Say some words... Smash them.
Extend invitations... Carry out the ambush.
Ask a question... Burn me.
Make a choice... Assign blame.
Receive a gift... Lament and complain.
Take a hug... Slap my face.
Continuity does not exist... Wonder and wonder why.
One thing leads to another... Don't connect the dots.
Hear the words... Don't listen.
Be informed... Deny.
Sew... Tear.
Build... Break.
Form... Crush.
Hold... Push.
Ask... Don't answer.
The headlights cut through the dark of night as I drove through the November night. The culmination of all my efforts for the last quarter century was supported by who sat next to me, what was in my heart, and what was in my thoughts. To the west, the bridge. When I was just 11, I crossed the previous old iron bridge that stood here, for the first time. It was built in 1910.
Back in the 70s, it was nothing to cross bridges that were this old. That was just the way things were. Ten years later, I drove across that bridge the day before it was closed forever. The day before, on April 5th, 1987, the Schoharie Creek Bridge on the New York State Thruway (I-90) over the Schoharie Creek near Fort Hunter and the Mohawk River in New York State collapsed due to bridge scour at the foundations after a record rainfall. The collapse killed ten people.
We were enduring record rainfall at that time. My job at the time was pouring concrete for Bob Eilers in Newington Connecticut. That day, April 6th, he foolishly poured walls in hard rain and things got dangerous. I got mad and left. I kept driving until I got to that Connecticut River crossing that connects Westminister Vermont and Walpole New Hampshire. I did not know it at the time, but I was standing on the threshold of one of the major pivotal moments of my life. You can be sure I was thinking about the Schoharie Creek Bridge as I crossed the old 77-year-old narrow iron girder structure with the Connecticut angrily thrashing a couple of feet under this old girl. I stopped on the west side, then gear jammed the three on the tree shifter on my 72 Dodge pickup. Adrenaline pumping. Hey, if a whole interstate bridge can fall, anything is possible!
Where was I going? It was a progression really. I was going to my family's camp in East Alstead New Hampshire. My cousins Dave and Janet, my second set of parents really, had built this cabin, with some guest appearances by others, including my father, who currently in 1987 had been living in Port Aransas Texas for the last 7 years. I had nothing with me today. I went to work this morning, threw a tantrum, and drove all the way up here. This was what you can do when gas is 86 cents a gallon. The bottom fell out on oil prices the year before, and you could literally roll pennies and fill a gas tank.
When I got up to the cabin, it was still lightly raining. I always loved coming here. This was my place. I was so drawn to it. It was like there was a source of energy under the soil that pulled me like Superman to the fortress, well, except no superpowers, red boots, capes, tights, or flying. A great deal of my life would be launched from here. When I was 11 years old, coming up here was the most incredible thing that could have ever happened to me. Back in 1977, my absolute obsession with this place could later be a foreshadowing of the incredible change and milestones, good and disastrous that would culminate in the years and decades to come, all happening on this very mountain.
I loved this place back in the 70s, having first gone up there in the summer of 77 with Dave, my Father, and my cousin Steve. There were only 2 walls up at the time and no floor. Steve and I took the scraps and built a small cabin fort in the front yard for something to do that weekend. The following fall, I went up again with Dave and Steve. It was going well until one of the beagles did not come back Saturday night. Overnight, it rained very hard, I recall Dave getting up many times thinking that maybe she was outside the door, ready to come in.
Morning came and the rain did not ease up at all. Dave suited up in raingear and left with a rifle in case he found her injured and needed to ease her suffering. During that time, Steve and I sharpened sticks. Being alone, the first thing that came to mind in our young brains was that we might need to defend against unwanted visitors. We felt it was our responsibility to craft weapons. Hours passed during Dave's soaking-wet hike over the mountain.
I will always remember what happened next because it was a glimpse into what it was really like to be an adult with kids who have no clue. Dave returned, soaked to the bone and unsuccessful in finding Daisy. We quickly learned that the logical and most helpful thing we could have done here was to start packing, brush our teeth, and clean up the cabin. There was so much to do. Dave always took a load of wood back home with him and that had to be loaded. I recall that the bumper of the truck got caught on a stump and got pulled out straight. The memory of Dave swinging that sledgehammer to right the bumper and cursing will forever be there. I would live this moment myself many times in the future, even with this same truck that later became my truck in the late 1980s.
I am happy to report that on Monday, a person on the mountain called Dave's home number to let him and Janet know that their Daisy was safe with them. They went up the next day and retrieved her. After that Sunday morning, I tried a little harder to ask myself, what can I do to help the adult who is trying to carry this load right now.
