Feeling down. . . it’ s the weather. It’s the century. I paged through a book about the life of Tasha Tudor this afternoon, Drawn from New England, and felt angry again, angry at the wasteland of my childhood. Gilligan died the other day; my constant childhood companion. I ought to have felt some grief, but I felt nothing. Did all those hours plopped in front of the television ever give anything back to me? Laughter? Maybe. Was it enough? No.
There could have been art, and craft, animals, flowers, cooking, sewing. There could have been laughter with family or friends. There could have been more than just ingesting food or books or idiotic television shows. There ought to have been more. (But my parents were the children of war; I don't blame them.) There will be more for my own child, though I’m going to have to be more of a beguiling mother.
I know, the whole Tasha Tudor thing—it’s an industry; lots of carefully cultivated images of Tasha in her 19th century garb, smelling her flowers and milking her goats. Lord knows what the true story is. I don’t necessarily want to milk goats, (though I’d give it a go), but every once in a while such a piercing sense of what I could have perhaps created out of this life sweeps over me. Can I still? Do I have the energy?
I had this sense of loss and disgust the other night, dining out with my mother and sister-in-law, at a local café’s Friday night fish fry. The place was totally depressing: cafeteria tables & chairs, blinding sun pouring through dirty windows with no blinds or shades, an abysmal salad-bar with only iceberg lettuce, and five kinds of macaroni salad, the nauseating smell of old, used, hot grease coming from the kitchen. Yet the place was packed, with people of all walks of life. It was hard to go from France, from even the humblest places in France, where they would have served fresh bread, wine, a lovely salad of mixed lettuces, slowly cooked meat and garden vegetables--to this abysmal diner.
I won’t go again. I’d rather eat at home. I can’t do it anymore. I’ll have to learn to politely decline. It isn’t snobbery. I assure you it isn’t. It isn’t that I think I deserve better. Every one of those poor souls in that restaurant deserves something better--some simple, basic goodness. I’m not going to preach at them, though, and you are the choir, so there’s no need. I’m just going to hunker down with my own two hands and my own cookbooks. This summer I grew herbs—chives, parsley and cilantro. Next summer I ‘m going to expand the herb garden, checkerboard style, with square paving stones separating the different plants.
But this sense of something missing has more to do with food, though, because I can either seek out good food, or I can prepare it myself. This sense of something missing has to do with something Dorothy Thompson once said, a quote I think Jean Zimmerman would have liked to have for her book Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth. I’m going to have to go look it up and post it tomorrow, though, since I haven’t memorized it.
Now, The temperature has crept back up into the 80’s; tomorrow’s forecast brings 90’s. I may slink off for a second viewing of The Penguin Movie. I found it amazing the first time—the way it was in their best-interest to bond together. When, I asked D. tonight, did it become in our best interest to hate, kill, cheat, blame and ignore each other?
Obviously, it never did; maybe we'll die out and the penguins will survive.
10:03:25 PM 
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