photo by KK Marais

One of the interesting things about being a writer is the way you’re always finding stuff.  Stuff you wrote years or months or (as I get older) days ago that you don’t remember writing.  Stuff you’ve hidden from yourself for whatever reason.

Not long ago I unearthed three pages that caused me to rewrite the entire manuscript of my newest novel.  Today I stumbled upon this piece I wrote almost fifteen years ago after a dear friend attempted suicide.  It brought back a lot of memories.

“I think it has something do to with knowing nothing is—or ever will be—perfect,” Jane sighs.  “And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Her eyes are at half mast, her chin sunk in her hands as she stares past me into the middle distance.  She takes a sip of tea and leans back in her chair, rearranging her feet around Mocha, her chocolate lab dozing in a golden puddle of sun on the café patio.

It all seems very usual, Jane and Mocha and me.  Same place—our favorite café in the village.  Same time—late afternoon, midweek.  Same occupation—chatting aimlessly or intensely.  About why Mocha was born with one ear shorter than the other.  About dreams we’ve had and their possible meanings.  My new manuscript, her new painting.  The on-again off-again romance of her son Josh.  The latest endearing or annoying episode of one of our husbands.

It seems so usual, in fact, that there’s a huge disconnect when I remember the day less than two weeks ago…I see myself walking.  Turning the corner onto her street, just like in a cop show on TV.  The fire truck and the ambulance, lights flashing, a swarm of uniformed police, paramedics.  Suddenly I’m running, each step sending shockwaves up through my knees, the rushing sound of my own breath like wind across the mouth of a cave.  I recall the feeling of moving very fast but not moving at all, the street getting longer, the house smaller, the Ballerina roses along the fence seeming to recede into the distance, as if I’m looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

The emergency crew apparently preceded me only by minutes.  Thank God.

What would I have done if I’d been the one to find her, half-conscious on the seat of her blue Toyota, engine running, garage door shut?  Would I have found her?  If she hadn’t answered the door would I have had the sense to look in the garage?  Her husband Cliff had left a message on my machine from somewhere in the Midwest; I could hear the tension knotting his voice.

“Would you mind just checking on Jane?  She doesn’t answer the phone, and I’m a bit worried.  She’s been depressed…”  His voice trailed off.  Fortunately he also called the police.

She’d been depressed.  Of course, I knew that.  With the total recall of a guilty conscience, I see her standing on the sidewalk in front of my house after book club the day before “the incident,” as she now refers to it.

Her long, thick red hair flashed its gold highlights and she smiled when I asked if she wanted something cold to drink.

“All I really want,” she said, “is to go to sleep and never wake up.”

I’d gotten used to her saying those kinds of things.  I’ve said them myself on occasion.  Without thinking, without any real understanding of what they meant.  Now I understand.

I most certainly do not want to go to sleep and never wake up.  I am the sort of person who, at death’s door, will undoubtedly cling to the last flimsy shred of life, gulping my final breath.  And I’m having a very hard time understanding the mindset that would cause my attractive, intelligent, wildly creative friend to turn her face to the dark.

When I first met Jane almost ten years ago, I was simultaneously attracted and repelled by her.  She was honest and open.  She was tactless and blunt.  She put her whole being into everything, she was always on the verge of saying more than you were comfortable hearing.

She was idealistic, and annoyingly pragmatic at the same time.  If I complained about the quality of schools, she would demand that I stop whining and become a classroom volunteer.  When one of our friends grumbled about the panhandlers on the beach, she immediately challenged him to spend Thanksgiving Day serving dinner at the homeless shelter.

She was spontaneous and imaginative, whipping up a dinner party or replacing her lawn with a rock garden or painting a mural in her bathroom the way I would decide to change the radio station.  If you were thinking about starting a scrapbook or making new curtains, you knew not to mention it till you had decided exactly what you wanted to do.  Because given the slightest whiff of uncertainty, Jane would take over your project, spinning wild beauty from her paints, beads, baskets, ribbons, stones.

