Take Me Out to the Ballgame

“Bring me some apples and crackerjack,” the young woman bellowed tunelessly, swaying in time to the organist and slopping her beer just a little bit. I’m not judging her for not knowing the lyrics to this standard American anthem, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The funny part was that the words were rolling across the gigantic screen, karaoke style, right in her line of vision. Some simply sing the wrong words with abandon, carefree in their ignorance and unaffected by perfectionists nearby. Good for her.

We were in the bleacher seats, directly behind center field. From here, we could visit several concessions dedicated specifically to sausage sandwiches, hamburgers, fried chicken and of course, the ubiquitous hot dogs and French fries. No salad, tofu or sushi for these fans. Actually, you can probably find these if you really want to. Cracker Jack now comes in bags, making it just too easy to cheat and find the prize before you get to the bottom. Prizes have also experienced an economic hit as paper jokes and games replace earlier baseball cards, plastic rings and temporary tattoos. I never did like Cracker Jack, but the prize inside drove me crazy, as did cereal boxes, in my youth.

The only time I enjoy drinking a beer is at baseball games and heat-of-the-day summer barbecues. So, despite the very chilly temperatures of this particular game day, I enjoyed a cold one. For the price of this lovely, plastic cup of nostalgia, I could have bought a case of high-end brand bottles. Ah, no matter. This is a rare event.

Usually, I bypass the ever-popular ball park hot dog, steaming and rubbery in its slightly stale bun, for a hockey puck hamburger. I was surprised and delighted to find that the burger was very nicely cooked on a fresh roll with lettuce, tomato and onion. The price of a single burger is $9 but that is not the most painful part of the story. The shocking addition to the menu posted on the wall overhead is the calorie count for these comestibles. Argh! Who needs to know that a single rocket burger has 710 calories? A double comes in at a whopping 1020 calories – more than half what I should consume in a day. Sigh. Add that to the beer and glorious garlic fries we enjoyed as an appetizer and technically I should not eat again until sometime next June. Do we really need to know this? No. A baseball game is not the time or place to worry about healthy food. I imagine there is not one redeeming ingredient in the Cracker Jack, ice cream or cheeseburger spring rolls either.

The bleacher seats are special in that they are populated mostly by folks who have purchased some kind of season ticket. This way, you end up sitting with the same people throughout the season and a familial camaraderie develops. As we shivered together, sitting on metal planks, the group around us shared stories, snarky observations about the Red Sox and leaped to their feet in outraged unison when a ball over the left field wall only yielded a double.

While I really love going to a baseball game, I am not a purist and was not above retreating to the warm, enclosed Mohegan Sun sports bar during the 7^th inning stretch. It was not so bad to watch the Yanks close out their winning game with a hot coffee in my hands and my toes thawing in my shoes. The bar has big screens covering all of the walls so you don’t miss a moment of action. What you might miss, however, is catching that long-shot hit to center field or having a little beer slopped on your jacket by an exuberant neighbor in the stands.

Cafe Gourmand

It seems that I am a little late to the table regarding my newest French food obsession: café gourmand. When I first noticed it offered on menus in France, I thought it was the Gallic take on fancy coffees like Irish coffee with Baileys or something highly sweet or flavored. I was not interested in such a thing, so ignored café gourmand. Quel dommage!

When dining with French friends last spring, they encouraged me to try a café gourmand. When they described it to me, I wanted to smack my forehead in regret. Quite simply, café gourmand is an after dinner coffee, accompanied by a few mini desserts. This was just too good to be true. Indeed, my tiny coffee cup was surrounded by five tiny pastries, each one a delightful bite. It was heavenly and satisfied my permanent sweet tooth without the commitment of an entire mousse au chocolat, which I could have happily devoured and regretted later.

Our family lived outside of Paris for three years at the turn of the last century. It was 1998 to 2001 but sounds so much more dramatic this way, n’est pas? Among the many, many cultural things we learned as Americans in a foreign country for the first time is that unlike home, the after-meal coffee could never, never accompany dessert. We received such looks of horror, disbelief, and disgust when we tried to order the two at once, that we got the message pretty quickly.

