The Journey of a Lifetime ... Mom's lifetime that is.

Ted's mom turned 90 this year so we thought it would be a great adventure to take her to her birthplace, Portland, Oregon. At 90, Mom's doing pretty well, albeit a little wobbly on her feet and her memory is blurring around the edges. Would she be able to find her old stomping grounds? Would we be able to keep her "steady as she goes"? To be safe, we rented a portable wheelchair for the latter, and her memory actually served us surprisingly well. After a smooth flight and just a little rain, we settled into our BnB, had a nice dinner and went to bed. Lots to explore the next day.

Woke up to a rainy morning, but that's Portland for ya. (Little did we know that the next few days would be the highest rainfall in recorded Portland history for the month of September.) Didn't stop us though as we set out to explore. First stop the Sellwood district in SE Portland where Mom lived until she was 10 or 11. To find her old house, we snailed along, up and down the street where she had lived. Studying house after house she looked for something recognizable. "They all look the same," she said anxiously. "And it's been 80 years since I lived here. I'm just not sure if I can find it." Then she saw a corner building and got excited. "That was the store! It was on the corner where I lived!" We cruised past that landmark as she became more animated and began jabbing her finger at one of the houses. "STOP! STOP! That's IT! That's IT!" She beamed while describing the features of her family home. This one fit her description perfectly.

  

Mom lived in the Sellwood house with her parents, two older half-brothers Darrell and Harold, and full brother Jack. Her face softened as childhood memories began to surface. She told us about:

• The time she unwillingly got her first kiss from Jack's best friend when she was 10 years old. Jack's friend wrestled her to the floor and kissed her and she was "mad as heck!"

• The times they walked over to the Sellwood amusement park. Her older brother Harold was handsome but didn't know it. (We saw photos. He WAS handsome!) Mom said, "He was a beautiful skater and a professional company wanted him to skate with them, but mom wouldn't let him go."

 

• The hot summer nights when Mom used to sleep outside on the front porch. Harold and his high school friends would come home late and she would startle them as they came up the stairs. (She giggles a little when she tells this.)

• The night she and Jack sat on the upstairs landing and cried and cried because they were moving to Midland where her mother had a house and 14 acres from her first marriage. Leaving was sad for them because they dearly loved their Sellwood life.

Mom was born on a houseboat not far from the Sellwood house. It was near California Street where the road dead ends at the Willamette River. There are still houseboats a little further up the river, but hers was no longer there. The family moved to Sellwood when she was 2, so she really has no memory of her houseboat life.

Okay, all this driving around with Memory Lane Radar at full tilt, made us all huuungry! And because the next stop on our journey was driving up north to see Mom's neices, Sharon and Deanna, we thought we should bring them a treat and have a little bite ourselves. Portland's Pearl Bakery is "treat city" and we tanked UP. Baked goods in hand (and some in our tummies), we travelled north, past Scapoose (don't you just want a baseball cap with that name on it?), up to Warren about a half an hour from Portland.

Driving down a beautiful country lane, Sharon and Don, and Deanna and Roland were waiting. Sharon and Deanna are about 10 years apart in age from Mom. They are Mom's brother Harold's kids and because Harold was quite a bit older than Mom, he had children when she was young. Anyway, Deanna had started some genealogy so she brought out tons of old pictures, letters, and documents and spread them out over the dining room table. If family stories came out of a bubble-maker, this bubble-maker was set on HIGH. Mom would pick up a photo here and there, get teary-eyed, sigh and tell a story (or twelve). It was an intimate afternoon in The Way Back Machine and Mom loved it. Sweeet!

Left to right: Mom, Deanna, Sharon

(To be continued)

TDAT

The Day After Thanksgiving.

Driving through the Alexander Valley the day after Thanksgiving, the vineyards reminded me of athletes in the locker room after a big game. Those vines played hard this year; sprouting new canes and grape berries in spring, ripening fruit in summer and being harvested in the fall. Entering into winter they're buck naked, ready for a shower (please let it rain) and a well-deserved rest until next year when they play the game all over again. 

I was thinking about our own cycle of life while sitting around the Thanksgiving table the other night. With growing children and aging parents, time seems to pass forward and backward at the same time. We just love the kids in our lives, and we don't see them on a daily basis, so because of their growing bodies and evolving personalities, it's like being with new little people every time we see them. I find that I'm never quite ready to lose who they were last, so am always strangely surprised at who they become—taller, more communicative, more capable people, charging into their futures.

On the other end of the cycle are The Elders. Same thing. While they deepen into aging bodies and minds-in-flux, their personal dreamworld brings their past into the present, blurring the edges of realities. Each time we're with them we also never know who they will be next—a little frailer, a little more confused, a little less capable, sinking comfortably back into their memories.

