The bitter scent of coming winter
I remember preparing a meal for him in the decay of autumn, after the leaves had dropped from the trees and lay rotting in the gutter and the breeze was turning cold and harsh. I was just 21 years old and could focus on the kitchen, had the time to think about cooking, and it was all still new, too, love and cookery. There was a recipe in Gourmet for roasted fall vegetables. I skinned and hacked a heavy butternut squash, added knobby shallots, garlic, and chunks of red potato, then tossed the vegetables with olive oil and roasted them in the oven. Near the end of cooking, I added slivered sage leaves, the bitter scent of coming winter.
Sage takes well to butter and olive oil, get crisp
and intense, medicinal over gnocchi, tucked among
thick slices of potato. My husband and I grow sage in
our front yard. The plant sits between the
flat-leafed parsley and the lemon verbena, its silver
green leaves upright, purple flowers still drawing
honeybees. I’ll have to trim it soon, deadhead the
flowers and clean off the spider webs in preparation
for the feasts and sadness of fall.
Here is the original recipe, from Epicurious.
Add 2 tablespoons slivered sage in the last ten
minutes of cooking to recreate my more winter-scented
dish.
Roasted Autumn
Vegetables
1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes
1 pound shallots (about 24), peeled and trimmed
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 pounds butternut squash, peeled and cut into
3/4-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
fresh thyme sprigs for garnish, if desired
In a bowl, toss together the potatoes, quartered, the
shallots, 4 tablespoons of
the oil,
the bay leaf, the dried thyme, the garlic, and salt
and pepper to taste. Spread the vegetables in an
oiled large roasting pan and roast them in the middle
of a preheated 375°F. oven, shaking the pan every 5
to 10 minutes, for 25 minutes. In a bowl toss the
squash with the remaining 1 tablespoon oil and salt
and pepper to taste and add it to the pan. Roast the
vegetables, shaking the pan occasionally, for 10 to
20 minutes more, or until they are tender. Discard
the bay leaf and garnish the vegetables with the
thyme sprigs.
Gourmet
October 1990
Image: Attractive sage bush, much
nicer than ours, from eHow.
Hello ... Columbus?
Capitol Plaza Apartments
The studio at Capitol Plaza Apartments was cheap and
within easy walking distance to Union Station. On the
first floor of an eight-story building, it had a
large window overlooking the basement roof and a
hemmed-in view of surrounding structures. Small and
dark, with parquet floors and “apartment-sized”
appliances in the not-even-galley kitchen, it was a
cozy cave, the right place to hide out for my final
year of college. I moved in August 1991.
To pay the bills, I took out more student loans, got
a better paying part-time job working in a library at
a high-profile law firm. That’s where I met Chas.
Chas had recently divorced and was trying to figure
out his newly single life at 39, the house gone, his
routine changed. I was a loner 21, a strange
combination of vulnerable and shuttered, talking more
to the homeless men who bivouacked on my street than
to my fellow college students. We were both in love
with DC, with its high crime rate and crack wars and
the insane mayor-for-life Marion Barry. The brick
rowhouses, the policy wonks, the strange political
celebrity, the feel of it all: It was home.
Chas had left Columbus, Ohio in the early 1970s and
headed straight for the District. He would tell me
stories of growing up the city, where his large
family lived in a massive brick Victorian. It sounded
exotic in its blandness, the spread-out burg with the
solid architecture. “They just don’t make houses here
like they do in Columbus,” he would chuckle, and I'd
smile as if I knew what he was talking about. Chas
got his own apartment at 16, a few years before he
moved to DC. Since I’d been emancipated from parental
supervision from the age of 14 or so, he felt like a
kindred spirit, another concealed soul,
self-protective and insular.
Most of our conversations took place on my early
evening library shifts where there was no one else in
the office to interrupt us. He would discuss the
pursuit of church ladies (they were a tough bunch),
explain his theories on electromagnetic radiation,
how the destructive energy fields from power lines
were spreading cancer and causing miscarriages. We
would stare out the window at the office building
across the street, watch the after hours workers work
or not work, watch them watching us. There was one
man who was always talking on the phone, standing
with his back to the full-length window glass,
earpiece pinned between head and shoulder. It was a
performance just for us, the man’s hands swooping and
slicing the air as though the person on the other end
would be persuaded by gesture. On the street below,
commuters dallied or rushed, flagged down taxis,
spilled out of the Metro station on the corner.
A lone wolf on the streets of Dupont
Circle.
I told Chas all about my former roommate Martha, my
escapes to visit her in Chestertown, where our
evenings at Andy’s were blurred through multiple
glasses of Dark and Stormies, a potent mixture of
Goslings Rum and ginger beer; he’d get the details
of the Bass Ale-soaked nights we had at the Irish
Times or the Dubliner. Sometimes I would give him
sanitized versions of barhops with Abe, an old
friend from Delaware. Abe and I usually mixed our
liquor, beer, wining and cocktailing it to the
final rounds of Long Island Ice Teas. These
evenings generally ended in an argument over
something petty. We screamed across disco lights
and crowded dance floors, tossed barbs in the back
alleys of Georgetown, only to do it over again a
month later.
In none of these conversations did I tell Chas about
my drunken flirtations, about the Marines Martha and
I dragged back from the bar one night, about the
make-out sessions with Eastern Shore acquaintances,
the booze-fueled pursuit of contact. Alcohol always
uncovered the chasm, brought the need for other
people to the surface.