Because I brought nothing with me that day in 1987, no food, no bedding, nothing, I lit a fire and lingered for about an hour, then I drove back to Connecticut. One Saturday night that passed winter two friends and I were having a couple of beers at a bar in Southington. It was lightly raining. We got bored, so at some point, one of us suggested a road trip to New Hampshire. We switched to coffee and by the time we got just north of Springfield Massachusetts, it began to snow very heavily. Eventually, we could only move at about 30 miles an hour, so it took the better part of the rest of the night to get up there. There was a dim daylight in the heavy snow by the time we got to Cobb Hill Road. I had snow tires on the back of my 2 two-wheel-drive truck and a full bed of planks from my concrete jobs that kept the old girl moving even in weather like this.
It seemed like in 1987, not a 14-day span went by without me driving up to the cabin. Sometimes with my friend Scott, sometimes with my then-girlfriend Stephanie. Sometimes we would drive up there and find Scott and his wife up there. I never understood the pull this place had on me, but it kept pulling me.
In the summer of 1987, I was working for Clock Company, a heat treatment plant in Manchester Connecticut. I had talked my way into a job operating their most elite vacuum furnaces. I always thought I would be marrying Stephanie, perhaps mostly because she just always talked about what the wedding was going to be like. Then without warning, she ended it because she "needed some time."
Suddenly, my tether broke. I had been living in a campground in my 1976 Chevy Van that had carried me up from Texas the previous autumn. I was running around like a madman, always running towards Stephanie on my opposite 3rd shift schedule. I was always late, always disappointing her or her family, always having to be somewhere. Suddenly, I had time and space.
Clock Company was owned by the same company that owned Mal Tool Aircraft in North Charlestown New Hampshire. We were having our annual company picnic weekend there. I decided to go since I had nothing better to do. The cabin was only 2 towns away.
I never got up to North Charlestown that weekend, but there was an awakening. I arrived at the cabin Saturday afternoon with a cooler of food, a 12-pack, and a notebook. I sat at the table after dinner Saturday night listening to Solid Gold Saturday Night on a station out of Rutland. Old songs from the two decades passed unheard for many years. I wrote. That was something I had not done in a long time. As I sat there I came to the conclusion that I was done with Stephanie. I did not want to live in Connecticut. I never intended to stay there when I left Texas, I was supposed to be moving to Maine. But here, tonight, a new seed was planted. Why not New Hampshire? Other than my job, which was a really good one, I was no longer attached to Connecticut. I left the cabin Sunday afternoon feeling like a new person. For the first time since leaving South Texas, there was some direction in my life.
The next time I went up, everything changed. My impulsiveness led to a complete shift in life. I was suddenly married and had a family. That land in East Alstead also meant a lot to them. Just like the months before, we frequently visited the cabin in any season. I was young, wreckless, tireless, and indestructible. Road trips were made on a whim all of the time.
The following summer, everything around me collapsed as far as a place to live and work. I took my stepdaughter Amy to Florida to spend the summer with her father and when I came back was told that I did not have a job anymore. I could have just found something else since there were jobs everywhere, but the toxic people who lived all around us in the campground were making even living there unpleasant. I decided that there was no better time than now to start over in New Hampshire since I had to start all over again in Connecticut anyway. The fact was, Connecticut for me was repulsive. It had completely changed from what it was when I was a kid and enough was enough.
The summer of 1988 was hot, so living in a one-room hunting cabin without electricity or running water was interesting. I don't think I will ever know how we ate or put gas in the truck. The gas gauge on the old truck had not worked in years. It was better this way. Don't ask, don't tell got us by. Putting a couple of dollars in change for gas at a time seemed to carry us back and forth between Connecticut and New Hampshire over the long hot summer and yet, I will never know how.
We left Connecticut in June with only $50 and a tank of gas, and by the 2nd week of August, I had a 2nd shift job in Claremont, New Hampshire for $5.50 per hour, an apartment on the 2nd floor of Spring St in Claremont for $115.00 a week. That wonderful place in East Alstead and my family who owned it had really helped us start life in New Hampshire. Things did get pretty dark at times, but they really started looking up.
Over the next few years, this spot on that mountain continued to be a foundational part of our lives. We were now only 40 minutes away and still enjoyed going there. Now it was also a way for us to visit with our cousins Dave and Janet when they came up.
During the mid-nineties, I continued to go there but my second wife never had the desire to go. For that reason I would go up on my own, or with friends, or my brother Bobby when I brought him up to NH. As the years went by, the freshness of this beautiful place changed. I know that it was always really a reflection of the miles that I had put on. For me, it was always beautiful.
In the late 90s, I was so busy in my life that I did not have time to visit, and a great deal of time passed. Dave had a serious incident happen in his life and I always felt that maybe he and Janet just might be holding onto it not only for them but maybe also for me. Maybe that was just in my head. I wanted to make sure they put their needs ahead of mine and told them that they should do whatever they wanted to do with the land. I can still hear Janet's voice on that call, during which she told me she would let Dave know how I felt.
