Big-Boned and Beautiful

My fetus thinks she’s fat. That’s right. Body image issues in utero. As the mom, I can take all the looks, comments, and flabbergasted exclamations when the mailman or the grocery clerk hear that I STILL have two more months. Your retorts ring in my ears at bedtime, “You’re Huge.” “YOU ARE about to POP!” “Gee, I’d hate to see you at 9 months” and my new favorite that seems to be paired with a hearty open-mouthed cackle, “You’re sure there aren’t two in there, darlin’?” Yes. Pretty sure. Now shut your trap, meth addict. Your teeth look like you have been gargling with coffee. I can take it all, but my baby. My sweet little 3 lb. baby. Thanks a lot. Now she has issues. She can hear, you know. That’s why Brad has been serenading Big Brown Eyes on the guitar at night and why I enthusiastically read aloud from that awful book, Goodnight Moon, in the nursery rocking chair with inflection in my voice.

She is taking it all in. Every suggestive comment about the importance of exercise and how I really only need to be ingesting a maximum of 300 extra daily calories. 300? You don’t say? And here I thought flabbing it out on my couch, eating sticks of Land-o-Lake’s like summer popsicles was what the doctor ordered. I will have you know that the OB says I am perfectly in range. No gestational diabetes, no swelling. My kid is just big-boned. Now leave me alone.

I find myself rubbing my belly in front of Dove Commercials while telling the Seed she is beautiful just the size she is. I still think years of therapy may be ahead of us. My sister is having the opposite problem. She has been suffering the skinny girl ridicule. Strangers on the street coming up to her, probing if she is eating enough. “You know you really shouldn’t diet when you are pregnant – your body needs at LEAST another 300 calories.” I told her to flick ‘em off and say she is doing just fine with her celery sticks and diet coke, but thanks for the unsolicited advice.”

So, here is the script. Pay attention and repeat after me. “Congratulations! You look absolutely wonderful. In fact, you are glowing.” And that’s about all that you need to say. Even if you have to lie. Just stick to the script and everyone will be fine. The only person that is actually exempt from this rule and allowed speak her mind is the maternal great-grandmother. She gets full reign. Or at least in my experience, it is impossible to put a muzzle on her. Baba has gone around introducing my sister and me throughout our mutual pregnancies this summer, beaming with pride. This is her standard opening: “Yes, Amy is having a boy in September and Emily, well, we think she is having a girl. You know how they say that girls steal their mother’s beauty.” Wink wink. Fantastic. But, hey, as I said, I can take it. As long as I have my stick of butter to pacify me.

The City

Tonight, thirteen strangers pranced through our apartment to discern if they could make it their home. I am glad Brad and I both left. I didn’t want to watch them mentally mapping out the next few years of their lives: curling up in our living room, frying onions over our stove, and sorting socks on our gray pile carpet. It is still ours.

This type of resistance floods my pores when change is perched cat-like on the horizon. I am a wistful soul. I find comfort in the familiar. But, our “Seed” is 22 weeks now and we have succumbed to the migratory pull of suburban parenting. It is fitting in a way – my parents brought me home from the hospital to a sunny yellow nursery on Bonnie Brae. Brad and I will be doing the same for the Seed. Three blocks down. It will likely be the house where she takes her first tentative steps, learns how to say Dadda and blows out a solitary birthday candle with frosting on her nose. But, right now it holds no memories for us.

I bought a card the other day that I tacked up on my bulletin board: “Sometimes ‘right back where you started from’ is right where you belong.” I think it may help me leave the life we have started here at 1211 W. Newport. It makes me think of that board game Amy and I used to play as kids. Life. The one where you plugged along in your mini-plastic station wagon at the mercy of the addictive rainbow spinning wheel, dodging financial ruin and social hiccups along the way. It was a twisty, curvy crapshoot if you hit prosperity or poverty – but everyone ended up a mere inch from the starting space anyway. Some just had more pegs in their cars.