In the ensuing years, we return to France frequently and are comforted by the things that endear us to this beautiful country including, random railroad strikes, a mystifying inability to understand our accented attempt at their language, the perfect bread that exists only here, excellent wines that are affordable, and the most sublime roasted chicken on the planet. I have noticed recently, that portion sizes at restaurants have grown, though no one can really tell me why. This is not a good thing as before, we could enjoy a four course meal without groaning in regret. In the early days of our Francophile training, the starter might be one small piece of pate seated on a tiny bed of greens, followed by a few slices of perfectly cooked duck breast next to a bouquet of 10 green beans tied with a cord of celery and a golf ball of creamy potatoes. After that came the seemingly unnecessary, but highly anticipated plate of cheese, usually three small slices of whatever looked good to the chef at the market that day. All of this would be followed by a larger crème brulee (after all, what is really the best part of the day?) then a small coffee of several sips. We would enjoy a glass of wine or two with this meal and left the restaurant feeling satisfied but not overburdened.

Today, as the portions have become much more generous, I often skip the starter and dessert, or simply take a starter and salad or cheese. Dessert is rarely something I order as I simply cannot enjoy it after so much wonderful food. The glorious answer to the gaping lack in my restaurant experiences these days is the café gourmand. As the Spanish have their tapas, perhaps the French might consider a wine gourmand offering? It could feature a generous glass of wine along with some cheese and mini-meal elements, much like we have in the states when we say “heavy hors d’oeurves.” This would be followed by its sweet cousin, café gourmand and we would end up with an extremely abbreviated version of where I started almost 20 years ago. I must admit that I prefer the classic meal formula. It forces one to relax a bit and savor the food. Unfortunately, the French are increasingly becoming American as they alter their eating habits to keep up with family and work commitments. Quel dommage, indeed.

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Did you stay in the car at the drive-in movies?

My brother was just a baby at the time and we were set up in the back seat of the family station wagon. There were pillows, blankets and stuffed animals all around us. We had on sweatshirts over our pajamas. It was thrilling to be outside in our pjs at night. This was a special occasion for us: we were at the drive-in.

            I can remember so clearly, the smell of the Jiffy Pop that my mom made for us. In the days before microwaves, this was a real treat and enjoyed only occasionally. The unpopped kernels came packaged in a covered aluminum pie tin contraption, with a handle. You slid and shook this thing across the heat of your stove and in a few minutes, the top had puffed out and the wonderful, hot popped corn was inside.

            When we were kids, there were always two movies at the drive-in. The first was usually a kid-friendly cartoon, the second a first-run adult movie. The idea was for us to nod off after ours, so the adults could enjoy theirs. Of course we couldn’t resist fiddling with the heavy, metal boxes that hung precariously from the slightly lowered glass of the car windows. This was the speaker through which distant and crackly voices emerged. The speaker was attached to a pole by a thick wire and we were admonished time and again not to pull on it. Yeah, sure.

            At the front of the parking field, just before the huge screen, there was a playground with swings and a rickety slide. We wanted desperately to play on those things while we waited for it to get dark enough for the show to begin. Nothing doing, said our parents, we were encamped and no one was going to miss a moment of the movie. From the concession ads to the final check that the speakers weren’t still attached to the car, a trip to the drive-in was an adventure indeed.

            When we hit our teen years, we considered the admission price to be a group fee. Two would sit in the front of the car and pass by the small booth, handing over the pooled resources of the group sneaking through the adjacent corn field at the same moment. We thought we were getting away with something. Who wanted to pay for a ticket when you could put that money to good use at the concession stand?

            It all began in 1933 when Richard Hollingshead rigged up the first drive-in movie in his backyard in Camden, New Jersey. As he tweaked his big idea, looked for an improvement on his little radio hidden behind the screen that had been nailed to a few trees. He contacted RCA Co. which devised a directional sound system and the drive-in movie on a large scale became a possibility. The idea grew in popularity through the 1950s, taking a brief hiatus during the mid-40s when the US was focused on the war effort. Construction of these outdoor theatres flattened out in the 1970s and by the end of the 80s, they began to close. Cable TV and VCRs were taking over as new forms of family entertainment.

