Book Slut

I am always looking for a book to pick up.

I spend inordinate amounts of time in bookstores and libraries cruising for a book I might like to take home.

I frequent online services to examine what is available.

I may look over a likely prospect in a bookstore cafe or dark corner of a library

Most are rejected quickly as unsuitable. A blurb, the contents page, a few paragraphs and I make my decision.

I admit I choose many books by their covers.

Sometimes friends introduce me to a likely prospect. They may bring one to my attention at a social gathering.

Often I take one home from a dinner party.

Once in a while I meet a book and it is love at first sentence. It is immediately satisfying.

We just click. Our relationship grows page by page, chapter by chapter until it blossoms into true love. 

It is a love that lasts until the final sentence when we two must part.

It is wrenching.

I remember the sweetness of those hours we had together for a long, long time.

But alas, I must start the search again.  

I am insatiable.

The Good Dog

Maazy, Mandy, Horney - whatever name she went by, was by far the best dog I have ever known. She was simply the smartest, most intuitive, lovingest dog in the world. So when unexpectedly at the age of only 10 or 11 she died, it was a shock that shook my family to the core.

She was a park dog - a foundling who had survived for some weeks on her own in Riverside Park. Our babysitter cajoled her home and my family fell in love with her at first sight. She looked like a sawed-off German shepherd, with alert, expressive eyes, a brown coat, which contrasted beautifully with a golden brown chest. She was my idea of what a dog should be.

Once she moved in with us we became her sole responsibility. She seemed devoted to us. She welcomed our friends and growled instinctively at those we distrusted. She accompanied the children of our building into Riverside Park after school. She watched over them and gave warning to anyone she perceived unwelcome by the group.

At home she liked to herd us into the same room. She was most content at meal times or evenings spent in the living room in front of the TV.

She doled herself out to us. Each of us got equal attention. She would allow us to pet and admire her. It was her due. We understood. She obeyed my husband’s rules with a smile. When he played the piano she would be sure to hop on the bed and relax on the pillows knowing he wasn’t going to enforce that particular ban while he was playing. Any pauses in the music and her intelligent head would perk up to see if the piece continued or not. She was off that bed long before he made it  into the bedroom if the piece was over. I’ve frequently longed for her during concerts when I didn't have a proper notion of when a selection is actually going to be finally over.

She had a highly defined sense of taste as well. She would come into the kitchen to see what I was preparing. If I were baking she would sniff the air and if I were using butter she would settle down in front of the oven to await the first cookies. If I was using margarine she would sniff and go to another part of the apartment.

Our Maaz ran away frequently. She was a park dog after all. We stopped being distraught after a few years. We knew she would come home after a night in the park,  she would cross Riverside Drive safely, arriving at our building when Barney the doorman began his shift. She knew he would put her on the elevator to our floor where we would find her asleep in front of our door.

That’s what got her of course. Apparently the parks department had laid pellets of rat poisoning in the park and she ate them. She consumed so many the vet couldn’t save her. We awoke Christmas morning to find her curled up next to our daughter’s bed. Gone.

This loss seemed unbearable to all of us. We wept and cried each day vowing never to have another dog because none could replace her.

Her passing made a sort of philosopher of me. I always agreed with Shaw that if heaven didn’t allow dogs then I wanted no part of going there. But to feel her loss, how could I comprehend? 

It came to me one morning after her death that she had been the best darned dog I had ever known. She lived her doggie life to the fullest. She enjoyed each day of caring for us, of foraging in the park, of just being a dog. She lived the good life: she was kind and just in her dealings with us humans. She forgave our shortcomings and even our misdeeds. She ate with relish and she slept peacefully. She lived her life to the fullest and now she was gone. 

And what difference did it make where her doggie soul had gone? She was my dog and I loved her. I wouldn't mind being as good a person as she was a dog. She connected. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Either there is heaven or not, a god or not. It’s all about how you live your life.

Thank you, Mandy.

Food Fight

Every time I make a cake from scratch, I betray my mother. Every biscuit that does not come from a box of Bisquick is a personal affront to her. Not to mention non-Pillsbury piecrusts.

