Pink of Perfection

A few weeks ago, I was craving comfort in a big way. I was getting over a lingering summer cold, and feeling neither interested nor able to deal with grown-up problems. I plucked Anne of Avonlea off the shelf, and for as long as I was flipping through those very old and faded rough-edged hardback pages, I did feel comforted. Anne’s is not a world in which she wonders about the meaning in her life. Meaning is as sure and tangible a thing as Marilla’s plum jam. The questions instead are how to extract oneself when you’ve fallen through the roof of a chicken coop and what to name a particularly enchanting place in the woods. There are scrapes, to be sure, but Anne snakes her way out of them.

I love ambiguity, questioning and grays, of course. But there is something deeply appealing to me about simpler worlds where families eat dinner together every night, self-worth and love are givens, and humans are replaced by bears and anteaters.

After turning the last page on Anne, I took myself to Books of Wonder and reacquainted myself with old friends like Mrs. Frisby and Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I pulled aside several different teenage female clerks and asked for recommendations based on my love of spunky, fierce heroines like Anastasia and Laura. They introduced me to Mary Alice and Sheila the Great.

I shelved Joan Didion and Annie Dillard. Enough darkness, rumination, and underbelly. I parted the curtains to let in some light. And in these last very happy weeks of time spent at reading level age 10 and up, I’ve learned that when life feels a bit clouded and the way is unclear, these scrappy young heroines remind me of everything I need to know. Adventure is where you find it. Smart girls are cool. Being kind is more important than being beautiful. Work for good. Follow your passions. Love yourself and love with another will follow. But in the meantime, we’ve got bigger fish to fry, like learning to write novels, befriending old ladies in stone houses, and finding our home on the prairie, our dreams in the tall sea grasses.

So, friends: I’ve got Anne of the Island on its way from a used bookstore in Michigan. A Wrinkle in Time is in the queue, and when it gets chillier, I plan to read through all the Little House books. What are your favorites? What childhood books do you visit again and again? Which heroines taught you what kind of woman you want to be?

Y’all know I like to tipple from time to time. That’s why, when I heard about a book called Booze Cakes, I pretty much knew it would be something you lovely readers would like for a giveaway (especially Sara Rose, am I right?). Quirk Books is raffling off one copy of this gorgeous cookbook to a lucky Pink of Perfection reader. Enter to win by leaving a comment about your favorite boozy recipe by midnight EST Friday, July 9. US mailing addresses only.

Update 7/12: And the winner is Amy! Thanks everyone for entering. Loved reading about your recipes!

On Friday evening I packed up a picnic of cold tuna macaroni salad and watermelon and boarded an evening train bound for Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. We arrived in the dark and drank cold glasses of vinho verde before falling asleep. But in the morning, we awoke to a a town filled with red brick buildings and ringed by green mountains in the distance. We ate breakfast outside in the sprawling garden of a restaurant where they roast their own coffee beans and sell peanut butter chocolate chip cookies the size of your head. From there, we visited the kind of huge, creaky used bookstore that can only exist off rural highways, and here we get to the first point I want to make: of course I had to buy the book you see here the moment I saw it, even if it hadn’t cost $1.50. Please note the sentence at the top of the cover.

I got a little carried away at this book store, snatching up an M.F.K. Fisher book I didn’t have, a Joan Didion novel I’ve long wanted to read, and a cookbook that caused a staggering library fine the last time it was in my hot little hands. Sebastian found me a heavy anthology of personal essays. As the shopkeeper rang me up, he paused at that one. “Is this one free or $1?” As I might have mentioned, I love used bookstores.

We returned to home base for rosé and cold celery stalks smeared with pimento cheese. Everyone retreated into their books for a quiet hour or two. Later, we drove a few miles on empty back roads lined with coneflowers to reach a swimming pool tucked next to river. Here, a surly teenager served ice cold canned sodas and greasy hamburgers.

How delightfully far it all felt from New York! On the Sunday drive back to the train station, my damp swimsuit tucked back inside my suitcase, we got to talking about quality of life. How that can mean walking five minutes to your office and having the things you love––swimming holes, bookstores, bibimbap, and really, really good iced coffee––easily accessible. New York has everything anyone could ever want. But to get to those things, we have to travel; even my best friend lives over an hour away by subway.

Some day, perhaps, I’ll settle in that kind of perfect place where indie craft fairs and ethnic food are enveloped by a wide natural world teeming with trails for hiking and clear lakes for swimming. (Any leads on places that match this description, by the way?) Until then, my new goal is to focus on the living the charmed life at hand. That means sprucing up the apartment I actually live in (instead of dreaming about moving), climbing in bed with an old novel, its brittle, brown pages and that wonderful old book smell, lulled to sleep with the story of what happens when a group of Bohemians face up to love.

I used to have a very clear sense of personal style, and it involved a cadre of $20 vintage sundresses. But as my early twenties turned into my late twenties, sometimes these bare dresses seemed a tad too costumey and young. My style needed to grow up, if only by an inch or two.

