Celebrations of love FEBRUARY 2, 2017 ● ULSTER PUBLISHING ● WWW.HUDSONVALLEYONE.COM
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2, 2017 2 | February Celebrations of Love
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The facets of love James Beukelmann identifies the various ways in which the sentiment can buoy the heart
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mong other characterizations, history will likely remember 2016 as a year filled with much rhetoric summoning hate and love. Though hate caught many headlines, love had the edge — it’s patently good, like motherhood and apple pie. It’s good to love peace and bad to hate it. On the other hand, hate has its beneficial side. It’s good to hate cancer and bad to love it. So I suppose it’s fortunate that we have the ability to feel and respond to both these human emotions. Still, we prefer love. Otherwise we wouldn’t have a holiday just for love and not one celebrating hate. Memories of love, even love lost, buoy the human heart. My fourth grade class distributed signed Valentine cards to every student. I punched out cards from perforated sheets and signed them for every classmate except one. To Jeanann Fisher, whom I admired from afar between September and February 13, I gave a huge, lacey, glittery, remarkable Hallmark expression of fondness. Classmates wowed and tittered at the excess. My nine-year-old mind may have been obsessed with baseball, but my heart beat by the pulse of Jeanann’s beauty and grace, a grace that emerged later in the day when she approached me and thanked me for the special card. We became occasional square-dance partners through June, but in September we attended different schools by a ba-
“View of the Past” (Sir Isumbras at the Ford) by John Everett MIllais, 1857 by-boomer-expanding district and we lost touch. Because church sanctuaries are still popular venues for weddings, I as a clergyperson have witnessed many special love moments. Brides and grooms shedding tears while delivering vows, the
bride who wore a camouflage sash in honor of her groom’s hunting obsession, the bride’s family in India in simultaneous prayer during the moments of the ceremony because of the impossibility of their physical presence, the bilingual ceremony
February 2, 2017 Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co. Claudius’ demand that the Christian priest bow with simultaneous translation for the Spanishto Roman polytheism. When he vowed to remain only relatives — these moments of grace will actrue to his beliefs, he was summarily executed. company me as long as I am of sound mind. Nor will I forget unexpected, more challenging wedding moments, like the four-foot snowfall t. Valentine’s Day is a time to reach out that prevented attendance by all guests save bride, to that best friend whose image in your mind groom and two witnesses donned in jeans and brings a smile even if years and miles sepasneakers; the fainting groom who delivered vows rate. You are no less mom, dad or child whether from a folding chair conscripted into service; a the connection is presently thick as thieves or missing limousine and a topless, tattered Jeep asstrained. A February 14 good wish to the homesigned as an impromptu conveyance for the newless man begging a job or handout, on a cardboard lyweds to the reception; the young groomsman sign outside the mall entrance, a nod to the harunaccustomed to suit and ried cashier at the fast-food tie in summer’s humid heat palace, the mailperson or who fainted down three steps garbage collector who ser“The saint who gave his during a prayer ending in a vices your neighborhood, or name to the day would have premature “Amen”; and the the public servant who greets forgotten wedding bands that you at the county building us fete love in all its facets” occasioned a faked exchange would be quite Valentinian. of rings. Sending punched-out or The Greeks identified four ornate cards, flowers, candy, or jewelry to bridge or poker friends, fellow dancefacets of love. They saw romantic love’s passion class members, commuter seatmates, hobby-club as a kind of madness. It was what drove Paris to confederates or self-help group associates might an obsession with Helen of Troy, into the Trojan feel a mite clumsy, but stands in the tradition of War, and Troy’s defeat. It’s the love that appears in songs, stories, films, plays, magazines, advertising, and wherever the human heart ventures because of its power over us. Contributors this issue But it’s not the only facet of love celebrated on February 14. There is also the love between friends fter time in California, Michigan, that ties BFFs together over geographical or emoNew Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsyltional distance, making each better and wiser in vania, Jim Beukelmann made the the areas of self, the other and the world. There Hudson Valley home for 40 years is the love between parents (parent surrogates) as a husband, father, and parish pastor, and and children driven not by personal qualities but in retirement additionally a grandfather, by intergenerational happenstance. And there is woodworker, old car mechanic, and writer. universal unconditional love aimed at strangers, Lynne Crockett is an English professor and nature or God that redeems social interactions, Chair of the Liberal Arts Division at SUNY Sulbuilds psychological, social and environmental livan. She has a PhD in Victorian Literature from fabrics, and enriches all that lives. NYU and has been an academic for 24 years. Psychology has supplemented these ancient Lynne believes that essays are organic, fluid works Greek categories