Some years ago, I careened off the Christmas track so lovingly created and maintained by manufacturers, marketers, retailers, and the media. When I came to, there was a bump on my head, and I discovered that I had landed in the dark part of Holiday Forest.
Shortly thereafter Scrooge-like tendencies began to appear, thoughts of “Bah Humbug” danced in my head with no sugar plum fairies to carry them away, and the word Grinch entered the vocabulary of my self-concept.
While these symptoms have not worsened, neither have they shown any signs of diminution.
This autumn while I was flying across the Atlantic, I took some time to think about what had gone wrong. My conclusion was that I had not gone wrong at all; it was the world which became deranged.
What does Black Friday, Black Monday, getting up at 5:00 am the day after Thanksgiving, the need to find “the perfect present,” the compusion to acquire the really “hot” item have to do with Christmas.
Not much.
At the Christmas Concert I attended last weekend, the choir sang Harold Darke’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem “In the Bleak Mid-Winter. “ It is one of the carols performed almost every year in “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England**,
Here’s the text of this great and solemn carol:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
Love, simply, is the message of Christmas. Nothing more, but nothing less.
The rest of it is cacophony, joyous cacophony perhaps, but in today’s zeitgeist, the noise drowns out nearly everything else.
It’s a good time to stick to the basics.
Cheers to you and yours,
**The service is broadcast live on Christmas Eve Morning at 10 am Eastern Time on hundreds of public radio stations across the United States, many of which repeat the broadcast on Christmas Day. That’s radio, not television, and it is also available on the BBC World Service.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Getting Hip The Hard Way
Having just navigated through the replacement of a hip and the first stage of recovery, I am now able to reflect on the last couple of years…the decline of function, the increase of pain, and my continuing impression of Treasure Island's Long John Silver, with his peg-legged gait, before I was wheeled into Surgery and put in the hands of a doctor whose work gives every indication of allowing me to live in a world with a much wider orbit than previously.
There is nothing on earth which can appropriately measure my gratitude for his and his colleagues’ skills in helping me get another shot at being able to walk comfortably. I even dream of a trip to Scotland and a hike around my favorite loch.
But here is what I don’t get and probably never will: Why did I get the best advice in dealing with my declining hip from a complete stranger in London, my stockbroker, and an old friend?
The people in the white coats were helpful, interested, and happy to prescribe physical therapy, the now rejected anti-inflammatories like VIOXX and Celebrex (and for a time these meds did help some), and home exercise.
Last year when the pain got to the point where I would do anything just to get through a day and a night without being driven bonkers by the pain, I felt I was hitting the wall. Then on a trip to London, my medical luck began to change. On a guided walk one Sunday morning, I was struggling to keep up with the group, when one of us came over to me and asked for my cane, and I was so surprised, I just handed it over, feeling like such a dumb cluck. The cane was adjustable, and she lengthened it some, and gave it back, saying, “Try this.” Recovering somewhat, I said something like, “Well, but..how…why.” I can be very good with words sometimes.
She responded, “Oh, well maybe it’s my thirty years as a physical therapist, maybe it’s because I got a new hip at Johns Hopkins seven months ago, or maybe I just recognized your walk.” For the rest of the morning, when the guide wasn’t talking, I was asking questions about hip replacement and getting good answers. She recommended some meditation tapes, and after I overcame my intuitive dislike of the prospect of some middle aged woman with new-agey flute music playing behind her telling me I should feel better about myself, I bought a couple and found the damn things actually helped.
Fast forward to last September and a phone conversation I was having with my broker. She asked about the hip, received a frank answer, and asked if I had ever tried water therapy. I described an attempt to do some of that in a YMCA pool, without much success.
She told me about a center with a therapy pool and recommended I get an evaluation. At that point, the pain told me I had little to lose, so off I went for my assessment, first on dry land and then in the 91 degree (F) therapy pool. The therapist said they could help me, and when I got back to the car, I did not know whether to laugh at the irony of finding this place so late in my struggle or cry.
