

But I was wrong on this one:

Contentment won't make
an appearance in Mom's life
not now not ever.

Because, occasionally now, it does. (In the picture below, taken in September of 2007, CZ in such a moment. Photo, David Koff).

About two years after the poems above were written, I found myself writing what follows, in a class with Pat Schneider. (Pat is herself a very fine writer and remarkable teacher, based in Amherst, Massachusetts. She founded Amherst Writers and Artists in 1981; her book about her method of teaching, Writing Alone and with Others, will have every writer underlining and asterisking and, finally, using. She is also a woman who has written extensively, honestly, and beautifully about her own complex issues with her mother, in her memoir Wake Up Laughing: A Spiritual Autobiography. If you live at all close to Amherst, you have the opportunity to study with her once a week on an ongoing basis; an experience which should not be missed.)

The assignment Pat gave us had to do with "what matters." Writing it, I'd say, may have been the beginning of the so-long-in-coming sea change in being with Charlotte.

At last, at last, Relationship School, even in this most fraught of relationships, was teaching me again how to love and be loved:

Calculation

What matters, then? What remains?

Subtract the fact
that there was always "Yes, but – "
to any moment that might, for her,
have threatened complete happiness.

Subtract the flat
of blue-velvet-faced pansies,
cheerful shocking yellow centers.
She taught me how to plant.

Subtract the water
she taught me to pour around each.

Subtract even the soil (or its memory),
turning to mud, and how
each seedling must be settled
down and in a second time,
patted as its element changes:
how, when I gasped
at that pink soft curled moving thing,
she said, “Oh no, it’s a worm, it’s good,
it won’t hurt you.”

Subtract that she has lost
the knack of naming:
Monday, Friday, January, June –
Joan, Jules, Josephine, “You know,
the one who pays my bills…” “…who used to live
next door…” “…that poet…” “You know,
your brother’s friend, who lives in –
what is that city, with the painted houses,
by the water, that’s always colder
than you think it ought to be, and
overcast each morning…”

Subtract the huge unbending joints
on tiny hands;
subtract the rings which, thus,
she gave to me.
Subtract the green eyes
browned by medication,
the ambulettes,  subtract
“They tell you things
about me that just aren’t true;
they lie and you believe them,
no one asks how I feel, what I want.”

Subtract the gauze dress, pink and blue 
she sent one spring, which I wore
to the ribbon-cutting
of a business I no longer own
in a town where I no longer live
when I was a wife
to someone who, being dead,
is now without address.

Subtract the rage.
Subtract the gaps between
what’s said and meant.
Subtract the future and the past,
sciatica and death and birth,
glaucoma, osteo, and Fosamax
exasperation, hopelessness, and repetition 

Subtract the old, old shapes and patterns.

Subtract the body, once my height and weight,
now 75 pounds, though still fond of salmon,
drowning in a twin bed, always cold. 

Subtract duty, money, obligation, and their grip.

What matters is, not because I must,
I love her.

So. And now that so much is falling away, I not only know, as I always have, that she loves me, but sometimes she simply expresses it: no buried fishhook, no agenda, just joy and acceptance. Who would have thought? 

Whether your mother is living or dead, whether your relationship with her is basically resolved and happy, or more ambivalent, or fatally flawed; whether you even know her or not; whether you are a mother or are without children, I hope you celebrate Mother's Day.

No matter what else she was or is, your mother was the imperfect portal through which you entered your own imperfect life, and took temporary residence on this imperfect earth.

If we preface the holiday with "happy", and of course we do, let it be the kind of happiness with breadth and depth, radical acceptance (even if it takes awhile), transparency (at least in one's own understanding), and, perhaps, forgiveness (but not if it has to be forced, not if you do it because you "should").

Such happiness is bittersweet, but then, so is good chocolate. Such happiness embraces it all:  broken dishes, broken promises, passed-down delicate heirloom lusterware tea-pots, scents that may mix Chanel Number Five with Clorox,  cigarette smoke, dilled chicken soup, Jergen's lotion, nail polish remover. (Photo left; holding hands: the knobbly jointed hands belong to my mother, the hands with rings are mine, and the third set of hands are my aunt's).