to include three additional facof art—and good writing makes her cry. She lives ets of love. There is playful love among equals in Sundown with her husband Donald and poodle that includes teasing, dancing or flirting with no Peter. strings attached, marked by casual, undemanding George Ernsberger former book editor and and uncomplicated activity. Practical love, based publisher and novelist, and currently Associate on reason or duty, pursues personal qualities, Editor of the journal Modern Psychoanalysis as compatibilities, shared goals, and a drive to keep well as the About Books columnist for several area the relationship alive and healthy. Finally, love of newspapers. self ends in a healthy self-image stopping short of Lisa Phillips is an author who teaches journaldelusion that leads to estimates of superhuman ism at SUNY New Paltz, following a career as a abilities, worth or accomplishments. public radio journalist, contributing stories to a Though the love for the Jeanann Fisher in your number of outlets including NPR. life may give sense to your stereotypical ValenRossi AKA Chef Rossi, is author of The Raging tine’s Day observance, love is too multi-facetted to Skillet, a columnist, a radio host and NYC’s wildbe locked in the cage of romance. Indeed, the saint who gave his name to the day would have us fete love in all its facets. Tradition says that he stood firm against the third-century Roman emperor
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Valentine who remained true in the face of martyrdom. The third-century saint would probably even applaud your expression of love to yourself of it’s short of narcissistic excess. If we cannot be happy with ourselves, we cannot be self-effacing enough to embrace someone else. The same year in which Jeanann stole my heart, Steve Gunther was my best friend. He was in a different fourth-grade class and lived a few houses down the street. We trudged the fields and construction sites in our burgeoning suburban town together. We flew kites and played ball in the local athletic fields. We walked to the hobby shop and movie theater. We rode bikes on fantasy and real adventures. We played endless marble competitions from which his marble collection increased and mine decreased, his superior skills being what they were. Our two-boy team excelled in a school-sponsored tournament, in which I rode on his shoulders to a first-place ribbon, the first award among the precious few that I accumulated in my lifetime. To Steve, from whom I have been separated these 60 years and 3000 miles, I say: I care for you, I miss you, your contribution to my life has stayed with me. Yes, I loved you then...and I love you still.
est caterer. Paul Smart is a writer and editor who now spends half his weekdays working out of a windowless room in our state capitol. Jack Warren is a writer and filmmaker from Phoenicia who is currently attending Wesleyan University. His work has been featured in Chronogram, the Goodlife Youth Journal, and the Woodstock Times. He likes to play pretend, fight injustice, and romanticize the past. Our cover is a contemporary Morgan & Smart adaptation of a classic 1949 Romance Comics cover by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who created Captain America among many other characters, that’s presently in public domain. The inside images this issue are examples of work by artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose intentions were to reject what they considered the” mechanistic approach” of late Renaissance art. Over the years their work has come to be seen as a late blooming of classic Romantic idealism, with an emphasis on chivalric love caught in many early literary classics.
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First kisses and faerie romances He wanted it to be real, Jack Warren explains, and sometimes it was
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was a save-it-for-marriage kind of kindergartner. My classmates held each other’s hands and pecked each other on the lips. Their parents cooed at how cute it was to see them pretend. I balked at the idea of such a sacred feeling being commodified by adults, and had cooler things to pretend, anyway. I wanted my first girlfriend to be someone with whom I could save the world from unspeakable evil and then marry. Preferably in that order. I met her when I was twelve years old, sitting in a circle at my first week of summer camp. Counselors were explaining where to put our plates when we were done eating lunch. The trash would be sent to the landfill, while the compost would be fed to the local pigs. There was only one problem. We were having ham sandwiches that day. I was horrified, yet reluctant to advocate against swine cannibalism in front of all these people I barely knew. “Say something!” she said. So I did. Our summer camp, The Wayfinder Experience, was a place for pretending. We dressed up in costumes, came up with characters, fought monsters, and found ourselves somewhere along the way. Late in the week, after the pretending was over, we watched the sun rise on the docks. Her eyes matched the color of the early-morning sky. Because this was summer camp, someone was strumming “Here Comes the Sun.” My heart was hurting in the way I had read about so many times. It may not have been a high-fantasy adventure, but it made for the perfect coming-of-age novel. A few months later, we were married. It was at a later Wayfinder event. I played an undead faerie king, she an undead faerie queen. It was a small ceremony, accompanied by the giggling of our
“She needed escape more than ever, and I was there to provide it.”
