Lonely as a Cloud....

 

The work of friendship is meaningful. The condensed version of a lunch interlude with daffodils became a coffee in the car, on the way to the gardens. Chatting, laughing and darkly humorous commiserating, alternated with discussions on the architecture of naked trees and the optimism of tiny wisteria leaf sprouts beside magnolia blooms burnt brown-tipped by recent frost.

Loaves and Fishes

The fog had not yet lifted when we reached the coast yesterday morning. We had a client meeting on a construction site; the three-story home-to-be, on a hillside overlooking Princeton Harbor, had an uninterrupted view all the way to the horizon. The white breakers crashing on the far Northern periphery, a distant reminder of the brutal waves of Mavericks surfing fame.

We headed down, after our meeting, to see what the fishing boats might have to offer. These incredibly fresh Rockfish inspired us to cook up a storm and invite some friends over to share our catch.

Six fishes (not five), a loaf of crusty bread and some wine, were the basics around which we crafted our meal. Adding Belgian endives and garnishing with parsley, garlic, fennel, shallots and tomatoes produced a visual feast as well as a flavorful one.

I had gone back to the office for the afternoon, leaving The Artistic One at home to work on his computer and prep our dinner for later that evening.

I was quite pleased to have worked uninterrupted for a few hours and headed for home around five o'clock, stopping to buy brown sugar and cookies to crumble over the apples I was planning on baking for dessert.
We have a family saying: " If we don't have a fire or a flood then it's not a real party!"

TAOne's car was not in the driveway. The front door of our house was unlocked. This is a frequent occurrence when TAO leaves in a whirlwind of creativity, keys and locks are often disregarded.

Once inside, I was alarmed by the smell of burning. I rushed to the kitchen to see what had been left on the burner and forgotten.

I had never imagined that anyone could succeed in burning vegetable soup! My big, heavy, stainless steel saucepan had a two inch (5cm) black crust around the inside, bottom edge. It was no longer hot but the smell had invaded the whole house. TAO had opened doors and windows and left to get groceries.

I turned on the oven and started making my apple crumble, as much to counteract the bitter smokiness, as to be ready for our guests.

It took a lot of scrubbing with abrasive cleaning powder to return my big pot to functionality. If it hadn't been stainless I would have tossed it out without even trying. I have had several opportunities to test my skills in burned-pot redemption.

TAO was soon back with his purchases. As I went to put away cheese and butter in the overflow fridge in our garage, I was distracted from my huff about the burnt soup; TAO had put away the fish earlier, still in its plastic bag, topped up with crushed ice. The slightly pink and fishy juice had dribbled all over the refrigerator, flooding the drawers, creating a nasty pulpy mess of the paper-towel liners I had put in.

The whole thing had to be mopped up and cleaned from top to bottom right away.

With both of our talisman fire and flood elements taken care of, it boded well for our party. We were expecting Lovely Daughter and SIL, with new addition Enzo the standard black Schnauzer. The other couple to whom we had allocated a fish each are longtime friends I know I could call in an emergency. I know they would respond but I also know they would be late in responding and have a very good excuse and it would be totally someone else's fault.

Friends are friends, warts and all. Right?

My invite to them was to come at seven'ish. At two minutes to eight, as we all waited and wondered, they appeared with a bottle of wine and a tale about the idiot who had messed up their bill and taken a half hour to sort it out. Sigh! 

I had a hard time steering our dinner conversation away from politics, as we have just had mid-term elections. I don't mind a give and take conversation about issues and performance but a monologue kept getting launched, that I have heard before, full of Urban legends, conspiracy theories and bigotry. 

When it got to a list of black men who are superior enough to "Transcend their blackness" (as opposed to our President, who apparently does not), Will Smith was the shining example. 

First of all "Blackness" is not something that needs to be transcended. Secondly, listing Will Smith as a not too offensively black example of blackness, because you like his acting, is a bit like a comparison to Roman Polanski, who can transcend being a pedophile by directing good movies.

The trend did not improve and my patience wore thin. The trouble with friends you have known for twenty years, is that there is less restraint on both sides. 

I usually let them rant on with just a passing mention of my disagreement with their point of view and/or a smiling reproach that magical thinking and viral internet postings do not a fact make.

Last night I put a damper on the hysteria with a strong reminder that good friends should know, and take into account, the fact that not everyone agrees with them. I told them how rude and disrespectful I found it to be steamrollered again and again because I was too polite to tackle them head on.

