the art of home cooking

I'm in the den—maybe lying on the gold shag carpet, maybe slouched deep into the arm chair—and the tv's on. I've done at least some of my homework so I'm taking an hour out of the packed day of a teenager to veg in front of some videos or a rerun of The Facts of Life or Cheers. The tv's on but not so loud that I can't hear, sizzling above me, the dancing patter of grease in a hot sauce pan—the sound of home cooking, of mom being artful in the kitchen. She's standing just at the top of the stairs and through a doorway—or at least I've always pictured her standing there over the stove while the chicken or hamburger or pork chops and onions simmer loudly. I've always pictured her just standing there, her gaze infusing into my dinner a kind of nurture, a kind of mom-only-can-give care. Perhaps she is actually seated at the table, reading the newspaper or the New Yorker or doodling with charcoal pencils on a pad of drawing paper or the edge of the news; but I've always pictured her standing over the oven, no matter how late she's gotten home, nightly letting the aromas wafting out of her culinary creations pull the details of her workday away. Perhaps I too need to return to cooking, not just for healthy eating or creativity but for healthy living, for peace of mind.

a weight lifted

like the way your arms rise
if you press them into a doorsill

a weight
lifted
acts a little like a sea breeze
or that first spray of spring blossoms:

some things move
of their own volition

sometimes in a discernible moment
my heartbeat settles
or a smile finds its place again upon my cheeks

Raulito

It happens so simply—yet discernably. For days there are only two people who can console him when he cries. Then, one morning, his mother goes out, and in his wailing at the door he throws his arms around my legs and buries his face into my jeans at the knee. When I reach down for him, rather than stamping his feet or pushing me away as I expect, he accepts the embrace, nestles his cheek into my hair and sighs deeply to stop the tears. When he raises his face to look me in the eye, I think the crying will begin again as he registers that I am not her. But his eyes are dry now; they look relaxed as they connect with mine. Then a smile breaks out, as if he and I are sharing a secret; his eyes crinkle, his lips part, and now we are conspirators in adoration. I kiss him and his grin widens. I put a hand behind his head to hold his neck before gently swooshing him upside down toward the floor, and he laughs and laughs, then demands "más" with a giggle. I repeat the action over and over, him gleeful, me quietly reveling in having just, in the briefest of moments, gained the trust of my young nephew.

dare I?

"But if you'd try this: to be hand in my hand
as in the wineglass the wine is wine.
If you'd try this."

Rilke wrote that, and when I first read it, I felt in it a sorrow—an already having let go of hope. That's how I felt back then, when I was coming to accept that things were not going to work out with the first love of my life, and the poem was like a period at the end of a long sentence. If only you had tried this, I thought at the time. If only I had reached out my hand to you and asked.

I read the poem now with a sense of curious invitation, the but that previously seemed filled with regret now hinting at a gentle redirection of course that just might bring joy into the picture. But if you'd try this, I hear aloud in my head and feel a warm smile spread across my lips. If you'd try this, and serenity settles in.

Dare I ask it aloud this time?

losing balance (a first attempt at poetry after many years off)

the way a sailboat's keel
lets it right itself
after a wind blows it off center

I have something that stabilizes me
except it is not one entity
but a balance of many

and when it grows singular
I begin to dip
not just my gunwales into the sea spray
but also the sails that would guide me
and make me feel, to myself, known

(reflection after giving college advice to a high school junior)

Sometimes it can be hard to keep your mind from retreating: back to that time before anything was settled: that time when you were still deciding which way to step next. I can still see the images that filled my brain back then, see the myself of those years in the visual memories that glow brightly so many years later. So many images from those days are framed by tree branches -- my school embedded in 180 acres of mostly forest; my house encircled by evergreens and hardwoods; my weekends often unfolding in woods. Once a friend asked where I was applying to college, and what I remember more than my answer is the purple hue of the night sky behind the silhouettes of pine trees looming above us. Thousands of time I lay in my bed at night or through the morning and constructed my contemplations while watching the stars sparkle through the tree branches outside, the leaves rustle atop them, or a bird perch in their midst. I did my best daydreaming in the hammock at my grandparents' house, the feathery soft fishbone of each honey locust branch resting against the blue of the sky like dried leaves pressed onto construction paper. I said goodbye to the south from the front seat of a van trundling slowly down Pigeon Mountain, a good few months before leaving; it was April and the yellow of spring was warm all around me; the leaves were fresh and shaking gently in the warm breeze as though quietly applauding me. A year earlier, as I'd said goodbye to New England seated below pine needles, a flock of geese unsubmerged itself from bay waters in an instant of disturbinglingly loud wing clatter. A decade earlier I'd said my first and only prayer of this lifetime; lost deep in the woods behind summer camp, I'd known no other way to calm myself down. So many pinnacle moments of my life back then were surrounded by forestry. I felt no doubt that I'd always continue my romance with nature, my spiritual bond with what blossoms all around us.