“Chivalry” by Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee, 1895
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friends and the marriage speech from The Princess Bride. She kissed me that night, but it was a stage kiss — our lips were separated by her thumbs. Though it wasn’t a real first kiss, the lightning that shot down my spine made me feel alive, despite the whole zombie faerie thing. We skipped out on rings, but a few weeks before the event we had met up to buy the faerie wings and fake blood. We pretended to be characters from our favorite show, Doctor Who, investigating a local costume shop (then a café, then her house) in order to save the world from diabolical aliens. It was probably a first date, though neither of us admitted as such. Putting romance on such a high pedestal made the prospect of actually engaging in it intimidating. But we talked every night and held each other’s hands and said I love you, and every moment we spent together echoed around my mind like a good pop song. Our pretend-relationship was perfect, for a while. She got older, and the two-year age gap between us became more apparent. When she showed me her sketchbooks, there were more pages skipped without comment. When I asked about her day, her answers were composed of more and more silence. I wanted to help, to slay her problems like so many monsters, but she struggled with a darkness that was beyond my understanding. She began dating a girl that she met at my thirteenth
February 2, 2017 Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co. birthday party, who, for better or worse, dealt with similar demons. Their relationship didn’t last very long, but it held a burning intensity that was absent from ours. Their breakup was destructive for both of them. She didn’t talk about it with me, but I knew her well enough to recognize that she was hurting more than ever. After huddling together on the couch to watch an episode of Doctor Who, she asked me to kiss her hand so she could keep me with her. She needed escape more than ever, and I was there to provide it.
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bout a month after her breakup and a year after we met, we went out to see a play. Her makeup was more elaborate than usual, and her sleeves were cut to reveal her shoulders. I was convinced that it was for her ex, who also happened to be in the audience. But during the performance, our fingers interlocked, and afterwards we walked around town and everything felt simultaneously familiar and new. When my dad drove her home, we sat adjacent in the back seat, making silly faces at each other and listening to Neutral Milk Hotel. When we got to her house, I walked her to her front step and hugged her goodbye. She was halfway through the door when she turned around to kiss me. It was nothing grand, just a peck on the lips, like the kiss of a kindergartner. I became hyperaware of my surroundings, the silhouette of her body in the doorframe, the kinetic pull of the air on my skin, the crickets and bullfrogs playing their songs, and the brief, wonderful taste of her lips on mine. I was completely in shock, frozen and aflame, imploding into my chest and erupting into the night sky, a body sung electric. “That was…something,” I said. Soon I was back in the car with my dad, and I stuck my head out the window, and the wind blew through my hair, and Neutral Milk Hotel blasted from the speakers, and the stars and the trees and the animals of the forest rushed past, and everything felt like an indie movie. Life was happening, not just in some imaginary universe with zombies and faeries and monsters, but to me. I had a girlfriend, a girlfriend whom I had fought for, who was my best friend, whom I would save the world with, whom I would marry and live with forever and have beautiful children …. It was then that our car plowed into a deer. This was the third deer our family had accidentally slain that year. The first had totaled an earlier car, and the second had happened only two weeks before the third. My dad was enraged. The subject of deer overpopulation became the talk of the car ride home. I stayed mostly quiet. I spent two months as her boyfriend. She told me that I had always been the one, that she had made so many mistakes, and that she was only happy when I was around. But the parts of her life that were off limits to me before remained mysteries, and our kisses never moved past pecks on
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the lips. We went back to summer camp, this time as a couple, but 24/7 real-life contact made for a miserably awkward experience. Shortly after we went home, she posted on Facebook: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” I called her. She told me she liked it better when we were friends. She hooked up with her ex on-and-off for awhile afterwards, and I entered the eighth grade. I cried because it was over. I wanted us to be real, and there were moments when we were. She did, too, I think, but the real world could never amount to the fiction we made for each other. Still, that fiction shaped my reallife coming-of-age more than any book or movie had. We kept in touch, talking about novels and TV shows we liked, and working at the camp that brought us together. She kept battling her demons, and I focused on combating my own. Sitting by the campfire last summer, we held each other like we once did, laughed about faerie wed-
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dings and Doctor Who, and told each other how important the other was. She was the first person I kissed and the first person I loved. That is unassailably true. We got married and saved the world. That’s our story. And I’ll be damned if it isn’t a good one.