I will miss this apartment. I will miss the buzz of the city – the parade of people clapping down Southport in their flip-flops, the over-priced corner coffee-houses, Ray’s Italian Ice shop that sells homemade soup in the winter, the open air patios, and even the local florist who charges $8 per hydrangea stem. I’ll miss the distant roar of the Wrigley crowd five blocks away and the playful score of the organ carried in on the breeze. I may even miss having to pause the TV every time the Brown Line thunders through our backyard at rush hour.

This was the apartment a cab dropped me off in front of one cold snowy mid-December night in 2008 after I had brushed my teeth and tongue at least five times. I stood outside and mused if I would be coming here a lot. And then Brad greeted me at the door with a preposterously thick, itchy wool sweater as part of my Christmas dare and I knew. Yes. I would be back many times.

These are the very walls that enveloped us as a new couple, the floors that creaked in protest when I “feminized” the interior. This is the living room nook that is transformed daily into the Hyatt St. Louis. The back door that attracts an obscene amount of spiders after dusk in the summer. The storage closet that graciously conceals the chaotic menagerie of two adult nostalgists. The whirlpool tub that lavishes the ultimate bubble bath. The hall threshold with the stubborn nail that has ripped multiple right footed cotton socks. The counter where one late wine-soaked night...we sorted the mail.

Our children will never know this place. It will be the street we drive them down one day on the way home from a customary Cubs’ loss and say, “Hey, see that stone building with the big tree out front? Your mom and I used to live there when we were first married. Yup, right up there. That front window is where I ‘d see your mom every morning sitting at her computer with her ponytail and pjs after I’d come home from working the night shift.” They’ll look up for a second – but won’t believe it. Mom and Dad – urbanites? Not a chance. Everyone in the city is so...hip.

Naturally, we are excited about what awaits us on Bonnie Brae. A subsequent chapter. A new home to claim for our expanding family of pink and blue pegs. A fresh coat of paint. There are good layers under there from the people before us who have moved on to their own next adventure. You can hear the echoes in the walls. Children’s squeals, backyard bbqs, and bedtime stories. I know this to be true. We are adding to an already solid foundation. I suppose that is what we leave to the new tenants on Newport – whoever you may be. We leave you some truly exceptional layers. Take care of them.

Announcing.... The Seed!

It may appear to the untrained eye that I have been letting myself go. Sweatpants. Sofa. Wheel of Fortune. Munching on Golden Grahams, Matzo, and the occasional pretzel rod. I’ve stopped cooking. I’ve ceased blow-drying. “Shower” is actually scribbled on my daily to-do-list. AND I feel incredibly proud when I can cross it off. I seem to have somehow activated a sadistic resurgence of adolescent acne in my T-zone. The giant ones. Band-geek worthy. With a pulse. I’ve completely given up on the YMCA elliptical while flipping through Us Weekly, even when discretely encased by Newsweek. I sob during State Farm commercials. I cannot open my own fridge without sporting one of those SARS masks you see in Asian airports. Oh yea, and most importantly I have turned the exact greenish hue of the Grinch who stole X-mas.

There is a creature inside of me, sprouting webbed hands, tooth buds and eyelashes. And some other important stuff, like organs. Brad and I are both ecstatic. It is a miracle. A miracle the size of a lime that has me sprinting to hurl over the toilet whenever I see a hamburger, think of pizza, or smell anything other than cantaloupe and pineapple.

I have been trying to bond with the little “seed”. I tell her everything is okay. I gently rub my tummy. I take long leisurely naps. But, I have a sense she is mocking me from her little amniotic command zone. I am pretty certain we are dealing with a girl. There is too much drama going on in there to suspect a laid-back lad. I have even given her an identity. Secretly and very maturely, I have been calling her a name that Brad impulsively “vetoed”, but that has been my childhood fantasy ever since I dressed my first Barbie doll.

The doctors all nod enthusiastically when I tell them I am feeling like shit. “That’s fantastic,” they grin. “Lots of hormones surging around in there! You should see things taper off around Week Twelve.” Week Twelve. I have been awaiting this Week Twelve like the coming of the Messiah. I have been counting down, pacing, salivating like a school kid for summer. Well, week 12 came and went. And the only apparent “tapering” is in the form of that invasive little worm that continues to starve me every ninety minutes.