She loved her job as sales manager for an art magazine, thrived on the constant travel, the chaos of interacting with artists and designers, the pressure, the deadlines, the crises.  She could still find time to jet up to San Francisco for the new Calder exhibit or to go hear Josh Redmond play the saxophone.  She was perpetually in motion, searching for the ultimate in everything.  Seeking perfection.

Which, I now suspect, she equated with peace.

I’ve always thought of myself as emotional, not cerebral.  Not given to philosophical ramblings.  I’m a baker of bread.  I bake other things, too, but nothing else that I bake calms me or satisfies me the way bread does.  Nothing else teaches me as much.  This is one thing I’ve learned:

There is no such thing as perfect bread.  Perfection implies static, inert, final.  Dead.  And bread is very much alive.

Every loaf has its own personality, its own resistance to the process.  You can’t force it to your will; the best you can do is strike a bargain.  Some days you settle for good bread, knowing the possibility exists for amazing bread tomorrow.

Sitting in the café that day, Jane confessed to me that this “incident” isn’t the first time she’s attempted suicide.  And she refused to promise that it would be the last.

But now she laughs when I call her on the phone in the afternoons.  When I knock on her door and say I just happened to be in the neighborhood, she pretends not to see through my white lie.  She even seems grateful for my presence.

I suppose she could be just waiting for the right time, the right place, the opportunity.  People who truly want to die can generally find a way.  But she’s back at book club, back at making her jewelry, painting her pictures.  Back at working and traveling.  She’ll humor me by letting me take her shopping or out to lunch.  She’s even mentioned that maybe we should go to Sedona, like we’ve been talking about for years.  So I allow myself to hope.  And hope, as the Tao reminds us, is saying yes when nobody asked.

Irony.  Jane found a good therapist, got on the right cocktail of antidepressants and decided she wanted to live.  She died of renal cancer in 2008 and is sorely missed by all of us who loved her.

Cotham’s is a café on Highway 161 in Scott, Arkansas, about thirty minutes south of Little Rock.  Geoff and I discovered it at the tail end of our Christmas road trip on our way back to New Mexico from Asheville (his mom) and Atlanta (my parents.)I wish we’d discovered it on our way east, because then we could have eaten there twice.   It’s that good.

It’s not fancy.  In fact, the building, which was built in 1917 and has served as a gas station, mercantile and a jail, sits on brick pilings over the waters of Horseshoe Lake and looks like it could fall in at any moment.  The sign is so weathered it’s illegible, so you have to know where you’re going.  Just look for the gravel field full of pickup trucks, cop cars, motorcycles and most every other kind of vehicle by which folks could arrive here.

The interior design features interesting junk, everything from rusty farm implements to old television consoles to a small box that purports to contain Hitler’s mustache.  You may have guessed that this is not a place where you go for carpaccio or portobello mushrooms.  They don’t do whole grain or extra virgin or low fat.  They especially don’t do low fat.  What they do is down home, Southern style cooking and they do it extremely well.  Geoff had a jalapeno burger, which probably isn’t technically Southern, but it was good and juicy and came with crunchy brown fries.

I had to have the chicken fried steak, and I’m grateful that I did.  It was everything chicken fried steak is supposed to be, but so seldom is—fork tender, perfectly cooked, in a light golden crust without a trace of grease.  It shared the plate with cloud-light mashed potatoes under a generous dollop of blonde, pepper-flecked gravy, and a small dish of perfectly seasoned black-eyed peas spiked with chewy nuggets of ham.  Heaven.

We couldn’t leave without dessert, so we split a fried apple pie…flaky crust, tender apples and a healthy slab of vanilla ice cream…guess they were out of frozen yogurt.  Oddly, after consuming more food than I would normally eat for dinner, much less lunch, I didn’t feel stuffed to the point of discomfort.  I felt happy in that way that only really good food can make you.  I felt satisfied.

That’s what you want for your last meal on earth.

Yes, that's a full sized dinner plate.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one other specialty of the house—the Hubcap Burger—so named because it’s roughly the size of a hubcap.  No joke.  Check it out on their website.  I was only sorry that we were there on Friday, because we missed the Thursday special–Southern fried chicken.

Next year.

