Recipe for Five Garden Tomato Basil Soup

1.      Buy four Oxheart tomato plants from a chatty patient's wife who claims they are from an heirloom plant that originated in Sicily.

2.      Gather the supplies you will need to foster plant life in a tiny urban backyard devastated by the three-foot snows of late winter in early 2010: potting soil with fertilizer, large pots.

3.      Discover you don't have enough space in one giant fiberglass planter to sustain four plants (or rather, have your visiting mother point this out to you, because at this point agriculture is still The Great Unknown).

4.      Give the remaining three plants to your neighbors.

5.      Nestle the seedling in your huge pot, all the while arguing with your mother about whether the plant will get enough drainage and sun and water and whether it will grow large enough to ever possibly need the three-foot tall wire cage support that dwarfs it now.

6.      Water it.

7.      And wait.

8.     Watch the plant grow tall, your heart lifting with pride and joy.  Smile a little to yourself when you’re at work and you stop to think about the tomato blossoms.

9.      Watch your neighbors' tomato plants grow full, their baby tomatoes like clusters of shelled peas among the dark green leaves.

10.  Worry a little bit.

11.   Look at your tomato plant with resentment.

12.  Have your mother rebuke you for yelling at your tomato plant.  (“No wonder it's not growing well with the way you talk to it!”)

13.  Freak out about the dark brown stain spreading from the blossom-end on the baby tomatoes.

14.  Google “Tomato Blight.”

15.   Ask your mother to sprinkle crushed up egg shells on the soil and pray the calcium will be absorbed quickly.

16.  Cut off all of the infected green tomatoes and throw them in a corner by the garage steps, so your plant can see the corpses of those who have chosen the wrong path in their tomato life.

17.   Punish your plant by not watering it.

18.  Listen to your mother nag you about watering your plant.

19.  Ask your tomato plant why it can't be more like your herbs.  They grow like weeds with little care and only minimal attention.

20. Cull another round of blighty tomatoes.

21.  Harvest the first deformed fruit of your labor.  Have your mother try it, because you don't eat raw tomatoes.

22. Humbly accept a handful of large, ripe, show-offy tomatoes from your neighbors.

23. Gratefully take a bag of San Remo tomatoes from your coworker.

24. Decide to make soup.

25.  Beg for tomatoes from another coworker.

26. Pick Roma tomatoes from your aunt's plants that are so loaded with fruit that they have collapsed under the weight.  Mutter disgruntedly as you fill a reusable shopping tote with ripe tomatoes.

27.  Remove any remaining stems from 3-4 lbs of tomatoes (your plants only contribute four small tomatoes to the pile, try not to weep).

28. Quarter the large tomatoes, halve the small tomatoes (leave any Grape tomatoes whole). 

29. Throw all into a huge stock pot that your best friend bought you for Christmas and haven't used until today because you've almost given up on cooking.

30. Stew tomatoes for 1-2 hours, until soupy.

31.  Transfer tomatoes into a blender, add a fistful of fresh basil.  (You may have to make 2 or more separate batches depending on the amount of tomatoes you've grown/accepted/stolen.)

32.  Puree.  Secretly rejoice that the tomatoes are finally getting what's coming to them.

33. Transfer back to the pot.

34. Add 2 tablespoons of butter.  Or the whole stick.  You deserve it by now.

35.  Add 1-2 cups of heavy cream.

36. Add salt and pepper to taste.

37.  Serve hot with bread (brush thick slices of baguette with olive oil, sprinkle with kosher salt and toast under the broiler) or just stand over the counter and suck soup from the ladle.

38. Take a Rubbermaid container full of soup to your mother.

39. And thank her.







Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Lobster Fishing



"I had a farm in Africa."

            Remember the beginning of the film Out of Africa?  Meryl Streep with that affected Danish accent in voice-over: “I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”  Cue the swelling brass of John Barry's stirring soundtrack.  The sweeping overhead shot of a train slicing through the African veldt along the Great Rift Valley.  Oh, this one will make you cry—the music, the cinematography, it all promises tragedy in store.

            “I had a farm in Africa.”  What poignant memory is in these six words.  What loss. Meryl Streep's character (real-life memoirist Karen von Blixen) spent seventeen years in Kenya, from 1914-1931 struggling to run a coffee plantation.  During that time, she married, divorced, started a school for native children, and ultimately, found freedom from the repression of Victorian Denmark.

            Maybe I'm overdoing it to hear the soundtrack in my ears when I think of the past, but I had my own farm in Africa.  It was a handful of summers spent in Bedford for extended family reunions.  It was the last days of childhood running wild in the woods on the Chestnut Ridge.  Two years on a tropical island in the Philippine Sea.  A tour of the Lake Erie/Chautauqua Wine trail with a new friend.  Two weeks in Nova Scotia with a group of strangers who became friends.           

There is almost no single moment of my life during which I stop and think, “This will be a moment I’ll want to relive.  This is a moment that will make me ache with longing.  This moment will be so glorious in remembering that I won’t be able to think on it without pain.”  We never think that, do we? 

Nathaniel Hawthorne said “Our first youth is of no value: for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone.”  It's true of so much of our lives.  Is it a punishment to be so oblivious?  Or just a natural outcome of the overwhelming weight of the present? 

I cannot see the forest for the trees, but once, I had a farm in Africa. 



Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Bad Hair



Worrywort

                I'm worried about my garden plants.  I think about them when I wake up in the morning.  I think about them when I close my eyes at night.  I think about them when I see commercials showing intimate (and slightly uncomfortable) close-ups of fresh vegetables.  When I stand, overwhelmed, in the Giant Eagle produce section.  When I order the veggie blend with my thirty-seconds-rare steak at the Outback.  I dream about the pale, bell-like blossoms on my Gypsy pepper plant, the softly furred blooms of my Oxheart tomato plant.  