I was thinking, maybe this kid is just looking for some good old-fashioned public acknowledgement. After all, we have kept this pretty hush-hush. Maybe I am gestating a star who will be the next Scarlett O’Hara and she just needs a sprinkling of narcissistic attention. So – here you are…public acknowledgement, kiddo. Everyone (aka my 17 loyal followers) is virtually adoring you on my blog. Now, it would be just swell if you would consider giving dear old mom a break – after all, I hate to manipulate your sweet little developing brain, but pretty soon you will be at my mercy. That’s right. Mom will be wielding all the power. I can’t wait for you to come out so I can introduce you to these things we call boobs.

Flour and Water

I picked up the bread. It was my routine. Every Tuesday around 4pm, I’d clap my laptop shut, grab my water bottle and surrender myself to the 100-degree Arizona sun. I’d swing by the post office, organic markets on Skyline Drive that curved around the Catalinas, and then the “piccolo” Italian café for their famous focaccia. One loaf, sometimes two, depending on if I had a spare propped up against the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. It was – without question – the most ethereal hearth-baked carbohydrate I had ever devoured: Sweetly charred where the flames had tickled the crust and subtly glazed with rosemary, olive oil, and a shy sprinkling of sea salt. The inside remained so moist and chewy that when you pulled it apart the gluten resisted like elastic. Flour and water - in symbiotic harmony. I craved that bread with a palpable savagery normally attributed to hyenas in heat on the Nature Channel. It was obsession at first bite.

I heard of the place when I first moved to Tucson and polled every person I met about the city’s hidden gastronomic gems. “Quaint little place. Only a few tables, so go early. Pasta is all homemade, but the bread...Oh, the bread!” This was inevitably conveyed with a certain drunken delirium – a smacking of the lips, rolling back of the eyeballs, with arms raised in the air. “Absolutely orgasmic. You must go.”

And so we went. Friday night dinner at the petite café in a disconcertingly drab strip mail devoid of all ambiance. We had been warned, “Don’t let the location fool you.” That afternoon, I had read online how the store’s owners, Massimo and Margarita, a young couple from San Francisco, had migrated west in search of a place to conceptualize and conceive their Italian café. A lone ravioli in a town of rellenos.

The modest room was brightly lit and separated part-store and part-restaurant by a precariously high stack of canned San Marzano plum tomatoes. Every item was authentic – imported kalamatas, infused balsamics, dried pastas in every contorted shape – peeking out from their cellophane windows like eager orphans waiting to be claimed. Sautéed garlic and lemon zest smacked you in the nostrils when you first stepped in the door, but after a while the wafts matured into rich boar ragus and eggplant caponatas. The colors in the deli case were mesmerizing – bulky tubes of beet-red salamis, polka-dotted with peppercorns, grilled calamari tossed with purple capsicums, and almond-toned panna cottas expertly molded into moon domes. We regularly devoured several baskets of bread and I was never shy about asking for refills.

It became our go-to spot - the local treasure we took visitors after the obligatory first meal at one of many spicy Southwestern joints. Sometimes, if we weren’t completely engorged, we’d round out dinner at the artisan gelato shop across the street that decorated each flavor with edible embellishments. After a few months, stopping by for a to-go loaf of the focaccia was tacked onto my regular Tuesday schedule. Gradually, I got to know Margarita and recognize her thick walnut hair pinned back with turquoise-rimmed sunglasses. She was always perched at the bar, bent over her purveyor orders, calculator in hand as a lemon wedge frolicked around the bubbles in her San Pellegrino. We exchanged small pleasantries, usually about food - What elaborate new recipe I had attempted that week or how quiet the town was since the snowbirds headed north. She always laughed and shrugged when I begged her to relinquish the trade secrets of her dough, “It’s pretty much just flour and water. It’s the pecan wood and oven that do all the magic.”