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Overnight and day passes are available. &Žƌ ŵŽƌĞ ŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶ ĐĂůů ϲϰϲͲϲϮϴͲϰϲϬϰ Žƌ ŐŽ ƚŽ͗ ǁǁǁ͘ĨŽůŬŵƵƐŝĐŶLJ͘ŽƌŐ͘ dŽ ƉƵƌĐŚĂƐĞ ƟĐŬĞƚƐ ŽŶͲůŝŶĞ ŐŽ ŽŶůŝŶĞ ƚŚƌŽƵŐŚ ĞǀĞŶƚďƌŝƚĞ Ăƚ ŚƩƉ͗ͬͬĨŵƐŶLJ͘ĞǀĞŶƚďƌŝƚĞ͘ĐŽŵ >ŽŽŬŝŶŐ ĨŽƌǁĂƌĚ ƚŽ ǁĂƌŵĞƌ ǁĞĂƚŚĞƌ͘͘͘ :ŽŝŶ ƵƐ Ăƚ ƚŚĞ ^ƉƌŝŶŐ &ĞƐƟǀĂů DĂLJ ϮϲͲϮϵ͘
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Literary love Lynne Crockett wonders how new technology will change learning
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t the end of last semester, overwhelmed and feeling frayed around the edges, while walking purposefully toward my next meeting I decided to turn right, away from my destination, and instead head toward the library stacks. By habit I entered the section on fiction. I wasn’t searching for books to read. I just wanted to be among them. My normal end-of-semester hyperactivity and panic slowly eased from the smell: the familiar, comforting odor of bindings, glue, and paper. I breathed deeply. I slowed down and began looking at the rows of books. And by chance I located a trilogy of Young Adult (YA) novels recommended by a student — the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. Rejuvenated, I went toward the desk to check out the first of the series and ran into our librarian, Rich, who steered me toward a display of new books. There I found Barkskins by Annie Proulx, a historical novel that I had intended to buy. So I took that, too. And got into a discussion with another librarian, John, about mystery novels. He promised that when I finished the books I had just checked out to hook me up with one of his favorite authors. This brief visit to the library had completely altered my state of mind. We readers comprise a community that nonreaders probably can’t fully comprehend. When I was in graduate school at New Paltz, one of my fellow teaching assistants said that she believes people form friendships later in life based on the books they read as children. I am not sure that I agree — I have always been a lover of nineteenthcentury novels (The Secret Garden and Eight Cousins were favorites), whereas my husband prefers science fiction — but I do know that people connect through literature. During the Harry Potter craze my students and I discussed which house we would be in at Hogwarts, and later, when Twilight was big news, arguments about who was sexier, Edward or Jacob, helped me to bond with my female students (the male students, unfortunately,
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“Tristan and Isolde” by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1902 found our disputes trivial and dull). As an adolescent, books saved me from a crushing depression. I felt isolated. I was overly sensitive and took everything personally. I thought I was weird, ugly and inferior. But during the times when I was in school struggling with bullies, or in bed curled into the fetal position wishing I could get it over with and die, I still had a stack of books that could transport me from my world into another. In books I discovered people like myself. I read YA novels like Trixie Belden, in which the protagonist was a smart, independent girl whose curiosity often got her into trouble — like me. My mother gave me historical novels like Jubilee Trail that illustrated the struggles of women to survive in difficult times. And eventually I discovered fleshand-blood friends who also were readers. A select few of us enjoyed weekends lying on my bed reading together. I often carried my favorite book in my bookbag, perhaps for the same reason my students are reluctant to part with their cell phones. I remember in high school one of my acquaintances snatched a book from my hands and flung it into the mud. I was furious. She clearly was not a member of my reading community; she lacked respect for me — and for books and the many lives within them. Reading has always sustained me, as a passion and as an escape. In the early 2000s I experienced a rough period when I changed jobs, my husband was diagnosed with cancer, both of my parents died, and I moved from a house and town that I loved to one with which I was unfamiliar. The multiple changes left me emotionally numb. I was in denial. I insisted to everyone that I was fine, although a colleague noted that I was skeletally thin. I spent the winter of 2014 reading. I went to work, came home, ate dinner, and curled up in bed with a book. As I drove or worked I thought
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not of what I was doing but of what I was reading. I am not sure whether I made the connection between my life then and my struggle as a teen, but just as they had when I was depressed in my adolescence, books eased my pain. I recently read an article written by Marc Prensky (“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”) about the differences between people like me who learned to use computers in our late twenties (digital immigrants) and people like my students who were raised with technology (digital natives). “Today’s average college grads have spent less than 5000 hours of their lives reading,” Prensky writes, “but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).”
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ike many members of my generation do, I worry about the effect that not reading may have on my students’ intellectual development. But I wonder, too, whether my thinking might be limited. My students have explained to me that video games serve similar purposes to them as books did for me. They turn to these games to escape their lives, to sustain themselves through difficult times. Video games, they explain, tell stories — and as “readers” they not only enjoy the narratives but can actively participate in them to shape their outcome. We use stories to expand our horizons, to teach us about others — and to teach us about ourselves. My love of Victorian literature is matched only by that for YA fiction, created for adolescents who need to learn alternative ways of perceiving their lives. As a teen, I trusted the characters in my books not to criticize or to hurt me. I was open to messages I might not have heard otherwise. Lessons taught by characters like Harry Potter and Dumbledore (Voldemort was defeated by the power of love, not hatred and violence) can reach readers in ways that parents and teachers cannot. Perhaps the future lies in digital narratives, like videogames. I just hope, for the sake of young lives, that they are as effective as books.