So I signed up and began the long process of preparing for my surgery. Three to four mornings a week I was in the pool being trained by a therapist, and once my program was developed, I showed up and did it on my own. And this was the best thing I did. Period. Full stop. By the time the doors to the Operating Room swung open, I was ready, not just for the operation, but for the recovery from the surgery.
The old friend asked about my hip and recommended I see a masseuse she had discovered. I demurred, probably the usual guy thing. A few weeks later, the friend prodded, and I knew better than to resist. And so the masseuse helped get me and my hip ready to receive the titanium, polyethylene, and ceramic replacement.
I went straight home from the hospital to my home where my two sisters came over consecutive weeks and gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received – their attention, support, and love. It was the first time we’d been alone together in half a century without spouses, children, pets, and so on, and my recuperative incapacities notwithstanding, it was a wonderful time.
I’m still using the meditation recordings; I’m back in the pool being trained to help me learn a normal gait; and I’m still getting massage. I have every hope that what I have learned and implemented in my daily life will help as I travel on.
In this day and age, we all have to be active, indeed aggressive, advocates for coping with our disabilities, whatever they may be. Books, web-sites, networking, asking questions of everyone who is or has dealt with a situation like yours can be incredibly useful in improving your coping skills, providing the resources for better questions when you do deal with the medical establishment, and improving your life and perhaps delaying surgery for a bit.
Yes, I have been very lucky, stimulated by pain and assisted by friends and strangers, accompanied by perseverance, something I learned from a paraplegic scotty who owned me years ago, but that's another story for another time.
There is nothing on earth which can appropriately measure my gratitude for his and his colleagues’ skills in helping me get another shot at being able to walk comfortably. I even dream of a trip to Scotland and a hike around my favorite loch.
But here is what I don’t get and probably never will: Why did I get the best advice in dealing with my declining hip from a complete stranger in London, my stockbroker, and an old friend?
The people in the white coats were helpful, interested, and happy to prescribe physical therapy, the now rejected anti-inflammatories like VIOXX and Celebrex (and for a time these meds did help some), and home exercise.
Last year when the pain got to the point where I would do anything just to get through a day and a night without being driven bonkers by the pain, I felt I was hitting the wall. Then on a trip to London, my medical luck began to change. On a guided walk one Sunday morning, I was struggling to keep up with the group, when one of us came over to me and asked for my cane, and I was so surprised, I just handed it over, feeling like such a dumb cluck. The cane was adjustable, and she lengthened it some, and gave it back, saying, “Try this.” Recovering somewhat, I said something like, “Well, but..how…why.” I can be very good with words sometimes.
She responded, “Oh, well maybe it’s my thirty years as a physical therapist, maybe it’s because I got a new hip at Johns Hopkins seven months ago, or maybe I just recognized your walk.” For the rest of the morning, when the guide wasn’t talking, I was asking questions about hip replacement and getting good answers. She recommended some meditation tapes, and after I overcame my intuitive dislike of the prospect of some middle aged woman with new-agey flute music playing behind her telling me I should feel better about myself, I bought a couple and found the damn things actually helped.
Fast forward to last September and a phone conversation I was having with my broker. She asked about the hip, received a frank answer, and asked if I had ever tried water therapy. I described an attempt to do some of that in a YMCA pool, without much success.
She told me about a center with a therapy pool and recommended I get an evaluation. At that point, the pain told me I had little to lose, so off I went for my assessment, first on dry land and then in the 91 degree (F) therapy pool. The therapist said they could help me, and when I got back to the car, I did not know whether to laugh at the irony of finding this place so late in my struggle or cry.
So I signed up and began the long process of preparing for my surgery. Three to four mornings a week I was in the pool being trained by a therapist, and once my program was developed, I showed up and did it on my own. And this was the best thing I did. Period. Full stop. By the time the doors to the Operating Room swung open, I was ready, not just for the operation, but for the recovery from the surgery.
The old friend asked about my hip and recommended I see a masseuse she had discovered. I demurred, probably the usual guy thing. A few weeks later, the friend prodded, and I knew better than to resist. And so the masseuse helped get me and my hip ready to receive the titanium, polyethylene, and ceramic replacement.
