Charlotte's Web and Soif

While Rachey and Ari stand in line for the Boardwalk rides, Steve, Brad, Danny and I go to Soif, my favorite wine bar. I order a flight of rose, and the guys try a sip from each glass while we eat fingerling potatoes with aioli and plate after plate of padron peppers, perfectly salted and roasted.

Then the guys head off to watch Inglorious Basterds. I don't like Quentin Tarantino in general and am irritated by misspellings in particular, so I skip the movie. (Prissy!) But I'd choose a bookstore over Quentin any day, so I'm happy to cross the street to Logos. I find a battered copy of Charlotte's Web, (a bargain at $3) and soon I'm curled up in the warm, cozy barn with Fern, listening to Charlotte and Wilbur and Templeton. A small thrill, remembering Templeton the rat and his me-first-ness, his slightly ominous presence. I think about E.B. White, making the untrustworthy personality the smallest one on the barn floor (Charlotte's obviously smaller but she's up above). It's the opposite of Stephen King. Shrink down what scares us so we can stand over it, feel more noble and bigger than the selfishness and greed.

And the words that Charlotte wove into her web: Some Pig, Terrific, Radiant, and Humble, which Charlotte says means "not proud and near the ground -- that's Wilbur all over." There's something there for all of us, choosing words carefully because weaving each word takes such effort.

"Why did you do all this for me?" Wilbur asks Charlotte.

"I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

And then, all too soon, this passage, which stops me and causes a pang of grief:

She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people who had visited the Fair, knew that a gray spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

I almost don't want to keep reading. But then there are Charlotte's daughters to rediscover, Joy, Aranea, and (the one that Wilbur names) Nellie. And that last page (go find your copy because it won't be the same if you read it on a blog). And when you turn the last page, you sigh, and you sit there on an old stool, looking up at the ceiling thinking for a little while. And then you go look for your friends.

copyright 2009 Ann Krueger Spivack

A Homemade Life and Cream-Braised Green Cabbage

I love Molly Wizenberg and envy her in equal measure. I envy her petite mother trotting around Paris in high heels. I envy Molly's years spent in a tiny apartment in France as well as her naturally red hair and funny, endearing writing style. "A Homemade Life" is my favorite book right now, and every recipe I've made from it makes me like Molly even more.

She saved me with her Cream-Braised Green Cabbage. Rachey read about cabbage soup (maybe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?) and has been hounding me to make it for weeks. I keep saying, "Cabbage soup is what you eat when you have no money for good food," but Rachey persists with her unreasonable belief that I will make a cabbage soup that she likes.

Suddenly, there's the answer right in front of me. Molly says,

"Cabbages may be homely, hard-headed things, but with a little braising, they're bewitching. Cut into wedges and cooked slowly in a Jacuzzi bath of cream, they wind up completely relaxed, their bitter pungency washed away and replaced with a rich, nutty sweetness."

Okay, worth a shot. I find a lovely delicate petit chou, cut it into wedges, and braise it in cream with salt and a little fresh lemon juice. Oh my God. OH MY GOD. Rachey takes a bite, serves herself a bowlful and curls up with it in her lap, watching Grey's Anatomy, completely happy. Danny comes downstairs, and sniffs at the pot. "What is this?" "Cabbage," I reply, sure that he'll snort in disgust and walk away. "Can I have some?" he asks. Sure. He polishes off the bowl and says, "That's so good. Can you make more? Can you make more now?"

So tomorrow I'm going to buy another green cabbage, braise it in cream, and serve the kids cabbage as an after-school snack. Thank you Molly.

copyright 2009 Ann Krueger Spivack

Everything Matters! and Jellybean Tomatoes

Don and Gary's backyard holds miracle after miracle. The praying mantis, stock-still on a plant leaf that's exactly the same shade of green. Don's little chapel of a greenhouse with its pepper plants and lemon tree. And the tomato wall -- a construction of plumbing pipe and wooden poles that holds a prodigious number of tomato plants. "I want this," I say over and over, like a child and Gary laughs. "This just about killed us" he says about the backyard, their weed-free, purple-flowered, blue-sky haven of a backyard. Don carries a large basket and carefully snips the tomatoes free of the wall, filling a bag for me. "Try this," he says, holding out the tiniest tomato I've ever seen. "I call these jellybean tomatoes because they're so sweet."

Somehow this fits in with Ron Currie's novel "Everything Matters!" Junior, who knows from the time he is born that a comet will hit the earth and destroy it, somehow manages to screw up his entire life. Heartache after heartache and I become more and more angry as he loses the love of his life, loses his mother to drinking, his brother to drugs. I read and scowl and keep reading. And then, when I'm about to lose patience and throw the book to the ground, a shift again. A moment of grace, of starting over.

This passage won't reverberate unless you read the book -- or maybe it will matter, because everything matters in the end:

"You wish they understood, as you do, that there is no escape and never was, that from the moment two cells combined to become one they were doomed. You wish they understood that there is joy in this fact, greater joy and love in this last moment than they experienced in their entire lives."

copyright 2009 Ann Krueger Spivack