They were an instant hit with my family, and have continued to be loved by everyone who’s eaten them over the years.  I’ve been asked for the recipe countless times, and my mother has threatened to cut me out of the will if I don’t bring or send her a supply every Christmas.  Unfortunately, I have no idea who originally devised the recipe, and the original page that I ripped out of the magazine has long since disintegrated, so as far as giving credit, I’ve done what I can.

I’ve tinkered with the recipe, substituting coconut oil for Crisco, dried cranberries for raisins, and chocolate chips for butterscotch, and enjoyed all the permutations, but for simplicity’s sake, here’s the original recipe.  Do with it as you will.

Pumpkin Cookies
1 cup shortening (not butter)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 can pumpkin puree
2 cups unbleached flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup each butterscotch bits, chopped toasted pecans, raisins

Preheat the oven to 375º F.   Have ready 2 parchment lined cookie sheets.

Cream sugar and shortening together in electric mixer.  Add pumpkin and egg, blending well.  Combine flour, salt, cinnamon and soda; add to creamed mixture.  Stir in butterscotch bits, nuts and raisins.  Drop by rounded tablespoons onto cookie sheets and bake 10-12 minutes.  Glaze while still hot.

Brown Sugar Glaze

In small saucepan, combine:

3 Tbsp butter
4 tsp milk
½ cup brown sugar

Heat over medium low heat, stirring till sugar dissolves.
Let cool slightly, stir in:

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Dollop on warm cookies.  If glaze gets too stiff, just add a little milk and stir.

Makes about 4 dozen.

MAKE AHEAD
The cookies can be scooped and frozen on a cookie sheet, then stored in a plastic baggie or other air-tight container till ready to bake.

Being a California girl, I’ve always loved cars and I’m shamelessly sentimental about my vehicles.  I learned to drive the L.A. way…cruising the freeways in my dad’s 1962 Pontiac Bonneville, but my big thrill was getting my very own car, which my dad bought from a friend.

I have perfect recall about the Saturday he dropped me off at the library and came back later to pick me up driving a black1950 Chevy business coupe with red baby moon hubcaps.  When I saw that car at the curb and recognized what it meant, I swear I heard the angels singing.  The car had no back seat, no heater and no radio (I hung the leather strap of my transistor radio over the rear view mirror so I could have tunes while on the road.)  It had a teeny, tiny leak in the brake cylinder, so about every third time I got gas, I had to ask the attendant to add brake fluid.  It had no power steering of course, no power brakes, no power windows.  You had to turn on the key and then push the starter button.  It had three-speed stick shift on the steering column, and thus began my lifelong love affair with manual transmissions.

I loved that car, but I had to sell it when I graduated and went off to college.  By that time my family had moved to Atlanta.  I was attending Furman University in Greenville, SC, where they had this archaic (not to mention sexist) rule that women students could not have cars on campus until their senior year.  I felt as if my wings had been clipped.  After my sophomore year I transferred to the University of Georgia and my parents bought me a white Corvair in exchange for my promise to stop smoking (I didn’t.)  Much as I hate to say it, that car was a total lemon.  I was constantly having it towed, fixed or extricated from wherever it landed when the parking brake failed.

When I transferred to Georgia State University in Atlanta I gave it up and my parents bought me a red VW bug convertible with 108,000 miles on it…another hand-me-down from a friend of my dad’s.  I loved my beetle.  I loved the long commute to school, zipping down Interstate 85, weaving in and out of traffic, squeezing into impossible parking places.

Upon graduation my dad let me pick out a new car…I chose a yellow BMW 1600…very bad decision.  The second day I had it, in the parking lot of a girlfriend’s apartment, a guy driving a riding lawnmower sideswiped it.  That was an omen.  When the Beemer wasn’t in the shop because of being sideswiped, rear-ended or having the back window smashed by vandals in New Orleans, it was in the shop for mechanical problems.  It was fun to drive, though.

My next car…or I guess I should say our next car, because my first husband was co-owner…was a boxy 1972 Volvo in caution-light yellow.  It, too, had four speed manual transmission, and I loved driving it from my job at KUHT-TV at the University of Houston to our house in Bellaire on the I610 Loop.  Loved it so much that I occasionally drove a bit over the speed limit.

