events and returns

The past twenty-four hours were richly decorated by the presence of my girls, their guys, and my landlord. (That would Ed, who remains, otherwise, without title. Or, who allows me to make up titles as I see fit. Same difference.)

Glowing moments. I’m at an age where daughters are so enjoyable that it hurts – like it does at the side of your ribs, when you’re laughing too hard.

I'm the parent still, but there are no more corrections to be made, instructions to be conveyed. I remember sitting at the Cuban café in Miami Beach. A rather young woman, with a baby straddling her hip was saying goodbye to her own mom (the baby’s grandmother). The grandmother smiled down at the kid, then instinctively pulled her daughter’s loose and revealing shirt up higher, so that it would reveal just a little less. Oh! These are such familiar impulses! Pull down the short skirt, pull up your shirt, up, down, up, down – look after yourself, please, look after yourself!

That's not my role now. Suggesting, prompting -- it's all much more subtle and nuanced when they're adults and you're even older.

I came back to Madison in the early Saturday afternoon. Ed picks me up at the airport and together we make our way to Monona Terrace. There is an Earth Day event and we find seats to listen to the featured speaker – Mark Bittman. In the older days, Ed and I were quite taken with Mark Bittman's video clips on the NYTimes website.  He cooked up simple meals, always with a sort of nonchalant manner, as if failure was not possible because, after all, it's all in the eyes of the beholder. Lately, he’s moved away from food writing in favor of food advocacy and I suppose he agreed to speak in Madison because we're the kind of place where he'd be well received. 

And he was.

He spoke more about the rather obvious food evils out there, but that’s okay – this is what he's focusing on, this is what draws out his passions these days.

Home now. Ah, home! Movies are made, books are written about this fact of going home: it feels good! familiar and grand, all at once. The Madison skyline is luminescent, the truck farmers are working in the fields around us (not our field -- that project may have to be stalled for a year)...

Yeah, home.

Where good kids make good things happen.

she's hearing good news about their future home

The day is cool but clear and bright. I'm up for a country walk, though not before I show off the progress in our various gardens. It's spring -- the time where you see few failures and lots of hopeful signs of growth.

We take a walk. A country stroll that belongs to my favorites around here.

Out beyond, where deer scamper and birds croon, life feels good. Sweet and reassuring. A quiet world where you can hear each distinctive bird and wonder at its song..

In the evening we eat. It’s a jovial birthday meal and Ed only looks like he’s skeptical about the whole enterprise. Ah yes, there's that arm... and a sweet treat with a candle...

Happy birthday? Yes, very, very much so.

Sunday morning brunch at the farmhouse. Cookies from Miami Beach. With guava jam in their centers.

Frittatas with spring veggies, mango, sweets. And good, strong coffee.

Final moments: we visit the house my older daughter and her fiancée are soon likely to call home. One more, just one more photo where I have my two girls at my side, before the little one and her guy head home, to Chicago.

And then, the wild weekend with all those good elements winds down.

Wait. A small errand still. Ed and I drive up to the Flower Factory, for replacement flowers. Just a few. The place of Midwest's best perennials is quiet now. As if the cool weather scares people away from thinking about flowers.

And now, finally, we're back at the farmette. Ed and I walk the land. Taking stock of the orchard, thinking, scheming -- contemplating possible expansions, or no expansion at all.

There's something to be said for growing within what's allotted to you at this moment, rather than expanding your options. Keep it simple. Do well with what's there. Maybe. 

I've always regarded my birthday as the first real initiation into spring. Daffodils and tulips -- the first good cut flowers. It's just so remarkable that the best growing months are still ahead of us. I'm humbled by that, really I am.

April 21

But I like my birthdays! I say to Ed, even though I know the whole topic makes him nervous. He can’t drop his life’s conviction that celebrations are ridiculously bloated and overdone. That may be, but I think back to my day of encountering birthdays in Italy -- when I had the pleasure of witnessing three such celebrations – familial events mostly and all I remember seeing is grinning and laughter and it didn’t seem that bloated to me at all.

When I scheduled my Miami trip, I could have stretched it through the week-end. People do that. Conferencing is over, you take a day to do some fun things. Me, I was in a hurry to get home.