I’d like to think she was flattered that I drove four miles every week to pick up a loaf of her $4 focaccia. I’d like to think she thought of me as a local – a neighbor – a friend. But, maybe she was just being kind, gauging my loneliness. My listlessness. Maybe she knew all along what I hadn’t yet discovered. That I was busying myself, running futile errands, whipping up gourmet meals on weekdays - all to provide purpose – to fill in the gaping holes of a marriage that was turning porous. Maybe she sensed I was keeping my life glued together with her bread.

* * *

Three years later, I am curled up on my love seat in Chicago to watch the NBC Evening News. I spot a familiar storefront in the background of the makeshift TV set. The blood drains from my face and I drop the remote from my fingertips. I know as soon as I read the caption scrolling beneath the broadcast, Gunman opens fire this morning at a political gathering in a L-shaped Tucson shopping center. Six confirmed dead. Fourteen wounded. The sidewalks are already littered with teddy bears, votive candles, and pollen-dusted lillies. A “Get Well, Gabby” banner blows gently, tied with string between two Agave stalks. Before transitioning to commercial, the camera zooms in on poster leaning up against a brick wall, “God Bless America.” - child’s scrawl in red and blue crayon. And there – just behind Brian Williams’ left shoulder is my Italian café.

How many times had I driven through that center, toggling over speed bumps, waving on pedestrians pushing grocery carts, before I took an automatic right onto Ina and accelerated for home? How many Tuesdays did I reverse out of my parking space, tearing into that bread before spitefully tossing the whole thing in the back so there’d be some left for dinner?

That night I sit up in bed and think a lot about timing and chance and mortality. I wonder how a place that once brought so much comfort to me, so much normalcy, could suddenly evoke such heartache. I weigh how much more complicated the world gets as you get older - how you begin to understand questions that start with ‘why’ don’t always have satisfying answers. How some holes are just too massive to be mended by something simple.

I think of Margarita and wonder if she is still making her focaccia or if routine is something that was sacrificed that morning in Tucson. And for the first time since I left, I can’t quite recall how it tasted. I swallow and my mouth feels thick and viscid and gummy. I am reminded of paste. All that comes to mind is flour and water.

Emily Dressel: R.I.P.

Once there was a girl named Emily Dressel. She was born with a tuft of white hair and a stubborn expression. She hated naps and adored soup. She was shy around the boys, inquisitive in class, and poker-faced on the pitcher’s mound. She blossomed in college with the discovery of $3 Boone’s Strawberry Hill.

My name has served me well over the last thirty years. Dressel. D (like David)-r-e-s-s (like Sam)-e-l. It is a good name. Near the top of the class roster – but not too high up so you had time to mentally prepare yourself if Mrs. Swanson asked everyone to spontaneously recite a haiku or name the Presidents backwards. Strangely, pizza order-takers and restaurant hostesses were universally compelled to lump a “LER” at the end. Apparently, Dressler flowed better in ink. Then, of course, there was that painful instance in 5th grade when some clever chump during recess unleashed utter humiliation in my initials: “E.D. = Explosive Diarrhea”. He wrote it in orange chalk next to the Four Square corner, albeit with several misspellings. His initials were “BC”. The best zinging retort I could spit back at the time, amidst pure playground-peer-pressured-panic, was “Birth Canal”. I can still feel the oppressive heat of jungle-gym stares.

I never personally ran into another E.D. Although one of my pals in high school told me that at her regional swim meet in Michigan, an imposter named Emily Dressel, banged her shoulder on the diving board during a routine back-flip. Apparently, “klutz” runs in the letters.