The irony was that in the year 2002, they did sell the land in East Alstead that we enjoyed for 25 years. 2002 marked a year that I most likely would have used more than ever before in my life for the next 20-plus years at least. I did not know that at the time. When I think about it, I do wish I had made an offer to them the year before. I was in the position to do so at the time and it would have allowed me to let Dave and Janet continue to enjoy it just as they had for over 2 decades. I imagine we would have built a little camp somewhere else on those 50 acres so that they could use their cabin whenever they wished. Hindsight is 20/20 and is just the way that things are.
What I find so fascinating is the sprout of a seedling in 1977. A Friday afternoon Dave and my Dad picked me up from where I lived in Torrington Connecticut and brought my cousin Steve and me up to that land in East Alstead. It seems like a stand-alone, unconnected event on a summer weekend almost 50 years ago now. However, because of that one weekend, so many people were born and would never have existed without that trip. Wars could not have been fought, and marriages, rescues, and inspirations would never have happened. Amy and Jesse's children, nor their children would ever exist, neither would Liam and Noah. Those are only the direct effects.
I always talk about how many entire courses in my life hung on the thread of one single second in time, in which I could have gone one way or the other with the way I chose being so unlikely. But this journey to NH as an 11-year-old kid was the very DNA of many of those threads that built entire lives and in turn, touched thousands of lives. Even I have a hard time comprehending the far-reaching implications of this.
There is something else though. I am sad sometimes when I think about that land in East Alstead. It was so important to the wild ride that my life has been and so many changes within it. Like a fuel section of a Saturn 5 rocket, nothing could have happened the way it did without it, but later it feels discarded, and fallen to earth as refuse. I know this is not the case. There are memories in the hearts of Amy and Jesse, my stepchildren in those days who if not for what I did then, would never have these memories. That is something to be so thankful for. I would not trade it for anything.
As I sit here, I think about the influence that place in East Alstead had on me. I started playing my life out as if I had never visited there that day in 1977. I realized as I tried to project how the course would have been different, I could write an entire series of novels about that course. That is the refuse, isn't it? That is the path not taken which makes it worth nothing. There are many people alive who will never know that their entire existence and family hang on that one day. I lived every moment of where that path took me, and I still cannot believe it.
Channel surfing.
Reading pages 1 through 9 in every book on the shelf.
It is the CD player stuck in "intro".
It's Ray Davies Destroyer.
It takes your complete sentences.
It infiltrates your dreams and leaves you stranded thirty years ago with a recent memory lapse.
It is looking for emotional clues.
It is thought time to put it all back on the rails.
It is a shift in the center of gravity.
It is indifference.
It is getting stuck on snags that should be smooth.
It is an echo in reflection of this time no matter what the year may be.
It is wanting to be a writer, then a chef, then an artist, and an engineer.
It is the sound of cicadas 24 hours a day at a horrible decibel.
It is having those you love all around you.
It is being more inside than you are on the outside.
It is wondering if you look clear or fuzzy in the lens of others.
It is summer and winter on the same day.
It is progress with a new measure.
It is people who let go for reasons that will never be known.
It is being understanding even when you do not understand.
It is dreaming of your Cinnamon Girl but knowing that is not real.
It is knowing the path home but the channel keeps changing.
It is standing on soil that keeps disappearing causing the need to jump.
It is sedation, it is turbulence.
You know what this is, don't you?
It's November.
Spring fell upon us with more independence than ever before. It was all new and the people we lived with were all different. I am still trying to figure out how that happened. For the first time, I was called to the kitchen table where all of the world's problems found solutions and we consulted over the morning coffee. Somehow, my sitting on the door armrest had translated into acknowledgment and validation. I fought for that!
My quadraphonic programming carved my perception of what my course should look like. Although that is spun into the fabric of who I became, thank God it failed to deliver fully! I have seen what that looks like, and I will tell you, brother, it is not pretty.
It was amazing to see the many facets of their relationship. I saw them as best friends at the height of marriage, and also as best friends when they were alone. It was such a true friendship and one that showed how right it felt between them. It was all of the other things happening outside that wrecked everything worthwhile. It would not have been so bad, except deep cracks in the foundations allowed the storm that was sweeping across time and space to get in. Who could possibly endure?
The antagonists appeared to be forces from the outside while inside each one owned their own specific torment. In those days, we never dealt with things like that. I recall the arguments; they, like the relationship, were charged and powerful. It was an age in which we just did not know what we did not know...what we needed to know. If we did, they could have had a chance.
It was here that she finally did it. Someone had to do something. The times did not allow for things to just continue as they had in the generation before and the one before that. She broke all the dishes in the pantry, leaving nothing of what had seemed like a sweet rescue.
Now she was free of it, but free of what? She shared what had happened with the boy on the phone. Sitting at a telephone stand in the hall an hour away, he supported her for what she had done, and her bravery, not revealing how much it hurt him. He knew they both owned this, he did this too. He knew enough that he could have prevented it. Even though he knew what, he did not know how.
It was the year when couples could act with a great alliance, but upon closer inspection, only dissolve the things they had. It was accepted as a normal byproduct of the pain. He knew he had played a part in all of the mess and now it was just ashes as he smoked one cigarette after another, consoling her and commending her for moving on. Nothing felt right, but there was no other way.