Such happiness is love and life, imperfect perfection.

And for writers, it's part of work, rich material which should not be forgotten or regretted, but utilized.  It is yours alone (your mother has her own) and far too precious to waste.

transparency, part 2: a little madness in the spring

Sometimes it seems to me that everything reflects everything.

Becoming transparent in the human sense, as I wrote about in the previous post, means that more light gets in, and out, in a spiritual, or maybe for some, emotional or psychological sense.

Transparency in the culinary sense, as I understand it, is both like and unlike this. Like human transparency in that the true self --- in this case, of the particular ingredient prepared in a way that enhances but not obscures it --- shines through.  Not like the human transparency in that the ingredients are physical. Of, and from the earth. Earthy, earthly. Worldly.

When we eat we are physical beings, confirming our connection, endorsing, and participating in our connection to the physical world, rejoicing in it, if we are lucky enough to have enough to eat and to have it be good food, by which I mean food that nourishes us, gives us sensual pleasure, and serves as the medium of that benign connection. 

To me, allowing an ingredient's true self to shine through transparently often means simplicity, or perhaps purity is a more accurate word, of preparation. (After all, in one sense canned green beans and condensed cream of mushroom soup and fried onion rings make up a "simple" recipe. But not simple in the way I mean here).

Now sometimes I'm all for elaborate, multi-layered recipes, full of complexity and layers of seasonings , as those who've seen Passionate Vegetarian can attest; some reader/cooks seem to love this --- as long as the guidance is clear ---  while some don't, as a cursory read of the reviews at amazon will tell you.

But sometimes simplicity is the thing.

Asparagus done this way won't look prepossessing, but it is itself to the nth degree: slightly crispy-crunchy on the outside, moist and juicy within, and explosively, purely asparagus.

Roasted Asparagus (per person)

The freshness of the asparagus is key: no mushy tips, please, ever, not even one slimy scale on a tip. Also, you want them of a consistent thickness for this method.

1/2 pound vibrantly fresh asparagus
1 to 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
a small pinch of coarse  sea salt
a couple of good grinds of black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 475.

2. Break --- don't cut --- off the white. tough root ends of the stalks (bend them, and where they snap is the point of proper tenderness).   

3. Cut the asparagus, tips and all, in  lengths about an inch, inch and a half long. You can slice them on a slight angle if you like. Throw the asparagus into a bowl, add the olive oil, salt and pepper, toss well, and spread out on an ungreased Silpat mat (or a well oil-sprayed baking sheet). Spread them out on the mat or sheet; you don't want them lying on top of each other.

4. Assuming the stalks are of medium thickness, bake them in the hot oven, for about 6 to 8 minutes. You want them slightly shriveled, but not even close to charred. As I mentioned, the asparagus slices  won't look especially pretty, but this is irrelevant after one bite. 

Notes:

Half a pound per person seems like a lot, but you won't have leftovers.

(If you did, of course as an omelet filling the next day, maybe with a little grated Gruyere or Emmentaler cheese, they'd be superb. But this is moot, because you won't have leftovers).

Also, please note that while this recipe works best using a Silpat mat, you can certainly do it on a baking sheet. However, nothing beats a Silpat (the in-recipe link was about Silpats; this one just above is where to buy 'em) for making roasted vegetables, and most vegetables, roasted right, are so mind-boggling good that a Silpat is absolutely worth the twenty bucks or so it costs.

Asparagus, like rhubarb and fresh strawberries, are signal foods that, of course, herald spring, a season that was certainly not wasted on Emily Dickinson:

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown --
Who ponders this tremendous scene --
This whole Experiment of Green --
As if it were his own!

This spring, may the whole experiment of green be as if it was your own.

Right now here in Vermont, the mountains, as the trees green out, look from a slight distance almost as if they were covered in soft green moss.

 

transparency

So I have this thing going on with the tendons on in my left foot. The details don't matter; it's getting better. What does matter is this: I see a doctor at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, approximately a 55-minute drive from where I live in Vermont.