When I was a kid my mom told me that what I did on the first day of the new year (calendar or birth) would be my destiny for the remaining 364 days ahead. I doubt she believed it and I didn’t either except that if this day represents, as any day does, your life, your peculiarities and inclinations, it most often is going to be suggestive. And so I am not surprised that I am traveling on my birthday. My restlessness, insatiable craving for that glimpse of life elsewhere, has been with me for as long as I can remember and I see myself as being one day wheeled onto a flight to Paris, then wondering how I can get myself out of the metro system where not all stops provide access for the elderly and disabled.

I got upgraded on the flight from Miami, which is odd, because, as an Air France frequent flyer (they give benefits faster to American passengers) I am the lowest priority for Delta upgrades. On the flight down, I was number 26 out of 26 waitlisted for upgrades and they only gave out two. But this time, I was number four and they gave out four and there you have it. Birthday luck. I wanted to thank the attendant and explain that I was especially appreciative because it’s my birthday, but that felt like I was asking for something – perhaps a rendition of a Happy Birthday chorus and so I said nothing. But I smiled gratefully at the free cereal and tea with lemon.

By a stroke of great fortune both my daughters and their guys are able to join Ed and me for dinner tonight. So we’ll be a table of six and I think that’s pretty close to those tables in Italy where people casually leaned over each other and put an arm around the shoulder of their neighbor.

I have hopes for myself for the year ahead. To be less discouraged at the end of long work days. To take that smile from tonight’s dinner table and, as Ed would say, keep it going. As if every day was indeed my birthday.

Readers, Ocean friends -- I want to thank you so much for the good wishes variously sent on this day, on all days actually. I truly value each kind word, each greeting and thoughtful message from you.

So, fifty-nine today. Pretty good for a person who got stuck in some tricky situations early in life and almost didn’t make it past four months.

photo taken by a stranger, on April 20

the familiar trail

It doesn’t take long to develop an ant track. You know how ants are – they follow their established trail and don’t stray from it. Into your kitchen they march, along that one preferred path. You have to use vinegar and other deceptive tricks to confuse and waylay them.

I’ve gotten my preferred trail working for me in Miami Beach. With variations, sure. But still, there are the basic repetitions.

Guava pastry and con leche in the morning.






I can’t walk up north – I have a workshop that starts at 9. So I take the bus. I look with longing at the skies outside, but I am not here for the skies, I’m here for workshops. Sigh. Goodbye beautiful skies.







...and beach umbrellas.







I know there is to be rain in the afternoon. So be it.

But as the sessions end, I step outside and see sunshine! The promised afternoon storms are stalled somewhere. Not at Miami Beach.

And here’s a little variation: if yesterday I walked on the upper beach, away from the water, today, I splashed my way south. All five miles of it rinsed by the wonderfully warm waters of the Atlantic.







Because it is a week-end, the beach is... well, not quite Coney Island packed, but close. All the more reason to do some serious people watching.








All ages, representing all localities, all there, enjoying beach life.







I imagined that the entire coast of Florida is on this day swelling with beach loafers.







Many people love to just stand in the water to cool off and that’s fun to watch too. Humankind, lusting for that refreshing moment when the waves gently tickle your legs or splash against your buttocks. Conversations in the water.







In France, they’d be unpacking their glorious foods and beverages. En famille! Not so here. We tend to like to plump down on a chair or a towel and feel the sun move from one point to the next. Or, in the inevitable quest for romance, we walk the shoreline, holding hands, thinking this is forever thoughts.






Or, we flirt with romance submerged. Or up in the air.







And so life plays itself out on the shore of the Atlantic.








Always with zest and color.








And energy.








Again, as yesterday, I feel hungry by the time I reach South Beach. I look at the lunch offerings – and there are many – but it seems somehow not right to sit down and spend money on yet another (perhaps indifferent?)  meal. 

But here’s a good deal: you don’t want to sit down and be fussed over? Go to Joe's, the Joe's. Order at the take out counter. Carry it to the bar, ask for a soda or, more appropriately, a glass of wine. And eat it there, out of the plastic container.