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February 2, 2017 Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co.
| 11
“Echo and Narcissus” by John William Waterhouse, 1903
Writing about love... Paul Smart asks Lisa Phillips how she became a specialist in romance
Y
Ou’ve gained a reputation for writing about love. How did that happen? Getting an essay published in The New York Times “Modern Love” column in 2006 got the ball rolling. And writing “Unrequited: The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Romantic Obsession” definitely solidified this identity. Once the book came out, I had a lot of requests for shorter magazine, newspaper and online pieces about love and romantic rejection. I joke to my students at SUNY New Paltz that my beat is “love and heartbreak,” but not in the glossy, Cosmo way (though I have been published in Cosmo). I work in a wonkier, more in-depth, cerebral fashion. Psychology Today is one of my favorite places to write for, because it’s very readable and very grounded in psychology research.
What was the first thing you wrote about love? How did that differ from writing in love? The aforementioned Modern Love column, aptly named: “I couldn’t let got of him: Did it make me a stalker?” It told of my experience falling in love with a man who was seeing someone else. He had feelings for me, but he refused to get involved with me. And I got obsessed, and that led me to chase him in a too dramatic and too aggressive way — nothing bunny-boiler level, but still not okay behavior. Obviously that’s not something I could ever write while in love! Rejection and yearning, as awful as they are, can be inspiring — you’ve got to do something to fill that space. In my book I discuss research that shows that feeling socially rejected can spur creativity. Also what happens in our brain when we seek creative satisfaction is somewhat similar to what happens when we seek satisfaction in love. How hard is this topic, from both the subjective and objective perspectives? I think that love is very interdisciplinary. We have a lot to learn about it from so many sources.
So this is a challenge. I do frequently blend the personal and the reportorial. That means the goal is different. For example, in my book I make one of the biggest journalistic faux-pas imaginable — I cover unrequited love from a zillion angles, but I don’t get “the other side of the story.” Which in my case is the perspective of the man who rejected me. I made a conscious decision to substitute another value for the traditional reportorial idea of balance. The more important value was sending the message that the answers in unrequited love and the resolution to an obsession can’t be found in the person who’s rejecting you. What are the audiences you imagine writing for? Self-reflective, seeking, usually but not always female. Much of my work, and certainly my book, won’t really make much sense unless you’ve had some taste of obsessive love/unrequited love at some point in your life. How vast a subject is love; and how narrow? Are their better terms one can use, other avenues and subjects better explored? It’s endless, of course! I think that love will always be the home base word, but other words can really bring you into it in a much different way. I wrote a cover story for Psychology Today {on the newsstands now!) on intimacy that was fascinating to research and report. I’d never thought about the definition of intimacy, weirdly — or maybe not so weirdly. Intimacy is the opposite of what you are dealing with in unrequited love. So writing about that gave me a chance to consider what humans do to grow close, to feel known and understood. And that put love in a whole new light. What did you learn from reading about love? I do read a lot of novels about love. Are there novels that aren’t about love? I think of the last two novels I read. “Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff suggested that enduring, passionate love can thrive on a foundation of lies — a rather transgressive theme. “Swing Time” by Zadie Smith had a central character who seemed immune to love, except when it came to an obsessive childhood friendship. I am still struggling with this character — I so badly wanted her to be more loving and more vulnerable. Then there’s all the research reading — that’s a
safer and more straightforward kind of learning, and I enjoy it, but novels are still what rocks my world the most. As the mother of a teen girl, what would you write to her that she would read? What do you wish she could write to you? Yikes. Five more months until she’s a teen, actually! I can’t answer that question because the very vague next book project I have in mind addresses just that…shhh. And for the second part of the question, just the whole idea that she would write something for me sounds incredibly wonderful. But it’s not something you demand — it would have to happen in its own time and way. No matter what, she is already an expressive (though not in a gushy way) kid, and I’m very grateful for our conversations. I love to talk to her about people and friendships and all the social challenges of being a middle schooler. What have you learned from writing about love and what do you sense you have yet to learn, or will simply never understand? I don’t think I will ever fully understand the coexistence of the persistence of the drive to love and the persistence of the human capacity to hurt. I think that writing about a subject can be transformative, but not necessarily in all the ways we hope. I am being purposefully enigmatic here.
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2, 2017 12 | February Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co.