Looking at everyone around our Thanksgiving table, I felt the fleetingness of it all and I found myself asking, "What can I do? How can I slow this Time thing down?" In an instant, I heard a voice inside say, "Just surrender—have another piece of pie and enjoy the ride." 

So is that the answer to one of Life's great mysteries? 
"Minced, pumpkin or pecan" ?

As good an answer as any…
Happy TDAT everyone!

Born-again

It's 2am. It's been over 100°F during the past few days, but it cools off at night so the air is pleasant and still. I love the wee hours when the town is sleeping and quiet. At times like this you can sense a Midsummer's Night Dream dancing all around you.

Wine country is pretty spectacular this time of year. The vineyards are in full leaf and clusters of young grape berries are beginning to peek out beneath the foliage. You can practically hear them growing. And the green is just so, well, GREEN! Driving around this time of year is intoxicating, on so many levels.

Last weekend we went to one of our favorite small-producing wineries, DaVero, to pick up our club allotment. DaVero is actually more than a winery. It's a full-fledged Biodynamic farm that also grows olive trees (their olive oil is a Mario Batali favorite), Meyer lemons, all kinds of fruits and vegetables, as well as pigs, sheep and chickens. Ridge and Colleen are the big-hearted owners and self-proclaimed "born-again Italians". They go to Italy whenever they can and have modeled their farm and wines after those in Tuscany. Most of you know enough about Ted to know that he considers himself a "born-again Italian" too, so in a very real way, he's found his Italian roots here.

We arrived at DaVero and sat down for a tasting. (Check out their website for a full description of their wines and their farm: http://www.davero.com) Along with the wines, we were offered succulent skewers of farm-raised lamb and pork, and just-picked peach salsa — talk about intoxicating! Feeling relaxed (wine will do that to ya...) and well sated, we strolled through the gardens and went out back where the pigs and chickens are kept.

Okay. Any philosophical vegetarians out there, please close your eyes and skip to the last paragraph. Before we went to see the animals, we were told that little piglets had just been born. As we nibbled on skewered meat we looked at each other, then at the wine barista and asked, "Is this meat from one of your pig pals in the back?" She said, "Probably." We stopped for a beat, but continued eating with the reverence that Lil Abner had for his shmoos. (Read about shmoos - second bullet point online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo)

When we asked about the piglets, she said matter-of-factly, "Oh, you mean the bacon seeds?" Farm-to-table is for real here. For sure.

I am forever grateful to people like Ridge and Colleen who create a lifestyle and love sharing it with their fellow "born-agains". With so much beauty and generosity of spirit, after living here for over four years now, I still pinch myself with amazement, "Do we really live here?"

Don't stop believin'...

Ted and I go to bed with Craig Ferguson every night. We find his Late Late Show the perfect way to end our day. Yeh sure, his jokes are often predictable, but we always have a laugh and we love that he doesn’t take himself seriously. And most of all, we love his complete and utter honesty.

Even as a boy in Scotland, Craig said he always loved America. He was naturalized as a citizen in 2008 (Check out his book “American On Purpose” http://www.amazon.com/American-Purpose-Improbable-Adventures-Unlikely/dp/0061998494/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366476928&sr=8-1&keywords=american+on+purpose) and loves America so much that he starts every show with “It’s a great day for American everybody!” Then he pounds on the camera’s baffolds a few times, steps back and does his monologue with his gay robot skeleton side kick, Geoffrey Peterson. (Gotta love 'em.)

This week was different. Craig in all honesty couldn’t say it was a great day for America. The Boston Marathon bombings had happened and even though the perpetrators had been caught, it was a sad week in America. A vulnerable week. A week where we all had to poke our heads up from of our daily lives and remember that we have become a country where we live every day with the possibility of bombs going off in public places.

Like Craig, for us, it felt insensitive to write a blog today about the pleasures of life in Sonoma without acknowledging what is going on in our country. It is indeed a sad day in American when people are out to terrorize each other, but the flip side is that the strength of the human spirit rises above. Always. People come to one another’s aid. People pour out their hearts to those who ran a marathon and may never run again. Terrorism in this country will not keep us from believing in the strength of the human spirit. It won’t stop us. It just makes us want to cherish the joys of each day even more. It unifies us and makes us strong so we “don’t stop believin’.” Ever.

Hello Everyone!