I went straight home from the hospital to my home where my two sisters came over consecutive weeks and gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received – their attention, support, and love. It was the first time we’d been alone together in half a century without spouses, children, pets, and so on, and my recuperative incapacities notwithstanding, it was a wonderful time.
I’m still using the meditation recordings; I’m back in the pool being trained to help me learn a normal gait; and I’m still getting massage. I have every hope that what I have learned and implemented in my daily life will help as I travel on.
In this day and age, we all have to be active, indeed aggressive, advocates for coping with our disabilities, whatever they may be. Books, web-sites, networking, asking questions of everyone who is or has dealt with a situation like yours can be incredibly useful in improving your coping skills, providing the resources for better questions when you do deal with the medical establishment, and improving your life and perhaps delaying surgery for a bit.
Yes, I have been very lucky, stimulated by pain and assisted by friends and strangers, accompanied by perseverance, something I learned from a paraplegic scotty who owned me years ago, but that's another story for another time.
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Preparing For Winter
We had a very dry summer, followed by a somewhat dry autumn; the leaves lacked their usual brilliant color, but under the circumstances, they did exactly what they were supposed to do – warn us that “it” was coming again.
“It” is the cold and the snow and all the little things which hurry along under their skirts, and these have to do mainly with warmth and safety. If you’ve lived here long enough, you don’t think that much about doing: A day arrives, there is the barely audible “click” in your brain, and everything changes.
The garage is organized so that an automobile will actually be able to fit inside it. This is made possible by moving herbicides to the warm basement of the house so that they will be “safe,” and useable again next Spring when you move them back to the garage so that you can find them again in the autumn to put back in the basement. Unless they have reached their “use by date,” in which case youthrow them out recycle them appropriately.
Back in the corner of the garage, the snow tires have sat since the Spring. Now is the time to get them into the back of the car to take them to the tire place where a husky lad will put them on the car and place the “summer tires” in the back of the car. This gives you an early season opportunity to hurt your back or at least say that you hurt your back. What brings relief to your back is to find someone else to do the snow blowing or shoveling. Money is likely involved, but this is a good investment – in fact, among the best.
The same goes for removing the fallen leaves from the yard. Find somebody who will do it for you. Write the check. Complain for no more than three days about the cost, and give daily thanks for the fact that you have chosen to provide employment in our difficult economy and no longer choose to do it yourself.
I have some driveway markers, basically green poles on a spring which help keep people on the driveway. They are an attractive dark green color until you try to find the base in the grassy ground – also dark green. If you wait until the grass is no longer dark green, the ground may be too hard to dig the hole for any new markers. There will come a point when you leave the markers in the garage next to the tires and await perfect installation conditions which never seem to arrive.
The winter clothes which may have been properly stored in the basement (or may not have if summer cold weather arrived as the clothes were finding their own way down a couple of floors). If the latter situation applies, be sure to check the laundry and other nearby locations. Once the clothes are returned to their winter locations, check them for wear, newly observed design and styling flaws, and then put them in the place where they probably should be all the time anyway.
Shovels, ice chippers, bags of sand, and similar tools of the season need to be placed by the front door, and when this happens you are reminded to turn off the outside faucets. In order to do this, one frequently has to step over the winter clothes which were not put away, so one must be careful.
Winter requires an array of footwear for warmth and safety. When I was a kid, we had black galoshes with metal buckles. Ugly and cold, but at least they kept your feet dry. Nowadays you can choose between ugly insulated boots, boots with felt insulation, so big you have to walk like a giant in them, slip-on boots with hearty soles, thingies with sharp points that slip over boots for walking on ice. Beyond that, there are walking sleds (“Sparks, as they call them in Scandinavia), walking poles, cross country skiis, snow shoes.