No one knew how to fix it. The old standard cast the mold and the world was changing. It is in the hearts of my parents that the frontier was taken, leaving them in the wake of families floating on the surface of the ocean after the ship they were on went down. They paid a higher price than anyone else did, and for time unforeseen more would fall as soon as they stood.
As evening descended, they each stood looking out their windows, him east and her west. After all of the villages that burned, it was a return to innocence. There was still something so incredible like that which can only be felt in the first love. It was evident, no matter what happened on that day in 1976, here was something that the air of the times, laws both legal nor physical, time itself nor any outside influence could ever break their connection.
I was fortunate. While yes, I heard more sad things than I would have liked to, their love and friendship is what I remember the most. I was old enough to remember hours and hours. Sitting in the backseat of that 63 Plymouth, 68 Pontiac, their ease at being able to talk to each other was such a beautiful thing. If I could have a wish come true for the span of my life it would be that they could have seen it the way that I could. I know it took me so many years to understand it, but having done so I do know, some people never get to have the closeness that my parents had.
They got married in a time in which they were on the threshold of social storms, those that had never before been seen. They were swept away in it. I do however find peace in the fact that they knew in their hearts, that the love they had was real and it was without end.
There was a sound in the night. It was a cry as if she was here, but I could not find her. Throughout the years, she never cried. Even now when she does, it is silent.
Because I know her heart, I can feel it, the confusion, the devastation, the temporary reprieve. There is a dimensional barrier that I have to cross if I am to console her. My callous recovery from my own trials sometimes make this as easy as passing through a solid wall of concrete.
So many times, for so many people, I have wanted to be the reason they found to look at things more positively. I wanted them to see the good in who they are, just like I did.
It is in the broken glass on the floor that I stop and ponder. I know that there was a difficult trial in this very spot. I am not interested in those whose boring and predictable lives have allowed them to live the dream. It is those who sit in the corner, knees pressed to chest, head down. I see you.
At one time in my life, I will admit that there was something in this consideration for me that was selfish, that somehow this allowed me to not look at my own imperfection and made me feel somewhat more worth something when helping others. Let me assure all, I have taken the express elevator to the bottom, and I learned a thing or two while I was there.
Today I am listening. There is a heart that I care for so much hurting and confused. Somehow, I have to let her know that I am here. For listening in the sad days and rejoicing in the happy days. I have seen all that she is; magnificent in ways that she cannot yet comprehend. But I believe in her. I always will.
I need to create classic recipes. It is the avalanche in me that cannot be stopped. I love seafood. I make excellent mussels. Sweet vermouth, PEI mussels, cream, portabello mushrooms, shallots, garlic, cilantro, bacon. Maybe a Thai chili or two if I want to cook on the wild side. My oh my!
But now, I NEEEEEEEED to make a lobster thermidor, a favorite back in1960s-70s entertaining. The food from those old black-tie dinner party meals is rising into view once again. I know there can be wild spins on what we can do with a meal that Julia Child championed us out of our collective trepidation. 60 years later we are tampering with the maverick. But take your rest here for a moment to cook at the station of that wonderful woman who brought the housewives out of the dark ages, showing us all that family dinner had no limits. Even more so, Julia showed us that ambition and creativity were not owned by men alone. She like my grandmother, did so in a world that said otherwise. But wow! I digress!
There it is, the antagonist in this blog shows its ugly head at the beginning of paragraph four. Time and energy, are those elusive things that none of us seem to have. We don't have time and so we compromise. Even worse, we figuratively have these little people standing on our shoulders, whispering in our ears: "You can't do it." Time assaults us, commercial dictators assault us, and we feel drained. The hyper-sensory trip we undertake daily is a long, LONG way from the days back in 1977 when I was white-washing cement walls on a summer afternoon.
The fact is, we have to fight against what seems to be an invisible weight that was never there before. I would attribute it to getting older but I know for sure that is not the cause. It is something else. Young and old alike, we all seem to be suffering. This means we have to channel the great Outlaw Josey Wales: "Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is."
This may not work for the average person, I don't know. What I can tell you is, I have lived by this law that it is only because of it that I am still alive today. Daily too. Exhaustion sets in and I get mad, I push and I succeed. It gets me through RA, through apathy, tiredness, anxiety and all those things that pin us down today.
I ran into a colleague who said she struggles with being an introvert. The pandemic has dealt us all a serious blow in this area. Personal interaction has an odd weight and unpleasantness these days, until you actually do it. Then we wonder what we were so worried about.
It may seem like I am jumping around a little, but it is all related. I have been doing Fight4Taste Friday since March of this year. It is where I make a simple or not so simple meal for approximately 22 people at work on Fridays. It is so simple to slip into neutral, and when I fight against that, I find my joy.