It's been well over a year since we've posted a blog and it's high time we jumped back in. If you're wondering why we stopped, about a year and a half ago my friend Lisa, a dating and relationships coach, asked me if I'd help her write a book about her work. Her invitation stupefied me for a moment and my internal knee-jerk reaction was "I don't know how!" At the same time I was kind of titillated. Help write a book? Why not? She was game if I was, so for the past year and a half any extra time for writing has gone to the Lisa Project and it has been a wonderfully fulfilling ride. Between the work she had already done (there was plenty!) and the work we did together (plenty more), lots of bones and meat were laid down. For now, our diamond-in-the-rough chapters are being organized and edited by her husband Benjamin (who has written 4 books of his own) and a professional writer who is helping with vignettes. So the baton has been passed and my portion of the track has been run.

I learned a lot by taking on this project, about how much I know, and how much I don't know, about writing, and about myself. I'm grateful for the experience and for getting to know Lisa at a deeper level. She really is a rock star in her field. Any of you out there "lookin for love in all the wrong (or even right) places" might want to check her out: lisashield.com

A DIFFERENT QUEST ...

Anyway, to pick up where we left off blog-wise, as you all know, one of our favorite explorations is FOOOOOD. (My ever-expanding butt size can attest to that.) This Easter season brought on a very special quest ... to find the best Hot Cross bun in Sonoma county. As you may or may not know, Hot Cross buns are usually only available about a month before Easter, so they are a precioussss, once-a-year piece of deliciousness for sure. Finding the perfect ones—a hero's journey? We thought so.

Well we had no clue that we'd make this journey until one day on our way home from The City we stopped in at Emporio Rulli in Larkspur, a quintessential Italian bakery that really feels like Italy inside. We walked in and, "Ooooooh look! They have Hot Cross Buns!" We stood in line to order a couple, along with a deeply rich Italian cup o' Guiseppe and took a window seat. As we bit into the soft sweetness of that first Bun of the Season, a lightbulb went off. Why not sample Hot Cross buns across Sonoma County and beyond? So we did (somebody had to, right?) and here's what we found...

Emporio Rulli, Larkspur   (http://www.rulli.com)
Rulli's buns are pleasingly round-shaped and studded with raisins. (Did it also have candied fruit? Ted remembers it did. I'm not sure and it's been too long ago now to be certain. I'll pay more attention to it next year and let you know.) The cross on top is made with a sweet eggy mixture, almost like the top of a baked custard. The dough is reminiscent of panettone, but more finely textured. We're not sure if the reason we liked it best was because it was the first Bun of the Season, but it really did hit our sweet spot perfectly.

Costeaux French Bakery (above photo), Healdsburg   (http://www.costeaux.com)
Another very lovely bun. (It's fun using the word "bun" because of it's double entendre ... makes me smile inside.) Their Cross decoration was of the sugar and water variety which is really good (how could it not?), but if I had to choose, I do like the egg custard style myself. Small bits of candied fruit give an intermittent burst of fruitiness in a subtly sweet dough. If you can't get them right out of the oven at the bakery you can ask them to heat them for you. Or heat them in your oven at home. We don't recommend microwaving because it's a little tricky ... a second too long and the dough gets weird ... slightly marshmallow-like ... squishy and stretchy in a not-good-for-baked-dough kinda way.)

Michelle Marie's, (above photo) Santa Rosa  (http://www.michellemaries.com)
A local French bakery here in Santa Rosa, makes a good one too. It's a little more dinner-roll like in shape and texture than the others, but it has a nice balanced sweetness and a custardy cross. The dough gives in to your fork (or your teeth if you just bite into it) with some springiness that is fun to break through. And dare I say it? A little butter on this bun takes it into another realm.

Downtown Bakery & Creamery, Healdsburg  (http://www.downtownbakery.net)
Driving around on a Sunday afternoon, we were at a winery and happened to mention our Bun Quest to the wine steward. Downtown Bakery was recommended and we had high expectations. We'd been to this bakery before and had enjoyed the wonderful homeyness of their food. This time I think we must have hit them on an off day. Their Hot Cross Buns were light on sweet, heavy on salt and they had a slight dry sulfate feel on the tongue as if there was too much baking soda. I don't even know if they used baking soda, but if you've ever eaten anything that has been over soda-ed, you'll know what I mean. Sorry Downtown, didn't care for yours so much, but we'll try again next year.

This list is far from extensive because we started late in the Hot Cross Bun Season, but we vow that next Eastertime we'll start earlier, hit more hoppin' bun shops and let you know what we find.

Love to all of you!
Peggy & Ted

p.s. We know the header says Spring 2011 ... new header coming sometime later ... but oh yeh! It  IS  Fava Bean season right now! Eat 'em while you can Monkeyboy*!
*Buccaroo Bonzai movie reference.