365 Memories

Sublime: We are standing at what seems to be the summit of the world. Cordes - sur -Ciel, France. A fortified town (" bastide "), founded by the Count of Toulouse in 1222 as a safe haven for the heretic Cathars . The old town juts into the sky, high above the valley below, even above the clouds. Our physical height begs for metaphorical application: a couple of days now before our wedding, and we are also feeling high on hopes for the future, the beginning of a new chapter of life. Inside the ramparts, we stroll with some of our guests, point out the sculptural details of 13 th - and 14 th -century Gothic architecture. All is beauty and bliss. Chèvres : Amid the tall stone columns of the open-air marketplace, under the thick wood rafters and medieval pennants in the center of Cordes , our sublime moment takes a turn toward the ridiculous. My husband is on a cell phone, checking in with the manager of the château in Couiza , where plans for our wedding reception are underway...

This week, friends are coming in from out of town. They, too, live in urban environments, so instances of city rudeness are not unknown to them, especially on the road, I imagine. (How many times a day does someone in Southern California get exposed to a dose of road rage?). But when it comes to rude, New Yorkers—especially the cab drivers—have earned a reputation over the years, not wholly undeserved. Actually, I think that people in the city (including the cabbies ) have trended much more toward nice in the past decade, though maybe "nice" is just a relative term. Certainly there was a post-9/11 shift. Of course I hope that my friends have only the best experiences in public transportation during the next few days, but in case of any rudeness, I thought I'd share a story to convey that it happens to all of us sooner or later, even the locals—so it's not necessary to ask whether you, when you visit New York City as a tourist, are a target; odds are, it's nothing ...

When I was living in Paris in the spring of 1991, I went out at night as much as possible. Mostly this was to escape my dysfunctional and completely inhospitable host family. If people visited, then I crashed in their hotels. If there were no family or friends from home in town, then I often had an evening of dinner and music and sometimes dancing with my French professor, a woman with the initials E. F. (see another post about her here ). She lived in the Latin Quarter; I was on the other side of the city. Not much of a trip on the Paris Métro , but quite a long walk. I think the last train of the night—the famous " dernier métro "—was at around 1:30 in the morning, and service didn't start up again until sometime in the 5:00 a.m. hour. Of course, being used to the 24-hour convenience (if dubious late-night safety) of the subway system in New York City, the fact of the trains shutting down often escaped my mind. So I'd miss the last train, and although it was late, ...

No, it is not what you think, get your mind out of the gutter. The etiquette in question is oenological , not sexual, although another writer might well draw parallels between the adult pleasures of wine, sensuality, and physical arousal. For a wine professional, of course, it is really no question at all. Faced with a long lineup of vintages for tasting, the thing to do is to sip, swish, and spit. Etiquette likely isn't even a concern; it's just standard practice, reflexive. For a twentysomething woman raised with good manners, who has never been on a wine tasting before, however, spitting is just not an easy thing to do. These days, of course, I know better. I am the wife of a sommelier , and after ten years of dating and marriage, I have been to enough tastings to know that any highfalutin idea of manners may be safely (and should prudently be) forgotten. But back in 1998, I knew no such thing. In October of that year, I traveled to southwest France to meet my husband (then...

When my family lived in Southport , Connecticut, we would go on occasion to an Indian restaurant in Fairfield . I can still see in my mind's eye the dark green awning with white lettering that spelled . . . something. Or maybe I'm confusing the awning with a different Indian place; that's possible. Anyway, I can't remember the name of the restaurant, though probably my parents do. I'll have to ask them. I'm pretty sure that this was the only Indian cuisine available in Fairfield at that particular time (late 1980s), and it was lucky for us that the food was good. Quite good. The people who owned the restaurant were nice, too; the kind of people you wish to succeed. I have the feeling that the restaurant closed eventually, though—after my parents had already moved away and Fairfield in general turned into a consignment store haven. At the restaurant, we always ordered the same dishes, the ubiquitous items that have assimilated best into the American "ethni...

