Today at Home.

I woke up at Pirooz’s. He is sweet. We’d gone on a date to see Martha Marcy May Marlene. It was intense and raw and crazy and afterward we had Mocchi Ice Cream. Then we slept and woke up so early that it feels like it was a week ago. I went to work at Radish, where I bake once or twice or three times a week. I got a long burn on my right arm; I made applesauce and baked two tall Apple-Spice cakes, two butternut squash pies, and a tray of brownies. I worked with an Indian girl named Kelly, who played a mix with The Arcade Fire and Silversun pickups, and later went into the whole album of the artist who created the theme for Mad Men (as Roger Sterling had just visited the other restaurant I work for). 

After work, I met a girl called Danielle for lunch at my favorite Brooklyn restaurant, Saltie. She is a chocolate maker. Danielle told me a lot about herself, and I appreciate her commitment to hanging out with me and being friends. I learned that she is going through a divorce and that she has no parents. So far she is lovely. I ate bitter greens with squash and apples and cheddar with two cups of coffee. I love their coffee. D and I went to Whisk, where I purchased a cookie cutter in the shape of the letter K, and a small whisk for my neice’s birthday, which is approaching with the speed of a prized racehorse.

It rained all day, and soon after Whisk I found myself back at home and trying, with much difficulty, to get through the last 20 pages of Franny and Zooey. I already started another book about Neuroscience that my new roommate, Ally-Jane insist I read, which I can’t wait to get my paws back on. The Glasses are exhausting.

Three hours later after my Subway ride, I woke up from very vivid dreams about my childhood neighborhood; all the old gang was there and it felt really nice to be back. The grass was so green, and the teepee my neighbors had where kids were caught kissing was back in its conical shape.   

I took a yoga class at Usha Veda that was difficult. It was full of off balance and new poses and thinking about Paris and more yoga. At times I stopped breathing, which really contradicts the point. I am happy to be taking a break from Bikram, which was the reason I cut off ten inches of hair. The day I stopped doing it was the final stretch of a 5 day yoga bender, the day I cut my hair with no regrets. I used to hide under that stuff. I thought it made me who I was. Yet, it was gone and I felt nothing about it and I never have to dye it again to catch up with dyes gone by.

Back at home, I spoke to my father and mother as I did the dishes and cut into an acorn squash to roast and boiled water for pasta shells. I made a lovely arrangement for myself for dinner and ate it at the dinner table, which is a bit unusual. I rarely eat at home (well, I rarely eat something other than toast, sunny butter and apples, smoothies, or tea).

I’m trying to make sense of my days and hope that they are rich with so much. With weather and appreciation and love and thoughts and new brain wrinkles and taking time for myself and for everyone else, too.   

Yesterday at Ashbox.

Dear,

 Often, when I am alone, I think of all sorts of things to write about. I think about what I am up to lately, things I like to eat, and that special moment where you garner a certain lonely and selfish feeling of being in your 20s.

I am a server deep down in Brooklyn, near where the Brooklyn Bridge leads into downtown and around where quiet streets where people walk their dogs and millions of leaves fall onto the sidewalks. I am baking halfheartedly at a place called Radish, where I make tall Apple Spice Cake and Squash Pies and really sensitive and delicate brownies. I do things on the side, not quite with full force at the moment, though I am trying to get my business into gear, while dreaming of running a marathon in Paris in April.

I write poems in my sleep and wake up to forget them.
My favorite foods are still apples, toast, peanut and sunflower seed butter, and anything green I can get my hands on. I like things that smell and taste like grass and I am obsessed with The Herbe Shoppe, where I buy Maca and Kelp and dozens of herb teas. I drink them all day and night and make smoothies really early in the morning and hope I don’t wake my roommates up.

I have a lot of, what am I doing? moments lately. More like, do I know what I’m doing? When I look at the things in my bedroom and when I sit with the cats in the evening, talking to my roommate Jared about current events. I miss Reno and you all the time. I miss the vast sky of last year, and the glorious sunsets and powerful moments of love and regret and wistfulness and the largeness, and smallness of life. I worked so hard this year. It was what I wanted and I got it.