So yes... Lobster Thermidor, smoked oysters, bento boxes that take me to new places, more, more, more. It's all good. Just remember, before I get started, everything inside of me says NO. But that is when I need to get mad.
I wanted things I never wanted before.
She shared stories that I never knew existed
Tales I never could have imagined.
When I awoke she was nowhere
Out on the front porch, I noticed a glow on the horizon
I knew what I had to do
I rode off into the frontier.
As the years went by I grew in knowledge and wisdom
I could tell by the feel of the wind when it was time to go
One great adventure after another, she always led me
It was a cool evening and I saw her walk by
my creativity surged with no limits
but then I turned to look and again, she was gone.
As the years go by I find that I need to push forward on her memory and what she showed me
Every time I see her, I watch and miss her knowing she will disappear
Our encounter becomes more of a deep well giving water endlessly only if I strive to remember.
Today I have to search inside and look for ways to bring her into my day.
Some are crafty deceptions, some are close encounters with her
Together, these make me possible, pushing forward. Ever pushing forward.
Occasionally, I write about something I would never have attempted. I perceive this as growth and courage, but it can be far more difficult when in the trenches that I find myself digging.
While nothing exists until the day I tap that "Publish" button, there is a pressure that I cannot define before that moment of release. The absolute need to get that piece of life out and to let it fly free is a powerful entity.
A piece such as that cannot be written in a day, a week, or a month. It is all relative to how intense and dense the account is. Complexities exist not only on the day I share the accounts but also on the day I write about them.
There are no shortcuts to reaching the goal. The process is full of reflection, regret, sadness, and nostalgia. There is no detachment when telling a good story. Initially, it must be experienced and recorded; only after that can a third person's perspective be shared, as it's only then that I can see it in that light.
I can be impatient. I am learning the process I find myself on a ride where there is no way to get off until it is complete. Choices are no longer an option once that ride begins. It is time to commit, hold on, and tell the story that needs to be told. That becomes my only mission at that time. Otherwise, I am incomplete.
I thought I felt it. I could swear it was there, that ever-slight vibration in the earth and something in the air. It is what you see when you do not look, but your mind can fill in the void. There is something happening somewhere.
There are subtleties in the words and body language of an old friend. You can miss them if you only think about your own house. Something is smoldering and for some reason, we need something to implode to give our attention to it.
Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash
Why do I walk with my eyes closed when it comes to you? Somewhere if I just open them, I might see you crying. How did I miss so many signals? I have boasted that in the golden era of time, I was raised in the field of empathy.
How do I know you are hurting if I was wrong about so much? I try to feel like I never have before and still, I fall so short. There is a world of hurt out there and we all carry what we have. Escalation and intensity finally pull the disaster into the light. If only we could see it before now, we could nurture the wounds.
No, we will wait until we are all moving at high velocity and then the inevitable happens, a wheel begins to shudder and it tears away from us as we tumble down into disaster and new normal. It will become the pivotal moment of our lives to which we divide the now from the then.
In a moment of personal breakthrough, I think about you my friend. I look at you intently: "are you OK?" You nod and crack a quick smile and irreverent remark. I do not break my eye contact. "No, ARE you OK?" This time silence. I will not say it again as this would only be degrading, but the truth between our eyes makes you look away. "No. No I am not", you say.
It is in the slowing down that we find our way. Once upon a time we did that. There was one day that we used to allow us to talk, to build, to play and just hang out. It would seem, that in all of our youthful lack of wisdom, we knew what to do, we just didn't know it.
I met a stranger on the day that he died, and my life was never the same.
I was just a boy of fifteen when the stranger rode into town. I was sitting in the saloon, sipping on short glasses of ice, complete with a couple of molecules of ginger ale. This justification was a lie for a man who could never look at himself in a mirror. I was a passenger. I had in tow with me the girl I would know forever, but the days of our acquaintance were numbered.
December came, and I was almost giddy with self-imposed tradition: I would turn my attention to the nighttime stratosphere and extract light that could not be seen from the dark sky. The times were changing, yes, they were, but I gleefully felt that I could hold on to the world I grew up in.
I was hanging with my southern boogie friends and my guitar-wielding women. They fed me everything I needed when that stranger came to town. As he approached the entrance he was thriving but I did not hear him at all, and then suddenly oblivion, he was shot down the moment he arrived.
I woke from a misty December dream and saw him lying in the street, the town echoed with the wailing of his widow, hands bloodied, disbelieving in shock. I came to him, knowing that there was nothing that I, nor anyone could do.
Everyone around me knew him so well and a shockwave blasted through the crowd of people that were gathering like a fire fueled by gasoline. A trapdoor opened under my knees as I knelt next to his lifeless body and I fell away from all of the people I knew, joining the friends of this stranger.
Suddenly as if in a dream, the stranger got up and told me to take a journey with him. The first part of that journey lasted four years. As we traveled, somehow he let me feel his life but in a way that only I could feel it, so it was not the same as it happened to him, but in a strange way, it was exactly what I needed to understand so many things about myself. The southern boogie friends and guitar-wielding women were still dear to me, but they paled in comparison to the stranger who had become part of who I was.