A few weeks ago, I said “I do”, setting into motion the daunting name-changing process. DMV, Frequent Flier Miles, Credit Cards, ROTH IRAs, Netflix, Work Email, Passport, USPS – the list goes on and on. Using www.knot.com as my “professional” guide to seamless marital transitions, I first bounded over to the Social Security Office. I am quite confident the waiting room chairs had maggots hatching on them or at least head lice, so I opted to stand in the back for fifty minutes while defiantly clutching my purse and attempting to look tough in my Ann Taylor sweater and pearl necklace. There were about a dozen screaming infants and toddlers running amuck with snot crusting on their cheeks, sucking on car keys and cell phones. There was one crazy white-haired lady with a walker who repeatedly shouted “What line?!” to the automated computer check-in screen and a woman in black tights and 5-inch stilettos who strutted past the police officer, dragging her 90 lb. Boxer, insisting that he was a seeing-eye-dog. I overheard two men in knit caps exchanging prison release dates and one androgynous individual, completely horizontal in row 12 appeared to be passed out or possibly dead. When my number was called, I clutched my tidy folder, containing all forms of identification, including my library card and gym membership, and marched up to Counter F. She took one look at me, half-smiled and said, “Let me guess. You just got hitched.”

There is a funny kind of mourning that comes with changing your name. In some ways, it feels like slicing off a pinky finger. True, it’s superfluous. After all, it is just a name, but yet it is subtly sentimental. Who am I if I am not Emily Dressel? My very identity.

It was the name my parents spoke aloud after kissing me on the forehead and some random nurse typed up on a birth certificate. It was the name bathed in incense during my baptism and the one that awaited me in my first grade cubbyhole on masking tape so I knew where to hang my Punky Brewster lunch box. The name appeared on T-ball trophies, in Wednesday Journal articles, and was carved into high school academic plaques. Emily Dressel was what was written on the front of the oversized Stanford University envelope next to a 72-font YES! that plopped through the mail slot one Tuesday in April. This is the name I have signed for decades on homework assignments, permission slips, petitions, and on the back of my first Visa card. The sound of it makes me turn my head, look up, and feel recognized. In fact, I get a bit jealous and competitive when I fumble across another Emily Dressel on google or Facebook. I mean who exactly do they think they are living with MY name all this time? And with that haircut?

This whole pursuit of legal reinvention is my choice and my choice alone though. Many of my female friends have kept their maiden names for various personal or professional reasons and Brad would have been happy with whatever I decided. This is something I wanted to do. A cutting of one cord and a Tarzan vine-leap onto another as Brad and I set off as a family, awaiting whoever or whatever may join our little duo along the way.

And so I am practicing my cursive H’s. It is one of the few capital letters that require an exhaustive pen lift. Several pen lifts, in fact. I can’t seem to get it to look just right. Hampson. It is harmless. Alphabetically acceptable. In the middle of the pack – not too cocky, but not too timid either. And thus far, only one person actually thought I was marrying one of the Hanson brothers with mushroom hair. It is a benign, next-door-neighborly, quaint, all-American kind of name. It will fit easily on the backs of my kids’ Little League jerseys or on the cover of my great American novel. No one will get hurt. It could be so much more controversial. My sister-in-law, for example, willingly adopted the new last name of “Gross”. (No offense, Mike, but that is true love right there.) But, still, it is going to take some getting used to. I don’t know Emily Hampson yet. I’m sure that will evolve after many cross outs, corrections, and voids in my checkbook. I trust she will eventually become broken in and comfortable and start to feel like sweatpants.

Fortunately, I have wracked my brain during quiet moments and commercial breaks and can’t come up with any disgusting gastrointestinal ailments that can be derived from E.H. The worst I can formulate is Excessive Halitosis. But, give me time. We’ve only just met.

You say potato – I say pomme de terre.

Hello, my name is Emily and I am a Foodie. That is...major schnoz-in-the-air, fancier-than thou-hierloom-varietal, organically-au poivre snob. You say beans, I say haricot verts. You say mushrooms, I say chanterelles. I won’t be caught dead with American cheese singles or Wonder Bread in my cart. Those are for the birds or toddlers with four teeth. I adore over-priced farmer’s markets and pray to the God of prix fixe. I will spend $200 on one dinner for two without blinking but refuse to buy a pair of shoes for $75 that will last me ten years. Priorities.