My friend Ali has cancer and she’s in her second round of treatment. I think about calling her and I don’t. I spent a few nights with her when I was in Utah, I told you about them. I will pray for her. Loud, singing Jewish prayers and tiny Buddhist prayers under my breath before soup and silent ones when I meditate. And I will tell her to eat vegetables.

I eat so much money. I buy big jars at Andew’s Local Honey and I go through them in two weeks. I put it all over toast, in drinks, in tea. I cook so, so much at Pirooz’s. I roast squash and cook pies for other people and make soup for myself for a whole week. He and I drink single beers and watch old movies and go on dates, mostly in Brooklyn.

What do you do? Where do you go? Who do you see?

My dad is better now. He scared us all, and amid tears, I listened to my mother talk to me as I sat on a church stoop on Bleecker Street in Manhattan about how my sister could move in with her and my dad would be gone forever. He’s still there, and he is happy as far as I can tell. My brother can love whoever and doesn’t have to worry about it; and me too. We are the same.

I’ll talk to you soon.

Beexles

Subway car to myself, chameleon. Somewhere inside 11:00pm, the G. Two days ago.

Intimacy

A mouse and a frog meet every morning on the riverbank.
They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch, and listen to those two
is to understand how, as it’s written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visible.

The mouse starts laughing out a story he hasn’t thought of
in five years, and the telling might take five years!
There’s no blocking the speechflow-river-running-
all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.

Bitterness doesn’t have a chance
with those two.

The God-messenger, Khidr, touches a roasted fish.
It leaps off the grill back into the water.

Friend sits by Friend, and the tablets appear.
They read the mysteries
off each other’s foreheads.

But one day the mouse complains, “There are times
when I want sohbet, and you’re out in the water,
jumping around where you can’t hear me.

We meet at this appointed time,
but the text says, Lovers pray constantly.

Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,
is not enough. Fish like we are
need the ocean around us!”

Do camel bells say, Let’s meet back here Thursday night?
Ridiculous. They jingle
together continuously,
talking while the camel walks.

Do you pay regular visits to yourself? 
Don’t argue or answer rationally.

Let us die,
and dying, reply.

Rumi

The day was here when we said, “The day is finally here”.

I was in bed with the light on. It was around 7pm. I wasn’t going to sleep, but resting in my room in the only place my body fits right now; otherwise the floor is packed with suitcases and bags of serving and baking dishes from last week’s baby shower.

I was on the phone and fumes were being gassed in my breath. The post office had repackaged a box I’d filled to the brim with books and papers, and what arrived was about half what I’d lovingly packed. And then Dad called, so I let P go from our conversation about my things and the tedium of insurance claims and I said I’d see him in an hour or at 8:30, whichever came first.

It was like this. No hello, just me in a quick what’s up? I was impatient and annoyed. Not at him, but he doesn’t know that. 
Dad was using his dark voice. The deep of the deep. He said hello to me and didn’t ask what was wrong, instead I demanded it. What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Having known him for years, ready for his pitiful theatrics where everything is about him and his life and his feelings. And today I cared about those things.

You know how I feel about homo-SEX-uals? He wanted to know.
Yeah. Yep. I knew already. I’m sure my chest deflated as my heart recoiled, prepared for what was coming next.
Your brother just told me he’s gay. 
Oh. Really? Oh—
Did you know?
I suspected.
Did you know?
Yes. Yep.
How long?
I’m not really sure.
Do you have anything you want to tell me? Are you sure?
I paused for a few moments to consider if my uterus was vacant or if I was suddenly donning a wedding ring. I have none of those things, and I just started a new job this week. I felt like I was okay. I just told him no. And today I am wondering if I should have uttered a parental kind of I love you. Or if I should have thanked him with profusion for everything he’s ever done for me.
Goodbye, Brenna. Have a nice [audio muffled] life? Night?
—and he hangs up.
Like he’s been doing my entire life. 

I took 10 deep breaths. I called my older sister and she knows now, too. There are no more secrets; none that my mom keeps for my brother and none that my brother has to keep from our dentist. None the defies her marriage or complicates dinner conversation. My older sister told me that she doesn’t want our 20-year-old brother around her children; who he’s been babysitting for almost 10 years. She doesn’t need to talk to him. She is like our dad, she said. She is scared and hopes it’s a phase and she doesn’t have to agree with him. To her he is a sex offender and he is choosing to do this.