            Recently, drive-in movies are enjoying a resurgence world-wide with theatres being restored and new construction taking place in the mid-West in particular. Nostalgia seems to be the driving factor. Lord knows we all have plenty of electronic gadgets in our homes to keep us occupied. Now, we look to the great outdoors for family-friendly entertainment.

            

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Peeping frogs, loud birds and strawberries

I woke up this morning thinking about strawberries. I can’t say why, exactly, but it might have been the bright sun just beginning to intrude through a gap in the draperies. Or it might have been the trilling cacophony just outside my open window. The sun and the sound of the birds only wake me in the spring and summer and I suppose my brain was already moving on to the next things that herald the best time to live on Candlewood Lake: strawberries, Johnny’s chicken burgers on the grill and cold beverages.

So back to the berries. I really learned about the art of buying fruits and vegetables when I lived in France more than 10 years ago. At that time, super-speedy refrigerated shipping and storage were not as prevalent as they are today. We found in the markets only the fruits and veggies that were ripe and in season in the nearby area. I think the only time we could anticipate a fresh fruit treat out of season from a truly distant land was clementines from Israel at Christmas.

Strawberries were my introduction to this wondrous phenomenon. I had just arrived in Paris with my two young children and my husband announced that we would go food shopping. I was soon to discover that there was nothing in the fridge in the huge, old house we had rented. Thoughtfully, he had waited for me to join him to accomplish such a task. The irksome part of this is that he had already been living there for six months. Those tales, my friends, are for another day.

So we go to the market. It is a magnificent, outdoor affair with lines and lines of stalls featuring everything from salad greens to rabbit carcasses. My jet-lagged brain was slow to adjust to the French writing on all of the signs, and filling my ears. My husband, ever the eager helper, picked up a cardboard basket of strawberries and asked me, “is this a good price are these good?” Before I could answer, the woman operating the stall reached across her beautiful display and slapped at his arm, nearly causing him to drop the carton. She growled something incomprehensible at him and shook her finger at me in admonishment. Hmmmm. I guess we are not to touch the goods, as we do at home in the United States. Lesson learned. I looked at him in despair and said that any price would be good right now and would he please just pay the unhappy woman and let us be on our way.

A few weeks later, I had learned to navigate the roadways and the kids and I found a wonderful, pick-your-own farm. Here we used shovels to wrest carrots from the ground, pulled green beans off their bushes with our fingers and sat in the warm sandy soil among the strawberry plants and simply ate the berries as fast as we picked them. When we got home, we made a dinner of those veggies and for dessert, a beautiful strawberry tart. I had not had any cooking lessons yet, and boy did I need them, so the tart was not actually beautiful in the traditional sense. I did not get the cream right but we sure had fun creating designs on top with the sliced berries. Sadly, by the time we were finished with the masterpiece, we were too full to eat it. The tart was a little defeated looking by breakfast the next day, but it was still delicious.

So today, I conjure up all of my strawberry memories as I lie in bed and think about summer. Strawberry season is upon us now in Connecticut and the local crop is a good one indeed. My mother always told me the best way to buy fruit is to smell it: does it smell like a strawberry? Surprisingly, the answer is often no. But go ahead and lift that plastic container close to your face and inhale deeply. It should smell like sunshine, sweetness, birds singing and the star of your lunch-time salad.

Kyoto

When we lived overseas, people would ask me what I missed most about my home. Without hesitation I would say, autumn. Nowhere in our world travels have I found more magnificent foliage, brighter blue skies, and crisper fresh air than our own New England. That is, until we visited Kyoto, Japan, about three hours southwest of Tokyo by high-speed bullet train.

Our introduction to life in Tokyo was a few months of stifling summer swelter. Once monsoon season arrived, the temperatures only cooled a bit before I saw a scattering of leaves changing color around the parks in the largely modern city. As we traveled out into the countryside, the landscape morphed dramatically and when we entered the ancient city of Kyoto, I realized that this was the Japan that I was expecting to see when I first arrived.