I blame my mother and grandmother, Baba. Raised as the daughter of a peasant farmer in the Czech countryside, my Baba mastered simple ingredients grown in the garden or butchered in the barn. There was beef with dill gravy, dumplings and cabbage in the winter - grub that stuck to your ribs and made you sleepy before sundown. In the summer there were tomatoes to strain, cucumbers to pickle, and peaches to peel. In the morning, chicken bones clinked like chimes against the soup pot while Baba braided strudels that bubbled of yeast and apricot jam. Her family used everything - down to the grease that was packed and perfumed into laundry soap.

The thrifty resourcefulness ingrained in that generation’s DNA immigrated with my grandparents to their eventual home in the West suburbs of Chicago. As a child, my mother became accustomed to traditional homemade Czech meals, but she quickly developed an itch to experience the American concept of “dining out”. This was an extravagance not in my grandparent’s vocabulary. When my mom set the table, she often daydreamed of dining downtown in a fancy room with linen tablecloths, crystal chandeliers, and waiters with silver trays who folded your napkin when you got up to use the ladies room. She longed to peruse a menu written in cursive and order something French or Italian that she couldn’t pronounce. She vowed that one day her daughters would know about champagne, caviar, and seafood forks.

My family’s love affair with food was evident decades back on my dad’s side as well. The story goes that his grandmother, Emma, was so fat that they had to saw down the front door upon her death in 1949 to remove her from the house and special order a mega-coffin from California. But, I argue that there is a critical class difference between being a compulsive eater and being a Foodie – besides the cholesterol. Where bingers love to eat, Foodies put equal stock in admiration. We are a discerning, adventurous, and fastidious breed. We are awed by the purple pigments in Dragon tongue beans and the subtle plantain flavor in a Butterstick summer squash. We could chat for hours about the hint of mandarin in a cardamom foam or discuss what herbs to add to a mirepoix to properly flavor chicken stock. We are enamored with gastronomy and fatigued by flourless chocolate cake. We subscribe to Food and Wine Magazine, Gourmet, and watch Top Chef on Wednesdays. We maintain a bucket list of restaurants to spend five hundred dollars at before we die. And we brag. Foodie to Foodie. Under the pretense of recipe collaboration, we truthfully love to pound our own chests.

My brother and I do this - indulge in culinary chatter. He painstaking describes how he basted a honey-dijon glaze over grill-skewered brussel sprouts on Friday and I see his “BS” and raise him a homemade butterscotch semifreddo drizzled with a rocky road brittle. He pauses. Considers. And folds. I win this round. To boost his ego, I casually mention my last encounter dining with savages.

“Last week I overhead this girl at a bistro ask her date what cream bro-leigh was. I turned around, thinking that the guy would be mortified, until I saw he was trying to eat the cedar plank under his salmon.”

We both laugh and snivel, basking in the warm glow of superiority.

But, this type of taste-bud transcendence produces an unfortunate side effect. We are commonly bored. I refuse to support restaurants that aren’t churning out something I can’t parboil, poach, or puree at home. Frequently I scan dessert menus on-line to see if they reek of the ABC’s: Apple tart, Bread pudding, Chocolate cake. It doesn’t even have to be expensive – just give me something original and sexy and deconstructed. Give me a meal of a lifetime.

When we do hit that crescendo - that orgasmic, trifectus climax of peak flavor, texture, and presentation - we cannot help but spew to all of our Foodie friends. Each of us, broadcasting our most elite conquests like decorative patches ironed proudly on a Girl Scout sash.: “Oh yes, we ate at Charlie Trotter’s for George’s birthday last year. The maitre d’ even gave us a private kitchen tour.” or “Bill was so romantic this fall – he surprised me with a garden table at Commander’s Palace for jazz brunch!” Even if you happen to know someone who has visited the Super Elite - like a sister-in-law who once ate sashimi at Nobu in Toyko - you can earn partial credit. At least you are in the game and fellow Foodies know, “Ok, he gets it.”

Which leads me to my latest conquest during our upcoming wedding weekend: Thomas Keller’s impervious 15-table magnum opus in Napa Valley, The French Laundry. The Crème de la Crème. A place where just securing a reservation earns you a patch. It has been on my list ever since my family visited wine country in 2002 and the concierge cackled in my face, “French Laundry!? Honey, the next time they have a table open, you’ll be a grandmother.”