One day as I was flying home for lunch, I got pulled over by an officer of the law, who in the course of writing me up, asked me if I’d ever gotten a moving violation before.  I could not lie.  He asked me when.  I could not lie.  It had actually been about two weeks.  His pen hovered above his ticket pad.
“Didn’t learn ya nothin’, did it?”
“Teach,” I said.  “It didn’t teach me anything, you mean.”
He looked at me as if were dumber than dirt…which I was…and then wrote me out a whopping fat fine.  That learned me not to correct an officer’s grammar.

When my husband and I got divorced, he got the Volvo (which endured for over 200,000 miles) and I got the 1976 British racing green Toyota Celica, a very sweet ride.  The reason the Volvo lasted so long was that my ex, who’s an engineer by training and temperament, gave it the attention and regular maintenance it needed, while my response to any odd noises emanating from the Celica was to turn up the radio and drive.  Fortunately I had a series of great Toyota mechanics, who kept it running reasonably well till 1982 when a loving dad bought it for his daughter’s high school graduation present…a lovely bit of symmetry, I thought.  When they came to collect the car, her first act was to hang her graduation tassel over the rear view mirror.

Since then I’ve driven a silver Honda Civic I bought from my dad (a good car, but I never really loved it because it had automatic transmission) my red Mazda RX7, my “company car” when I was a partner in a small travel agency, a white Mazda Miata which I bought from my dad (quite possibly the most purely fun car I’ve ever owned) and then in 1999 I became the proud owner of the silver-green Saab 9-3 convertible which I still drive and love today.  We’ve been through a lot together, and she’s showing her age, just like I am.  The on-board computer’s not too reliable, sometimes the top won’t go up or down, and there are a number of dings and scrapes on her body.  Also like her driver.  But I love her dearly and I have a great mechanic and I plan to drive her till one of us gets too tired to keep going.

And yes, she’s got stick shift.

Meredith Mileti

1.    The dictionary defines Aftertaste as “what is left at the end.”  How did you choose the title and what does it mean to you?

In gustatory terms an aftertaste can be good or bad, either a lovely surprise or a bitter disappointment. I think the same is true for life. Sometimes what you taste initially develops into something quite different, often revealing a surprising endnote. It seemed a nice way to describe this defining period in Mira’s life. Things don’t always turn out the way your first expect.

2.    I love the way Aftertaste is constructed.  Can you talk about how you devised the structure and how you fitted the story into the five courses?  

I am an early morning writer, so by the time lunchtime rolls around I am ready for a break. One day during the writing of an early draft of the book, I was eating my lunch and mulling over an issue with one of the supporting characters. I thought the plot was getting too complex.  I said to myself,” No, you’ve got to keep this story line simple. It is really just the side dish to the story.”  It got the wheels turning.  Having the meal as a framework actually helped guide the rest of the novel.

3.    Mira has a theory about cooks versus bakers.  Is that Mira’s theory, or yours?  Which are you?

Mira’s theory is that bakers are more rule-bound than cooks.  They respond to order and precision while cooks are more creative and thrive on improvisation. I think that’s a bit oversimplified. I’m actually both a cook and a baker, although I think perhaps I’m more of a natural cook.  I often have trouble following directions.  The exception is bread.  I love making bread.  In particular, I love that moment when the gluten reaches a certain level of development and you can actually feel the dough come alive under your hands.  It thrills me every time.

4.    At one point in the story, Mira tells us that she believes her only chance for happiness is in a kitchen, a place where things both tragic and wonderful have taken place and that it is really, the only place she knows how to be herself.  Is there a room in your house where you feel most yourself?

I love my kitchen and I do feel very much myself when I’m in it.  Next to my office, it’s where I spend most of my time. It’s painted orange, my favorite color and we have a big, comfy couch in there that is perfect for sprawling. I love to work in there while my husband or kids lounge around reading or chatting with me.  It’s also one of my favorite spots in the house for snuggling up with a book.

5.    Tell us a little bit about your process.  What does a typical working day look like for you?  Are you an organized, linear writer who plans everything and then writes to the plan, or do you need to discover the story through writing it?

