- Cupcakes and life

At 9:40pm, Jimmy is folding laundry and playing dj. It’s Prince: “I Would Die 4 U,” “Raspberry Beret,” and “When Doves Cry.” Eli is out. I am putting away my sorted clothes, and Lydia and Grace are hanging out with us. As usual, the children introduce conversational threads out of nowhere.
Lydia:  When we go to [...]

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- Words that cannot be said

When I was a child, there were words forbidden in our household.
The following were the big three. Really, these are the words I recall my mother itemizing, after she announced: “There are three words I don’t want to hear.”
I am about to write them, which is a kind of saying.
Stupid
Hate
Kill
My parents had five children. While [...]

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- Dream of kahare

I sit in a restaurant with two colleagues, a female one from my current job and a male one from a job I had 14 years ago. In my immediate view is what looks like an artichoke heart, but paler green. I hold it up to my mouth; I eat. I register “sweet, like fruit,” [...]

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- Overheard and overbought

I heard this today, as I stood in the check-out line at my local grocery store. It’s a revision of a well-known saying, and another customer was sharing it with another clerk.
When you complain, you complain alone.
When you laugh, everyone laughs with you.
That seems good to remember.
And what was I buying at the grocery store? [...]

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- What are you letting go?

On Saturday night in Berkeley, after trying (without reservations) to eat at Chez Panisse (the upstairs, less expensive café part), Betsy and I walked along the block for a while before deciding on Café Gratitude, a raw food vegan restaurant that practices sacred commerce.
Our young server, Natalie, with her bangs and long black braid, bright [...]

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- A begat

This half-pound bag of Blue Bottle Coffee is a begat.
According to my father-in-law Ed, who knows a bit of Yiddish, many things that are bought may fit into the category he calls “begat.” And even though “begat” begins its life as a verb — beget, which means to sire or cause to exist — [...]

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- All facts

I am a slow eater. Or, perhaps I live with fast ones.
At dinner, I said to the kids, “Slow down, slow down.”
I added, “I just read that people who eat fast are two times more likely to be overweight than people who don’t.”
Lydia: “You read that? Where?”
Jane: “Yes. In my Diabetes Forecast.”
Lydia: “So, it’s a [...]

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- Hidden badness

Yesterday I made a turkey tortilla soup for lunch. It was to be the vehicle for a delicious, surprising chili accessory that I ate recently at my friend Brandi’s home: a dollop of sour cream, into which was mixed lime zest and juice. It was just the thing that turned her good chili into one [...]

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- Christmas ghosts

A couple of weeks ago I hurt my neck or my shoulder — “the C6 region,” according to the chiropractor whom I started seeing out of desperation yet now am quite attached to — and it’s been hard to get into the anticipatory rituals that make a holiday interesting and attractive. When I was a [...]

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- Onions are vegetables.

This post is dedicated to my brother, Brian, who said recently that he’s trying to eat “more cooked vegetables.” His resolution I find charming; it’s so much more idiosyncratic than one of the standard <yawn> resolutions, like trying to lose weight or save money.  A couple of years ago, on New Year’s Day, I resolved [...]

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