Pasta for Thanksgiving

I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving as a young child in Austria and didn't know exactly what the holiday meant until my family moved back to the U.S. when I was 9.

In those early years, Thanksgiving was an afterthought. As my mother dished out the whopping 3 pounds of pasta she cooked for her brood of six, she mentioned "Oh, today's Thanksgiving."

What's that? we asked with full mouths. 

"An American holiday."

And we dug again into the mountains of pasta blanketed with deep-red tomato sauce.

I ate helping after helping until the top button of my skirt needed to be undone. Until I had to take a nap before I could comfortably move again. This was also not unusual in a household that served one main meal each day, a light breakfast and dinner and hardly ever snacks.

I couldn't find us eating pasta,
but here's a holiday pic from that time.

Pasta was the food that fueled afternoon play. Pasta was what kept us waiting as lunchtime approached and belly's grumbled. 

"A watched pot never boils."

I knew that my mother was right. But not watching in wait while your stomach screams is an impossible ask. 

By the time the pasta reached al dente (and when I was the tester, I sometimes lied that it was there already) the mob of six circled the kitchen, sometimes fighting with each other. We couldn't help it.

When my mother placed the bowl on the table, there was no more will to wait. We held our forks upright ready to revolt. 

"Marisa, you say the prayer," my mother said to the oldest. Marisa was the one who organized our play. She took care of us. She sometimes ruled on who was right and wrong. We would give her one breath. One sentence.

"Thank you for our family, our food and our friends."

"Amen," we all said and then pillaged the pasta.

I am better acquainted with idea satisfaction than Thanksgiving. The gratitude comes afterward. I am satisfied; the meal was good. 

Comfort food

I want comfort. I boil three potatoes in their skins, mash one with the back of a fork, drizzle it with good olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt. I crawl back into bed.

I'm home sick for the second time in two weeks, and I'm homesick for a distant memory:

Nono (Italian for grandpa) feeds my Jack-o-lantern-mouthed brother from a steaming bowl.  He blows on each spoonful of potato before offering the bite. Anthony gums it down and opens for more. Sometimes Nono tests. Twice, after I beg, he feeds me too.

It's been eight years since Nono died and many more since he weaned Anthony. But the flakey potato tastes exactly like I remember. A lot has happened to to me in between those bites. There have been many times when I wanted comfort. Many times when I've retreated to bed with something that will fill me up or numb me out.

I've gone to bed with a glass of wine at the end of a long work day. Against the recommendation of most any dentist, I never bother to brush my teeth before falling asleep. I also hid a giant bar of cooking chocolate in my underwear drawer while I was studying in Spain. I would peel back the foil at night and gnaw on it. Once a wayward chip melted into my sheet. I tried cleaning it up with tissues and toothpaste, but my host had a keen eye. When I got home from school, the spotless sheet was drying on the line between apartment buildings.

It feels good to be cared for — to be spoon fed or have someone else do the laundry. Others have taught me the pleasure of clean sheets. But the lesson is now mine.

I go to the kitchen and mash another potato.

Out of my mind

There's a lot on my mind but not much I can shape into words. And even less I can say on the public platform of this blog. 

I've been wallowing in snot and self pity this weekend. The flu's onset happened swiftly on Friday afternoon. I went from scarfing down an entire box of sushi as a late lunch to sneezing and filling my trash can with Kleenex. I went home from work early and spent the next 36 hours in bed. 

Too much time in bed in my case is the fastest trigger of an emotional decline. I woke up this morning feeling sorry for myself. My head still felt like a watermelon, but the thought of another day in bed just about made me cry. And just like that, my friend Harum called. 

We talked about all the things that matter in the lives of single 20-somethings — the high- and lowlights of dates, the stresses of work, plans for future trips, riding bikes, being outside. And suddenly I was outside in the sunlight walking barefoot up and down the sidewalk in front of my house, still in my pajamas. The sun felt good. It felt good to laugh. 

I got off the phone and got in the shower. I dressed and went to the coffee shop around the corner to answer emails and write this blog. My head still feels heavy but my mind is a lot lighter. 

Creative burst

I've got a head full of schemes and a blistered right hand — both the result of the weekend's tiny house building workshop.

In three days, I learned the basics of framing a tiny house from floor to roof.

The result of three days' work.

I got home late last night (from dinner with the people who hosted the workshop) totally inspired and also painfully aware of my lacking skill and the limitations of my strength. Hammering floor joists, wall studs and plywood was hard for me. It took me five swings of the hammer to everyone else's single swing.  But I stuck with it.

