My Aunt Cindy

Tonight I had a lovely, if not random-ish, message on facebook from a woman who was one of my late Aunt Cindy's best friends. I was astonished, flattered and well...thrown into a big tornado of "WTF?"

My Aunt Cindy, Lucinda (Lewis) Boone, was an extraordinary woman, and a paragon for me since I was a gangly little kid with skinny legs and too much "gumption and booksmarts." I was told by my mother, from the time I started talking that I reminded her of her sister. I grew up with an ingrained pride in being like my Aunt. She was a remarkable woman.

Here's the thing: I only met her a few times in my life, and yet she is closer to me than many, many other relatives. Why? Because she "got" me. Christmas presents would come and I would have all sorts of gadgets and goodies, but when I opened Aunt Cindy's present, there was everything I was thinking and dreaming and believing in. She just knew me. Sometimes even more so that my parents. When I got older she had sage advice. For instance "When things got me really down in college I would just smoke a cigarette, drink some wine and listen to Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell." So of course my college career was totally threaded with the dulcet tones of long haired hippy women...whom I have now become. But I still have all of her emails and all of them essentially say, to paraphrase, "Be yourself, you are wonderful, and keep creating."

And I think I "got" Aunt Cindy, as much as a precocious child/eccentric teen/early-twenties-fuckup could. I knew a kindred spirit the first time I met her, when I was 3 years old and she let me eat my dinner next to the cat bowl with her fluffy kitty because I was not Natasha, NO! I was Inkabell the black kitty. Seriously I lived in black tights and a leotard and ate out of dishes on the floor. I blame Andrew Lloyd Webber...but I digress. Aunt Cindy totally embraced this first meeting of her kitty-niece and loved me all the same.

She got to see me, in life, only a few times more. They were lovely times. Times I will never, ever forget and very important times to me, at this point in my ife. Now, as a woman (because I am FINALLY starting to feel like one) moving into an age where all that chaos is (hopefully) being slowly absorbed into the ether of the past, I feel I am seeing my amazing Aunt in a new light.

The first thing I turned my attention to was my Uncle Michael. When Cindy died, I had no idea what he was going through. I had never known love like theirs, and I am sure that few people have. But now, after marrying my best friend, and living through only a few years of life together, I could not imagine such a loss. If anything happened to Jason, or if I knew that I was going to leave him in despair...well that, my friends, is true tragedy. My Uncle lives it everyday and all want to do when I think of him is apparate, like some J.K. Rowling character, and give him the biggest hug and cook him a meatloaf. I really wish I could. I wish I could let him know how much I still love him. There are some uncles in my past, who married family and divorced, and honestly I wasn't bothered to see the back of them. But Michael is family. Always.

I love so fiercely. From as long as I can remember my biggest fear was the people I love dying. And here I am, so far away from the people I love, so that that fear takes everything out of my hands. When my Aunt Cindy was dying I was unable to come to her. I tried, but I was told she "wouldn't want me to see her like that." I dunno. I regret it. I regret the fact that my family on that side barely speaks to me now. Family can be so fickle, but you would think, after years of sadness, we might all want to relish something light.

That's what Cindy would have wanted.

My Aunt Cindy always had funny ideas for me. She liked picking out celebrities for me to marry. One time it was Derek Jeter....good thing she died before it came out that he is a walking STD. The best was after she saw "The Pianist" and emailed me saying "I think the man for you is Adrien Brody!!!" She totally got my thing for guys with big noses. It's too bad she never got to meet my Jason. His nose would knocked her out, as would his manners, joie de vivre and sweetness. I would like to think she would have approved. In fact, I think she would have totally dug (is that the right form of "like it dig it man!" ?) our wedding as she loved Arizona and we played the Beatles in our ceremony, which was officiated by a woman.

There is so much about my aunt that I want to know. She was writing books. I want to read them. She was so fantastically interesting and amazing and yet I feel I have always been distanced. I don't know if it was space or people. I was the perpetual "kid," as she liked to call me. All I know is that I miss her, and I regret the time that I wasted not getting to be more a part of her life. And I desperately hope that the rest of my family, who is part of her, will allow me to to be part of theirs.