In between the pickups and the throw-ups and the work
and the studying, I’d occasionally see my faraway
half-boyfriend. But most weekends were quiet. “Friday
night drinking night?" the corner liquor store owner
asked me during one regular visit, to which I gave a
weak nod and smile. I’d drink, study, write papers,
maybe catch the PBS Saturday night movie on my crappy
box of a television. The Capitol Building was close
to my apartment and I would walk around its lit-up
beauty at night in all kinds of weather, braving
bracing November winds, floating through the
incredible sweetness of spring, when the cherry trees
and azaleas were in bloom. (“I am alive, I am alive”
I would think as I walked a path of fallen pink
petals, feeling the joy rise up in me).
The week before Martha drove me out to Illinois in a
battered U-Haul truck, Chas and I went out for one
last round of beers, a temporary goodbye. I had every
intention of returning to DC immediately after
graduating from library school. But then I met a guy
who got a job and we moved to a new town together:
Columbus, Ohio. We started to build a life, adopted
some animals, and finally bought a house. It was a
four-bedroom brick Queen Anne in the Old Towne East
neighborhood, a steal at $125,000. When I gave Chas
the address, he was quiet for a moment.
“That’s the same block I grew up on,” he finally told
me. Almost exactly across the street from our new
house was an empty lot, the location of Chas’s
childhood home.
Franklin Avenue house and neighbor (we never had a
flag up and the neighbor will have to be a story for
another day). Photo from Old
Towne East Neighborhood
Association.
It was a strange coincidence. What were the
odds?
Writing prompt: Watch it!
The Metro is packed. The threatened end-of-day thunderstorms have arrived and I am jammed in with other hangdog federal workers, soaked tourists, and a crowd of high school students all wearing identical Smithsonian raincoats. I stare at a man’s hairy hand, thick gold ring on his index finger, as I hang on to the pole by the doors. We breathe in the heavy air, faint with adolescent sweat.
Picture from The Janus Museum.
As the warning chime rings and a disembodied voice tells us “Doors closing,” she walks in. I see her almost every day at Union Station sitting by the Christopher Columbus fountain behind a phalanx of plastic bags. “Got any money to spare today, baby?” she’ll ask. Before I encountered her there, she once sat next to me on the Metro, in one of those seats half hidden behind plexiglass at the back of the car.
She’s hard to forget, this middle-aged African American woman, probably homeless, maybe a little crazy. Every morning she gets up and puts make-up on her face, stripes of beige and dark tan, giving herself the face of a bland tiger. Her eyes are always hidden behind sunglasses. Today she wears a threadbare, stained trench coat, tan, stylishly cinched at the waist.
Commuters flatten themselves against daytrippers as the tiger woman forces her way into the car, except for man beside me. “Hey, you: watch it!” he yells. She ignores him, the doors close, and we’re on our way. Next stop, Judiciary Square.
Seven facts
Instead of passing it along, I offer it up to anyone who would like to participate.
7 FACTS about
Jennifer
1 - WORK: I was a reference
librarian for about ten years, first for a state
legislative agency, then for a Washington, DC think
tank, and finally for the "world's greatest
deliberative body." Four years of working 40-50 hour
weeks in a basement paging through Congressional
Records, locating report language, and watching
C-SPAN with my colleagues for the laughs led to
disillusionment and burnout. (Note: There is really
much more to the job than that, but an exhaustive
listing of what we did would bore most readers). I
quit to go to culinary school.
Took a detour to be a stay-at-home mother and
freelance writer.
2 - EDUCATION: After
one false start, I received a bachelors in
philosophy, a masters in library science, and a
certificate from a culinary school. My first college
experience was about drinking; my second, about
thinking, my third, about getting a job, and my
fourth about taking a chance while I still
could.
3 - FRIENDSHIP: When I do make a friend, it is
generally for life (even when I am not good at
keeping in touch). I’m still figuring out how to make
connections as a reserved person without a
traditional working life in a place I don’t know very
well, since we’re still fairly new to Northern
Californa. It isn’t easy, but I am getting there. I
don’t need a posse, just a few confidants.
4 - RELATIONSHIPS: My second husband and I have been
married five years as of last Saturday, and have been
together for ten. After a tough 2007, we’re in a good
place now. Happy belated anniversary, honey!
5 - WWW: The Internet was just taking off when I was
in graduate school. I remember becoming quite
engrossed in the usenet groups. Gopher -- a kind of
menu-driven WWW -- was the hot technology during my
first library job. It’s a totally different world
now. Completely addictive, too, especially now that I
am blogging.
6 - FITNESS: Run 3x a week when I can, other exercise
on the off days, walk almost everywhere. I’ve been
mainly vegetarian (some fish) for 13 years and don’t
see going back to eating meat.
7 - DREAMS: One basic dream: that I make an authentic
life as a writer. A better way to put it: I am living
an authentic life as a writer, making the dream a
reality. (Thank you to The Fearless
Blog for cheerleading the idea
that we must think something to make it
so.)
Leaving on a jet plane ...
Since I can't bear to tear myself away from the blogosphere, I'm bringing my trusty laptop along. Hopefully I will have time to write other stuff, too, though that will be tough in a hotel room with little respite from watching the kid. I also want to work on a new layout for the blog. Naptime will be packed.
We'll be seeing my mother for the first time since last September. C is excited (this breaks my heart; even though they've had very little contact, he clearly loves her). I'm sure she is, too. I guess I am as well. If the air is clear and we're all feeling friendly and happy, the show will go off without a hitch. We will link arms and walk offstage, filled with warmth and love. If anyone's mind is clouded with worry or with things left unsaid, the performance will be off. Everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when it's over.
I'll let you know how it goes.