I have been slow to convert to separates, in part because I do not have that magical skill of grabbing this, grabbing that, and putting something together that is chic and surprising and utterly right. I like the grab-and-go appeal of dresses. But after a long visionary planning session with a friend, I now see the virtue of a-line wrap skirts and crisp cotton blouses and low-v t-shirts. Especially because I am in love with the wrap skirt in Diana Rupp’s Sew Everything Workshop.

This one turned out a little less perfectly than my first try, made last year in a light summery linen. Perhaps I was less confident without my mom at my side to troubleshoot. I did learn some important sewing lessons, though, ones I will swear by on all future projects.

1. Tackle a project bit by bit, an hour here, and hour there (that 5-hour window of free time never seems to materialize anyway).
2. When you start to get frustrated, do not soldier on. Take a break and come back to it with fresh eyes.
3. A sloppily cut pattern will result in sloppily pinned fabric, which will in turn, end up as a sloppily sewn seam. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but slapdash work along the way will turn into a slapdash looking skirt.

Wonkiness aside, I’m proud of this skirt. I am consistently amazed by the miracle of sewing. What sort of genius invented that machine, which makes no sense to me in its separate parts, yet somehow works? I do not, apparently, excel at spatial reasoning, my brain working overtime to envision the flatness of the fabric being transformed into a new form with shape and movement. It is so cool. And then there is that sense of involvement that just never gets old to me: having a hand in creation, actively crafting instead of mindlessly purchasing. I love that feeling of hunkering down into a process, sinking my teeth into the making of a skirt, and in some small way, the making of a life.

A big leap there, I know, and I hope I didn’t lose you. But it’s the same thing we’re always talking about here in roundabout ways but which maybe hasn’t been explicitly mentioned lately. These “lifestyle blogs” aren’t just trying to make you feel like your life should be art directed and perfect, that you should be taking the time to squeeze a gallon of lime juice for your next fiesta and if you’re not you’ve got your priorities all screwed up. At least this one isn’t. This blog is about bringing attention the thing things we care about, creating a life that means something because we’re actively creating its delights.

When we’re making dinner and making things, we’re engaged in a process––slipping in via small, unassuming access points to bring a meaningful attention to our lives. We can certainly bring that same attention to waiting in line at Taco Bell for our nachos bell grande, but somehow––maybe it’s the hairnets and the muzak––it’s easier to tune out there. But when we have the cheese grater and the knife right in our own hands, when we hold the scissors and sharp pins, there’s no choice but to pay attention, to bring awareness to our days and how we’re living them. Which, at their ordinary best, can involve chowing down on homemade Mexican food in really cute, imperfectly-sewn skirts.

Women Food and God

Lavender bubble bath

Goldie Hawn’s hair in Foul Play

fava beans

my little brother’s college graduation

peonies

morning pages (how cool is anne sexton in this pic?)

my new love of barley

Thrifty is such a funny word, though maybe I think so because I use it in a somewhat liberal fashion. After all, I call myself a “thrifty girl,” but appreciate expensive clogs and pricey slab bacon. What a thrifty life lived in “the good life” fashion comes down to, duh, is choices — scrimping on the things that don’t matter to you, like toilet paper or black tea, and spending your money to support what you feel pretty adamant about: soft sheets, fresh flowers, good coffee.

Thrifty: Living the Frugal Life with Style culls every area of life and offers up frugal ideas on everything from wardrobe to the home in a friendly, witty tone. Anansi Press is giving away one copy of this book to a lucky Pink of Perfection reader chosen at random. To enter, leave a comment about the way you live with thrift. That could mean your favorite ways to save money or what you think is worth the splurge. Enter by midnight EST, Friday, May 7. Open to US and Canada mailing addresses. Bon chance!

Update 5/10:

And the winner is Rez! Thanks to everyone for entering — I loved reading everyone’s thrifty ideas!

Alice Waters fan, rejoice! In fact, fans of David Chang, Rick Bayless, Charlie Trotter, Lidia Bastianich, David Tanis, Thomas Keller, Dan Barber (and more!) go ahead and rejoice, too! In the Green Kitchen is a slim, pretty volume jam-packed with simple, sumptuous recipes that illustrate indispensable cooking techniques. Waters begins with a green kitchen manifesto (#4 “Cooking and shopping for food brings rhythm and meaning to our lives”), and a list of what to stock in your pantry, making this an especially great cookbook for a starstruck beginner. To enter to win, leave a comment about your favorite thing about spring cooking by Friday, April 9 at 12 midnight EST. Two commenters will be chosen at random; sorry, this one’s for US mailing addresses only. And if you don’t win but are still curious, bear in mind that all proceeds from the book go to support Edible Education, a national movement to change the way children eat and how they learn about food in the public schools.

Update 4/12: Congrats to Paige and Supermommie! And thanks to everyone for entering!

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil
     probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty
     dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we
     spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
     pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here,
     and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street
     the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying
     along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my
     wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush:
     This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called
     that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter
     to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more
     and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in
     the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a
     cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m
     speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

–Marie Howe

photo via alancleaver