DHMC, in my view, has a lot of stars in its crown. Though not alternative in medical modalities, it's holistic in the sense that the doctors seem to see, and treat, the whole person, not just a tendon, liver, prostate. David had open-spine surgery there two summers ago. Somehow, this gigantic institution not only took superb care of him, but also managed to keep an eye out and take care of me, the caregiver, at the same time (another story).In all, the team there did such an amazing job that David celebrated his 67th birthday a mere two-and-a-half months later by walking 67 miles to DHMC (also nother story). The entire experience, unexpectedly, was a giant step into integrating Ned's death into life and loving / being loved by, David.

But even that's not what matters for the purposes of this post.

What matters is, it's a big deal to get an appointment there. You do not miss an appointment at DHMC. Not under any conditions. People are lined up and waiting to get in. It often takes months to get one.

What matters is, I left the house at 2:30,in plenty of time for my 4:00 appointment. What matters is,  I took a fateful shortcut, mistakenly went left (north) instead of right (south) at the intersection. What matters is, I kept going.  What matters is, when I finally turned around and asked for directions, I learned that it was going to take mucho extra backtracking, time, mileage, fuel... all, in their own way, expenses no one can afford. And I still wasn't going to make it to DHMC on time.

What matters is, that when I realized I was not going to make it, I had to come up with a Plan B. What matters is, my self-assessment at that moment, and the choices I made and didn't make.

See, in my own view I had done something bad (inconsiderate-to-others bad) and stupid. Rude, wasteful of resources, tendons unhappy. And I couldn't call, because I didn't have my cell phone (it doesn't usually work in Vermont anyway; I only use it on out-of-state trips).

Plan B: stop at relatively nearby Rockingham Library, use computer to look up direct number of Dr. H, explain that I - horror! humiliation! --- was going to miss my appointment.

I began, to work out what I would say when I called. Automatically, without even thinking about it, I ran through all the things that might make missing the DHMC appointment not my fault.

Flat tire? Totally lame; a lie. A piece of gravel bounced up and off the windshield and caused an ever-lengthening hairline crack it? True, but a) that happened weeks ago and b) the hairline crack wasn't stopping me driving. Family emergency? False, thank goodness; there've been too many real ones in recent years. Well, how about a car accident on 91 that tied up traffic and ... ? False, and they would know it: they're a hospital! Accident victims go to hospitals!

At the library, I found the number, used the library phone, called Dr. H's office. It was 4:10.Here's what I said: "I tried to take a shortcut and I got all turned around and went miles in entirely the wrong direction, and I'm just not able to make it there in anything remotely close to on time. And I am so, so sorry."

"Would you like to reschedule?" said Dr, H's scheduler amiably. We did (I guess the first appointment is the one that's really impossible one get). Then she said, "Well, I'll just go tell him what happened. "

But even though it appeared that she wasn't particularly bent out of shape by my failure to appear or cancel in a timely fashion, and didn't think badly of me for it, that's not at all what matters here.

For there is that always one person who concerned about what he or she thinks of you. That person is you. In this case, me. What matters is, and was, how would what I did or didn't show me myself, to myself?

By making excuses I'd be lying, knowing I'd be lying, and trying to get them at DHMC to perceive me a certain way. And I'd also be saying, "I'm not responsible." But I am, and was, responsible.

If I made something up, particularly because I imagined it would make me look less flaky, I would be in conflict with myself. The self I want to be, reach for, am becoming or trying to become.

When I live what I know, I move closer towards this self, and I get happier; when I don't, I move farther from it and I get unhappier.

What matters is not that the DHMC lady was nice and gracious, though she was, but that I stepped up and took the opportunity, again, to do and be a little better in my own eyes. To become the transparent, loving, honest self that I think I was meant to be.

The second I told the truth, it was as if the very air around me calmed down. Every muscle and nerve I hadn't known I was clenching unclenched. All the energy wasted in anxiety, rationalization, trying desperately to get there on time, was released. Nothing to defend against, from within or without.

What matters is transparency. What matters is life, with its continual gift of choice: will I become more transparent or more opaque? Nothing, not a second, is wasted, when one realizes this. 

The more transparent one gets, the more light is able to shine in, and slowly, slowly, to shine out, too.   

"You'll get a big kick out of this."

This was the subject line on an email from Patti, who handles sales of my, my late husband's, and my mother's out-of-print books. Some we still have actual copies of; others we are set up (thanks to Patti) to offer digital copies of, for downloading.