None of my anecdotes worked with her, and I marinated in our now quite obvious differences. We all know plenty of gay people!—Not her. And she doesn’t talk to the ones she does know.

My father cried to her. This is something that is happening to him. Why him? He must have thought a hundred times. No one is dead and we are all healthy. I asked my older sister to babysit him. To make sure he doesn’t commit to suicide (because he is a candidate and I said these things out loud with some kind of disbelief). I wanted to be home to protect my mom; who, before my brother sent an elusive text on National Coming Out Day, my father threatened to leave if he had a gay son.
I will leave my family. He claimed.

My little sister had all the same feelings as I did. She was bawling when I got to her, and I was familiar with the thoughts of her despair. Why did we squander our best family days? All the warmth of the lights and fireplace and crock-pot meals with flaked mashed potatoes and the television and our dad plopped on the couch and everyone in their rooms. This is, most certainly, a defining moment of a crack in our structure. My mother is finally clear of the feat of secretive oppression. The two of them, my mom and brother, are free. We are uncertain now if the echo of my father’s laughter will cry out as unalloyed in his own home; if he will be there at Christmas. Why does he work where he does, and is he happy there? And she and I love our brother. We love him. Why does our older sister need to treat him differently when his hair and skin and glasses are still the same, when his very DNA is closer to hers than anyone else’s? My Evann and I understand that this is a moment where we could all bond and love, and live out the rest of our days in a household with less bigotry, and perhaps later less racism. Our home could be just as warm, and we are in favor of it. We are all still here, and we could give like there’s no tomorrow.

And so far away, I am sad. I am confused. There is a void and loveless sleeps and this concept. Family. Family. Will he leave? Will I worry?

That was the day. It finally came. It is finally gone.

 

Hey guys.

Hey people. Hi.
I’m here outside. Right out there. I’m at a cafe. Champion. It’s 4:00p.m. and it’s October 10th and it’s 75 degrees. I’m in navy silk shorts with pocket flaps and an equally silky top with jagged stripes. We are in Brooklyn.

About me:
I have a trail tonight - I am hoping to secure some work as a server as a means to ends and means to beginnings.

I want to paint my room.
I want to read more.
I cooked at P’s and walked home. On my way I stopped into a bookstore, Word.
I read Rumi and in his way he smeared salt all over my wounds with perfect explanations for curing for what ails me.

I did the dishes at my apartment and I napped.
I want to be kissed a lot more and I like it when bees do their thing with flowers.

By the way, Alta and I saw each other two weeks ago. The only lesson I gathered from our meeting was this: it’s okay to live with one foot out the door, so long as you know it’s open.

Things to cook in Utah.

Angela asked if I would help with a baby shower. I might. She wants to make:

A ribbon cake.
I want to make: hand-pies, panna cotta, cream puffs, macarons.

My dad is insisting we are “invited over for dinner” to his friend Troy’s, where I will be doing the cooking. My mom pointed out that that is like asking her to go to a party where she could nurse the party guests.

He tells me I will prepare: Salmon.
I want to make:  Sunny Kale Caesar, Tomato Tarts
And what for dessert… I can hardly pick a favorite. 

Irenian.

It’s Monday. My last Monday at the diner.
On Friday night, after the day’s 241 cover take and having made several desserts—I made more still by simmering evaporated milk and mango juice and adding in sheets of gelatin. That would be for one of the finale dinners in our series of “FareWells” dinners, a way for us to make more money and cook, still, whatever we wanted.

I put the mixture into heavy bundt pans and later they unmolded them to what the chef described to me as, “Magazine cover, 1980’s Bon Appetit perfect”. I went home and packed a lot of my things and brought them to Pirooz’s. My apartment in Greenpoint met the doom of Zone A, prone to heavy flooding, should there be any, during a hurricane.

On Saturday the city shut down. The diner was open through the night, and again I made a slew of pastry for the day (it was plentiful, and we were busy), and then worked on Panna Cotta with the chef of another restaurant in New York, Fedora.