So, here’s my delicacy (also the cheapest item on the take out menu) – shrimp and scallop ceviche (which is very Floridian – in a Key West manner of speaking) and a glass of rosé.

Heaven.







And after? Remember, I’m on my ant trail. Back to Las Olas for a strong café con leche and a guava roll (their last one! What great luck!).







And I watch people come and go.






An afternoon well spent.




Assumptions. I spoke of them a while ago. Back in Gargnano. Today, I felt I dug a little beyond the guesswork and came up with interesting departures from initial impressions.

So the hotel? St Augustine. A good one. Stay here. Just be sure to ask for a room on the second floor.

The woman who is behind the counter? Not Cuban at all. She is from Argentina. Came here to be with son, stayed. But she knows the good Cuban coffees.

But here’s a guess that proved more than accurate: so many Cubans here have no good words to offer about their home country.

And so here’s an interesting scene: Friday evening at the St Augustine: the hotel throws a wine and cheese social hour for all guests. I’m there printing out boarding passes and somehow I hadn’t known of this but now here I am and so I take my place at the “bar.”

A couple comes over. Where is the wine and cheesecake? The man asks in broken English.
Here. Wine and cheese. Here. -- answers the very friendly, very helpful Cuban-American guy who works evenings at the hotel.
The couple sits down.
Where are you from? I ask. It's what you're supposed to do at these social hours, no?
The Ukraine. And so we start speaking Polish. Ukraine people are used to speaking Polish. It’s the only country that learns my home language because they feel they have to, what with the tourist traffic and all.
The minutes roll along.
I ask our server (and friendly host person) when he came from Cuba. 1999.
Ah. By boat?
No. A complicated story follows.

Have you been back?

No!
The Ukrainians listen, but their chins are down.
Listen, he says emphatically. I know your history. Poland. You needed the Soviet state (I would not characterize us that way, but it’s fine, I understand what he’s trying to say), but in Cuba – it was different.

He’s bitter, indeed hostile about the Cuba of his childhood. The Ukrainians and I look at each other. We’re of a different history.

When we came to America, it was by chance. She won the green card lottery – the Ukrainian husband explains. At first we thought – what are we doing here? I was a professor of engineering in Lwow. I’m a machinist here. But, we’re fine. Our son is here. He's a doctor! (I detect pride.) Our daughter – she was too old, too established to want to move. She stayed.

The Cuban American person describes himself as moderately right of center, politically speaking. But he mentions Canada and the European Union as ideal types, leaving me a bit uncertain as to his classifications.


Suddenly, the Argentine woman is bringing out a lemon pie with a candle. Say what? Ah. Today is the Ukrainian gentleman’s birthday. He’s sixty. We sing, drink, cheer. I look their way. The Ukrainian wife smiles at me. She knows what I’m thinking. I know what she’s thinking.


And so it ends. One last meal – I go for a simple (indifferent) pizza up the street, and a request for a very early wake up call. My flight leaves before they even put out the continental breakfast here at my little hotel in South Beach. I’ll be older and wiser tomorrow. Or older anyway. And home. And that’s a good thing.

next day

The immigrant child carries with her a tangled ball of yarn. Pull on it a little and she’s flooded with memories of the home country. A little more and she’s forgotten it all, embracing the new, culturally almost assimilated, almost, but then pull again and she misses the old place, and then some more and she’s critical of it -- and so on and so forth. It’s a lifelong game.

But the immigrant child has this wonderful thing going for her: she looks at new places with interest and finds ways to like them.

Even Miami Beach.

Sunrise. I can barely see this – my window doesn’t acknowledge the sky, but something outside is turning brighter. Out I go. To the ocean of course.






Mornings by the ocean are my very favorite time there. The colors, the light, yes, all that, but also the people: morning beach people typically have interesting reasons for being there.






I come across, too, the older people who like walking in the hours when they cannot sleep. Me, I could have slept longer, but the AC and I were in a nightlong battle and when, belligerently, I finally turned it off, I felt that I had cheated no one but myself. So in the morning, I left it all and took to the beach.