(My mother, BTW, is the children's book writer Charlotte Zolotow. One of her best-loved books is titled Snippets, incomprehensibly out of print. Because it is referenced in several educational textbooks as well as on various teacher's websites as helpful in inspiring young children to write, and is ridiculously expensive used, educators were always emailing me to see if by any chance I had a copy I could sell them.  Thanks to Patti, now, we do).

But I digress.

Anyway, two of my very early books, published in 1972 and 1973, were The Bean Book and Putting Up Stuff from the Cold Time (the latter was about canning, pickling, and preserving). They were little tiny funny-looking books, skinny, spiral bound, kind of cute: in fact they were the first cookbooks ever published by Workman (which was then basically Peter Workman, an editor named Jennifer Skolnik, and one secretary/receptionist... my main memories of those days are Peter Workman running around, running his fingers through his hair like a mad professor, and many, many cardboard boxes of books, and the secretary/receptionist at her desk, an island in the sea of book-boxes). Workman, of course, went on to make publishing history with cookbooks like The Silver Palate.

And, like the old, old Olga bra ads, which used to say "Behind every Olga there really is an Olga," there still really is a Peter Workman. In fact I visited with him for fifteen minutes or so when I was last in New York, this past February, in their several-floor, jazzily-painted cheerful office, now on Varick Street, where they employ I don't know how-all many people, and is quite a step up from those early digs... but all this is another digression.

At the time of their publication, The Bean Book and Putting Up Stuff for the Cold Time cost all of $2.95 apiece.

I am working on a revision of The Bean Book now, as it happens, lo these almost-40 years later (if you think that doesn't make me feel old, then maybe you need to work on more effective thinking or greater empathy). Beans, happily, seem to me to be a food whose time has returned. (Not that their time ever went away... there are many of us "legumaniacs", in the felicitous phrase of Aliza Green, author of The Bean Bible.)

But why is beans' hour particularly now? What with the emphasis  on sustainability,  moving towards a more plant-centered diet (which I think is the accurate phrasing: "moving towards" seems to apply even for people who have no intention of becoming vegetarian), heirloom varieties, seed-saving, general acceptance and the popularity of foods brought to the U.S. on various waves of immigration (in the last decades that being mainly from the very bean-centric Mexico and Central America), even the rise in usage of the slow-cooker / Crock-pot in American kitchens ... all this suggests bean-timeliness. 

We also can't ignore the effect of the overall economy on bean consumption, actual and potential. As food prices rise along with unemployment and uncertainty, beans will always be loved and relied-upon, for they are consistently among the least expensive sources of protein, nourishment, and (when cooked attentively) deliciousness on the planet.

In fact, there's an excellent blog, Becky and the Beanstock, in which Becky is taking us along as she eats her way "through a year’s worth of heirloom beans. For all of 2008, each week I’ll track down, obtain, and cook with a different variety of bean - Moon beans, tepary beans, black valentine, Chinese red, a whole kaleidoscope of beans, most of them heirlooms (but if I’m getting desperate by November, we’ll see). Fifty-two different beans. This will be a true celebration of the beauty and diversity of one small part of the foods available to us today. I’ll give you the history of the beans, images, recipes, and info about where I got them..." It's a wonderful project, and one undertaken for all the right reasons: biodiversity, supporting the valiant work of seed-savers, etc. I highly recommend that you check it out.

But, what does all this have to do with Patti's email?

Well, The Bean Book's sister publication, Putting Up Stuff for the Cold Time, does not seem to me a book whose time has returned (although with the emphasis on eating locally, this may change yet again; nothing and everything surprises me). But in general, people now seem to have less and less time, and thus less inclination to do the fairly labor-intensive kind of cooking that, well, putting up stuff for the cold time is. Too, there are far more interesting and excellent quality jams and preserves and pickles generally available than there were when I wrote that book.

But, Patti did her digital magic with the title, because some people still want the book, bless 'em. And one of those people is James K, a PhD student in Crop & Soil Sciences at Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington.