As the years went by the idea that we as a world once lived, jumped and breathed in a season of such unparalleled creativity seemed so impossible, yet we know it was there. So many years later, I am still learning from this friendship that I could never have imagined. The relationship built friendships in my life that I think may never have happened, had I not met the stranger.
I met a stranger on the day that he died. My life was never the same after that, and I am so thankful that I got to know him at all.
It happened in a moment. It was summer, but I must have dreamed it. My entire life was laid out before me, and then I was ambushed and found out that what I knew, I did not know.
I was good, but then I found out that I was not. Even worse, I had not been good for a long time, and now I knew.
It is always like that absolute shift in reality that the entire world had on 9/11. For seventeen minutes that morning, we all thought a terrible accident had happened. Then at 9:03 am, Flight 175 hit the south tower and then we knew that everything we knew was wrong.
As we watch video footage, we feel an incredible desire to rewrite the events of that September morning or whenever we watch the Challenger lift off on January 28, 1986. The loss cannot be counted, and the ripple that follows lifts the ties, tracks, and spikes right out of the ground and takes them elsewhere.
Sometimes, I looked down the corridor and I knew that if I walked down the hallway, the building would collapse upon me. Sometimes I did that, and sometimes I did not.
In the times in which I felt there was no warning, I looked back and could see that there were always signs and warnings along the way. Lying to oneself can come so easily.
It was a bitter cold Saturday afternoon in January of 1978. We sat in the warmth of Torrington's Warner Theatre. Charlene and I had just settled into the movie, Saturday Night Fever. Suddenly, something I had never seen happen before, they turned down the movie and paged her. Ninety seconds later, everything was different. It will always be engraved in me. Eternally, she is standing in the aisle, crying and I hear her voice still. Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in a cigarette-smoke-filled kitchen, stuck.
When the walls fell down, sometimes we did things. Sometimes we did not do things. The gambler knows when to hold and when to fold. He is not always right and the more he is successful you can be sure it came with so much loss.
When the walls fell down I learned, I cried, and I was angry. When the walls fell down I had to build something from ruins always feeling the pain of not having built what I could have before the collapse.
When the walls fell down I wanted to fall down too. A world-saving mission had just failed, and now the planet was knocked out of its orbit and was hurtling into outer space to die a cold and dark death. I wanted to find a mountaintop somewhere to just watch it all fade away.
But there was something inside of me that said no. There was something that made me get up and continue. I hated it, and it made me furious, but it drove me to my feet and I clenched my fists and I screamed. I stood up with the ruins at my feet, knowing now what really happened, knowing I was about to build from whatever was left. Would it be better, I don't know. I just know that it would be fortified with the walls that fell down and somehow, this would add strength.
When I was down, with affliction so precise and unique, it was a pain that hurt more than walking against the storms of addiction. I had forgotten what that could feel like and I am thankful for that. What I did not know was I could be there again, even if it was not me that that storm came upon.
I forgot the pain that my heart could feel, the devastation so complete. Rewriting everything is something I never could imagine, but here I am in a lonely room, looking at an empty wall and seeing all the things I didn't do.
I could never imagine my world without you in it. Throughout the winds, the rain, and darkness we had each other's hands. We spoke with one voice and loved with one heart, and I don't understand how they can be so separate.
When you pulled away I heard the music play and somehow I knew what the words were before I heard them. It was everything I had feared and even worse and I keep hoping I am being dramatic.
It takes me back to a Friday night dream so many years ago. I saw a flash of what I wanted and knew it just could never be. I hurt with the pain of a person who had to climb onto a spaceship and never see the earth again. The world was gone and adapting to that would be a deception that I could never buy.
Every moment of every day, I rewrite our past in my mind. I know it cannot change anything, but I cannot help it, I have to do something. The richness you gave me is unimaginable and it will take forever to understand, and maybe even longer than that.
In these days, I stand on the bridge. The leaves fall and I know the winter is coming. I bravely stand at my side of the bridge, honoring the person that you are - the person I know you are. It is everything. It is absolutely everything. Now I have nothing to focus on except myself, the person I need to get to know. Of all of the things that you have given me, will this be the greatest gift? I don't know, because it is everything.
You could never know the life you made, the definition you brought, and the love you showed me that can exist in one person's heart. I will never forget the moment I held you with you looking up into my eyes, I could not imagine the intensity that came with you. Since that day, you have me in awe all of the time.
When I woke up this morning, I was so thankful that I had you, I had to reach out and tell you I love you and to have a great day. Then you said it back, and I wanted to cry because I cannot count the so many ways I am privileged to have you for my son.
You have defined things in me that I did not know were discernable in so many ways. That is just the side effect for me. In your journey, the many complexities that make you who you are, blossom into showing that you are a man of great integrity. Of all the people I have ever met, I have learned the most from you.