The trees are simply spectacular with such vibrant colors that they take your breath away. Unlike Tokyo, which has been completely destroyed several times due to fires, earthquakes and the ravages of World War II, Kyoto was spared most of this damage and now boasts the highest number of pre-war buildings in the country. Here are the temples and shrines with their sensuous, curving rooflines and delicately carved details. The narrow streets are lined with low, wooden buildings. This is where the famous geisha live today though it is rare to get a glimpse of one.

We stayed at a traditional lodging called a ryoken. This is about as far away as you can get from the American bed and breakfast experience. Upon entering the building, you must remove your shoes and put on the slippers waiting for you. Luckily for me, Japanese folks have smaller feet; my husband and daughter managed to get only half of each foot into the slippers. Next you are given a yukata, a unisex, cotton bathrobe, and shown to your room. The room is sparsely furnished but very clean and elegant. The traditional rice paper screen doors are prominent and on the floor is your bed, a futon. This mattress with no box spring or base, is rolled out on the floor and covered with a cozy duvet and small pillow filled with rice or something like it. You literally sleep on the floor. Again, this works great for me, but my travel companions’ legs stretched well beyond the edge of the futon.

You are expected to wear the yukata while relaxing in your room. You must also wear it when you go out to enjoy an onsen bath. This is a hot-spring fed, shallow pool, centrally located in the garden or a small shelter. Usually separated by sex, one must scrub vigorously with the brushes and soaps provided before entering the onsen. Also, no swimsuit or clothing of any kind is allowed. It took me nearly a year to try this out and only at 4 a.m. when I was sure nobody was around. While my sense of modesty was uneasily put aside, the glorious hot water and silky minerals made the risk worthwhile.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, the entire city was a feast for our eyes. We saw many Japanese women strolling along, decked out in their finest, traditional kimonos (flowing, robe-like gown) with unique obis (large belt). The fabrics of these garments are extravagant with ornate designs, rich colors and delicate needlework. The ladies wear platform, thong-type shoes with socks allowing the big toe to be separated from the rest of the foot. They walk in small, clopping steps. Their hair is elaborately styled in a modified chignon and studded with all manner of decorations from delicate chopsticks to small birds and flowers and sparkling stars. Their faces are made up with bright white foundation, very red lipstick and carefully penciled brows. They are all absolutely gorgeous and will smile shyly when a gai-jin (foreigner) can’t stop admiring their parade.

Kyoto is home to many World Heritage sites. One of my favorites is the Nii-jo Castle, home to the Tokugawa shogun. It has many rooms designed for specific waiting, preparing to visit, then finally getting an audience with the shogun (high-ranking lord.) This building boasts a unique flooring system known as the nightingale floors. These boards are nailed in a unique way so as to squeak slightly when they are walked upon. This served as a warning system to those inside in the case of a ninja attack. They really did wear all-black and moved with deadly stealth.

Then there is the breathtaking, must-see Golden Pavilion or Kinkaku-ji Temple. Decorated with real-gold paint, the temple served as the private residence of another retiring shogun from 1358 to 1409. Afterwards, it was converted to a Zen temple and adapted the traditional gardens and contemplative landscaping that makes this place so beautiful to behold in any season.

Known for its dramatic five-story pagoda and massive main gate, the Ninna-ji Temple also features magnificent gardens with bridges, ponds, teahouses and small halls for prayer and residence. It is a lovely example of the Japanese Buddhist temple’s harmony with nature. This building was originally the summer home for the imperial family and became a temple in 886. The miniature Japanese maple trees on the grounds glowed fiery red and orange in the reflection of the shiny building and serene pond surfaces.

Among many, many temples in Japan, some of my favorites follow Shinto beliefs. Very simply, Shintoists  see all things as “kami” or gods. There is a special god for all sorts of specific circumstances. In keeping with this, the gates (stylized entries to the grounds of the temples) are usually dedicated to specific causes or groups. For example, we happened upon a group of young local, ladies dressed in jeans and sweatshirts coming toward us en masse waving their cameras. It was not unusual for people all over Asia to want a photo with us because of our blonde hair and well, different look. They were participating in a scavenger hunt and needed our image to complete their list. There were no young men with the group as we came to understand this particular gate is dedicated to young women in search of boyfriends for marriage. Of course I snapped a shot of my 16-year old daughter to show her children some day. She was not smiling, but the hundreds of young Japanese girls behind her were.