Others who live here believe that engines are essential in the winter – snowmobiles and similar contrivances. Many of us believe that these provide too much pleasure in the winter and are creatures of the devil, environmentally wasteful, and so, in a word, purposeless. I’m sorry to report that these machines and their brethren seem to be a very popular way of dealing with early darkness and perennial cold and snow – there is almost always the so.
The furnace needs to be checked and tuned, supplies of cocoa and whisky to be aggregated (part of blizzard prevention), extra blankets put on or near the beds, the battery powered radio located in case of power failure), the safety supplies for the car (blankets, ice scrapers (several for different kinds of ice and as back-up), sleeping bag, small shovel, bag of sand, coffee can for individual relief. Inside the house those of us without a lot of hair look around the nightcap to be found, second only in importance to blankets and duvets. Hot water bottles are also a good investment. Not only are they warm, but if you are surprised by them, you can learn the difference between first and second degree burns.
Lastly, the winter vocabulary returns to active use. This is aided by a lot of preparatory discussion having to do changes in the weather – looks like snow, could be unpleasant tomorrow, have to change the oil in the car, better tell the cat, bring in the brass monkeys – all that discussion which is really the way we warn each other and assure each other that we are prepared and prepared to endure it together.
Our vocabularies change, too, so that windchill, black ice, turning into a skid, braking distance, blue wax, kitty litter (a sand substitute), and a whole host of curse words not required the rest of the year arrive as though freshly minted. Other words used during this time are Florida, Mexico, Vegas, California, the Caribbean, Hawaii, even Iowa.
But of course, we never are completely prepared for winter, not even for the gray day when the first white flakes descend from the sky, land, linger for just an instant before the last heat of the ground melts them. That experience is as old as we are, but new and simple and beautiful each autumn.
And then, alas, experience starts to accumulate and linger on our roads and sidewalks, and steps. Outwardly we continue to complain, but secretly we just look forward to crawling into our beds, snuggling under the covers with a good book, surrounded by the quiet of a winter’s night and being grateful just for being warm.
The garage is organized so that an automobile will actually be able to fit inside it. This is made possible by moving herbicides to the warm basement of the house so that they will be “safe,” and useable again next Spring when you move them back to the garage so that you can find them again in the autumn to put back in the basement. Unless they have reached their “use by date,” in which case you
Back in the corner of the garage, the snow tires have sat since the Spring. Now is the time to get them into the back of the car to take them to the tire place where a husky lad will put them on the car and place the “summer tires” in the back of the car. This gives you an early season opportunity to hurt your back or at least say that you hurt your back. What brings relief to your back is to find someone else to do the snow blowing or shoveling. Money is likely involved, but this is a good investment – in fact, among the best.
The same goes for removing the fallen leaves from the yard. Find somebody who will do it for you. Write the check. Complain for no more than three days about the cost, and give daily thanks for the fact that you have chosen to provide employment in our difficult economy and no longer choose to do it yourself.
I have some driveway markers, basically green poles on a spring which help keep people on the driveway. They are an attractive dark green color until you try to find the base in the grassy ground – also dark green. If you wait until the grass is no longer dark green, the ground may be too hard to dig the hole for any new markers. There will come a point when you leave the markers in the garage next to the tires and await perfect installation conditions which never seem to arrive.
The winter clothes which may have been properly stored in the basement (or may not have if summer cold weather arrived as the clothes were finding their own way down a couple of floors). If the latter situation applies, be sure to check the laundry and other nearby locations. Once the clothes are returned to their winter locations, check them for wear, newly observed design and styling flaws, and then put them in the place where they probably should be all the time anyway.
Shovels, ice chippers, bags of sand, and similar tools of the season need to be placed by the front door, and when this happens you are reminded to turn off the outside faucets. In order to do this, one frequently has to step over the winter clothes which were not put away, so one must be careful.
Winter requires an array of footwear for warmth and safety. When I was a kid, we had black galoshes with metal buckles. Ugly and cold, but at least they kept your feet dry. Nowadays you can choose between ugly insulated boots, boots with felt insulation, so big you have to walk like a giant in them, slip-on boots with hearty soles, thingies with sharp points that slip over boots for walking on ice. Beyond that, there are walking sleds (“Sparks, as they call them in Scandinavia), walking poles, cross country skiis, snow shoes.