                At first, I fretted over the little plants, worried that their growth was slow, that every imagined deficiency proved my fault.  I water them too little.  I water them too much.  They get too little sun.  They get too much sun.  Do they lack for attention?  Should I not fondle the leaves?  Is that a yellow spot?!

                I'm failing.  I'm failing.

                Weeks ago, the first pepper blossom fell and in its place a tiny green swelling appeared.  It grew.  I relaxed.  And turned my focus to the towering, but fruitless tomato plant.  Then the hint of a tomato appeared, like a droplet of rainwater trapped amidst the green.  I thought I would be satisfied.  I thought I would find relief once the first fruits made an appearance.  But the worry is worse.  Now every morning and evening, I check the baby peppers and tomatoes, turn them gently to inspect the skin, test the weight and firmness.

                I'm understanding just how much worry is involved in taking care of something alive.  How did my parents survive all these years with the constant concern about my physical well-being?  I know they worry still.   Am I growing well?  Am I bearing fruit?  Can I weather the coming winter? 

                I've never been neurotic about taking care of an infant or child.  Even though I'm not a mother, I can hear the difference between the angry howl of a hungry baby and the high wail of a frightened baby.  I know how to lull little ones to sleep with heartbeat pats and low-throated humming.  I know how to feed them, bathe them, clothe them, entertain them with silly songs and simple games.  Babies make sense. 

                But these plants.  Oh, these plants.

                I love them.     



Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Didn't Wanna



I'm not Lazy! I'm Green!

      It's what we writer's DO.  We work on a piece of writing.  Rewrite it, revise, re-see, re-do, re-ray-me-fa-so-la-ti-do, and repeat.  Every mutation, every permutation of that piece of writing becomes stronger, better, more fit and able to face the world ahead. 
      I would never leave the house in a half-sewn dress. And I would never post an untried piece of writing.  It first needs the paring down and polish of a few workshops.  But recycling old writing...well, I'm not above that.

      I wrote this poem years ago, when struggling with my hatred of poetry.  Don't worry, we've reconciled.  Now I only vaguely dislike poetry and occasionally, on holidays, I let it take the children to its parents' house.    

The Wallpaper

My two great aunts stand

positioned around the room like pillars

blouses untucked and shirt-sleeves rolled up

past their dimpled elbows.  Armed with sharp scrapers

the cousins and I wait for Uncle Julius

to spray our section of wall with steaming water

from the dull gray cylinder.  We wait

while the water soaks in and the flat smell of the hot

damp paper radiates out from the wall.

It is hard work

this scraping away of memories

gouging with metallic force into layers of life.

It makes our shoulders ache.

Aunt Marie hums while she works

imagining how the new walls will look.

In only four short years she will leave this house

alone with its empty footsteps, whispers of laughter

the Thees and Thous of Uncle Julie’s formal prayers

drifting through the air like motes of dust

ghosts of child cousins playing in the creek out back.

The afternoon sun swings around the room

in a dusty golden arc.  Uncle Julie’s large white sideburns

stand out like exclamations against his work-reddened cheeks.

What a wonderful mess we are

arms covered in clots of colored paper

feet hidden by the soggy curls that slide off our scrapers.

I will remember the rustle and noise, the piles of scraps.

And sharp-eyed Aunt Elaine who once complimented me

on the shape of my nail beds and the way she stands back,

nods, and approves of the delicate clusters of rosebuds

covering the scrolls of new wallpaper

that lie like promises in the hallway.



Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: I'm Stuck

Herbs in the 'Burbs

Sweet basil across my palms.  Thyme crushed in the crooks of my fingers.  Oregano, spicy and lemony, rubbed between fingertips.  My hands perfumed.  I could stand here all day and press the fresh, green leaves to my nose.  Fondle.  Inhale. 

What do I want to say about my little potted backyard garden?  How accomplished I feel?  How rewarded? Zen?  Like herbs in a main course, my garden is a welcome addition, a complement to everyday life.  But it is only a taste—pleasing, tempting, and bittersweet.  I long for so much more than a backyard garden can ever give me. 

While I wait, I’ll take this bouquet garni and make you something wonderful.  


 


Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Recovering Thumbsucker

Lazy Man's Load

I believe that it’s okay to cut your toenails in a smooth curve.  Screw conventional wisdom.  Cutting your nails straight across is ugly and dangerous.  I don’t want sharp toenail corners that can lacerate my loved ones. 

Not only do I cut my toenails curved, I cut them short—really short.  So short the flesh around them beats pink.  It hurts to put on closed-toe shoes for the first few days.  But I get a sense of accomplishment from the knowledge that my work here is done.  Pedicure, check.  It’s as if the shorter I cut my toenails, the less I have to tend to them at all.  The closer I shave my legs, the smoother they’ll be.  The harder I scrub the toilet, the longer it will stay clean. The more vigorous the dusting, the less it will start to settle again. 

                It’s like I am trying to get ahead.  One more thing, one extra inch, and this’ll save me so much more time and effort in the future.  But what happens?  The dentist tells me I’m wearing away my teeth enamel.  My vacuum cleaner burns out.  The extra casserole I made gets furry with mold.  My clothing starts to fade from too many washings.

                Does it all boil down to the “lazy man’s load”—the sing-song phrase my father used to chant from the car as he watched me pile my arms up with too many bags of groceries?  

Oh, how broken am I that all my hard work is born of laziness?





Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Plantar Fasciitis



So. That about says it, I think.

Yep.