It was his email she forwarded to me:

Hi Patti,

I've been taking exams all week and was planning to read this as a treat afterwards. I thought I should let you all know that this book was the most hotly contested item during my parents divorce (after myself).  There was quite an argument over who would get 'custody' of it, which my mom eventually won through some fierce bargaining.  My dad fumed about it for  years until I bought another copy of it for him online a few years ago.  Somewhat scared to borrow such a cherished book from either of them,
I decided to finally go and buy a copy for myself.  I was very glad to see that a digital version is available as I am a student and frequently have to move around for my research.

Thank you again and please convey my best to Ms. Dragonwagon; I am a big fan.

-James

And you know: Patti was right. I did get a big kick out of that, and now, maybe, so can you.

A writer just doesn't knows where his or her books might turn up in someone else's life and what role they might play; in fact, maybe that's good; it might be distraction to know too much.

But occasionally, someone like James does let an author know.

Thank you, James, I'm honored that you're a fan of Putting Up Stuff.

(Proof that "Nothing is wasted on the writer" : his letter, of course, not only made me feel pleased, but  sparked this post.) 

Oh, lord, the name

Before I continue with the here-and-now adventures of April's cornbread odyssey, I really ought to do the decent thing and answer the question I am most often asked, which is "Is that your real name?"

Okay, that's done.

Having a weird name (by choice, no less, even though I was too young to have any idea what I was doing to myself, and forever) is like having a tattoo of a red tarantula wearing sunglasses in the middle of your forehead. You might forget it's on your forehead, but until they know you so well that they fail to notice it, it's all other people see. Now imagine you got the tarantula with shades when you were twelve, and you're now collecting Social Security and explaining, at the Senior Center, for the twelve zillionth time that, oh, you were just a kid, you really liked sunglasses and thought it would be a goof (to the extent you thought about it at all), and you never imagined you'd live until your nineties ...

I can't blame anyone for asking, and it's nobody's fault but mine, as the old Blind Willie Johnson song goes (Please note: these links are to two astonishing archival videos, far more substantial than this lightweight weird name stuff: in the first, Pops Staples does a version of the song, in the second, it's Blind Willie Johnson himself, singing another of his songs, on his front porch. The second one... I'd be willing to bet it was filmed on celluloid, in the 30's or 40's, and probably recorded by one of those folk musicologist like Alan Lomax. Blues lovers, don't miss these).

But still. Back to the name: explaining gets old.

Now it's true that lately some people have called my silly name cool; in one kind post on Anne's Food  and response it even got tagged, "improbable" and in someone's reply, "brilliant." (!) This is certainly better than what "What, you took too many drugs in the '60's?" or (more innocently and somewhat flatteringly, given my age), "I guess your parents must've been hippies?" 

It is also true that I got contacted (charmingly) some years back by a bunch of over-educated twisted folks who despite their advanced degrees evidently have nothing better to do with their time than create and maintain a site, admittedly amusing (unless it's your name) called Name of the Year,  which I "won" in 1993, and which was evidently so popular that NOTY's annual play-offs are now titled the Dragonwagon Regionals. However, come on... does one really want to be in the company of "the likes of Anicet Lavodrama, Unique Wigfall, Babypaz de la Vega Jr., Drs. Jihad Slim and Barney Softness, Gay Straite, Courage Shabalala, Dick Trickle, Dudley Softly, Finesse Couch, La’keisha Laughinghouse, Attila Cosby, Maximum Havoc Steinberg, Dudu Chili, Asi Wind, Shula Hula"?

Well, a little late to consider that now, Crescent.

For what it's worth, I took a writing workshop taught by Elayne Clift a couple of months back. In one exercise, everyone was asked to rename themselves, give themselves a name that was another, could-have-been self, and write as that person.

All around me, women were writing as WindEagle, Cinnamon, Calliope, Thrive, Juicy Crone. 

For what it's worth, I chose, and wrote as, Jane.

Sleek, pared down, in no way calling attention to itself. 

But I do like my logo, above. As you can tell by what the dragon's working on, it dates to pre-computer days.

Now: are we done on the name topic?

today is the first day of the rest of my blog: settling in after a month of cornbread travels

It was during the first event of last month's great April book tour boogie (thirteen events! nine cities! One of those cities three times! Renting and a returning a car six times from various airports! Getting off and on an airplane 22 times!) that I realized: hey! I really no-kidding have got to start a blog! The book I was traveling with and about was my latest cookbook, The Cornbread Gospels, which was published on Thanksgiving Day, 2007, by Workman Publishing.