Others who live here believe that engines are essential in the winter – snowmobiles and similar contrivances. Many of us believe that these provide too much pleasure in the winter and are creatures of the devil, environmentally wasteful, and so, in a word, purposeless. I’m sorry to report that these machines and their brethren seem to be a very popular way of dealing with early darkness and perennial cold and snow – there is almost always the so.
The furnace needs to be checked and tuned, supplies of cocoa and whisky to be aggregated (part of blizzard prevention), extra blankets put on or near the beds, the battery powered radio located in case of power failure), the safety supplies for the car (blankets, ice scrapers (several for different kinds of ice and as back-up), sleeping bag, small shovel, bag of sand, coffee can for individual relief. Inside the house those of us without a lot of hair look around the nightcap to be found, second only in importance to blankets and duvets. Hot water bottles are also a good investment. Not only are they warm, but if you are surprised by them, you can learn the difference between first and second degree burns.
Lastly, the winter vocabulary returns to active use. This is aided by a lot of preparatory discussion having to do changes in the weather – looks like snow, could be unpleasant tomorrow, have to change the oil in the car, better tell the cat, bring in the brass monkeys – all that discussion which is really the way we warn each other and assure each other that we are prepared and prepared to endure it together.
Our vocabularies change, too, so that windchill, black ice, turning into a skid, braking distance, blue wax, kitty litter (a sand substitute), and a whole host of curse words not required the rest of the year arrive as though freshly minted. Other words used during this time are Florida, Mexico, Vegas, California, the Caribbean, Hawaii, even Iowa.
But of course, we never are completely prepared for winter, not even for the gray day when the first white flakes descend from the sky, land, linger for just an instant before the last heat of the ground melts them. That experience is as old as we are, but new and simple and beautiful each autumn.
And then, alas, experience starts to accumulate and linger on our roads and sidewalks, and steps. Outwardly we continue to complain, but secretly we just look forward to crawling into our beds, snuggling under the covers with a good book, surrounded by the quiet of a winter’s night and being grateful just for being warm.
Friday, December 10, 2004
How I Found Courage
A couple of days before Thanksgiving, I sat down and wrote a screed, and I am thankful I didn’t put it up on the site. It was off the mark, a bit sour, and not what I intended. What follows comes closer to the mark.
Each year I find I am thankful for yet another “something” which has come into my life, and this year what tops the list is a place called “Courage Center.”
For the last several years my right hip has started to deteriorate, and the discomfort has moved from sporadic to continual to continuous, and the situation finally got to the point where I’m scheduled for a replacement hip early in the New Year.
I tried everything I could think of to delay the surgery – glucosamine/chondroitin, riding a bike followed by riding a semi-recumbent bike, active stretching and strengthening, physical therapy, anti-inflammatories – including the now infamous VIOXX.
On the recommendation of a physical therapist from Baltimore whom I met by chance on a walk in London (a story for another time), I bought some meditation tapes and found them far more helpful than I ever would have imagined..new age music and all.
Then one day, I was talking to my stockbroker, and she listened to the hip update and then recommended I go out to a place called Courage Center for some work in their therapy pool. I figured it beat slaughtering a chicken and slathering the warm fat on my hip, so in a “what the hell” mood which failed to disguise the true level of my desperation, I made an appointment for an evaluation.
I met one of their physical therapists in the reception area, and on the hike down to the room where she was going to assess my state of hip, I felt like carrion being watched by a hungry eagle. By the time we arrived, she had it pretty well sorted out but confirmed it with the usual pushing and pulling and aches and pains.
Then we got in the pool, and I learned about the advantages of 91 degree (Fahrenheit) water, of working out in an environment of nearly zero gravity, and discovering exercises which would help my hip and prepare me for the day when I would have a new hip which would be an improvement over what I’ve got now.