For the past fifteen years, it has been ranked as one of the top restaurants globally. This is the holy grail of the West Coast. Every night, approximately one hundred chosen disciples indulge in a hallucinatory orgy of culinary lovemaking. Foodies will give their left pinky toe for a chance to feast on Keller’s ambrosia: “Oysters and Pearls” or “Foie Gras en Terrine”. If only appendage amputation was so easy…. You actually have to put in the work. It may be about as difficult to snatch a table at The French Laundry as it is to win the Indiana Lottery – twice. And so, I set off to do my research.

First, I sensibly google ‘How to get a reservation at the French Laundry?’ I am bombarded by an obscene quantity of posting boards and chat rooms. Foodies in Portland and Charleston lamenting on Trip Advisor that they have been trying unsuccessfully for five years, perhaps searching for some sort of miracle fertility treatment to increase their chances. There is a message board where you can trade dates and tables with other couples who have reservations on days that they can no longer attend. It all reads suspiciously like a personal ad, Silver-haired San Francisco couple with a secured 4-top, searching for fun-loving pair to join them for Late Seating on Tues, September 14. Must love food, red wine, small talk and be willing to spend a fortune. Gay is a plus! There are numerous references to a mysterious man named Aren Sandersen who will guarantee your party a reservation on your selected day if you give him 70 days notice and hand over your Visa number.

The French Laundry currently takes reservations two months in advance to the day. Their largest table is a six-top and we have eight anxious Foodies in our group. I need two tables of four (13% of the restaurant!). October 4th is our night. We have one shot at this. Like the hunky astronauts in those Hollywood Blockbusters attempting to reroute apocalyptic meteorites and save the human race from total obliteration with one last Hail-Mary computer algorithm.

I call on August 2nd, just to make sure they haven’t changed their policies. I call again on August 3rd to double check and confirm the first person I spoke with wasn’t a vapid idiot. During the night, I have a nightmare about getting stuck in an elevator when the reservation office is about to open and having to tap out a SOS in Morse Code to the emergency responders who don’t seem to appreciate the magnitude of my distress. I have my fiance stationed on his overnight shift, stalking Opentable for any possible loopholes per online rumors that the website releases one table per night. On August 4th at 11:30am CST, I arrange my notebook, credit cards, pens, back-up pens in case the first two run out of ink, and stress ball in front of me on the bed.

11:45am - Begin calming breathing exercises.
11:50am – Text my sister to remind her for the fifth time to call on her phone.
11:55am – French Laundry voicemail, “Our reservation office will reopen at 10am PST”.
11:57am – Quick breathing exercise
11:58am – French Laundry voicemail
11:59am - Busy signal
11:59:32am – Busy signal. Shit.
12:00:02am – Busy signal. Double shit.
12:00:13am – Busy signal. Triple shit.

I redial every eight seconds for the next twenty-two terribly tedious minutes. 165 calls. At one point around 12:19pm, I peer down at my index finger, blistering from redials, and think, What the hell am I doing? Dinner at this place is about as much as Baba’s annual social security check. I must be nuts. But then, I come to my senses and realize I have just wasted eleven precious seconds. At 10:22:46am I actually hear a ring. I screech with excitement as the drone announcement comes on, “Thank you for calling The French Laundry. Your call is important to us. All representatives are currently with other clients. Please remain on the line and the next representative will be with you shortly.” I glance at my watch. 10:23:55am. I am probably screwed. More bad elevator music. A voice cuts through the other line - a formal British accent – “Thank you ever so kindly for holding. This is Victoria”. Very proper. I think they must only hire reservationists with proper British accents so all the bitter Americans don’t become irate and vulgar on the phone once all the tables are lapped up. You just can’t take a tone with Victoria.