I get up around 6, (earlier, if I’m deep into the work or if I have a looming deadline) make some coffee and settle into my office.  I try not to check email or any other social media. I just dive in, and usually spend a few minutes rereading and tightening what I’ve written the day before.  The first draft of Aftertaste was very much a journey of discovery.  I really didn’t know the characters yet and was sometimes surprised by what they did. Subsequent drafts involved shaping and tightening the story in a much more structured, linear way. I have found that I can’t skip around and write later scenes before I’ve worked out the previous ones.

6.    When I initially read Aftertaste, I could hardly believe it was a first novel.  The graceful prose and spot-on pacing seem more like the work of a veteran craftsperson.  How long did it take you to write the book, start to finish?

Thank you so much for the lovely compliment!  I wrote the first chapter about ten years ago while I was writing my dissertation in developmental and educational psychology.  I put it in the drawer and didn’t touch it for several years.  Eventually, I picked it back up and began chipping away at it a couple of days a week.  As you might imagine, I didn’t get too far too fast.  It really took me about 3 years of full time writing and rewriting to produce the draft of Aftertaste that sold.

7.    Rewriting, to me, is where the real writing comes into play.  How do you view rewriting?  Do you normally rewrite short sections as you go along or blast out a whole draft, then go back and revise?  What kinds of ideas did you initially embrace and later drop or change?  

I couldn’t agree with you more. I do some revising as I write, but most of the work takes place after I have a whole draft to work with and most of the work for me has been cutting. In early drafts I included things that as the writer I needed to know, but weren’t necessarily critical for the reader.  A big part of writing a book, for me, anyway, is deciding what to leave out.  I view the process of rewriting a little like sculpture.  My draft is a big block of marble that contains the essential story.  I have to chip away until I reveal its form and then polish and polish until, hopefully, it gleams.

8.    There are some pretty specific worlds portrayed very believably in this book—the New York food scene, the business of running a restaurant, the financial machinations of the syndicate that Jake gets involved with, and of course the knowledge and sensibilities of a professional chef.  Do you have personal experience with any of these métiers or how did you research them so you could write about them so convincingly?

I don’t have any personal experience working in restaurants unless you count a very brief stint as a fry cook at the campus grill during my college years. By interviewing several professional chefs and reading several non-fiction books—including Heat by Bill Buford and Michael Rhulman’s wonderful series of books (The Life of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, etc.)— I gained some understanding about what kind of person is driven to become a chef, and what kinds of demands—physical, as well as emotional and intellectual—the work entails. And the demands are many. Early on in the writing, I took a cooking class with my father in Florence.  The teacher, Sharon Oddson, was a Canadian ex-pat and chef-owner of the wonderful Trattoria Garga in Florence.  She was very helpful in teaching me about what in particular in takes to be a successful woman chef.  For the legal scenes and the syndicate sub-plot, I was lucky to have a built-in consultant. My husband is a partner in a big international law firm.

9.    Are there any similarities between cooking a meal and writing a novel?

I think there are lots of parallels between cooking a meal and writing a book. I take great pleasure in planning a menu, determining the theme, carrying it all the way through from the start of the meal to the finish, pairing flavors, and deciding which flavor notes to draw out in each course.  I followed many of the same steps in planning Aftertaste.  What is the theme, and how am I going to convey it through the plot, action and characters? Which characters will provide which of the ingredients necessary for a good story and how will they work together to reinforce the theme? In order to keep things flowing in the kitchen and on the page you have to be organized.  That said, I think there can also be a lot of spontaneity in both writing and cooking.  Give it a taste and see what it needs.  Throw in something unexpected.

10.    Do you prefer to cook or eat out?

They are very different experiences for me. While I always enjoy eating interesting, well-prepared food, and everything that goes along with the experience of dining out, there is something I find deeply satisfying about cooking a meal.  It’s certainly about the sensory experience of getting your hands in and preparing food, but more than that, it’s about nurturing the people you love with the gift of good food, thoughtfully and lovingly prepared.  It’s one of the ways I express my feeling for my friends and family, the people I care most about.