“Ophelia” by John Everett Millais, 1852
Beyond the Beach Boys Paul Smart and his wife discuss matters of the heart
M
y wife’s mother passed away this summer. While clearing out her apartment, we found a letter in the headboard of her bed, alongside a notebook filled with the poetry she’d been writing over the years. The letter was addressed to my wife’s father, whose divorce from her mother had taken place some 40 years ago, a dozen or so years after the couple had married. It was written on stationary bought in the 1970s, when they were still man and wife. My wife didn’t know exactly when the letter was written. She said it filled two pages, front and back, and was still in its envelope, addressed and ready to mail. In it her mom wished her ex well with his new marriage, talked about her fond memories of their time together, and forgave him. My wife described her mother’s handwriting as somewhere between girlish and secretarial, with lots of curlicues and flourishes. In another drawer, filled with fancy undergarments and a lavender sachet, was a separate stack of love letters from my wife’s father to her mother,
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from their first year of marriage, before kids. The man was away on a business trip, writing about how much he missed his wife. The letters never addressed sexuality directly, but did carry the intensity of a marriage’s early years. My wife says she and her sister, with whom she was cleaning out the mother’s apartment, noted how the woman who wrote about forgiveness, while using her mother’s handwriting and signature, sounded like no one they knew growing up. My wife asked her sister whether she should send the letter their mother had written about forgiveness, but never sent, on to their father. The sister, who hadn’t been in touch with their dad for years, shrugged and said it would be up to my wife. About a fortnight later, my wife finally mailed her mom’s letter, in its original envelope, along with a loving but slightly blurry photo her dad had taken of her mom in their first house. She wrapped both in a letter she wrote telling her father about her mother’s death. She included a copy of his high-school yearbook and some more old photos and mementoes found among her mom’s stuff. A few weeks further on, not having heard from her father, my wife phoned him. As she recalls the conversation, he was angry about her having sent him “that letter,” meaning the mother’s unsent missive about forgiveness, and implied that she’d been a “buttinsky,” repeating a term his ex, and my late mother-in-law, frequently used. My wife tried explaining to her dad how she’d thought he should know how her mom had at least tried to forgive him and move on. But by then he had changed the topic and soon found a way of getting out of the conversation altogether. As my wife has put it numerous times, neither of her parents had ever been very good at discussing matters of the heart, or things they found confrontational or even challenging. We discussed all this while walking the dog down to the site of an old Hudson River ice house, just north of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. My wife asked whether I wanted to see a copy of her mother’s letter. I declined but asked her what she had learned from looking it over since her death. She said she had been glad to see that her mother had at least wrestled with the idea of forgiveness. But she also noted how she realized how her mother could never “own,” let alone send out such feelings. It was like her mother knew forgiveness was how she should feel, even if she couldn’t. My wife noted how the poetry her mother wrote
(which I’d seen once, too, years earlier) had never changed over the years. The yearning love poems from her teen years were the same as her yearning words of regret and loss 60 years later. My wife also duly noted that her father’s second marriage has lasted over three times the length of his first, to her mother. What her mom had wished from him, in her yearnings and attempt at forgiveness, was an acknowledgement of their marriage’s existence, including the four kids born from it. Which was also what my wife wished. I was told that those love letters from the sachet-scented drawer were in a box of old photos and other memorabilia up in my wife’s studio now, to be one day shared, digitally, with the siblings. And maybe with our own son.
D
own by the riverside, standing in an expanse of tall maples and gnarled roots, we fell silent for a moment and simply watched the river flow. The tide was coming in. A single branch inched upstream. Later, my wife talked about what else she’d learned. She’d only come to recognize the destructive power of yearning years into her own first marriage, long before I entered the picture. Before, she’d thought such feelings of always wishing for more were natural. But that was just a consequence of having grown up in the shadow of her mother’s broken heart. My wife told me that if she had known better, she’d have divorced that first husband years earlier than she did. My wife went on to say that marriage had to be about maturing, emotionally as well as physically. I answered by talking up the innate powers of yearning inherent in so much art and music, poetry and drama. She admitted how her experience of yearning may have been one of the reasons she couldn’t stomach so much of pop music’s “whining,” as she put it, from The Beatles to The Beach Boys (and so much of the alphabet beyond). I’d like to say that at this point we held hands and quietly walked up the long slope from the Hudson. But we were already home by then. I’d gone quiet at the mention of my wife’s first husband. She’d gone quiet after realizing I didn’t want to hear my favorite genre of music desecrated, a recurring point of argument between us. So we moved on with our days, me writing this, and she later checking it out to see whether it passed muster. We decided that was all anyone ever should have yearned for.
