Stop and Smell the Skunk Cabbage

The last of the snowdrift has melted from under the cherry tree in the back garden.  Crocuses are in bloom and daffodils are in bud.  The trees are bare; the grass is brown, but the afternoon sun has a quality that could almost be considered warmth.  The trick is to appreciate the white bending snowdrops for their beauty and not wish for roses. 

Personally, I love to complain.  If the sunshine is warm and the wind biting, I mention the chill.  Perhaps at some formative time I received sympathy and associated it with love, but who feels sorry for a man buffeted by the March wind? God sends the rain on the just and the unjust.  I always thought that meant you got wet whether you deserved it or not, but now I realize this wisdom was first uttered in a dry country and refers to a blessing.

It’s a good idea to sort out blessings from afflictions.  Our thoughts direct what we say, but people who grumble are building attitudes, and what they say influences how they think.  The psychologist Erick Berne in his book Games People Play described a game he called “Ain’t it awful” in which people sit around and complain.

 We all enjoy feeling sorry for ourselves.  Like drinking martinis, grousing builds camaraderie and is beneficial in small doses. If you’re irrepressibly cheerful when others aren’t, you won’t win friends.  But in the solitude of your mind it’s healthier to give thanks.  Stop and smell the roses, and if they haven’t blossomed, take a good whiff of pungent skunk cabbage and reflect on what it means.

Kitty Care

They tell me it’s good for oldsters to get themselves into unfamiliar situations.  Finding your way in a strange town without a GPS is a suggested exercise.  That works for me because I don’t have a GPS, and if I did, my aging brain cells would get a workout getting the gadget to operate.  I suppose the ordeal awaits me because paper maps seem to be going the way of phone booths. I’m pretty good with maps, at least until it’s time to fold them back up.

Today, my cerebral calisthenics involved going to Petsmart to buy supplies for my mother’s cat, Peaches.  Mother has taken up residence at the LIfecare Center on Obery Street, but the cat still resides in Mother’s eight room house.  I have a neighbor helping with the feeding, but I do some of it myself, and I’m the quartermaster. 

The cat was low on food and cat litter, which are pretty much all the provisions he requires.  I have a different philosophy from my mother’s when it comes to cat feeding.  I am of the opinion that a hungry animal will eat whatever food is provided, and if the creature rejects it, he simply isn’t hungry enough.  This philosophy works with soldiers in the field and small children in the home. Eskimo kids eat raw seal blubber, or at least they did before their culture was corrupted by Pop Tarts and Ring Dings. 

Not everyone agrees.  I once knew a woman who went to the fish market for fresh fish which she boiled up for her cat because the chubby gourmet wouldn’t eat anything else.  Of course he didn’t.  If were a cat faced with the choice between fresh fish cooked daily to my taste and canned garbage from Mrs. Paul’s fish stick factory, I’d go on a hunger strike too. 

The pet food industry caught on to this phenomenon. Supermarket shelves are lined with tins of gourmet treats with pictures on the labels make the contents look appetizing enough to serve your most discriminating human guests. Some cat owners, like the fish cooking lady, fear their animals will die of starvation if their palates aren’t tempted, and others believe, if they pamper their cats, the little dears will love them.  Personally, I believe that the cats lap up the expensive canned goods and chuckle at their owners’ stupidity.

If the cat were mine, he’d think he was in boot camp, but Mother is making a difficult adjustment to the routine at Life Care, so she needs to know that Peaches is getting the loving attention he has been used to from kittenhood.

Shopping for him put a strain on my aging brain cells.  Of the hundreds of small cans that line the shelves of the Petsmart catfood aisles (Yes they have more than one.) I finally chose a brand that offered single serving containers in boxes so I wouldn’t have to juggle them. 

Then I moved on to the kitty litter department. This was really perplexing, but there was a bevy of cat owners there who were willing to instruct a beginner.  I had heard from my helper that she doesn’t like the clumping kind, but everyone there insisted that clumping kitty litter is a scientific breakthrough that has revolutionized cat ownership.  A gentleman recommended a brand he said was the best he ever used.  I liked it because it wasn’t heavily advertised, and I reasoned that it might be making it on excellence instead of hype.  The word clumping wasn’t blazoned in big letters, but by the time I’d lugged the heavy container to the checkout counter, I had read the fine print and found out the product could clump with the best of them.