Now, this first event was something of a home-coming, for it brought me back to Little Rock, where I used to live, and where I met my darling late husband, Ned (with whom I spent 23 years; a picture of us taken in August of 2000, three months before he died in a bicycling accident). I  still have many dear friends, some of whom share decades of joint history, in Little Rock; returning is always, like chocolate, rich, dark, sweet, bitter and irresistible. Most of these friends, knew Ned, and knew us as a couple.

A tornado arrived in Little Rock the night after I did. My friend Starr Mitchell hypothesized a connection (harumph). I met Ned in Starr's former home; I was staying in her present home, shared with her husband, George West, when the tornado sirens went off. The three of us, and their younger son, Cane, who is on hiatus from college, alternated between watching the reports of the storm on television, watching it from the upstairs loft, and going out on the porch to watch. The Mitchell-Wests dug out the large closet in Cane's room, the architecturally most secure spot in the house, in case we should need to scurry into it for shelter. Fortunately, we didn't have to, as Scratch, the family cat, had peed in one of its far corners, with lasting results, in the olfactory sense.   

But meteorological events and friendships notwithstanding, what I was really there for the Arkansas Literary Festival, the main fund-raiser for the Arkansas Literacy Council. This was one of the causes close to my heart when I lived back in Arkansas, and for that matter, still (literacy, anywhere, anyhow, always will be).The opening event was a ticketed meet-the-authors thing, buy books, snack, drink, gossip, get books signed, cocktail party-ish. The horribly unflattering picture to the left was taken that night; it's of me and another old friend, Louise Terzia, who works with the aforementioned Starr, at the Historic Arkansas Museum. I'm the red-headed one, but trust me, said photo does neither of us justice. Anyway, the featured drink of the night was a pomegranatini, which I stayed away from (I get looped on two sips of wine, so I never drink at all if I have to be remotely on; besides which, I could just imagine my late father, at times fanatically devoted to "an extra dry martini with a twist of lemon peel", who viewed the addition of an olive, with its noxious brine, as a travesty, going into a horrified rant at the very idea of any kind of a fruit-ini ... if you want to know how serious he was about liquor, until he gave up drinking in late middle age, check his article on absinthe). As to the food, I was delighted to find excellent guacamole, and what was for me a first on a cocktail party buffet: really good from-scratch mashed potatoes, with grated cheese and oddments to sprinkle on them. Of course there was also all the usual meatballs, artichoke-crabmeat dip, etc. But as a vegetarian - hey, those mashed potatoes made me happy. (Speaking of which, here's a very happy mashed potato recipe, which I developed for Relish Magazine some years back; it has marscapone and celery root).

At most such events writers wind up talking quite a bit with other writers. I plunked myself (and my cocktail-sized plate of mashed potatoes) right down next to Suzette Haden Elgin (in Blog-Land she goes by Ozarque). We hadn't visited in some time and we got right to everything important: writing, health, relationships, gossip about mutual friends and not-friends. Because I had been angsting about whether or not to blog, I asked her if she did. At which she lit up, smiled a great big smile, and said yes, and she was finding it amazing and thoroughly enjoyable though a hell of a lot of work. I quizzed her ruthlessly. In essence, she said: "It's time consuming, it's good, you can do it in your pajamas and you don't have to go anywhere, you won't believe how many people read your work, it's fun, your book sales go up, I actually got paid decently for a poem I posted there, it's a constant surprise."  She also told me, "Don't write about religion!" (Which it turns out I manage to have done, in this very first post... Sort of. A bit. Later  on. But.)  Suzette writes sci-fi, and non-fiction (the latter primarily in the field of linguistics --- her Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense is a classic). Neither of these are my genres. But we are both poets as well, and feel comfortable with each other, and are both Arkansas, and Ozark, authors --- though I'm an Arkansas/Ozark author who now lives in Vermont, or perhaps a Vermont author who used to live in Arkansas (the first feels more accurate to me, though).