February 2, 2017 Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co.
| 13
Sexy food Rossi shares her recipe for squash Napoleons with kale pesto
I
’ve thought a lot about food and romance over the years, partially because I’m a wedding caterer. Food and romance is basically what I do for a living. Sometimes the food that seems like it would be the most romantic is the least likely to end that way. I’ve had a whole lot of dinner dates that didn’t go so well. What could be sexier than a big juicy steak? Well, first of all when you sit down and eat a big juicy steak you don’t need to have sex. You already have. I went out for a romantic anniversary dinner with my girlfriend. She had a petit filet mignon. There might have been a chance for l’amour for her. But I ordered the rib eye. Man, it was great, but all I wanted to do after dinner was take two antacids and crawl into bed. There is, of course, the oyster-your-way-to-thebedroom plan. Most of my pals say oysters bumping up your sexual mojo is a myth. I do have a few who swear by it. You’ll have to decide that one for yourself. I think how sexy oysters make you feel depends on how sexy you think oysters are. I think they are about as sexy as a root canal, so color me no for the oyster parade. I like flavorful food as much as the next girl, but spice can be a good or a bad thing. I went to a fusion tapas joint on a date. The food was perfectly seasoned, a hint of jalapeno here, chili, passion fruit and cilantro there, but never overkill. I felt all my senses were awakened by the smell, taste and texture of the fresh, tasty, zingy tapas. It was perfect. I also had the experience of going to an uber-hip Indian restaurant on a date. I’m guessing the hipsters were too young to care about their insides. But that food was so far past spicy I felt like I’d swallowed a lit match. I can’t even tell you what the food tasted like. All I can remember is agony. So yes, you want flavor and a little spicy is okay, but spicy enough to melt your sneakers not a good idea.
O
ne thing I do think is very romantic is chocolate. But I mean good chocolate. Not run-of-the-mill milk chocolate or that crap you get in the hearts at the drug store
Squash Napoleons with Kale Pesto
Detail from “ Lorenzo and Isabella” by John Everett Millais,1849 on Valentine’s Day, but real deal, dark chocolate. I had a piece of Brazilian dark chocolate once and almost molested the traffic cop. Seriously. But mostly, for me the foods most conducive to romance are light, healthy and easy to digest. No antacids or naps needed. A rustic vegan dinner, a simple grilled fish with a salad, chicken in a light sauce with vegetables,
these would be my idea of a perfect romantic supper. Skip that heavy pasta dish in favor of a vegan squash Napoleon with kale pesto. Eating early is also smart. That leaves you plenty of time to digest before getting chummy. Just to get your mojo going, I’m gonna give you that squash Napoleon recipe. Remember, food is love. It’s meant to be shared.
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Preheat an indoor or outdoor grill. Whatever you have. I use a stovetop grill myself. Get your grill nice and hot. Meanwhile, slice zucchini and yellow squash into quarter-inch ovals, slice eggplant into quarter-inch rounds. Slice red onion crosswise into quarter-inch slices. Toss your veggies in olive oil, kosher salt and ground pepper until you are ready to grill. Grill for a few minutes on each side until they are well marked and softened. Optional are grilled bell peppers, tomatoes, or portobello mushrooms; all work fabulously with this dish. For the kale pesto, clean out a bunch of kale and cut out the white, hard parts. Adding some fresh basil is fabulous. Toast two handfuls of pumpkin seeds, walnuts or pine nuts. Toast in a dry pan for a few minutes. Drop your kale and nuts or seeds into the food processor with two cloves of fresh garlic and a few drizzles of olive oil, and add fresh lemon juice and salt to your liking. Build your Napoleons first with eggplant, then with the squash, onion and zucchini, and then top off with more eggplant. Put a nice plop of kale pesto on top or slather it between the layers.
2, 2017 14 | February Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co.