I think Aunt Cindy would have loved Okinawa. In fact, I think she would have approved of everything, except that I was not acting. But I will make her proud. She'll see. ;)

I Would Like the Disaster, Please, And a Salad Nicoise with a Cold Sancerre, Thanks.

In the last few hours I have been examining a lot of my friends' status remarks on Facebook. I have had several online conversations with some very unhappy people. This election has gotten everyone's knickers in a twist, and I, being an expat, am at a loss. Disaster, it seems, has happened again....or to some, perhaps, great strides have been made. I, being a little too bohemian in my principles to ever appeal to the Right of Wing, am resoundingly, if not by default, liberal. So there we are, it is another "Disaster."

But when I really sat down and thought about the word Disaster, and what it meant to me, who has lived through many, is that my particular sense memory has me recalling the most ridiculous thing. Food! I was astonished. Every episode of my life that held some sort of Disaster, when remembered like a good little actress/writer in my giant sensual recollection box, had a memory of food, and I started to think about how, in times of great horror, fear, despair, or need, how truly fascinating it is to nourish. So I thought it might be interesting to catalogue my memories here and see what they amounted to.

I suppose the first memory I have of Disaster was my parent's divorce, although consciously I don't recall it as a Disaster, I suppose a therapist might, and it was a major moment in my life. The funny thing is I have no bad memories from it at all. The only thing I know is that after my parents divorced, there were suddenly these great weekends with my father that brought us so close together. Rituals that last, to this day, when we can embrace them. The first was Friday night dinners at El Chapparrel, my favorite, yet now nonexistent Mexican joint. We would roll in and know half the people in there. Dad would get his green corn tamale and chicken enchilada, and me a deep fried bean burro with extra hot salsa. We would laugh and talk about the world, movies, school...and when I went to bed at night I was always satiated and loved. In the mornings he would wake me and we would go to local breakfast joints like "Waffles 'n' More" (mmm strawberry syrup) or "The Juniper House" (best pancakes of my life) and then promptly hike it all off. He is smart, my dad. He knew how to make a transition from something potentially life damaging, like a divorce, into a cool new way of looking at life. Even with our summer trips, I have nostalgia for the camping food he cooked on the propane stove. It was lovely.

In a way the next life Disaster was something different. When my parents divorced I was still loved and had lost no one, but when my step father killed himself when I was still just a girl, I finally faced a Disaster head on. I faced it, and had to face my poor mother, who had lost more than even I had. It was around then when she stopped cooking, I think. She was never a big one for chef-dom, but after my Grammie, who had come in to help out for awhile, moved out, well...my mom could not be bothered. Not that I blame her! In fact I got my love of experimental restaurant-ing from her! We ate out all the time. I learned to try so many new foods and eat on a budget! I learned all about the different jobs of waitstaff and soon we knew every waiter, busboy and chef in town! I have survived, during hard times, with this knowledge, and still make friends with waiters, bartenders, bussers and chefs all over the world.

There wasn't much Disaster after this. I think, looking back, I lived a bit of a charmed life. It wasn't until 9/11 that I endured another bout of disaster, as did all Americans. The funny thing was, that day, that actual morning, I was moving to London for the first time. I had a $1000 in my pocket and a dream of acting in my jet lagged head. My friends picked me up at Gatwick and we hurried along to a little pub. I do not remember what I was eating there. I only know that when the bartender switched over to the news and we saw what was happening, we all ordered several more pints of lager. The food that I do remember, after that tragedy, was served two days later, at a dinner party thrown especially for me, to introduce me to my new life and get my mind out of the terror regime that was becoming my country. Leila, my friend, made Iranian cuisine while her husband made French desserts. Someone brought English Trifle. The wine was from all over the world and so were the guests. We drank loads, stuffed ourselves, laughed, cried and cleansed. Through that dinner party I was able to see the world, and what was happening to it, from many different cultural, moral and intellectual points of view. I was relieved of the burden of worrying about a country or a government I could not understand anymore, but rather incited to listen to people and discern and to LEARN. That dinner made a new breed of American.