I remember that me but don't feel that I still am her. I thought I would be for life, but you go to a college and then you find a profession and things unfold in such a way that segments of your existence feel disjointed. I wonder, sometimes, if I'd gone to a liberal arts college out in the woods if I'd be doing things the old way now, if I'd still go hiking and camping and know how to light camp stoves and pitch tarps in any setting. I miss that me that found such exaltation in simple things. It's so easy to retreat back to those memories, to bemoan the loss of the realities behind them. Yet it is enriching to discover other existences, to come to know them deeply as well. It is invigorating in its own right to explore worlds unknown to me: to intermix the loves of my past with the heartfelt investigations of the present.

regret

If I had to paint regret into a picture, I would capture the face of a long-ago friend surrounded by leaves falling on an autumn afternoon. He had eyes that always seemed to me to twinkle with brightness; on the day from which the memory comes, his whole being seemed to float and shimmer. There was something on his face that afternoon, something in the air between us; there was a moment that felt like a movie-ending moment. It lasted long enough for the thought to pass through my head that he was about to rescue me from another love that had consumed me for years and that was beginning to seem unrequited; he was going to rescue me and replace that with something better, surer, stronger.

In that moment, when I felt that he was about to kiss me, I rewound the tape in my brain to reconsider something he had said as we hiked that morning. "We should get a dog," he'd said, and I'd looked at him strangely, so he'd corrected his use of pronoun. I should have turned to face him just then, with the yellow beech leaves surrounding us standing as witnesses, and told him that since I'd met him when I was 18 I'd been measuring men against him. I should have told him that I had imagined marrying him, had pictured walking through a green field near the ocean and agreeing to move with him to whatever distant place he felt like living next, as he was a wanderer and an explorer, and I knew this country could only hold him put so long.

Though we had been friends for years at the time, this was the first time I had felt a romantic overture from him, and it took me by surprise. It's not that I was uninterested; in fact, I had been quite smitten with him when I first met him, as we built a quick and strong bond, and he, a few years older, seemed magically mature and interesting. But he was seriously committed back then, as good as engaged, and by the time he got cheated on and heart-broken from half-way across the globe, I had concluded that he thought of me only as a little sister and stopped allowing myself to consider him romantically.

Regret comes not from knowing that somehow I let that moment close with no kissing. My regret is knowing that I allowed the dazzling air between us to blow past so many times, over so many years. That I spent hours upon hours, conversation after conversation, pining to him about my other love interest. That though part of me hoped he would draw me away from that situation, I still built a wall around myself, made myself seem to him unavailable—mind and heart already set on someone.

Years later, after he had moved away and while I was visiting one weekend, those who spent time with us together told me he was blatantly in love with me. I wouldn't have believed it if just one had said it; but two said it separately: one of my oldest friends in the world and my mother. The latter asked me how I could be so blind, and I, in shock at the prospect, protested—having fully, after that kiss-less afternoon, come to believe that he thought of me platonically. But when I rewound the tape in my brain that time, I could see it: that the eyes glowed so brightly when near me, that the air became light and joyful when it drew us together.

By then, however, it was too late. When I tried to bring it up, he cut me off. He was already dating her by then—the woman he did one day marry. He got angry when I tried to talk about it. So I let it rest. Instead of making a declaration, I let potential love rest.

I don't believe in wallowing in regret; I find that counterproductive, depressing, self-halting. Instead I try to use it as a guidepost—as a lodestar to lead me down surer paths in the future. Yet every time I come near this particular path, the path of broaching topics that would reshape boundaries, I find myself hesitating. Perhaps that is because he and the other one from that time each skewed my sense of perception—the one seeming to love me but saying it wasn't quite so, the other not seeming to love me like that and yet perhaps all along doing so. They skewed my internal compass, my ability to accurately judge where the line between friendship and romance lies, so that now, many years later, I hang back from it, daydream and speculate rather than declare, inquire, or explore. I may not wallow in my regret, but I still have to not let it wall me in.