Kyoto was Japan’s capital from 794 until 1869, and as such, attracted many artists to the court of the emperor. The beautiful artwork special to Kyoto includes rustic pottery, all manner of textiles, and paintings. The vintage fabrics, woodcut prints and fine drawings particularly prove that the unforgettable fall foliage here has been spectacular through the ages and appreciated by many. As a souvenir, I bought a vintage obi made of black silk shot through with bright orange and gold metallic threads depicting the important temples of Kyoto. I like to think of a geisha, perhaps, wearing this proudly as she stepped among the red leaves fallen to the street, a parasol shading her from the bright fall sun.

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Not What I Expected

Sometimes I feel like a traitor to my gender. I have become exactly what I did not intend to be: a wife and stay at home mom.

What I was supposed to be is editor in chief of the New York Times. I should be living in Manhattan, by myself with a dog perhaps. I should still be eating macaroni and cheese from a box and quaffing the finest diet Dr. Pepper. I should not know how to cook, speak French, operate a sewing machine or change a diaper. I should not know how to run a bake sale, fix a clogged sink or diagnose an ear infection. I am doing all of these things under an assumed name, having given up hyphenating my last name when my oldest child went to school. At that time, it just seemed pretentious and complicated. I don’t claim to do any of these things well, but I am certain that I was not really supposed to be able to do them at all.

I went to a women’s college in the 1980s and even that was a surprise to me. From the time I got my first typewriter, I knew I would be a reporter. It was red plastic, manual of course, and I kept track of important things in my 7-year old life. I was always taking notes. From middle school, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Going to college was never a question as both my mother and her mother had gone to college. I truly believe that my early life was so much richer for their experiences and insights as educated women. I graduated from the same school my grandmother attended. I even lived in the same dormitory, 50 years after she did.

When I was in college, I enjoyed participating in student government and of course, the campus newspaper. At that time, my classmates and I were directly benefiting from the women who brought the ERA and NOW and ideas of gender equality to work, politics, life. I had the distinct honor of being sent to pick up Bella Abzug at the airport. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinam and even Phyllis Schafly visited our campus. We were empowered, emboldened, and encouraged to ask questions, question authority and think big. Throughout the campus, we ran the show, unimpeded by male perspective. We celebrated the tremendous achievements of the mothers who went before us, creating a path for us to continue the fight. We respected our place in history and felt ready to take on the future as fully functioning workers. It never occurred to me that there would be any issue of my gender as I looked to the future. Then I graduated. Once we got out there, however, we discovered that despite the gains, there was still a long way to go.

As I moved from one job to the next, I realized that my gender worked for and against me. I know that I was hired at a technical magazine because they needed another girl on the editorial board. I took that job because I wanted the experience. Looking back, I am sorry that being female counted for so much on my resume. Naively, I thought my writing skills were what they wanted from me. Once I got pregnant, it became clear to me that my gender was indeed in the way. It was a tough pregnancy and I got no support from my all-male colleagues. The other girl on the staff was still out on maternity and would come back just in time to take my place.

When I finally met my son, I changed my plan to leave him at six weeks and return to my real life. I realized that it would be better for him and me if I stayed home with him. I got a part time job and thoroughly enjoyed learning how to be a mother. I realized, that I am grateful for the ability to make that choice. In the long run, I believe that my education and work experience are not wasted on my work as a stay at home mom. I believe my children are richer for the things I have learned and our family has benefited overall.

I was reminded of this recently when I read Sheryl Sandberg’s book, “Lean In.” My first reaction was to feel insulted. I could not believe that she was so arrogant as to believe that women today are just not trying hard enough. I got the message that we still need to advocate for ourselves and stop being so tentative. It seemed that she was dismissing decades of progress. Who the heck does she think she is? When I discussed this feeling with my college roommate, who does not consider herself a feminist and is working as a corporate executive, I began to see another side. She sees the message in this book as giving a push to the younger women who may not appreciate how they got to where they are today. We both agreed that the possibility of choices – choosing family over career or career over family – are a direct gift of those women on whose shoulders we stand. There is no shame or obligation in either choice.