Truth to tell, I got in my car after that first session, and I didn’t know whether to laugh - almost angrily - at my not having learned about the place far earlier than I did or to cry at my never having felt so good after a workout with the hip in its sad state.
I had always thought that the Courage Center was for people with disabilities, serious physical problems; yes, and, it turned out, I was one of them. My disability was pretty modest compared to some of the people helped by the staff at Courage Center, but that didn’t matter.
So for several weeks Kathy trained me to do a water program which would help me, and then I was allowed to come work out on my own. Every morning when I get up and head for the pool, I have exactly the same set of feelings I had when I was a hockey playing kid and it was time to go to the rink – anticipation bordering on excitement, and the urge to tear out of the house and go get in the pool.
As a result of our efforts, I shall probably be better prepared to cope with the surgery and the period immediately thereafter, and I know I’ll count the days until I can get back in the pool.
In the meantime, I’m getting to know some of the others working out in the pool, to appreciate what they’ve overcome with assistance and hard work, and to ease myself into the ad hoc community which ebbs and flows in the pool each workout.
I may be a latecomer to this remarkable place, but I shall always be deeply thankful for the facilities, services, and staff of Courage Center, yet another reason why I'm glad I live in Minnesota.
Each year I find I am thankful for yet another “something” which has come into my life, and this year what tops the list is a place called “Courage Center.”
For the last several years my right hip has started to deteriorate, and the discomfort has moved from sporadic to continual to continuous, and the situation finally got to the point where I’m scheduled for a replacement hip early in the New Year.
I tried everything I could think of to delay the surgery – glucosamine/chondroitin, riding a bike followed by riding a semi-recumbent bike, active stretching and strengthening, physical therapy, anti-inflammatories – including the now infamous VIOXX.
On the recommendation of a physical therapist from Baltimore whom I met by chance on a walk in London (a story for another time), I bought some meditation tapes and found them far more helpful than I ever would have imagined..new age music and all.
Then one day, I was talking to my stockbroker, and she listened to the hip update and then recommended I go out to a place called Courage Center for some work in their therapy pool. I figured it beat slaughtering a chicken and slathering the warm fat on my hip, so in a “what the hell” mood which failed to disguise the true level of my desperation, I made an appointment for an evaluation.
I met one of their physical therapists in the reception area, and on the hike down to the room where she was going to assess my state of hip, I felt like carrion being watched by a hungry eagle. By the time we arrived, she had it pretty well sorted out but confirmed it with the usual pushing and pulling and aches and pains.
Then we got in the pool, and I learned about the advantages of 91 degree (Fahrenheit) water, of working out in an environment of nearly zero gravity, and discovering exercises which would help my hip and prepare me for the day when I would have a new hip which would be an improvement over what I’ve got now.
Truth to tell, I got in my car after that first session, and I didn’t know whether to laugh - almost angrily - at my not having learned about the place far earlier than I did or to cry at my never having felt so good after a workout with the hip in its sad state.
I had always thought that the Courage Center was for people with disabilities, serious physical problems; yes, and, it turned out, I was one of them. My disability was pretty modest compared to some of the people helped by the staff at Courage Center, but that didn’t matter.
So for several weeks Kathy trained me to do a water program which would help me, and then I was allowed to come work out on my own. Every morning when I get up and head for the pool, I have exactly the same set of feelings I had when I was a hockey playing kid and it was time to go to the rink – anticipation bordering on excitement, and the urge to tear out of the house and go get in the pool.
As a result of our efforts, I shall probably be better prepared to cope with the surgery and the period immediately thereafter, and I know I’ll count the days until I can get back in the pool.
In the meantime, I’m getting to know some of the others working out in the pool, to appreciate what they’ve overcome with assistance and hard work, and to ease myself into the ad hoc community which ebbs and flows in the pool each workout.
I may be a latecomer to this remarkable place, but I shall always be deeply thankful for the facilities, services, and staff of Courage Center, yet another reason why I'm glad I live in Minnesota.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Remembering Julia Child
One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was “Mastering The Art of French Cooking,” by Julia Child and Simone Beck, and to this day, I am unable to explain why I did. As a bachelor in his first teaching position, my idea of cooking was cubed steak, chipped beef, hot dogs, and hamburgers. There was the occasional tuna salad, but rarely any fish, and nothing ever very complicated.