What I found inspiring was the process of turning drawings into an actual structure. I returned home each night of the workshop exhausted and still spent an hour looking at pictures and reading about what other people have done. The model that most appeals to me is that of Dee Williams (see video below).

I left the workshop with a half dozen phone numbers of people I could call to bounce ideas and perhaps to drive a few nails for me. 

Last week brought another creative highlight. I got to do some writing for the newspaper. Best of all, the topic was one I liked. I wrote about poet Galway Kinnell. For the reporting process, I attended a reading to celebrate Kinnell's contribution and life and spoke with his cohort of poet friends.

Galway Kinnell, 87, at the reading honoring his life work
at Vermont's Statehouse

The poetry and the conversations have stayed with me. They affirm that a life in pursuit of creativity is one well lived.

Living ‘The Little House’

Growing up, my mother read aloud to us every night. This continued well past the time that I could have easily read to myself. 

Mama warmed up with picture books chosen by the younger kids and then dove into the chapter books. The younger ones listened to those too. We covered considerable literary ground. We read “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “The Arabian Knights,” “Brother’s Grimm” and much more. We read “The Little House” series at least twice. 

Much of what I knew about the United States, as a child in Austria, was based on the lives of the Ingalls and Wilder families. My sisters and I were obsessed with hoop skirts and bonnets. We played at churning butter with buckets of mud in the backyard. 

Above all, the journey west in a covered wagon captured my imagination. We built covered wagons out of chairs and sheets and filled them with everything we could think of — a tea set, blankets, pillows, the chest of dress up clothes. My destination was always Montana, where my make-believe husband grew up. 

When we finally moved to the United States, I learned that no one actually lived and travelled in a covered wagon anymore. That life was limited to historical reenactment museums. But the idea of a small mobile dwelling has never left me. 

In my early 20s, I learned about eco-minded people living in tiny houses on wheels, and I have dreamed of building my own tiny house ever since. I like the idea of living in a home where each object is considered. A home that doesn’t tether me to a mortgage and promotes a lifestyle of limited environmental impact.

I feel ready to do more than just think about tiny houses. Next week, I’ll take my first concrete step. I’m registered for a tiny house building workshop. I hope to track my progress here.

Picture stories

I'm enrolled in a five-week data-visualization class. The idea is to learn the mechanics of telling stories with numbers and pictures, which happens to be quite tricky.

I woke up in the middle of last night, restless and thinking about my latest assignment. I tinkered for hours with a map component. This evening, I finished. I'm damn proud of these visualizations that explore the top baby names in Vermont.

Learn About Tableau

Time to take flight

June and now half of July have rushed past. I’m afraid that summer will be a distant whistle before I get the chance to acknowledge her presence.

Still, I’ve enjoyed all the things that have kept me from those long, do-nothing summer days. The weekends have been packed with family, friends and weddings. The days filled with work, coffees, drinks, dinners and travel — all at a pace out of sync with the slowness of my writing. I need an expanse of time to form complete thoughts from words. For me it cannot be done during the 30-minute ferry ride across Lake Champlain or the 45 minutes between yoga class and my workday.

I’ve thought about slower and too-slow times in my life and wondered where the balance lies with my current constant state of motion.

I think of summers in Massena, N.Y., during my adolescence. The town had very little to offer me at 14. There were trips to the library and the beach on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River. But I didn’t care much for reading then and the river was far too cold for more than a dip. In the evenings I crossed the road and the park to my grandparents’ house to watch “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” and on Saturday nights, “The Lawrence Welk Show.”

I remember being moderately depressed in the mornings by the expanse of time that lay before me. I tried to make the most of it. I read “Gone with the Wind” one of those summers and knit half an intricately patterned gray wool sweater. I also obsessed about irrational fears. After seeing “The Exorcist” at a friend’s house, I grew terrified of being possessed. And despite having a healthy dose of sex education, I worried that by pressing my bellybutton in just the right (or wrong) way I’d become miraculously pregnant. Without more engagement and structure, my mind roamed to dark places.

Bread Loaf blooms

It wasn’t until my mid-20s that I found the happy balance of purpose, structure and time. I started Vermont’s Bread Loaf School of English after a year of scattered work and unfocused writing. I got to the mountaintop campus in June as the fields bloomed with color. I took classes and worked as a server in the dining hall. The coursework nudged my mind away from obsession. Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner separated my days into workable bocks of free time. My writing took flight in the sunny, Adirondack-chair hours between lunch and dinner service.

My writing has come to a standstill in the past months, but thanks to those Bread Loaf summers I understand what I’m missing. Although I don’t regret the activity, I need more Adirondack-chair hours. I need to remove some structures from my day. I need to clear a runway for takeoff.

Bread Loaf path