Almost exactly seven years ago, early April 2002. It was three months after my small civil marriage ceremony, performed in Connecticut by a justice of the peace; it was three months before the church wedding and reception planned for family and friends in southwest France. Married, yet somehow not, in a state of transition, I embarked with my father on a "heritage trip" by car, driving down into the Deep South. Georgia, Alabama: the roots of my father's childhood, the seat of a civil rights revolution in its infancy. I had really never explored this part of the country, not in any important way, and in no way with a feeling of connection. My grandparents, Southern to the core, had moved to a Florida retirement town before I was born, and visiting them never really seemed "Dixie" to me. This was a bonding trip, a time to pause and honor ancestry before the life of the future (my separate, legal family life) came to assert itself, forcefully, everywhere. We had pl...

I have just cut my hair—it's what I'll call a "clean up" job. I think it's been almost a year since the last cut (can it be?), and I finally couldn't take my "recession hair" any longer. I went to a new stylist, in a salon about two blocks away from my apartment. Judging only by external appearances (not a reliable indicator, I admit), this salon seemed like a good compromise between my usual high-end stylist and the local Super Cuts type of shop. I've tried the chop shops, and I have to say that unfortunately my very straight, fine hair is not suited to their bargain techniques. Today's experiment paid off; it was the compromise I was hoping for: a lower price and maybe a slightly less sophisticated style, yet nothing that looks in the least bit bad. This blog is about memories, however, and speaking of bad . . . today's brief salon stress (the initial anxiety, when you first trust your head to a complete stranger, not knowing whether th...

Sometimes, it's just too much. "It" can be anything at all: losing your keys, the series of phone calls you have to make to investigate a fraudulent charge on your credit card bill, a visit from the in-laws, the cat scratching the furniture, missing the bus, burning dinner, the rude person who lets a door shut in your face while you juggle groceries and a child, broken machinery, stepping off the curb into a dog pile . . . But sometimes there is nothing wrong, it's just a day with an overwhelming amount of work (real work and "busywork") that must get done, and you are just a one person with two hands. My mom and I have a shorthand for empathy in this situation. "Want to go scream 'shit' out the window?" we'll say to each other. It dates back to a specific moment of frustration, though I don't remember at all what it was about. We were living in Chicago—on Lake View across from Lincoln Park, which puts me at about eight years old. T...

In L.A., we shopped often at a grocery store called Vicente Foods, which was ( eponymously ) on San Vicente Boulevard and directly across from my elementary school. It was (still is, I believe) a small market, convenient to Brentwood neighborhood residents and known to carry exclusive foodstuffs not found at the mega-stores. For convenience and quality, one paid a premium, but it was worth it for certain shopping. Vicente Foods was where you'd go for excellent produce, a great butcher, and an in-house bakery. (For things like paper towels and toilet paper, there was always Ralph's.) My mom and I loved the little bakery section tucked into the back left-hand area of the store, and it wasn't too hard to make a convincing case for stopping and picking up a dessert to accompany that night's dinner. The modest pastry case was always filled with fresh temptations. Perfectly iced cakes, pies, and glazed fruit tarts, plus the smaller French standbys: eclairs and napoleons. At ...

Am I five years old? Seems about right. At this age, I took a plane by myself from Chicago to Florida to visit my paternal grandparents. (Being the mother of a boy the same age now as I was then, I shudder to think of this.) I remember I was in a window seat and, I think, in a bulkhead row on the right-hand side of the plane; I have a memory of seeing the exit door to the left of where I sat. I recall the widening space between myself and my parents, their worried withdrawal (or was it just my father I glimpsed at that last moment?)—also my sense of perfect security despite being alone. I don't remember the flight itself, what I did to pass the time, if I talked to anyone. I don't remember arriving in the airport in Florida, don't remember the drive to my grandparent's house (in an overly large dull green American boat of a car), but I can clearly see their driveway and the garage through which we entered into Mimi's kitchen. This is the central memory, though: the ...