Now my children are grown and I face a crossroads. I am looking in the mirror and not sure who is looking back. I have time and I have choices and for that, I am truly grateful. Another thing for which I am grateful is that I have raised an intelligent, self-confident daughter, who, at the tender age of 20, is involved on her own college campus with women’s issues. Unlike me, she already knows how to cook, and even made her own prom dress in high school. She recently observed that, “It is not the question of what we can do, but what we choose to do,” when it comes to contemporary gender issues. I am happy to see that perhaps I am not a traitor at all, but a teacher and a leader, in my own small way.

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Posie Paralysis

Our eyes met briefly across the top of thousands of geraniums in a rainbow of colors. We bumped into each other about an hour later. We collided, back to back as we focused skyward on the hanging baskets obscuring the sun. She laughed and patted my hand. “You have it too?” she asked conspiratorially. Yes, I nodded wordlessly. We agreed that we were trapped in the complete inability to make a decision at the garden center and had no idea how to get out.

Every year it is the same: I am paralyzed by choice. Methodically, I visit my favorite local garden centers, spending hours among the hydrangeas, coleus, petunias and begonias. I am fond of making matching pots or baskets for the front porch and the back deck, so I find it challenging to search out the plants and flowers that complement each other. In the beginning, it was simple red geraniums. Everywhere. Then one year we went on vacation and the neighbor who was supposed to babysit my floral friends got distracted and the poor things withered and died of thirst. When I went to replace them, I discovered very little choice so late in the season and ended up with some winsome, miniature petunias. They were white and had sweet potato vines growing among the flowers in the pre-planted pots. End of summer sale – loved it! That fall, I discovered that those vines were not just decorative. We found frozen sweet potatoes in the pots when we went to empty them for the winter.

So, one would hope that after decades of this game, I would have learned sooner to overcome this ridiculous habit and make confident, speedy, pre-planned annual choices. Alas, it was only last year, but the trick I learned then reduced this year’s agony by weeks.

I had been prowling around Locust Glen Garden Center and was finally down to the last two baskets for my deck. I found one that had already been made up – with red geraniums, blue petunias and white lantana. It was festive and bright and perfect for July 4 decoration. Just when I thought I had gathered enough plants to create a matching basket, I spied some amazing purple and yellow flowers in a smaller container. I wavered, as I always do. After I put down the red, white and blue basket, I gathered the purple and yellow, but needed just one more yellow to make my matching set. Minutes turned into an hour and I still could not find the right plant. As I made my way around the corner of the building, I came upon a woman wearing work gloves, surrounded by hundreds of potting plants. She was elbow deep into a large, stone container, reaching for one of my yellow plants, when she noticed me watching her. I expressed complete envy of her eye and skill in putting those containers together to look so artful and unique. She smiled, handed me the yellow plant I needed from her already finished pot and said these three words: “thrill, fill, spill.”

Like so many things in life, the concept is simple and makes perfect sense. As with algebra, physics and the metric system, I would never have figured it out without help from a patient professional. Here is the key to potted plant perfection, the garden center goddess explained. This one, she said, is the tallest element in the pot and provides the thrill, the focal point of the arrangement. Next, you fill in the middle area with smaller scale plants, and finally, you add a plant or two with a horizontal habit so that it spills over the edge of the pot. I was elated to discover that I could easily duplicate her creations at home while chanting thrill, fill, spill, quietly to myself.

Now back to my new friend with the geraniums. She saw the lack of conviction in my eyes and tried to help. She pointed to a hot pink geranium that would have contrasted nicely with the yellow strawflower I was clutching. I thanked her for the suggestion and admitted that all I needed was a “spill” to complete my task. She stepped back a tiny bit, and hesitated before asking, “huh?” I explained the garden center mantra and she raised her hands in victory. I can do that, she told me. Indeed, I agreed. Wishing each other good luck and good gardening, we parted ways.

I left that place without my spill but found it on the way home while stopped at a traffic light. I saw the missing element to my container masterpieces through the fence but had to make plans to return. That second garden center was closed for the day. This year, I have added another helpful habit for myself: I draw a simple sketch and label the plants, including the year and location of purchase. Who knows, I might be able to get it all done in one day next year.