I think my message was received this time. There was a moment or two of awkwardness and shock followed by dessert and the very late addition of  a mutual friend who was divorcing her unfaithful, alcoholic husband as she'd found he'd cleaned her out financially and not paid taxes. He recently fell or was pushed and fatally hit his head whilst out with his girlfriend. It has since been discovered that someone put sugar in his car's gas tank as well, so it is ruined.

As well as burying her past, our friend has a week left to vacate her home which she is now losing. She is moving to a much smaller space and holding a sale tomorrow of furniture and belongings she cannot keep.  Political Monologue friend had worked all day sorting and tagging possessions for  the sale; certainly living the experience as a precursor to what might still be ahead for her family as she lives on the edge of foreclosure. In the years we have known one another she has lost two siblings and a niece to cancer. She is without health insurance and afraid to get any health exams as they might not only show a problem but then it would be on record as a pre-existing condition and she couldn't qualify for insurance if she could afford it. This same woman is viscerally against the one man who is trying to make health care available to her. She lives in fear either way.
All three of us have been as supportive of one another as possible, referring business back and forth to one another whenever we can and talking on the phone to worry through problems.
The greatest achievement is just the fact that we are all still here.
Much like the deceptively calm waters in Princeton harbor, in Life as in Friendships, there are rocks lurking beneath the surface and rogue waves that will try to drown us. If we're going to make it through we'd better keep finding a way to pull together, regardless of our differences.
I know what I'm going to say next time I speak with P.M. Friend:  "Will Smith for President!"

On-Ice in Arizona

I first met Sue and her big Old-English Battering-Ram, I mean Sheep-Dog, at the school athletics field where local dog owners congregate to chat and allow their (mostly) four-footed pack members some socialization with other canines. Fluffy always went everywhere at a lumbering run; his intentions were sometimes dubious and he scuffled with other dogs just because he could; he out-weighed them and even if they retaliated he had hairy-dog immunity to all but the most toothy opponents. Sue would yell at him and take him home if he was really bad but she was a little blind to his delinquent tendencies; he was, after all, her fur-child.
One day as she was dragging him off the field after a couple of skirmishes with other dogs. She apologized and said "I don't know what's got into him, he's not usually like this". "Umm? Yes he is" I said. "He does that every time you come out here." "Oh Damn!" she said"You're right. I have to stop making excuses". And so a friendship began.
Fluffy's manners never really improved but everyone was allowed to yell at him and set him straight, without ill will between humans. I hold him responsible for my torn meniscus; an injury shared equally between professional footballers and dog-park attendees who get hit sideways in the knees by something heavy with momentum behind it. I don't really blame him, he couldn't see where he was going and I should have been paying attention. The drugs they gave me during surgery and the handsome orthopedic surgeon almost compensated for the crutches, limping and months of pain that followed.
It turned out that Sue was married to a Frenchman, another common denominator for us. Her husband was a great cook and very attentive to their relationship. We had soirees together at each of our houses. At Sue's there were often guests introduced as distant cousins from New York, Poland, France and Belarus; Sue was an avid genealogist  with keys to the local Mormon research library where she spent many late nights. She collected cousins.
I learned that Sue had faced cancer; she blamed the onset of uterine cancer on the fertility treatments she had undergone in her desire to have children. (The spoiling of Fluffy became self-explanatory). Sue was still working in the marketing side of high tech, when we met. In between work and chemo treatments Sue lived her life to the max. She was always traveling somewhere; a trip to a small village in Europe where church records had survived conflict so that she could find out more about her family ties; a cruise through the Panama Canal with her husband or a trip to see the Fall foliage in the U.S. Sue's mantra was "Survive until they find a cure" but she hedged her bets and took her living into her own hands so as not to miss a thing.
Several years went by and we saw one another on and off, sometimes by design and sometimes by coincidence. Sue went to France for the summer; there was a wedding for a member of her husband's tribe and Sue wanted to be in the thick of it.
Sue woke one morning with a headache and was unable to speak or move. Her cancer had spread to her brain. She was shipped back to California and operated on at Stanford University Hospital. She bounced back. There was some tiredness; her hair was replaced by a wooly hat and she would sit on the grass whilst Fluffy played at the park. If he needed wrangling, we'd take care of him. Sue still had stories to share of travel plans and people she met or wanted to meet.
I learned that there is such a thing as a Concierge of Cancer Services; There are Patient Navigators and Patient Advocates; some paid employees, some volunteers. No one goes it alone in Cancer treatment at Stanford; There is a Body, Mind and Spirit approach with yoga, meditation, massage, art and writing therapies, as well as someone to coordinate treatments and social services.
From the outside, looking in, it seemed believable that Sue would vanquish her disease or at least outlast it until a cure was found that was right for her.
The one time that the thought "Terminal" crossed my mind was when Sue returned from England with tales of her attendance at the Queen's Jubilee party at Buckingham Palace. She was so resourceful that maybe she got tickets without the help of The Make-a-Wish Foundation but I preferred not to ask.
Sue's 40th birthday party was another huge event. We were invited to a party at a downtown restaurant, along with a couple of hundred other close friends. A few days later, Sue stopped coming out to the field with Fluffy; her husband came instead, taking a brief respite from his full time care of his now bedridden wife. I'd walk with him and our two dogs around the perimeter of the soccer field and ask what I could do to help. It got down to some very basic trips to the store to buy necessities as he could no longer leave Sue's side. There are items that are part of the downhill spiral of all humans that do not need to be gone into in intimate detail.
I took it upon myself to call the head of the Concierge department to ask for advice. Patient confidentiality prevented specific answers but she immediately knew who I was talking about, gave me some hypothetical instructions and set up an immediate visit from Hospice Care.
I learned a day or two later that the Hospice Nurse who came to spend the night was much appreciated and very timely. Sue died in the small hours of the morning.
I hadn't known that Sue's quest to wait for a cure would not stop at death's door. She had chosen to be frozen and stored as part of her belief in her own future revival.
To maintain her organs in the best possible condition, her husband and the hospice nurse took turns administering CPR for two hours until the Cryogenics team arrived to do what they do. They had been alerted to the pending need for their services and were waiting for the call. These teams are made up of specialists and local people who are signed up for the same services and who have undergone special training so that they can help one another at the end of life as we know it. I found out after that Sue had been on one of those on-call teams for others.
Sue is a big popsicle, in a storage facility in Arizona. She has been there for three years now. Her memorial service was held locally in a tranquil business meeting room with video-conferencing ability. There was a simulcast with the East Coast and France with multilingual tributes and translation services.
I am still impressed by Sue to this day. She lived and died as much on her own terms as any of us can master. Believing in anything takes work. She worked hard and who's to say she won't get the last word.