Later that year, not long after 9/11, I was traveling through France and had two more Disasters. One was in the old part of Nice. I was having my first Salad Nicoise with a beautiful glass of Sancerre and I watched a man die of a drug overdose just a few meters away from where I was sitting. I still love that salad and that wine, but it will always be an epitaph for that poor man.
The second French Disaster was a lot more serious. I was staying in a seedy hotel on Rue de Mavais du Garcons. It means "street of the bad boys." Shoulda been a sign. I was just bringing my dinner guests, Lionel and Susanne, back to my place for a quick drop of Absinthe before we headed out to the clubs, when we were accosted by the owner, who was a bit drunk. He refused to let my friends in my room. When I said it was just to have a drink and change my shoes, he said we had five minutes. We hurried up the stairs and no sooner were we in the room then he was banging down the door demanding to "speak to the man!" I was furious of course but Lionel took over. The three of them followed the crazy owner downstairs, but I had the most incredible feeling that I had to get out of there. I quickly packed my bags and started down the spiral staircase. Just as I got to a view of the front area I saw the owner pull some sort of bat from behind the desk! Lionel and Susanne ran from the man swinging at their heads. They barely escaped through the glass door. I don't know what came over me but I was furious. He had locked them out and me in. I confronted him. Told him, in amazingly good french, that he would have to answer to the American Embassy. HE asked for money, of which I had none.
"But you are an American. Of course you have money!"
We argued. I don't remember much but finally i just started screaming, to try and rouse another of the people in the hotel. Then he came after me with the bat. Just as I had reached the end of the line, the glass door where Susanne was pounding and crying, the Gendarme (with darling Lionel!) broke down the door and saved my fucking life.
Six hours later, at the prefect of police, turns out my hotelier was a terrorist, wanted for years for car bombings. C'est la vie, mais no?
How does this relate to food? It was Lionel. Lionel took my poor broken body back to his home that morning, went to the fresh market and bought the most amazing meats and cheeses, fruits and breads. I had the best French meal of my life that day. It renewed me, healed my wounds, gave me life, confidence, joy. It made me realize the magic of cooking. He made coq au vin and it save my soul, just as he had saved my life.

In so many times in my life, when I felt the waves of Disaster, whether it be political, emotional, natural, economical...food has always been there. The impromptu, half naked BBQ we had on the roof during the NYC blackout so none of our food would be wasted. The scones an elderly grandmother of a friend gave me with tea after my brief run in with the Northern Ireland Troubles. The big shopping carts of randomness from the food bank that I had to make into magic after the economy collapsed and my new husband and I were unemployed. A beautiful toasted bagel and cream cheese in the early hours after I watched a man be shot to death in front of me in Brooklyn. The champagne ceremony I held for my aunt who died, who was celebrated so that night, even though I was the only one who actually knew her. The way my also late grandmother used to fill her fridge with food when my dad and I would come to visit and insist on cooking breakfast and dinner for us, even when she was getting frail. There is a resonance to these sad sad things. These scary things. These survival things.

I think again (I know you who are rolling your eyes) of the zombies. I suppose in a way we can circle this back to zombies anyway as I started by talking about politics. But let's look at the zombies. All they look for is food. We pretend to be so above the zombies but we are just the same. We are afraid of our own mortality and when faced with it, of course we revel in the pleasures we are afforded! The feasts after the wars! The drinks at a wake. We all can be put together again by food and drink. No matter where you are in the world, food is one of the main centers of all cultures. From the Masai who drink cows blood, to the French who eat snails and even that eternal comfort food, the Big Mac....it all means something to someone. When we eat, we are truly living. When we eat we say, "Hey man! I am fucking ALIVE and I can survive!" When we eat, we are dispersing Disaster.