I miss my grandma’s soup. Several times, I’ve tried to recreate it but can’t find a recipe that reproduces it exactly. The results might taste good, but they don’t taste like Grandma’s soup.
The fault could lie with the ingredients, not the kale, white beans, and potatoes, but possibly some missing seasoning or a wrong addition. Maybe it’s the chouriço. The brand I find at the grocery store very likely isn’t the one Grandma kept stocked in her freezer, courtesy of her sisters. Whenever my great-aunts from Taunton, Massachusetts, visited us in Jamestown, New York, they’d bring Grandma plenty of chouriço, along with linguiça and big round loaves of sweet bread. Clearly, not even Grandma could make her soup taste like her soup without the correct brand of sausage. [Read more…] about Yearnings
Of all the damage this pandemic has wreaked and the changes it’s wrought, my kids’ giving up the piano shouldn’t rank high on my list of woes, but the piano sitting in my house these last couple of years, increasingly untouched and ignored, has bugged the heck out of me. As pianos go, it’s on the small end—a spinet. Yet even a small piano is a big instrument, and lately, given its silence and untapped potential, it also seems like a big sad symbol. 
I’m tempted to rename this fall—my fall, anyway—fail. All fall, I have failed. I haven’t planted bulbs for the spring yet, gathered hollyhock seeds, weeded the flowerbeds, cleaned out my bedroom closet, stuck to my diet, stayed in better touch with family and friends, or organized the pantry, all of which I promised myself I’d do. I haven’t even kept to my first-of-the-month blog post schedule. Here’s November’s: late! 
I didn’t notice it until the bird began occupying it for long stretches, clearly focused on the business of incubation. This bird—a cardinal—had built her nest in the Rose of Sharon outside our half-bath window. The clever cup of woven weeds, leaves, and twigs rested low in the bush and close to our house: a snug location, protected from spring showers and summer storms, and, for me, a lucky location. I had a front-row seat to a cool production.
My husband Michael and I met twenty years ago. On one of our first times out together, we went to the cinema to see The Fellowship of the Rings. It was a great date. Certainly, the fellowship could have stood a little femaleship and (cripes, Hollywood) some diversity. And yes, I found the backstory detours and not-an-ending ending disconcerting. Still, the fantasy adventure had some things going for it. The mischievous Merlin-y Gandalf, the sweet and earnest Frodo, the terrifically terrifying Elf Queen Galadriel, and all that Legolas-Aragorn-Arwen gorgeousness, plus the stunning landscapes and special effects (Arwen’s summoning of the flood!) and the sweeping score, enhanced with a little Enya mystical magic: They dazzled me. Michael and I were transported. 
Of all the pottery-making stages—centering, opening, pulling, raising the wall, and shaping—maybe the most difficult to learn is the first. Centering involves placing the clay on the wheelhead, squeezing and lifting the mound into a tall cone, pressing it back down, and exerting pressure toward the center until the clay revolves smoothly. 
If you’ve ever seen a doctor about an injury, I bet you were asked to rate your pain. Was that hard for you? If your injury wasn’t obvious (no gushing blood, broken bones, blisters from burns), did you hesitate to confess the number that popped into your head? Did you fret you’d come across as a liar? As dramatic, pathetic, or weak? Did you worry giving too high a number would make the doctor suspicious your emergency was a ploy to get a pain meds prescription? Did you dread facing skepticism, doubt, a lecture? 
My twelve year old favors my husband’s side, appearance-wise, the long legs, straight back, and Brad-Pitt eyes, but she’s very much her own person. Confronted by one of her unique inclinations, my husband and I will sometimes marvel, “Who’d she get that from?” In one respect, however, she’s all mine: She doesn’t part with stuff, at least not easily. Her messy bedroom pains my husband, the neatest person I know, but she can’t seem to toss, donate, or recycle much of anything. “It’s too special,” she says. (Our ten year old couldn’t be more different. Case in point: He used to tidy his kindergarten teacher’s desk for her during recess. For fun.)