The Toasted Tomato

A few weeks ago, I found myself moving a super-industrial drier to gain access to the spice drawer. The drier was one of many that were in place throughout the kitchen and basement after a pipe burst in our upstairs bathroom and water poured down through the ceilings. In fact, so stuffed was the kitchen with drying equipment that it was essentially unusable, so unusable the insurance company was actually paying for us to go out to restaurants to eat.

After three days of doing that, though, I was ready for home-cooked food. Luckily, my mother-in-law stepped in and brought over a pan of her lasagna. Which brings me to the spice drawer, wherein live the hot pepper flakes.

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I don’t know about you, but for me there is something about Back to School that makes me feel especially industrious. This is always surprising to me, as I would normally define myself as someone who likes to buck, rather than embrace, routine. But this time of year is different. The house is quiet, the season is on the brink of changing and, far in the distance, there is the delicious promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas. What better time to put your nose to the grindstone and re-establish habits that had been whimsically dropped during the luscious summer?

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Two nights ago, I headed down to the basement bedroom to sleep. I’d been hit by a nasty summer cold and didn’t want my coughing to wake my slumbering husband William. So I cuddled up with my old teddy bear Hilda, who lives downstairs, and finally fell asleep.

I was awakened by the sound of water running and thought William must be taking a shower before heading to work. I stretched in bed, my throat sore, my sinuses clogged. But he needed lunch so I got up and checked the clock. 2:57, it read.

“That’s strange, must be wrong,” I thought to myself. So I checked the other clock in the basement, only to find it was, in fact, almost 3 in the morning. But the water, the shower, it was still running, wasn’t it? How could that make sense? Was William sick?

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Three years ago tomorrow, my dad and I listened to Willie Nelson as he gently passed away. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the sun was shining through the old window of the hospital. The nurse had encouraged us to bring CDs when my dad was transferred to palliative care, and Matthew and I had stacked up his favorites: John Lee Hooker, Turtle Island String Quartet, Nigel Kennedy and this one, “Across the Borderline” by Willie.

Willie had played an important part in our musical upbringing, with no road trip complete without the whole family singing gustily to “On the Road Again.” My dad loved music. He went to the symphony every month. He had me take him to jazz clubs when he visited me in Washington, D.C. He even went through a new-country phase when Garth Brooks was really big. I think he also felt it was important to share music with Matthew and I. When I was very little, he bought me the single “Betty Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes, and when I got older, my Christmas presents would always include some esoteric picks he’d heavily researched.

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Gabrielle Baker sat in the front seat of my car last Saturday smiling. It was the kind of grin that didn’t brush off easily and, in fact, she’d been wearing it for the past hour. It was the result of the pink rotary phone she had sitting in her lap, whose receiver she would periodically pick up and talk into before descending it back onto the hook.

She’d found the phone after a long afternoon at the peddlers mall in Lexington, a gargantuan place filled with booth after booth of used treasure. The excursion was one my sis-in-law Teresa and I had been planning for a while, and finally we had made it happen. My stepdaughter Gabrielle and my nephew Reece had come too, and we’d had a lovely time browsing, examining and debating.

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Last March, when things were still very grim with my husband’s health, my sis-in-law Teresa called me up and asked me if I wanted to go the peddler’s mall with her. Up until that point, I hadn’t felt comfortable leaving William for a whole afternoon at a time, but things were progressing slowly and I realized it was time to let go a little. So I left him and, with no expectations, drove with Teresa to this place I had passed thousands of times before but never thought to go into.

When we walked inside, I instantly felt like I was back in my Ukrainian grandmother’s apartment. The huge warehouse-like space was divided into booths that were filled with used, whimsical treasure. The booths with the antique dishes appealed to me right away, and I started examining crystal relish dishes, platters designed to hold deviled eggs, lamps that dripped with glass teardrops, juice glasses stamped with cheery orange flowers.

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Though it feels like we have been for a month, we are now officially in the spell of summer, that special place where tomatoes taste like tomatoes, skin turns golden and you can hear kids squealing in pools. Though I’d say I’m more of a winter girl, I can definitely dive into the appeal of the season and I’ve been quietly enjoying these hot days while weeding in my garden. All the while, I’ve been thinking of the summers of my own childhood.

Before I turned 16, my mom had a pretty strict policy that summers were ours to enjoy and relax. We’d worked hard in school and lessons all year and I think she wanted to give us our two months with as little responsibility as possible.

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I’m sitting in the Minneapolis airport right now watching the people go by. My eyes feel like they’re a little too big for my sockets, and a headache is rocketing through my temples. My arms feel heavy and rubbery. My stomach has told me that, under no uncertain terms, am I to feed it. Still, I’m not complaining. I’m tired, that’s all, after three hours of broken sleep after a whirlwind trip home.

Last night, I knew it was getting late. My best friend Kristin hosted a beautiful dinner of eggplant parmigiana, and we had a great time laughing, talking, catching up with our moms and her aunt Glenda. Around 10, we said our goodbyes and headed home, where my stepdad Peter was waiting for us and happy to pour a glass of wine. So of course I had to sip it while we talked and talked. After a long winter taking care of my husband, it was finally spring and I basked in my parents taking care of me for a few days.

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Last night was the hardest I’ve had since my husband William got sick in January.

We had been to see the heart failure specialist earlier in the day, and the doctor had come into the bland room to tell us the preliminary results of the cardiac MRI William had had just a few minutes before. I was wound like a top, and I could tell from the blush on my husband’s neck he was nervous too.

Six weeks before, we’d been told William’s ejection fraction — how well the heart pumps blood — had risen from 30 to 42. For William’s heart to have a normal life span, though, it needed to get to at least 50.

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Though my mom is the woman I talk to most in my life, she’s probably one of the people I write about least. She likely prefers it that way, since she hung a quote from Philip Roth in my room a few years ago that reads: “When a writer is born into a family that family is finished.”

But Sunday is Mother’s Day so I thought it might be nice to introduce her a little bit more to you. Because it just so happens I am the offspring of a pretty fascinating lady.

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