Connected
Sailing in Cape Cod
It’s hard to say how many time I’ve sat at this computer to post a story in these months. Countless seems the only appropriate word. I’d pick the pictures, have an outline of a post laid out in my mind, open the computer, stare at the blank screen, shut it and walk away. Undoubtedly I’d roll my eyes and sigh at myself. Use words such as blocked and stuck to describe my experience. But those words are misleading. Those words imply that just like my screen, I was blank. That when push came to shove the words wouldn’t come. Only that’s not true.
The truth is that I have an abundance of words, I simply wasn’t sure they had a place here. The truth is I’ve not been stuck. I have been stalled and needing to shift gears so I could keep moving forward yet remained reluctant to press the clutch because whenever I sit here everything falls away and the only thing I want to write about is my dad. And so I will…
It was November of last year when I started working on building the site for Artisanal Vermont. Breathing life into something that’s been on my radar for such a long time felt exhilarating. I could feel my father with me then. November holds a lot. It is the month during 2020 when he moved back to Vermont, sick and deciding to no longer have treatment so he could spend whatever time he had left on this earth feeling as though he were living, not dying. November was when my son and I got to hug him on Thanksgiving while spending our first day together after he quarantined from his travels. During the following year, November was the month he passed away, only a few weeks shy of the date he landed at Burlington airport twelve months prior.
Sitting at my computer this winter, playing with fonts and photos, gathering information for things I’d like to write about and ingredients I’d like to feature, I found myself drifting away and thinking about him. Not in the heartbreaking way in which I expected to feel on the first anniversary of his passing when time and space for grieving were finally opening up. Moments of sadness gave way to floods of memories, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the time we had together in this life and all that he taught me.
I am fortunate to come from a family of fantastic cooks (a story for a different time) but the person who opened up my eyes and palate to a more worldly view was hands-down, my father. Through his business travels he would arrive home with recipes he discovered and wanted to share. He would enthusiastically scan the shelves of our local supermarket looking for the closest ingredients he could find and then whip up his new recipe for our family. Always encouraging us to try something new. Be open to different experiences. To leap into the unknown. Food being a universal language that could help link cultures and foster curiosity around fascinating unexplored places. A way for him to share his experiences with us, even if just a small piece, so we felt a little bit included in his journeys; to help fill in the spaces where he had been gone.
One of his favorite haunts was a German restaurant called Winkelmann’s in the town just south of where we lived. He had a love of deep dark breads topped with strong mustard and liverwurst spreads. As a girl, I was awestruck as German phrases flew from his lips and landed with laughter from the owner behind the counter. On the drive home he would regale me with stories of his first time speeding down the Autobahn and shift his 280Z just fast enough to make me giggle.
High up in my closet, tucked safely away, resides a stack of treasured postcards he sent me from his travels in Japan, which sent my mind spinning into daydreams of cherry blossoms and tea houses. Snippets of how he spent his days kept us connected when the miles between us were plentiful. Stories of people he met along the way, new food that he was trying, and descriptions of what he’d seen all stoked my curiosity of what life was like somewhere beyond the place we called home. His message to me that for all of the differences that can be found, the world is really just made up of families who love each other would make me feel safe enough to one day venture out on my own.
Then, as luck would have it, a Japanese restaurant opened up in our town. Dad immediately whisked away my brother and me to show us a little bit of what he loved so much about his time there. Chris took to it much faster than I did, but our father didn’t give up on me. Every time we went he introduced me to something a little different. Coaxed me into trying a bite of this or that until I started to branch out on my own. Those once unfamiliar, and at the time unappealing, flavors have long since become a favorite of mine and over the years we passed many an evening dipping delicate pieces of fish into soy sauce while chatting about our lives and dreams as he ordered our meals and exchanged pleasantries with the waitstaff in Japanese.
Shortly after graduating from college I packed my bags and moved to New York City, where my father and I made it a point to have dinner together once a week. One evening we walked over to the East Village. I had never been to that part of the city before and immediately fell in love with the funky little shops we passed on the way. Our destination - East 6th Street for Indian food. My father and I strolled along, looking at the colorful decorations through the windows while deciding where to go. If I close my eyes I can still see him sitting across from me, ordering Saag Paneer (still my favorite), the sitar player smiling in the background. We shared the plates of food he suggested, listened to beautiful music, and talked the night away, the scent of then unknown but inviting spices hanging in the air.
The list goes on and on and on... Learning about Koreatown and the magic happening on West 32nd Street in the form of Korean BBQ, where we grilled our own meat as my mouth puckered from my first taste of spicy kimchi was spectacular…On a hot summer Saturday we journeyed across the city, over the Brooklyn Bridge, for some old school Italian food and a visit to the neighborhood where he grew up. Walking down Fifth Avenue, a young man ran up behind us and stole his wallet. Completely unruffled, he decided to continue on with me finally being able to pick up the bill and in that moment I started to learn about letting go of the things I couldn’t control…So many tables full of roaring laughter when my brother would visit and we’d all hover over huge steaming bowls of Chinese noodle soup and plates of steamed pork buns.
In these months, I’m learning all the different ways in which the saying “the people you lose are never really gone” is true. When the physical space someone occupied is left empty, love rushes in to fill it. And it walks beside you.
It’s a strange thing to speak about someone who has so vividly colored the pages of your life in the past tense when the love is so incredibly present. As I sit here with the light of the full moon flooding my room, letting these thoughts flow instead of pushing them away, the threads that connect us are illuminated, revealing a path that constantly brings us back to each other. These lessons about food and love and connection are woven through our family. One cannot exist without the other.
The days are getting longer now. Soon it will be spring and my son will pull out his grandpa’s grill. I will be banned from the kitchen as he whips up my father’s secret marinade - the one he taught him to make during his last summer with us. I’ll watch from the window as he listens to music while sitting at the picnic table they bought together that now graces our backyard. He’ll watch ever so closely for the perfect moment to flip the steak, wanting to get it just right, the way his grandpa showed him. And when we take the first bites we’ll smile, knowing that he did.