Bon Voyage to a Friend

Dear Friend,
I have been thinking about your pending departure for foreign shores all week. I am sorry that this Global World in which we live has diminished this momentous occasion. In another time there would have been steamer trunks and a last glass of champagne together on board a great liner before the stewards escorted the non-travelers ashore.
In our way, maybe we have had that, after all. We have certainly journeyed together through these years since we first met. We have never been deprived of champagne, nor lacked reasons or excuses to share a glass or two. You are the only person, other than The French Artist who was at both our wedding and that of our daughter, more than two decades later.
You were the chronicler of images before they went digital; so annoying with the camera, but so appreciated in hindsight. What's even more valued is having someone who can picture our common past experiences in her head, no photos or explanations required.
I am confident we will see more images as you join your new "life in progress". We'll be visiting soon enough to see for ourselves your impact on the local culture.
No Regrets!
Bon Voyage

Multipurpose

Take a dining room that serves as a water-color studio and a breakfast room that usually serves as the dining room but is too small, unless everyone knows one another and doesn't mind squeezing together. Take a friend who has a birthday and deserves to celebrate without doing the work at her house, so you invite a crowd of her friends who you don't really know. The solution, with the help of a couple of folding tables, is to turn the living room into the dining room. Voila!

Cream of watercress soup with French bread, garlic, anchovy butter croutons.

2 Legs of Lamb with Chanterelles mushrooms and rosemary

Belgian Endive Gratin

Quenelle/fingerling potatoes with persillade (chopped garlic and parsley)

Cheese Plate

Chocolate birthday cake (not home made)

A 1989 Epernay vintage champagne brought by a guest and quite a few other nice bottles as well.

Lethal fruit in secret sauce (that jar that gets topped up with all kinds of alcohol and fruit all year long)

There is not a plate or glass in the house that didn't get a work out last night. That was fun! 

Friendship Award

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

http://halfwaytofrance.blogspot.com/
http://atidingsofmagpies.blogspot.com/
http://le-puy.blogspot.com/
http://mollyredux.blogspot.com/
http://follywoods.blogspot.com

This award was given to me by Solitairemare and is greatly appreciated. I have only been blogging for a few of months so I can't come up with 8 recommendations. Of course Solitairemare would have been on my list if she didn't already have the award. The blogs I have listed are part of my daily travels. I hope that you also enjoy where they might lead you.