“Congratulations,” she says breezily. “We have exactly one table left for October 4th. A four-top at 9:15pm.”
“I’ll take it.”
As I rattle off my credit card information and put my name on The Wait List for an additional table, I am already scheming – Who out of my eight family members is expendable? Amy is skinny. Maybe she can sit on my lap.

A week later, I get a call that their private event room has opened up and would we like to secure it for our party of eight? More breathing exercises. Absolutely! I actually do heel clicks and sashay across the living room all afternoon.

Many of you will probably think I am certifiably crazy. For those who don’t – welcome to the club. You are definitely a fellow Foodie. I leave any aspiring Foodies with this small piece of advice. As my mother always instructed my siblings and I, growing up: Fake it until you make it. I recommend investing in an excellent French/American cookbook and dictionary. And remember, everything sounds better and more expensive in French. Meme quand c’est la laverie. Or as we say here....even when it’s the laundry.

Ode to The Smurf Hearse

Although you never technically transported miniature blue cartoon characters from funeral parlors to crematoriums, you would have been the car they cast had they made the movie: Smurfette and her Erection Collection. You were, however, my leading, although somewhat effeminate, “man”.

I picked you out of a conformist lot of white, grey and black sedans when I was twenty-two. You may have been the runt in the litter, but you were electric blue and somehow, I found you endearing. Practically speaking of course, I knew I would never lose you in parking lot. You were my first new car – a Chrysler PT Cruiser – promising tailgates out the hatchback and parallel parking for dummies. I signed on the dotted line and you were my wheels to adulthood as we chugged along together, hugging life’s curves with your stubby little Firestones.

You and I withstood criticism. People wondered why I was with you. My sister called you hideous and refused to go for a ride - horrified some college guys might assume she was white trash from Melrose Park. Once while stopped at a red light on a beautiful summer day with the windows down, four teenage girls in ponytails taunted and pointed at you, “That’s a really UGLY car!” I know you wanted me to run them over, but I didn’t want to get blood on your blue hood. It would have looked a bit too patriotic.

You were my steady companion through seven years, five moves and three states. You silently tolerated honks, tears, egregious profanity, and twangy country music. You even saved my life once while parked outside a gelato shop in downtown St. Louis. The windows from a twenty-story building blew out, raining down on you like icicles, but you shielded me from debris as I dug around your seat cheeks for meter coins. I don’t dismiss the little things either. Throughout the years, you helped transport dry-cleaning, suitcases, and even that egg custard dessert I brought to a dinner party that sloshed around on your floor mat for twenty minutes until there was nothing left in the casserole dish. Your heated seats more than once tricked my friends into thinking they had wet their pants. And your brakes pads could rival any baby-on-a-plane in a screeching contest, especially after some rain. But, you never judged me. You were my steadfast companion, refusing to gossip even when I had to pee in a McDonald’s cup over your cushions while stuck in a Thanksgiving blizzard on I-55.

Granted, you have to admit to being a bit high maintenance. Always racking up hospital bills with some random hydraulic tube, coolant fluid, and new tires – not once or twice, but three times. You were always falling apart and frankly, your neediness began to reek of desperation. In your later years, you became a heavy breather – wheezing and gasping down the road - insinuating that I should just get out and put you on my back. It almost seemed as though you forgot that you were supposed to be the reliable one in our relationship. So, are you surprised I went and traded you in for a younger, hipper, bronzed model that has less girth? What can I say, you lost that spark plug. You didn’t really think I meant forever?

I will always think of you, my Smurf Hearse, when I see one of your relatives parading down the road. I will recall you fondly, remembering us both in our prime and our youth – wondering if you are somewhere, gallantly delivering Papa Smurf to his final resting place. After all, the dude’s getting old. I write this ode because in the butterflied excitement of my new motor of love, I forgot to even say goodbye. So think of this as a last little pat, one tender farewell. You looked so forlorn, so frightened, so alone - discarded and abandoned - in that brightly lit Hyundai dealership with foreign models sticking their grills up at your chubby handles. But, take comfort, my friend, as much as I cursed you, you were the car for me. And remember this when you are feeling your most blue - they always say you never really get over your first.