11.    I smiled when Mira talked about the celebrity interviews in the back of Bon Appetit.  I used to flip straight to the back of that magazine to read that page first.  So…tell us, Meredith, what three things can always be found in your refrigerator?

A jar of my homemade salad dressing, salad greens and a block of Parmigianno Reggiano. We are big salad eaters!

Lois Gilbert

My friend Lois Gilbert is a woman of many talents.  Possessor of a BFA in drawing and fine art, she made a living for many years doing photo-realistic art.  Then she decided she wanted to write books, so she published four novels, including her latest, Lost in the Gila, a kick-ass mystery starring a female archeologist.

After the modest success of Lost, Lois decided that while she enjoyed writing, she really didn’t like publishing and all the self-promotion it entailed.  She has a flair for shaping other people’s stories, so for a while she worked as a hired gun (that’s writer talk for someone who helps you whip your manuscript into shape so you can hopefully sell it to a major publisher.)  She also had a highly successful gig as a ghost writer.

Never one to rest on her laurels, by 2005 Lois was ready to re-invent herself again.  After

Home Made Bread and Movies

seeing the documentary Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (a wonderful film!) she woke up in the middle of a restless night and decided she wanted to try making movies.  She discovered that her point-and-shoot digital camera had a movie option, so she and a friend spent a lot of time experimenting with it.

Then at an art opening in Santa Fe, she met Peter Ogilvie, a fine art photographer and filmmaker.  The meeting changed her life.  And his, too.

She hounded him by email and phone, asking questions about equipment and technique.

Blue Gets into the Act

Based on his recommendations, she purchased her first camera and microphone, a new MAC computer and editing software so complicated that more than once she cried herself to sleep in frustration.  She sent him her films and begged for critique.  Essentially she apprenticed herself to him in return for dinners for him and his partner at the best restaurants in Santa Fe.

From the very beginning, Lois has sent links to a select list of friends, (fortunately including me) to her YouTube page, The Lois Gilbert Channel.  I’ve watched her work progress from “fun little movies” through a series of interviews on love after fifty, to a short piece on a local clothing designer that was picked up by ABC News for possible inclusion in a feature on small businesses in America.  She even had one film selected for the 3-Minute Santa Fe Film Festival at the Lensic Theater.

When she mentioned to me over coffee at our favorite bakery that she was thinking about trying some promotional videos for writers, I volunteered to be her first client.  You can see the result of our collaboration, “A Writer’s Life” here on my website (videos page) or on The Lois Gilbert Channel.  I think it’s pretty wonderful.

Exit, Stage Right

She’s now producing videos at the rate of one about every two weeks, and her next big project will hopefully be a short film about homeless teens.   At our last coffee date, we talked about all the videos she’s made, how her artistic sensibilities have developed and her ever-expanding fascination with the medium.

“The whole world is a potential movie,” she said.  “I’ll never run out of subject matter.  And the more movies I make, the more I begin to see a coherent portrait of myself.”

Portrait of Lois by Peter Ogilvie, video production photos by Geoff Hendricks

I’ve known Anne Henderson Browning (AKA Roonie) since fall of 1964 when we became part of a small, select group of bad girls intent on having maximum fun with minimum work at our small, Southern Baptist university.

Our main interests then were boys, cutting chapel, smuggling cheap wine into the dorm and sneaking out after curfew.  But these days most of our conversations involve more staid topics—books, movies, travel, food and wine.  For several years she and her husband Steve have been telling Geoff and me about a place called The Cabins at Bear Creek about 30 miles northeast of Dolores, CO and finally we arranged a rendezvous there.

It was a brief getaway—Wednesday to Friday—but perfect.
Accommodations consist of two cozy cabins situated on a gorgeous parcel of creekfront land, surrounded by national forest.  This spring the “creek” is a rushing torrent of snowmelt that provides a soothing backdrop for lounging on the deck by day and sleeping like a babe at night.  The place is owned by Kevin (a veterinarian who built the cabins) and Diane (formerly a chef at

Diane

Chez Panisse in Berkeley) which tells you something about the level of hospitality you can expect.  We were not disappointed.  (See photo of German apple pancake.)