My mother was a modern lady, carefully schooled on shortcuts and prepackaged foods to feed her family beautifully while allowing herself maximum free time.

She could not believe that, I, her daughter, a working mother refused to learn from her. “I am just trying to save you time, honey,” she lamented as she asked why I didn’t use Betty Crocker’s Potatoes Au Gratin instead of peeling and slicing and cooking. “What you are really saying, Mama, is that the packaged stuff tastes as good as my homemade.”

“Let’s not go there,” she replied, in the hippest jargon imaginable.

Mama was trained by Betty Crocker and Peg Bracken. She loved chicken baked with canned cream of chicken soup, pancakes from Bisquick and especially boxed potatoes au gratin. The likes of Julia Child and Alice Waters could never loosen her alliances. She was loyal. I was not.

Her mistake was to let me cook. She was in a crummy situation when I was teenager. Her mother, the formidable German haus frau that she was, moved in with us. My father was Italian and Gramma never did trust foreigners. I don’t think I heard her address a single sentence directly to him.

His extreme patience stopped at the dinner table. No wonder Mama wanted to get dinner over with. Someone was going to be annoyed no matter what she made. An Italian dish and Daddy would be all smiles. Gramma would look like was being asked to eat Martian food.

Daddy would eat most America dishes as long as there was bread and Romano cheese on the table. But after Gramma moved in, he seemed to get a bit testy on the subject of American cooking.

Mama discovered that if she let me cook, her two critics would be on their best behavior. I wanted to try out things I had discovered in my new devotion to all things French. These required a great deal of cutting and chopping, but as long as there was no grousing at the table she was fine with any recipe I wanted to try.

It wasn’t until after I was married, working, and had a family who ate whatever I put in front of them that her incredulity showed itself.

At first she would suggest I could save time by using prepackaged cake mixes. I really couldn’t tell her that they had a chemical taste because she would have been insulted, so I took the easy way and said they were too expensive, which they were. I said they didn't save enough labor to make them worth the money.

The only difference in actual preparation as far as I could see was that the mixes left out baking powder, salt and shortening. You still had to dirty a mixing bowl and beat in eggs and milk. So what was so darn easy about that?

Mama said it was a matter of having confidence in knowing the dish would turn out well.

“Well,” I told her, “if someone didn't like the cake I baked for him or her, he or she could keep his or her mouth shut about it because there probably wouldn't be any more cakes baked from scratch or from mixes if people started complaining about it.”

“Ok, ok,” She said, “Don't get so steamed up about it, it was just a suggestion. I thought I was helping you and now you go off on me about it.”

As Mama aged she changed tactics. She gave up on cake mixes and switched to side dishes. She would bring up potatoes au gratin every time we saw each other as if it were for the first time.

“Did you ever hear of Betty Crocker’s Potatoes Au Gratin?” She would innocently inquire.

I would narrow my eyes and wonder just how much of this was age and how much was Mama.

”Yes,” I would answer, "Every time I talk to you.”

She would, in turn, narrow her eyes and remind me not to get sassy.

She suffered from Macular Degeneration and was told to eat more green vegetables and salads, a prescription she did mot much care for. I don't think she ever met a vegetable she really liked. Maybe canned white asparagus, but then that certainly didn't meet the green standard.

I prepared fresh vegetables and salads for her but she could only stomach them drowned in bottled dressings. She particularly disliked fancy salad makings like mesculin. Iceberg was as far as she would venture.

She called me a few years ago to say she was having a recurring nightmare in which she was lost in a field of arugula.

As she neared ninety we came to a truce. I would not serve her salad if she would quit bringing giant bottles of strange salad dressing with her to New York.

We visited each other frequently. She never failed to ask if I had tried Betty Crocker’s Potatoes Au Gratin yet.

Mama is gone now, but on her birthday I never fail to buy a package of those potatoes. I make a meatloaf with Lipton Onion Soup mix and for a vegetable I buy canned creamy corn.

I serve it with a nice arugula salad.