Fallings, risings A thousand words on love By George Ernsberger
I
never did have an easy, amusing way to talk about love and falling in love. I’m just now clearing a pretty demanding couple of years in that part of my life—a passage that half of us will have to find a way through, and that can’t be studied for, but only learned by furiously, unwillingly doing it. Anything I could say about that with adequate care would require hours of your limitlessly tolerant attention. But I’m asked for a thousand words, and this is the thousand I have: I first fell in what felt wonderfully like love at 22 or so. I didn’t doubt that’s what it was because it was so piercing, and slightly scary, and it really did sting that the real circumstances of both my life and hers made a long-term relationship unachievable from the start. I remember Louisa with real warmth still and can, just by relaxing and thinking back, almost recall her face, and clearly feel her body, shoulders, hips, curly hair, face—ears! and wish that all of her were here with me now, in place of the memory. But I don’t miss Louisa unless I stop and decide to remember her, so really that must have been just falling in sex-withreal-warmth-and-fondness. (The sex was sexy, but it was almost all attraction, hardly any action. In memory, I attribute that to the mores of that archaic era, but it’s possible that I was just that inept.) That was in Goshen, Indiana. Same sort of thing occurred again a couple of years into my life in New York (when I was, in every way but chron-
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ly, depending on what part of that still tireless swirl of feelings happens to show up in my mind. This falling, too, was into (even less) sex with (even more) affection, and I was glad to have it again. Maria was enough younger than me — 20, I think, when I was 24 or so — and so sweet, that I was a little slow to recognize how both knowing and large-hearted she was. And beautiful: big smiley eyes, sneakily magnetic cupid’s-bow lips, and—what I can’t call visually, specifically, to mind—a great crooked honker in the middle of her face that was easily, instantly edited out of one’s perception of her, just because the rest of her physical being and every bit of her actual self was so lovely. I sometimes enjoyed spending some mental energy to switch that cold-eyed view off and on as I looked at her face, for the pleasure of the complexity it introduced me to. We all do that, of course, and not only “in love”: even our friends’ inharmonious features disappear into an image formed as much “Isabella and the Pot of Basil” by Edward Burne-Jones,1875 from personality and distant examples as from physical makeup—but I had never experiologically, even younger). I remember it even enced it in such an extreme form. The effect was so more vividly and either more happily or more sad-
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February 2, 2017 Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co. powerful that even my crude narcissistic pleasure in being seen with a pretty girl was unimpaired. I wasn’t “forgiving� or “rising above� anything, I simply knew that those around us would have adjusted their own perception before we’d even said hello, and would find her beautiful, too. Her . . . radiance, I guess it was? commanded it, and then Maria kindly permitted it. Soon after that, though, my life unexpectedly entered a chapter that wasn’t a chapter at all, but a whole big novel. That seems to be how I think of everything involving Claire and all of our life together, now. It transformed and then powered my emotional comings and goings, soaring and diving, and...well, and needing some different thousand words at least.
B
ut that led to this — which seems to me to shed another light, a little aslant but bright, on in love:
The day after a telephone call told us that our baby had been born, Claire and I flew to where she was — met her and held her that afternoon. Claire held her; I didn’t, at that first brief meeting, and that was enough — all four of our arms were one set by that time, anyway. She was a very pretty baby, healthy-enough looking, like most babies, past the center toward the cuter end of the spectrum but really a generic baby, much like every one I’d ever seen, only this one ours, and suddenly also a terrifyingly delicate sort of soft contraption for us to learn to maintain. For life. The next morning, we awoke in our hotel room beginning to know that this process was about to become real life, now, that we’d be flying north that very afternoon with this unfathomably complicated tiny live bundle. But I awoke to some-
thing else, too: I found the baby’s very face in my mind, as clear as it had been in her mother’s arms the day before. The exact face of that suddenly unmistakable, singular . . . person! I was stunned at the clarity, the specificity. I said, “Jesus! You know — I could — if you showed me — if you had a gymnasium full of babies I could pick out that baby.� Claire seemed happy to hear that, but utterly unsurprised. I had never suspected that was possible. Of course you’d learn your baby very well very quickly, wouldn’t pick up even a very similar one by mistake, in (I guessed) a very few days. But — but what the hell happened in my brain, there, without my even noticing when it did? Back at the hospital in a little while, when we saw that face again I saw, as I knew I would, that it was indeed that forehead, chin, cheeks, nose . . . Annie’s face. The face that belonged, and would for the rest of my life, to Annie. And began to form a slightly broader, even maybe deeper, definition not only of love but of “in love.�
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Annie is now the mother of a boy with George in his name and a girl with Claire in hers. I see them every day. And — at last — beyond a thousand words, now, though something else may need to click in my brain before I find a way to tell some of that great central journey — I can say about it now that I think of it not as a falling but a rising.
Catskill Quartet
| 15
240 Boulevard, B l d Rt. R 32, 32 Kingston, Ki NY 12401 Email: info@thechateauevents.com 845.331.4386 • www.thechateauevents.com
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The Flower Garden Where owers are our inspiration to create lasting memories Call to secure your free consultation
fostercare.com 845-331-1815 200 Aaron Court Kingston, NY 12401
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Š 2017 KidsPeace. We respect our clients’ privacy. The model(s) represented in this publication is (are) for illustrative purposes only and in no way represent or endorse KidsPeace.
Eclectic American Cuisine with an Irish Twist!
3164 Route 9W Saugerties, NY 12477 Fax 845.246.0961
Featuring Chef Josh Paige
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MICHAEL’S
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2, 2017 16 | February Celebrations of Love
Ulster Publishing Co.
88 Grove Street • Cairo, NY 12413 Office: 518-622-3353 Fax: 518-622-8668
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