Each cabin has a queen bed, nice bathroom, full kitchen—including gas stove!—and a small dining table, a porch with 2 rocking chairs and a small fire pit.  For communal activities there’s a big deck with an outdoor kitchen built almost on top of the river.

On Wednesday night we cooked baked shrimp with fennel, tomatoes and feta over orzo, and on Thursday night, chicken breasts stuffed with pesto, grilled zucchini, ham and mozzarella.  We spent most of Thursday in Telluride, lunching at a new bakery/café called the Butcher and Baker.  Afterwards we headed for the local chocolatier, Telluride Truffle, where we sampled dark chocolate dipped salted caramels and tequila/sea salt truffles.  We then retired to home base and attempted to work it all off with a hike before dinner.

Friday after breakfast we packed up to head our separate ways, but not without a bag of fresh chives and a couple of strawberry plants from Diane’s garden.  As if our breakfast wasn’t enough, Geoff and I stopped at Absolute Bakery and Cafe in Mancos, one of those great old mountain towns for a whole grain blackberry almond scone to sustain us on the drive home.

Sometimes life is better than you have any right to expect.

I tend to think of California as a beautiful woman who’s been abused and exploited till she’s become coarse and vulgar.  But just when I’m about to turn my back on her and walk away, I catch a glimpse of her still formidable beauty and brilliance or maybe she just has a good laugh at her own expense and my loyalty flares up fiercely.

Right now I’m sitting at one of my favorite L.A. hangouts—Bob’s Coffee and Doughnuts at the downtown farmers’ market.  The place is a walk-up stand that’s been in this location since 1927 and its only real concession to the 21st century is the addition of espresso to the menu.  Basically the doughnuts are the same as I remember, which is to say perfection in fried dough.

The glazed yeasted and chocolate frosted are everything a doughnut should be—light, greaseless, not too sweet.  If you’re feeling particularly indulgent, the apple fritter is the way to go.  The dense buttermilk cake doughnut is satisfying, almost sandy/crunchy.  Even the bear claw is good, although it’s not really a pastry bear claw, but rather a doughnut shaped like a bear claw.

Last but not least, I love Bob’s because they know how to spell doughnut.  Not donut.

It’s been two weeks since we got home.  The first week was spent walking around in a fog, alternating between sleeping for twelve hours without changing position and not sleeping at all.  That and doing laundry and answering email.

The second week was more normal, although it’s still hard to get out of bed in the morning.  I’ve spent an ungodly amount of time on the photos—sorting, editing, adding captions, putting them in chronological order, checking spellings, uploading, posting.  We ended up

Murray and Sue

with about 205 out of a possible 500 plus.

I wanted to do it while the memories were still fresh, and it was fun to relive all the beautiful places we saw, the great food and wine, the tramps (that’s NZ for hikes.)

Margaret and George

But what struck me as I was sifting through all the maps and souvenirs, clicking through all the photos, was that the best thing about the trip had to be the people we met.

Eva and Roli

The kiwis who welcomed us not only into their homes and farms, but into their lives.

Theo, Millie and Ginny

They fed us, told us their stories, marked their scenic routes and secret shortcuts on our maps, pointed us to the best place for fish & chips, where to get a tire fixed, the galleries that had

David and Marilyn

real New Zealand art and crafts.

Chris and Peter

Before we left on the trip, people would often wonder why we were going to New Zealand and they’d ask us if we had friends there.

Terry Blumhardt

Jes and Eileen with Roxy

Next time someone asks me that question,  I’ll be able to say yes.

Here are links to the websites for all these smiling faces:

Murray and Sue at Paua Bay Farmstay

Margaret and George at Te Anau Lodge

Eva and Roli at The Rocks

David and Marilyn at Cherswud

Chris and Peter at Founders

Terry at Walking Places

Jes and Eileen at the Esk Valley Lodge

Theo and Ginny are still working on their site, but their email is ginnyrussell@paradise.net.nz

One of my favorite legends is a bit more contemporary.  It involves two brothers with a common dream, as these tales so often do, but these brothers were named Mike and Doug Tamaki.  Their dream was to start a tourism company to teach visitors about the culture and history of their people, the Maori.  At first things did not go well for the brothers.  No bank would lend them money to start a business.