Anyway, I am back home, in my new-old home, Vermont, after 30 days crammed with traveling (exhausting) and cornbread adventures (energizing). (The house in Vermont is pictured. Unlike the picture of me and Louise, this one is incredibly flattering; it was taken when my aunt, who was more moneyed than I am, owned the place as a summer home, and she really kept it up. It's a bit funkier now, though still an amazing piece of property.) A tsunami of stuff has accumulated in my absence, and it would like some attention. Yet Suzatte's enthusiasm stays with me, as does that of another writer I also queried on the pros and cons of blogging last month: Judy Blume. And so, here I am, commencing to blog. How did this become front-and-center on my To-Do list? (Well, when a list has assort receipts, catch up with emails, pay bills, do laundry, make dentist's appointment - the stuff every human being contends with, and which Starr, many years ago, once referred to in a piece of writing as LPTs, Little Piddling Things - starting a blog looks much more compelling. I realize that "the stuff every human being contends with" presumes that you, dear reader, are in fact a human being, despite the New Yorker cartoon of two dogs hunched over a computer, one gleefully telling the other "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.").

This last month's goofy narrative will continue over the next few weeks, up to and including the grand finale, The National Cornbread Festival, in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, last weekend (It's always the last full weekend in April, FYI; [icture, left, one of the many food vendors at the Festival. This particular shot taken in 2003, by David Koff: note the blue sky and green mountains).

All told, April was one interesting, story-rich month for me: revisiting these experiences in writing, instead of merely thinking about them, will be pleasurable, a putting things away as important, in its fashion, as unpacking. (Someone, I think W.H. Auden, said famously, "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?").

But, of course, why stop with last month? I've had, and still do, an... interesting life. I vividly remember a telephone conversation with my father, the writer Maurice Zolotow, who I already mentioned vis martinis, and who was, among other things Marilyn Monroe's first biographer. I can still picture the kitchen where I was standing as we talked, me on a wall phone with a curly black cord. I was facing out across a laminate counter, bright orange, looking out through the window behind the counter into our small Atlanta backyard garden, dominated by a larger wisteria. Maurice, in LA, would have been in his small office, one room of his West Hollywood apartment, cluttered with paper and open books and the detritus of a working writer's working life. What I can't remember is what my father asked me that sparked whatever story, also vanished, I told him in response. But I can still hear him saying admiringly, with great relish, his customary over-the-top enthusiasm, and maybe even a little envy, though his own life was far, far from dull:  "By God, Cres! You could live the rest of your life in a nunnery and you'd still have plenty of material to write about!"

I was 29 then. I'm 55 now. So you can imagine.

But we have miles to go before we sleep. I do, anyway.

Which brings to mind the following: when my husband, Ned, was alive, late one night we somehow got into a long, long passionate discussion about how those who follow various religions so often commit atrocities in their name, despite the fact that the doctrines of most such religions at least in part support peace and brotherly/sisterly love. Bear in mind this must have been in, oh, 1990 or 92, way before 9/11. Ned and I discussed Christians. We moved on to Jews. We had just reached Sri Lanka  and the long and terrible civil war essentially between Hindus and Buddhists... I glanced at the clock. "Good Lord, Ned!" I said, startled,  "Do you realize it's way past 2:00 a.m.?" He gazed at me balefully, raised his eyebrows, and sighed. "And Muslims to go before we sleep," he said. (Another picture of Ned, this one when he was very young, before I knew him: as a teenager, throwing pottery. What a sweet, funny, smart good guy he was. )

I guess that story is a long way from cornbread, from being back home in Vermont on  May Day, 2008 ... But you know? Everything's connected, which may be why I chose to put up that picture of beans and cornbread, which are certainly connected on plates around the world. Or maybe I chose it because it was taken by my boyfriend, David Koff. Because though I miss Ned greatly and still, I am living proof that life and love go on in altered form, and that human beings are incredibly resilient. And perhaps, because I do talk about Ned a lot, I didn't want you, unknown reader, to put me into the "grieving widow" file, though there were certainly years when that's exactly where I was.

But not now.

As I was saying: Everything's connected, and nothing is wasted on the writer. I trust digression. I go with it.

Now, thank you: for going with me.