Tale of New Biscotti

As a host gift for a New Year’s Eve party, I made biscotti last night, for the first time.

It did not go as planned.

First, the dough seemed wrong to me. Cristi called just then, like a fairy godmother – one who’s studied cooking in Italy no less – and confirmed that the dough was too dry. I added the necessary moisture and was on my way.

Then the bitter skin did not just ‘flake away’ from the roasted hazelnuts, as promised in my tried-and-true recipe book. Refusing to change course, I engaged in the Cinderella-like task of scraping the thin crust from each nut and fragment. After about 45 minutes of this, however, when no new fairy godmother appeared, I decided that half the hazelnuts were good enough for me.

Biscotti means ‘twice cooked.’ After the first baking, after all that trouble, I tasted one and found it really bland, much more so than a biscotti should be. I turned to Paul who suggested a glaze. Using his ideas, another cookbook's (Julia Child), and my own nose, I concocted one out of fake butter (for our dairy-allergic host), brown sugar, cinnamon, orange extract and grated ginger.

Result: strange and wonderful.

Here's what I learned:

• best to trust my multi-colored senses over the black and white recipe.

• my fairy godmother can be counted on, in whatever form she appears, though I must say she often looks like Cristi.

• it’s worth taking the time to avoid planting bitterness, but it’s not a good idea to spend my whole life doing that.

• it's (almost) never too late to ask for help.

Next discovery: how will the biscotti taste dipped in champagne?

L’Chaim!

I am not the walrus

I dreamt recently of going to the beach with friends, only to find the water dense with walruses! I longed to swim but wasn't sure how to go about it. A few women walked by, dripping wet. I asked them, 'How did you do it?' One answered me, 'Just go on in. There are so many of them, they don't see one or two of us as a threat.'

I've never dreamed of walruses before. My favorite shamanic animal website noted that walruses are about group living. That's when I got it: as I prepare to launch my book, I needn't to worry about the crowded waters. There is room for me. Other women have done this already.

Hats off to them, the list is blessedly long. A few who come to mind this morning, from recent encounters: the fabulous artist Judy Chicago whose Dinner Party has found a home at the Brooklyn Museum. Margaret Starbird went out on a limb to bring us much of the real scholarship used in The Da Vinci Code. The old-world woman at the gym with pinned up hair and faded pink sweater, who told me triumphantly when I admired her bright red patent leather boots, 'I don't try no more to be who my children like me to be.'

I think too of another mother, somewhat more famous, who helped her daughter Muktar Mai risk everything, telling her, 'Someone has to be the first drop of rain.'

I would add: No matter how many walruses are in the water.

Look

I had something on my eyelid, it burned a little. I went to look in the mirror. My skin seemed normal, just little red. Then I thought I should compare it to my other eyelid. So I closed that one too.

I really did. Silly me.

I am often reminded of the quote: Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they will never cease to be amused.

Jenny and Colette taught me how to laugh at myself when I was 12 years old and so terribly, terribly serious.

Bless them too.

My mother is a Buddha

Yesterday I sat with my mother for an entire half hour. At one point I fed her some apple sauce the recreational directors brought into the day room. I have not been able to sit with her for that long since she lost the ability to walk this summer.

Yesterday she knew who I was. This was obvious to all who observed us; it was what we call one of her 'good' days. And thus upon seeing me, she smiled and reached and wept tears of joy.

My tears were different, made of the longing opened by her recognizing me. I was not complete in looking at her and holding hands. I wanted the woman I miss to come back.

But my mother is a Buddha now. She lives entirely in the moment, and lives each one so completely that the previous one is erased entirely. She can do this because her brain has been damaged by disease. Still, I can learn from her journey.

Sitting there with her, holding hands and gaze, I thought: I get to be here, I get to live this kind of love, I get to live this unbelievably painful, beautiful, grounding and elevating string of moments with a woman who no longer knows anything but how to love.

Later when I left, I was secure that within moments of my leaving, whatever distress that moment may have caused her, she would forget I was ever there. Until next time.

I do not forget. And in case I do, I tell you.