My own angst fought me at times, making it so hard for us to speak the same language and these were the things that I needed to learn. My eyes often were closed and my mouth was yet speaking. You have given me so much credit; sometimes I do not see how I can be treated with such generosity.
I know in my heart that it really has nothing to do with what you said or I said. It is more about when you love someone as much as I love you, that kind of power can be impossible to comprehend and channel. Love makes me want to give you the finest advantage in your path. Ironically, that same love can be what causes me to not hear and to not see.
We are good though. As time went on, we found our common goals and in them, we could hear and see each other. I want every moment to always be like that. As I look back on my comparatively short time with my father, I so hope that he felt that he had those times with me. In his last hour, he struggled to physically see me with every ounce of strength. In my heart that tells me it was absolutely: yes, he did.
Here today, I strive for an acute awareness of not letting the fullness of our relationship ever slide through our hands. With a boldness that we were born with, a passion that after the explosion keeps progressing as though walking determinedly through mere smoke, never letting the barnacles of this world cover over what is pure energy to be who we are. Who we are to each other.
I always say that my life has been a wild ride. Sure, but I have also been blessed in more ways than I had ever thought possible. I don't think you could ever know what you mean to me, because it is something that cannot be measured, never be counted, too great to ever be taken in with mere sight. I can write infinite paragraphs and never come close to how I feel about you.
All I can say is "Thank you". When you were born I never knew that I could have such a friend and someone who could teach me so much and give me so much. I will always fight for that and not only do I need to live it, but it needs to be here, in these words always.
Sometimes I think I’m so smart...
Come on now! 24 years of constantly cooking, experimenting, tasting, burning, succeeding, winning, and losing! You would think, I would have this thing pretty much in the bag, wouldn’t you? Let me tell you though, I am still only learning.
There is so much inspiration out there to glean yet never enough time in a day to take it in with any coherency. I want to learn, apply, and feed my people good and delicious food. I want to do it without unnecessary steps or waste. I want every moment to count in a meaningful way.
Tina Choi's Doobydobap, Samin Nosrat's Salt Fat Acid Heat, Mike Greenfield's Life by MikeG, and of course the one who does not even know she has the force within her, June as in junelikethemonth are all part of this Swiss army knife of innovation and experience that I wish to fold into my own, go-with-the-flow technique. It is a whole universe floating around in my brain.
Then there is the fact that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Let's call that the Butterfly Pea Effect. The beautiful blue tea arrives at the table. You just know when you squeeze that lemon slice into the tea it will turn green, but then it turns purple!
By now you are asking; "Mike, what are you even talking about?" and you are right. Let me explain.
Good judgment, based on food experience, makes one a better cook and judge when ordering food out. So imagine my satisfaction when we dined at a wonderful Thai restaurant in Littleton, New Hampshire. www.tastethethaiandsushihouse.com We had an excellent experience. There was nothing showy or gratuitous about this restaurant. The staff was warm, helpful, and genuine as well.
For starters, the shrimp shu mai, and pan-fried potstickers were wonderful. Donna ordered the Tom Kha soup which is shrimp, Coconut milk broth with onion, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, tomato, galangal, lime juice, mushroom, and cilantro. Just the right amount of every ingredient.
One of the resources you have in an excellent server is their opportunity to be your consultant and tour guide. In a restaurant that really sets out to serve their customer the best experience they can, when asked by the diner, "What is the dish you see everyone coming here to have?" That server will give you a real answer that does not simply steer you to the most expensive item on the menu. You can always tell the difference from the answer you get too.
Our server answered my question with two possibilities:
The first offer was Massaman Curry with Avocado, one of the most popular Thai curry. This dish was listed on CNN Travel as #1 most delicious food in the world in 2017!! Choice of meat with Potato, white onions, carrot, and cashew nuts. In coconut milk and Massaman curry.
The second offer was Thai Basil Pad Kra Prow. Beef stir-fried with basil sauce, garlic, onions, green bean, bell peppers, and basil.
Naturally, since potatoes are very much a part of the Axis of Evil, I ordered the Thai Basil Pad Kra Prow and was very pleased with the choice. If you are not familiar with my aversion to potatoes, see https://fight4taste.blogspot.com/2022/06/please-don-pass-potatoes.html.
I usually do not write about a single dining experience. What happened in less than 24 hours from this very nice meal perplexes me. We were driving through Lincoln, New Hampshire in the early afternoon. We pulled into a parking lot to look at lunch choices locally on my phone. The place where we were parked got our attention.
Five Main on the River in North Woodstock had several items on their menu that seemed to be winners. We decided we had already arrived at our lunch spot. The mussels, chicken lollipops, goat cheese spinach artichoke dip, and soups seemed to be spot-on to what sounded good to us. The inside was a pub with big televisions playing over the attractive bar.