 I toted it back and began again. The cat lovers resumed their praises of clumping cat food, and I was getting tired.  There didn’t seem to be many brands that didn’t clump, although Petsmart is such a vast emporium, there may have been a separate non-clumping kitty litter section that I didn’t find. I took home some Arm & Hammer because I remembered the baking soda from my Grandmother’s day. 

Expertise is yet to be achieved, but at least I’m stocked up.  In the past, Peaches has both scratched and bitten me, mainly because I have been the one to apply his anti-flea treatment, which he doesn’t like.  I would hold him firmly while Annette would place a dab of the insect repellant on the back of his neck where he couldn’t lick it off.  Mother didn’t’ like to trouble her pet and let his enmity fall upon me. Now that he sees me as the provider of his Fancy Feast, his attitude has changed, and when I enter the house he purrs and rubs against my legs.  I’m less than impressed. 

Moby Dick

I have always been afflicted by the dilemma that there are so many books and so little time.  It is for this reason that I used to be reluctant to read the same book twice, but now as age creeps upon me I have come to realize that I shall pass from the world leaving masterpieces unopened.  Instead of rendering me deprived and bitter, this understanding has turned me mellow as an old briar pipe. 

Perhaps some inkling of it was the reason certain volumes remained on my shelves, surviving cruel cuttings to make room for newer books. I have, for example a nice set of The Lord of the Rings, which came, as I recall, as a bonus from the Book of the Month Club, to which I once belonged.  These supplanted the tattered paperback copies that everyone read in the sixties. I dip into the books from time to time because they take me back to Middle Earth as it was before the movies imagined it for me.

 I have the Modern Library edition of Moby Dick, a relic of my college days.  We, who were required to read it, called it Moby’s Dick, for no other reason than ribaldry made us feel a little less beleaguered by the grim oppression that made us labor through it.  Most of my college books are gone, but I kept it as one would the trophy of an animal one had overcome with perseverance and courage.

I reread the book in my middle age, finding that maturity brought light to its pages that I hadn’t seen before, and that an expanded understanding of the world and a better vocabulary made it a pleasanter read.  Then, while wandering the aisles of the Brattle Book Shop, I came upon an Easton Press edition beautifully bound in black leather and offered at a tempting price.  As happens to book lovers in such a place, I found I couldn’t leave it behind.

I withdrew the Modern Library copy from the shelf, intending to consign it to one of the boxes of books slated for sale at the Antiquarian Society fair next summer, but I found I couldn’t part with the Rockwell Kent illustrations that are far superior to those in my new copy. So now I have two.

The newer acquisition has other charms. The paper is fine and edged with gold that matches the design on the cover.  The endpapers are blue silk, as is the ribbon that keeps my place. The print is beautiful and stands in sharp definition, making it a joy to read, and reading it I am.  

The orbit of the world has passed the vernal equinox, and the weather at its best reminds me of Wormtongue’s description of Éowyn in The Two Towers, “Like a morning of pale spring, still clinging to winter's chill.” Tonight it is snowing, and I am cozy with Moby Dick. I have just passed chapter 49, the first paragraph of which reads:

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.”

I was “Interested” in existentialism in college, but I slogged through that paragraph not noticing how it presaged the philosophy that was then the fad.  Even in the second reading I failed to appreciate its humor and beauty.  On this snowy spring night I finally got it.

Rum Drinks

You have to try new things or your life goes stale.  That’s why I bought the bottle of Rhum J.M. I knew it could be a mistake, but it was made in Martinique, which is actually a Department of France, where they make Cognac, Champagne and paté de foie gras, so why, on a Caribbean island, wouldn’t the French make wonderful rum? 

I squeezed a lime, measured out the Rhum J.M., got the simple syrup and, ice, and shook up a couple of daiquiris. I tasted mine and said, “This is terrible!” and Annette said, “You’re right.” We needed an able mixologist, so the next evening we invited our friend John Sgammato to come to the rescue. You can always depend on John to help a friend in need.  When he arrived, I made a daiquiri to demonstrate the problem. 

