July, July

Oh, my. I meant to drop in here earlier, but where is this month going?

To be totally honest, this month feels heavy with import and occasion. And July is supposed to be about lemonade and skinny dipping! But I have been thinking about big things, so encouraged by Rob Brezny and Michaele who pointed out the year is half-gone and what exactly have we got to show for it? So then there I was, holding the bag of goals, to-dos, and a truly ludicrous amount of laundry and feeling plagued by its weight. And so I have been reluctant to check in here, really needing the optimism we all rally around, but feeling perhaps too serious to just say, hi! I made another salad!

This is the month in which MFK Fisher was born, 100 years ago. Of course I took this as the first sign about this month, and probably the first admonition, too. Her life is a model of living mindfully with head, heart and senses, and her writing still makes me stop and drop the book to my lap. From The Gastronomical Me:

For Norah I would get a pitcher of milk and a pot of honey. I'd put them with the pat of sweet butter on the table, and a big square block of the plain kind of Dijon gingerbread that was called pavé de santé. There would be late grapes and pears in a big bowl.

Norah and I would sit by the open window, listening to the street sounds and playing Bach and Debussy and Josephine Baker on the tinny portable phonograph. The food was full of enchantment to my sister, after her gray meals in the convent, and she ate with slow voluptuous concentration of a dévouée.

And this is the month when my beau and I celebrate our first date. This year we drank wine in the ice cold air conditioning, talking and planning things, before heading out into the hot night to see what the fishmonger would put into our hands. He was young and energetic, with at least two or three recommended preparations for each fish in which we expressed even a passing interest. And once he, beaming really, handed over the fillets wrapped in stiff white paper, we walked through the brightly lit aisles of the grocery store planning the rest of our meal, picking up packages and bundles of green things and dropping them in our basket. Back in our small, stuffy kitchen, we stood side by side at the cutting board, he in charge of the zucchini and I in charge of the fish (wild sea bass, if you want to know). I think we would have made the fish guy proud.

This is also the month, most importantly, I've felt my family rally around each other in a way I haven't seen before, full of humor, good advice, good stories, and booming singing voices. There is a warm, resilient calm about us. We feel as tight as a sailing knot, and as strong and steady as an anchor.