The more we thought about it, nickel and diming these app-style foods into a lunch will turn into a dinner-size bill which plainly seemed frivolous. Since they had pizza, it made sense to just do that. This is where we go off the rails. We could have just ordered traditional pizza and man, I wish we had. No, we had to order "The Mediterranean" off of the "Handtossed Signature Pizza" section.
Normally, my brain understands that if you take a piece of pizza dough, and spread it out on a pizza pan, then top it with; spinach, kalamata olives, artichokes, pepperoncini, a pound of feta cheese, many very large heirloom tomato slices intimidatingly covering much of the surface of the pie, fresh garlic, oregano, red onions, and roasted garlic. Balancing these toppings on top of a pizza without any effort to remove some of the moisture from them basically gave the pizza the same moisture content had we covered it in cucumbers.
When it arrived at the table, the bottom of the crust had some color, showing that the pizza oven had browned it. Donna did not like the top's uncooked appearance and frankly, I was not pleased either. The idea of sending it back scared me more than eating it as is, but after talking it back and forth, we asked our waiter, who seemed to have never been asked to take something back ever before in his life, to please take the pizza and brown it more on the top.
I had a core aversion to this idea, but my food radar was being jammed somehow. When the pizza arrived again, the top did appear to be cooked more and thanks to the laws of physics and gravity, the 9 ounces of water content that was once in that pile of vegetables on top of the pizza had now migrated into the crust. Now the crust has the consistency of what happens when someone tries to make a carb-free crust but has no knowledge of what to use, so the ingredients never come together to make a composed crust. Like a gas giant planet, there is not an actual surface that is firm enough to stand on. The worst part is we did this to ourselves.
I know that there are many people who would have sent this back, but by this time we were here over an hour and a half. We ordered the ridiculous "Mediterranean" which has items that should not be on a pizza unless you can carefully roast and drain some of the moisture out of them. But then we requested that they do something to take this abomination and ruin it completely. I felt that sending it back would have led to a need for systemic education. This is a foundational issue with the restaurant and one that I find hard to believe exists. I do also hold out hope that the person prepping and cooking this alien-like food substance is not the normal person who carefully portions, dries, and preps toppings so they are more balanced pleasingly rustic, and tasty.
We took the rest with us, me thinking that somehow I could salvage at least the toppings. 2 mornings later, I opened the box, and when I touched the crust, its cold, wet, slimy texture caused me to involuntarily hurtle the whole mess into the trash can without even thinking about it.
This was my fault. Even if a restaurant thinks they are all cool and trendy by having all of these things on a pizza that I could see Jamie Oliver making, the laws of culinary physics say NO, NO, and NO!!!
So I wonder, who or what is jamming my culinary radar? I feel this is a graduation in which I have tons of new uncategorized other knowledge and it is not indexed yet. I feel that I am in a gear, topping out fruitful RPM and I am about to look down at the gearshift and notice there is another gear that I can shift up into. But not before I make a mistake of another kind.
Fight4Taste Friday comes, and I decide on egg rolls. F4TF is something I voluntarily do in which i cook lunch for the staff at my place of work. Unilaterally you will hear that those eggrolls were delicious and they were, but stupid technical disasters were everywhere.
Ice packs were too cold so the rolls cooled the oil too much, I did not cook the vegetable filling which caused more moisture in the vegetables (sound familiar), and cooled the oil too as well as made the wrappers tough to chew because they sort of steamed. The wrappers were older having been frozen and then thawed which makes them hard to deal with, they break if you look at them too hard and they do not handle moisture well at all. The odd thing is: I know better.
Finally, there is another jamming of my perception and that is my generous spirit to give culinary institutions a chance after they burn me. I did just this last night with a restaurant that has been in operation for as long as I can remember. Joy Wah on the Connecticut River in Vermont. My wife was passing by and I was not feeling up to cooking. The last time we got food there, I think it was in 2020, we had a miserable takeout experience, which last night, I decided to attribute to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was wrong. This is a restaurant that is clearly trying to save money by cutting or skimping on flavor components. The fried rice is only trashcan-worthy. The boneless pork was overcooked to the consistency of hard plastic. Their egg rolls were underwhelming. When is this going to stop?
I have often said that because people have been brainwashed into thinking that they cannot cook many of these things, they are eventually reduced to people who can be fed a rock with barbeque sauce on it and come away thinking it was awesome! We need this to stop!
The final jamming. There is so many distractions that always get in the way of me really getting the good food out there. I make it all the time. So many people say they don't have the time. Believe me, I do not have the time! Because I still do this it turns my life upside down, I hardly sleep, my RA tries to pin me down, and I live in pain. But I am fighting. I don't want to surrender! I cannot give up. I do wish I would stop being so stupid when I know I have the knowledge, wisdom, and determination to make better decisions concerning cooking and eating. So whatever it is: Quit jamming me!
Say some words... Smash them. Extend invitations... Carry out the ambush. Ask a question... Burn me. Photo by Trym Nilsen on Unsplash Make...