After my ride home I settled in with Pirooz. Hurricane Saturday felt, strangely, like Christmas. It was either an adrenaline and excitement driven marathon or we’d sleep through the night and in the morning look to see if there was presents under the tree and snow outside. I made stir fry. We watched a movie. I lasted until 1. I wonder if we all asked ourselves if the power would go out, if the water supply would be depleted and if our structure was sound. On our Sunday walk we saw plenty of trees uprooted and many businesses closed; but generally Brooklyn stayed quiet. The sun came out.

Last night I cooked some more. I think with the combination of cooking for someone on a regular basis, and watching Mad Men, I have a better understanding of what mother’s feel like when they have to cook something different every night; and how leftovers are actually exciting and not boring; and how most of the stuff we serve at one of America’s top 10 best restaurants in ‘11 (Bon Appetit says), might be considered ‘leftovers’, anyway. It’s fun, though. I made a nice bechamel and added cheddar and parmesan, salt, pepper, and curry powder. I added it to the quinoa elbows with threw in chickpeas and baked the sauce with the noodles until the parm I’d sprinkled on top was brown. I oven-roasted tomatoes and tossed greens with a lot of vinegar to balance the creamy sauce. I like cooking. I was surprised at how good it tasted when I sat down with P and a white-wine spritzer (Ferrari-Carrano Fume Blanc, like I used to drink).

I like eating cereal and reading the news in the morning with coffee made with an auto-drip (or a french press, or a percolater). The sound the auto drip makes reminds me of sitting in the dining room of the house my mother grew up in in Pennsylvania. During our last summer visit, my mom would brew coffee in the yellows of the kitchen and pour me a cup as I sat and typed romanticism on my computer. That sound and scent with the combination of toasting bread is like a safety lock and key. It reminds of rolling green Pennsylvania hills and Reno apartments and Brooklyn all at once. 

I’m going to stop there, and I will meet you on the other side of the last 48 hours at M. Wells on 49th Ave and 21st St in Queens.

Lackadaisical.

This review, to me, is how I read old Ruth Reichl reviews years ago. Okay, 2 or 3 years ago. I gripped her books in my knuckles and read them cover to cover, some before I moved to New York and less after. She was a wonder to me; I wanted her job and her palate and to go to the places she went and to see them as she did.   As the NY Times restaurant critic her reviews were romantic, tasteful, brash, and luscious. And now, here was the restaurant I am part of in that same column. All of us hunched over a laptop during lunch service swallowing the imagery and owning our two stars.

In working at M. Wells I’ve gotten to take the reviews out of context. The counters are where I work; where I laugh very, very hard belly laughs with my co-workers many times a day. I’m not sure I’ve thrown myself so heartily into a job before; immediately agreeing to six days a week with only 40 hours of pay (but with kickbacks every now and again). I wanted to stay in New York, and I wouldn’t have without them. I’ve complained a lot. Cried a lot; slept very little, slept too much. Ate too much, drank too much. I’ve learned very little about cooking and massive amounts about baking and cleaning and killing ants and making custards in industrial woks.

Them. Sarah and Hugue. Sandi, Aidan, Brian. To a much lesser extent, Jeff (my sometimes bully). Colin, who loves his girlfriend more than anyone his age loves their girlfriends. They are my brothers and sisters and I love them. I love them for giving me a key and giving me the restaurant in the morning. Without those hours alone I’d have no chances to sing at full lung capacity. I’d have no way to listen to NPR and sit and contemplate my daily list in whichever booth I decide is my favorite that morning. I’d have no chance of dancing from one end of the diner to the other with no boundaries or worries other than getting my list done.

I’ve gone from making 4 desserts for dinner to 10. I’ve trained interns and gave them work and had servers peel my apples and had my mom and little sister sit near my work space. My life, in the last 6 months, has been encapsulated into this tiny space; one I can hardly recite the table numbers to but can tell you how many rubber spatulas we have in the kitchen and where, near the woks, you will find them. 

I am the woman making banana cream pie. The man who wrote this is merely talking about a place I am home and the people I live with and the food with our elbow grease.