(The fault is really not with the hotel which is actually very nicely staffed and pleasantly mod and clean, but with the room. They changed me today to the top (2nd) floor and it made all the difference.)

I’m at the southern most tip of Miami Beach and somewhere across the water I can see the towers of Miami proper, but I’m not going to make it there this time around – no time, no need – I have enough here, on Miami Beach, to fill spaces between conferencing.

On the walk back to the hotel, I came across Joe’s crab place. Famous, large, I mean, grossly large. These are terrible places for solo dinners. But I go inside because they have a storefront that opens in the mornings. So here you go, if you wanted to indulge in a dinner of Florida crab, you’d come here. But not with me. Not this time.






And now it is decently early (as opposed to indecently early) and I see that my little hotel is set up for what they call a (free) continental breakfast. I drink my con leche (a Cuban coffee that is good and strong and with just the right amount of milk) and I’m munching on a nice sweet pastry. Is it with guava? -- I ask. Cuban pastries are often with guava.





The woman behind the counter, a lovely person with a thick accent confirms. Noting my interest, she tells me – go visit my favorite café bakery. It’s just a few blocks from here. Behind the CVS.

This is when I started to like Miami Beach.

The corner café she spoke of has a counter opening to the outside too, so you can drive up, get your café con leche, toss around a few sentences with someone you know and keep going.






Or you can linger over your guava roll, or your plate of huevos at one of the handful of tables.






I could stand and watch for a long time the comings and goings in and around the place.






A long time.






But, my first conference session starts at 11 and I have a five mile walk before me to get to it.

A solid, good walk. First, through the quiet, colorful neighborhood north of the café.






Then eventually along the main drag of Miami Beach – Collins Avenue. Here, Miami Beach shows its true colors. Its big hotels, unique, yes, very unique...






But still, they are what they are: big hotels. The Family Law Section of the American Bar Association has chosen the Eden Roc for its spring meetings. The hotel is splendid, or awfully splendid, depending on how much you take to these kinds of places. Big and glitzy with rules about how you must dress when passing through the lobby. Myself, I don’t intend to undress here, but I’m of the mind that if a person in a bikini or one of those European skimpy speedos wants to pass through proudly, so be it. There are, by the way, a lot of Europeans in Miami Beach. French, Italians, Germans. True, their own sea coast is closer, but it’s not nearly warm enough there in April and besides, Miami Beach is just so American – in ways that make you feel like you’re getting a good look at how this country lives and breathes.






It fits the stereotypes, in a colorful sort of way. Like L.A., only with a more accessible beach.

I have just a few minutes to admire the beach area...













... and then I am sucked into the over-air conditioned interior for meetings and workshops – one after another until finally the morning morphs into late afternoon and I am done. Since these meetings bring together attorneys from all over the country, there is not a chance that I’ll know anyone – not this time anyway and so I back away from the social events. Tiki cruises are even less my style than Miami Beach without the Tiki cruises.

And now I face the long walk back to my hotel. I take to the beach this time, walking under suddenly very cloudy skies to the west, so that I am in complete shade, but with a view toward the blue skies in the east. Bright and dark all at once. With the usual umbrellas, lovers, sea gulls, etc etc.







At one point I come across an older woman sprawled just by the water’s edge, her face almost buried in the sand. I run to the beach umbrella people and tell them that surely she is nearly dead, but they assure me that she is in her normal repose, there every day, huddled by the water’s edge. They cannot touch her because it is, after all, a public beach.

Somehow I do not think we have adequately addressed the problem of homelessness and mental infirmity in this country.

It’s a long walk and I pass many many colorful umbrellas and beach scenes, but by the end of it, I know I am just this: very hungry. The small guava pastry and coffee feel as if they were from another day. A mere memory.

I stop at another Cuban-American institution of a place – Puerto Sagua. Since it’s early, around 5, it has mostly a mixed local crowd even as the place is right smack on Collins and very favored by guide books and, therefore, visitors. But they’re nice to everyone here --- outsider, insider, no matter. We all get the well worn menu, the bottles of spicy sauces, the ridiculously rich and delicious café con leche. I order, too, a fresh mango juice and a tortilla de camarones (eggs with shrimp).