At this point I must become a little nonlinear in my story and take you several years back and a lot of miles away to the island of Bermuda.  Annette and I were staying in a hotel called Silver Sands.  It was run by a family of white Bermudians, and their idea of food was so English and so bloody awful it could almost be called quaint. I’ll give you one example from which you may extrapolate their entire cuisine.  There was an appetizer on the menu called cold ravioli.  Being a man of daring palate, I like to try peculiar-sounding foods, so I ordered it.  I was solemnly presented a plate bearing a lettuce leaf upon which there was a single patty of Chef Boyardee ravioli right out of the can. 

The hotel was not without a redeeming factor. The bartender was a black Bermudian named Wellington.  I asked him if he had a special drink all his own, and he did.  The concoction was delicious.  I asked for the recipe, but he gave me his genial smile and told me he didn’t reveal his secrets.  But of course he worked right in front of me, so the next evening, sly of intent and sharp of eye, I ordered it again.  Wellington was deft with the bottles and fast with his pours, but the problem was he didn’t make the same drink. He kept changing his specialty every night we were there. He admitted he was doing it, but his tropical libations were so delightful, I had no cause to complain.

I never discovered Wellington’s secret recipe, but I learned his technique.  His drinks had a base of rum, a mixture of fruit juices, and a flavoring of a fruit-based brandy.  Two that I noticed he used were apricot brandy and crème de banana.

To return to the present and the problem of the horrible daiquiri, John and I were in my kitchen trying to mend the sample drink.  I added an ounce of apricot brandy.  It was no better.  I colored it red with a drop of grenadine syrup – no improvement.  Together we agreed upon a drop of coconut syrup.  Annette thought we might be getting somewhere, but it needed something more.  Wellington’s fruit juice had been poured from an unmarked bottle, so I never discovered what he used, but I’ve been experimenting for a long time.  I find pineapple juice makes a good base, but I didn’t have any.  I squeezed an orange and added the juice to the failed daiquiri.  Bingo!

Ruhm J.M is 100 proof and stands up well to the fruit juice base of a tropical drink. Recipes abound, but I prefer to create my own.  There’s much to be done, and already the level of Rhum J.M. is beginning to dwindle.  I’m going to call my masterpiece a Wellington, and the distinguishing factor will be that the drink will never be made the same way twice.

I had my inspiration, and John set off on a different tack.  He asked if I had any crème de cacao.  I didn’t, but I had Kahlua. He mixed some with the rum.  The flavor was promising.  He added some Godiva chocolate liqueur.   Annette sipped it and thought of a brandy Alexander.  “There’s some cream in the door of the refrigerator,” she told him.  He shook the mixture with ice, poured it into a martini glass, and the Annette cocktail was born.  I suggested the next time it might be nice to rim the glass with cocoa powder. 

These are the discoveries of an evening of creativity punctuated with stories, laughter, and happy sipping. We’re delighted to share them, but we recommend you have your own sessions of invention from time to time. Any sort will do, but if you come up with cocktails, your mind will be freed from inhibitions, and gaiety will ensue. 

Annette Cocktail

1 oz. 100 proof rum
1 oz. Kahlua
1 oz. Godiva chocolate liqueur
½ oz. Light cream

Shake with ice, and pour into a cocktail glass rimmed with cocoa powder.

 

 

 

 

 

Portents

 

In a gloomy mood, I grumble that March is a winter month, and sometimes the weather bears me out.  As I tap the keyboard, I can see bare trees and brown grass. Most of the snow has melted, but there doesn’t seem much change from the way things looked in January.

I’d been doing my walking in the supermarket for weeks to avoid icy blasts and treacherous footing.  I liked to get there early so I could move briskly past the produce, up by the deli counter and along by the fish and meat. Unobstructed by shopping carts, I moved at a snappy pace with the bread on my right and the butter on my left, and strode past the checkout counters and the customer service desk to the produce where I started again.  Seven times around made a mile. 

But Friday I took my first outdoor walk in a long time and was rewarded by the sight of a clump of crocuses in a sunny yard. They were tightly furled against the cold, but definitely in bloom.  There was also a stand of snowdrops.  Neither of these were spectacular.  At the florist area of the supermarket I gave orchids a sideways glance, but the virtue of the crocus is that it stirs to changes humans barely notice and bravely blossoms when needed most.  It is a sign of spring. 

As such it warms the heart the way an orchid never can.  It reassures us that the world is changing for the better. In the low wetlands the green and purple horns of the skunk cabbage must be protruding through the muck.  I must go and see.