Then Mike said to his brother…

“I think you should sell your Harley so we can buy a 16-passenger van.”

Understandably Doug replied, “You think I should what?”

But at last he was persuaded and from that humble beginning came Tamaki Maori Village, one of the most well regarded and well awarded companies in the lucrative tourism market.

On our last night in New Zealand, Geoff and I went to their cultural show and hangi (feast) in a wooded setting about twenty minutes south of Rotorua.  I’d been to a similar event in 1979 when only a few were offered and most took place in theaters in the city.  Now there are at least a dozen programs, but from what I’ve seen, none compares to the Tamaki Brothers’ experience.

It was twilight and a light mist was falling when we disembarked the bus.  We’d been briefed on what would happen and what protocols we were expected to observe.  The instructions were clear that what we would see was very important—sacred, even—to the Maori people, and that we were to enter into that spirit and show respect for their traditions.

Te Wero

We had chosen a chief from the bus passengers to be our representative to the Maoris.  At the entrance to the village we were greeted by a warrior in traditional dress who performed Te Wero (the challenge).  They call it “the challenge of peace.”  First the man goes through some aggressive gestures with a Taiaha (a spear-like weapon.)  Then once he feels the visitors are sufficiently impressed with his tribe’s fierceness, a Teka (peace token) is placed on the ground.  If the visitors’ intentions are friendly, their chief picks up the offering and the Karanga (the welcome call, usually sung by a woman) precedes the Powhiri (welcome dance) performed by several tribe members.

After that we all walked through the dark trees into the Marae (village,)

Traditional Tattoo

which I suppose could be compared to a theme park—Maori Land—except it doesn’t seem Disney-esque in the least.  I swear, walking through the dark woods, in the soft rain and the quiet night, I felt as if I might really be in a pre-European Maori village.  There were several different huts or platforms where people in traditional dress, lit by the flickering light from small fires, were demonstrating tribal life skills—cooking, food preservation, building and carving, warrior training, and tattooing, which is still an important part of Maori life for both men and women.

A Love Song

After about thirty minutes we were guided to the Wharenui (the big house) for a program of music, dance, games, and of course the Haka.  If you’re a rugby fan, you probably know what this is because the All Blacks, NZ’s rugby team, perform one before every match.  It’s sort of a chant, but very physical, with lots of aggressive posturing, huffing and puffing, making bug eyes and in general working to psyche yourself up and to intimidate your enemy.  It seems to work for the All Blacks.  If you’d like to see a really good Haka, watch this one on YouTube.  I actually find it rather thrilling.

After the show came the feast, and it was simple but bountiful and

Veggies for the hangi

surprisingly delicious.  A fire is built and rocks heated to white hot, then put in a pit dug in the ground.  Baskets of lamb and chicken or other meats go on top of the stones, followed by baskets of veggies, then puddings (desserts.)  A wet cloth is placed over the whole thing, then the hole is covered with earth and your dinner cooks for 3-4 hours.  The meat was tender and juicy, the veggies flavored by the smoke of juices hitting the hot rocks.

The dining hall was huge.  Geoff and I figured there were between 250 and 300 people the night we went.  The food was presented on long buffet tables and service went quickly and efficiently.  I ate more than I had planned to, but I still had to try the desserts, which were not traditional Maori fare, but definitely typical of New Zealand.  The steamed pudding with lemon custard was pretty bland, but the Pavlova!  I’d never had it before because it always sounded boring…baked meringue, custard, whipped cream and fruit.  Ho hum.

It was fabulous, the different textures…crunchy, silky.  They served it with kiwi fruit, but I kept thinking it would be incredible with berries.

There was a closing ceremony with a few speeches and then one of the chiefs launched into a singalong of “You Are my Sunshine.”   I’m not kidding.  It completely shattered the mood for me.  No longer a visitor to an ancient Maori village, I was suddenly back among a bunch of bus passenger tourists.

Fortunately, they did another Haka, which saved the evening.