The core of my my bachelor cuisine was the hamburger, and it was clear that this apple had not rolled very far from the tree.
My parents’ idea of dinner was meat, potatoes, sometimes accompanied by soup or a salad, and dessert, and my mother was happiest if someone else would prepare it, and any bipedal mammal met her minimum qualifications. When she found herself desperate on Tuesday…nearly every Tuesday, she would prepare cheese soufflé, and in the summer this would be accompanied by petit pan squash. I learned early on to get on the phone Tuesday morning to see whether I could cadge a dinner in a non-cheese soufflé home, and to my good fortune, there were many such households.
About two years after I had been cooking for myself, I realized that I was in a rut which was beginning to resemble an abyss, so it was Julia Child who helped me climb out. Most of the recipes were far too complex for me, especially the one for making French bread which took more than a dozen pages, and I will confess that I didn’t prepare many of her dishes.
What Julia Child did for me was to show me that cooking could be serious and fun, and that the journey could be fascinating and very tasty, and the easiest way for me to learn was to read cookbooks. So I have for the last several decades, and they have led me in interesting directions, just not as far as I once might have hoped.
It’s taken me a long time to be comfortable in the kitchen, and over the years I’ve subjected lots of guests to some good food and some flaming failures, and invariably the failures are more interesting than the successes.
These days, I keep things simple – having a bad hip tends to limit my time standing at much of anything, but come the autumn, I’ll be back making bagels (I never have had the courage to return to that French bread recipe.)
With Julia Child’s passing, an era in cooking, cookbooks, and cooking on television has drawn to a close, but it was Julia who led us down the path of discovery. As she said once, if it hadn’t been she, it would have been someone else, but someone else might not have been as warm, as self-effacing, as natural as Julia was.
She was not only a cook; she was one of the great teachers in our lives, and we were oh so lucky to have been able to come along on part of her long and wonderful life.
Bon appetit!
The core of my my bachelor cuisine was the hamburger, and it was clear that this apple had not rolled very far from the tree.
My parents’ idea of dinner was meat, potatoes, sometimes accompanied by soup or a salad, and dessert, and my mother was happiest if someone else would prepare it, and any bipedal mammal met her minimum qualifications. When she found herself desperate on Tuesday…nearly every Tuesday, she would prepare cheese soufflé, and in the summer this would be accompanied by petit pan squash. I learned early on to get on the phone Tuesday morning to see whether I could cadge a dinner in a non-cheese soufflé home, and to my good fortune, there were many such households.
About two years after I had been cooking for myself, I realized that I was in a rut which was beginning to resemble an abyss, so it was Julia Child who helped me climb out. Most of the recipes were far too complex for me, especially the one for making French bread which took more than a dozen pages, and I will confess that I didn’t prepare many of her dishes.
What Julia Child did for me was to show me that cooking could be serious and fun, and that the journey could be fascinating and very tasty, and the easiest way for me to learn was to read cookbooks. So I have for the last several decades, and they have led me in interesting directions, just not as far as I once might have hoped.
It’s taken me a long time to be comfortable in the kitchen, and over the years I’ve subjected lots of guests to some good food and some flaming failures, and invariably the failures are more interesting than the successes.
These days, I keep things simple – having a bad hip tends to limit my time standing at much of anything, but come the autumn, I’ll be back making bagels (I never have had the courage to return to that French bread recipe.)
With Julia Child’s passing, an era in cooking, cookbooks, and cooking on television has drawn to a close, but it was Julia who led us down the path of discovery. As she said once, if it hadn’t been she, it would have been someone else, but someone else might not have been as warm, as self-effacing, as natural as Julia was.
She was not only a cook; she was one of the great teachers in our lives, and we were oh so lucky to have been able to come along on part of her long and wonderful life.
Bon appetit!
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