Good, solid food.

And just then the clouds let out some drops of rain, but I’m fine with that. I’m almost home and I am certain that within an hour or two, this pretend rain will surely pass.


It does. And in any case, I don’t go very far for dinner.


I don’t know if it’s grand to eat outside because eight months out of the year I can’t do it, or whether it just is grand to eat outside. And if you’re a Floridian, is it boring? Like the exquisite new car that after a while, just gets you from point A to B?

No matter, I do love it and I look for places that have tables outside. Like the Locanda up the block from my hotel.

So it’s Italian. South Beach is littered with Italian eateries. Cuba, meet your cousins from across the ocean. You do rice and beans, they do pasta and tomatoes – it’s all comforting and good, no?


And this sets me thinking (and I think especially vividly because the nice waiter from Italy – oh yes, from Italy and he loved fishing on Lake Garda as a little boy, yes, indeed, in Gargnano too! – makes sure that my wine glass is never empty) – it sets me thinking – isn’t it fascinating how we’ve settled into loving the rituals of ingesting food? Ed, the holdout, is not quite on board with that – he would love to bring along a book to read on our dinners out, just in case neither of us has a good story to share. But he refrains, perhaps realizing that he is fighting millennia of pre-established etiquette.


So I eat. Squid ink pasta which, admittedly is not hugely Floridian, but still, the Italians have come here and they have had an impact and now I am eating their purple pasta and loving it, so there.






I’m in my hotel room now, finishing this text, liking the fact that I can open the window and keep the radio on and basically liking the fact that I am here... and that I’ll be home soon. Saturday. Right in time for my birthday.

hot pink

I’m in a place where, truth be told, I don’t want to be. No no, I’m not talking about the farmhouse. Far from it. Really far from it.

Early, I woke up to this:





In the evening, I strolled past this:





Oh, not revealing enough? Okay, I also strolled past this:






I’m in Miami Beach, where, for the next two days I have a conference which I thought might be (from the intellectual standpoint) good for me.

But me, in Miami Beach?

When I was a kid and spent a handful of years in New York, my parents routinely took us south for winter break. We drove for three days and plunked down our beach towels on the golden sands of Ft. Lauderdale. Once, just once we drove through Miami Beach. This is where rich people stay, I was told.

Even then, I failed to see the attraction.


I have to admit that when I first learned that my conference was going to locate itself in Miami Beach, I wasn’t displeased. Art deco funky stuff, Cuban food, great weather – hey, what’s there not to enjoy!

And it isn’t bad. I just like the farmhouse better.

Ed of course, chose not to tag along. Who could blame him – I’m busy during the day, the trip is short – just three nights – none of it is to his liking. Yes, I sailed through some time ago. On my way to Cuba – he tells me dismissively.
I need your manly companionship! I pleaded.
You’ll be fine. Find a good New York Jewish deli and have a good pickle on me.

So I’m in Miami Beach, at a tiny insignificant little hotel at the south end of things. (The conference hotel, even discounted for attendees, is more than I would ever spend.) There are children in the room next to mine and though I asked for a pleasant view, I got the trunk of a palm tree and someone’s bathroom windows just outside. I may move tomorrow, but probably not. It’s not as if it really matters.





I’m not used to writing unenthusiastic posts and so let me switch gears a little: flights were good, the public transportation from Miami International to South Beach is excellent and cheap, and the beach is just two blocks from my hotel.

Though I find Florida odd (it’s as if, when you move here, you accept the fact that you’re leaving life’s challenges and settling for something... bland), I do like oceans (yes, how obvious) and funky charm is always interesting. For a few minutes.  I find the Cuban presence fascinating and I look forward to eating authentic Cuban food.

I did that tonight, here.





Chicken, rice, beans.


Okay, tomorrow the sun will be out, I’ll wear two sweaters against the public space air conditioning and life will again look peachy pink.

For now, the pink and aqua are a vivid reminder why we no longer rave about pink and aqua.





From Miami Beach, where the air is humid and the waves threaten to drown the place if the ocean rises in the years ahead -- good night. Ed, don’t forget to water my geraniums if they dry out.