Sofra

"She had had to hide feelings for so many months that her expression now changed dramatically, and her relief and happiness were obvious. It was if all her inner joy which had nearly been extinguished, had suddenly been rekindled." Laura Esquivel, "Como Agua Para Chocolate"

In Turkish, a language I do not speak (YET), the word sofra means dining table, table where food is set or, more generally, a spread of food on a dining table. It's a bit like picnic. A time for sharing not only food but also stories and travelers' tales.

This week, while enjoying a leisurely stay-cation, I decided to make a sofra for my friends Kate & Bob and my sister Betsy. I love to cook, especially when I'm not in a hurry, and I believe in the power of slow food preparation (and consumption!). There's an essential and sensual truth to cooking. I love it.

A big part of the joy lies in selecting the ingredients. Some of my favorites, in no particular order: Vanilla beans from Madagascar, long, plump and spicy sweet. Bunches of fresh mint and basil, still dripping water. French feta cheese (and a shout out here to the amazing Sevan Bakery, THE Armenian grocery in Watertown, MA), creamy and salty, just a perfect near-white block of loveliness. Olive oil. Oh, that grassy, rich elixir, redolent of warmer climes. Sesame seeds, dill, Urfa pepper, pistachios, apricots and dates. Lamb -- organic, sweet and tender. Garlic. Banana peppers. Cilantro. Native tomatoes, soft and pulpy and full of juice.

I could write about this stuff forever.

There is something so incredibly pleasing about the fragrance and the spice and the limitless sense of possibility in those ingredients. The culinary vistas that open up before me when I select the ingredients are the stuff of fantasy. When I cook, I feel like it's all possible! Like driving to an airport and choosing an unplanned destination just 'cause it appeals in that moment. It's about serendipity. It's about instinct. It's about whimsical leaps of faith.

It's about passion.

And, it's about memory. Food as memory. Nostalgia. Integration of past experiences into present.

I felt that day as if I were somehow able to channel not only my wonderful trips to Turkey but also my months in Italy, my years in London, my life in New York, my very first dinner party, my first kiss, my first glass of champagne, my childhood. My mother. Again, and unwittingly, I realized the strength of that connection: my mother was an excellent cook, a natural in the kitchen. She gave me the confidence to try. I remembered this as I cooked.

My mother and I were not especially close. She had a horrendous childhood and she learned to close herself off and to remain at a distance from anything potentially powerful. She was physically unapproachable. Sarcastic. It was very hard to know my mother. I'm not sure I ever did. What I know is that she was far more complicated than she ever let on.

People who knew my parents always say I'm exactly like my father. And they're right in lots of ways: our curiosity, our thirst for learning, our love of linguistics and word play. I can plot points along the genetic continuum from my father to myself.

But, as I learn more and more each day, my mother gave me many of the things that make me who I am, as well. Her passion for cooking -- something about my mother that was cited not only in our eulogy but also in her obituary and in every condolence card we received -- was an expression of her love. And a gift she passed on.

What I understand now is that sometimes we are only able to appreciate some gifts after we have experienced sorrow. That with grief comes deep potential for joy. That even-keel can never be anything more than what its name promises: comfortable but ultimately flat.

Got the gift, Mom. Tesekur ederem. (That's thank you very much in Turkish.)

Zuckerman and Shafak

This past week I listened to two TED talks -- back to back -- and they really made me stop and think. The first was by Harvard's Ethan Zuckerman on the value of connecting -- hearing voices, not all like-minded, from around the world. The second was by Elif Shafak, the Turkish writer, on how listening to stories widens the imagination and allows us to leap over cultural walls.

I don't believe in coincidence. Sure, I listen to TED talks all the time. They're fascinating and I always learn something. But this time there was a deep resonance for me, and the one-two punch of Zuckerman's modern-day take on Forster's "Just connect!" and Shafak's idea that imagination is the suitcase we carry with us, well, they made for a potent cocktail whose lingering effect is still with me.

Connecting. Hearing other voices, other perspectives. Stories. Telling and listening. Crossing cultural barriers, not with treaties or legislation or declarations, but with stories told and heard.

Those ideas thrill me.

I am sitting in my life, learning (teaching myself -- the genuine article in home schooling circles) to sit quietly and listen. Really, really listen. This is way harder for me than it sounds. As you might know from my previous posting, I have never before taken the route of letting the path become known. I have never before committed myself to Tolstoy's wise words: Things will shape themselves. I have never before surrendered. I've planned, strategized and organized.

(There's nothing wrong with that approach. But it has led me to make intellectual, logical choices, and it has widened rather than narrowed that gap between my authentic Amy self and this version of myself that I present to the world. Now I am committed to minimizing that distance, shrinking it down so that there is only one skin and it's the one I live in all the time.)

So, after listening to the two talks I felt excited. Not because I've suddenly come up with some great new business idea. Not because I suddenly know what it is I'm meant to do next. Nope.

The excitement, which remains palpable, grows from the fact that out of the muddiness of my self-imposed silence, I'm beginning to pick up sounds: noise, input in uniquely clear and discernible frequencies. Here's what I mean. Just sitting and trying to surrender has so far felt scary, unknown, chaotic. Hence the muddiness. Like a big black hole. I have been unable to pick up one clear story line, one clear idea. The lone flute? Lost in a gigantic wall of sound.

But something has shifted. I listened to Zuckerman and Shafak -- an odd pairing if ever there were one -- and I heard the words connect and stories. And I felt like I was hearing those words either for the first time or definitely in a whole new way.

Not very long ago, I asked my mother to tell me about myself as a baby/very young child. I asked this because the only things I knew about myself from the pre-memory period were that I was unplanned, I hated sleeping, I got sick a lot and I once threw a dog turd across the living room. Surely, I suspected, there was more to it...

My mother, who was already deep into Alzheimer's, surprised me with her answer. "You loved stories," she said, with uncensored authority. "You loved to hear them and you learned how to tell them at a really young age."

That was a remarkable observation. I held it then, and I hold it now, as a gift from my mother. In her condition, she was beyond trying to flatter. She had no agenda when she said what she said. She was simply reporting something she remembered from a distant past -- the only time period for which my mother was still a reliable witness.

Where does any of this lead me? I have no idea. There will be no neat and tidy conclusion to this posting, no narrative arc that brings it back around to the opening premise. What I know is that I'm homing in on connecting and telling stories. Not sure what that means in less abstract terms. But I'm certain this isn't about intellectual curiosity alone; it is deeper than that.

Connections and stories. Those are the only two clues I have to go on at this point. There will be more.

I am learning to listen.

I will hear the clues.

Here are the links for those who might want to listen:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_zuckerman.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/elif_shafak.html