Seattle Soiree - Installment 3

INSTALLMENT 3 aka "PENSEES DE L'AMOUR ET DE LA TRUFFE" (SOME THOUGHTS ON LOVE AND TRUFFLES)


Bonsoir à nouveau,

(Again readers, sorry about the lack of explanation on this one.. maybe someday..)

The preceding sentence is all I had written when my phone erupted in a
perpetually repeated chorus of "Poker Face" and who should be calling
but you! It was lovely to talk to you, we always could talk for hours,
even when nothing particularly fascinating was afoot.
This seems not to be one of those times! I must admit you succeeded in
turning my blue eyes considerably more "vert" and I'm intrigued by
your extra holidays in November. I still can't believe you're going to
Paris, Champagne and Croatia. My jealousy abounds.

But as you yourself said, c'est mon soiree maintenant so, back to me.

The past few days have been as lovely as their predecessors, if
slightly less frenetic. I sat down with Dr. Lady Maureen Henderson
DPH, MBBS, Professor Emeritus, Epidemiology, Professor Emeritus,
Department of Medicine (and yes, she has been noted by the queen) who
is a client of mum's "care for the elderly" company. She is
incredible. I hope to be even half the woman Maureen is when I'm 80.
She's sailed the world on her own yacht, been to nearly every country,
reached the pinnacle of her field and received the highest possible
accolades for her efforts. She bought the 12th story penthouse of The
Mirabella (the manicured version of a retirement village) and has
recently gutted the place as "it was an atrocity" and redone it with
impeccable taste and all the latest trimmings. Unfortunately her body
and brain simply don't work as they used to and she now needs help
with trivial things so Mum works with her anywhere between 10 and 20
hours per week doing the shopping, hanging clothes, checking e-mails,
etc. Personally I think she just misses having a personal assistant to
do her bidding but then again, after 50 years of having one, wouldn't
you?
She has a plethora of designer clothing, shoes and bags which either
don't suit her anymore or for which she has lost interest and has
hired me to sell them for her. I'll be spending a bit of time sipping
riesling and pawing through vintage D&G, Valentino and Prada *sigh*
life is hard.

Today I had lunch with our old neighbours, Rae and Steve. They are an
odd story and one which I have pondered for quite some time. Rae is 10
(nearly 11) years Steve's senior and it shows. She also has a chronic
problem with alcohol and pain medication, not to mention an enormous
inferiority complex and insecurities about marrying a substantially
younger and better looking man. While I was growing up she treated me
with a substantial amount of resentment, particularly as Steve and I
got along very well (I saw him as the father I ought to have been
given). I also saw their marriage as utterly unhappy and frequently
wondered why they didn't just cut and run. Today I saw them in a new
light. Today she seemed comfortably old and he seemed immensely
caring, as if all those years and difficulties had brought them
strangely closer.
I am constantly struck by the oddity of being here, reliving my old
life staples and seeing the cracks and waring of time on the
foundations of my childhood. It's good, I think. It gives everything a
pragmatic nostalgic coating. I find sinister memories softened and
replaces with ones of a harmless ephemerality. I think we call this
closure.

After lunch at a delicious Italian restaurant (yes, I ate chargrilled
zucchini with baked tomato, pesto pasta, broccoli with fetta and pine
nuts and a seafood marinara. See, some things do change..) I picked up
Ellis and we pimped my new black,
30-something-Microsoft-employee-newly-engaged-with-the-world-at-their-feet-mobile
Dodge Calibre down to Mecca (read: Pike Place Market).

Wandering around we tasted several piping hot jellies, dark chocolate
covered Northwest bing cherries, muscat grapes and the largest
strawberries known to man. Seriously, King Kong would have thought
they were substantial. We quickly popped into (read: Denea stopped and
carefully read the labels of every jar of quince and mulberry paste,
goose-liver and peppercorn pate and fig and walnut crisps) De Lorenti
(the store Simon Johnson wishes it were) where Ellis knows absolutely
everyone. Apparently his grandparents take a weekly visit to the
Market, without fail, every Thursday morning and have done so for
almost all the 60 years of their marriage. They repeat their time
honoured pattern; she spends too long perusing the shelves, he gets
fussy, she kisses him on the cheek, he smiles and buys her something
to get her moving. I think that's beautiful.
I made Ellis taste some Delice de Bourgogne and I indulged in a nibble
of a heavenly Fromage de Chèvres à la Truffe.

It's amazing being with Ellis again. It's been over a decade since we
saw each other last but it could have been 2 days. We fit like a
glove. I remember sitting in 7th grade telling stories of our crazy
cats and having him pull my ringlets and say "b-oing" every time he'd
let go. I love him dearly.

We went to Café Champagne where the pommes frites are outwardly crispy
with succulently creamy filling and the black truffle aioli will turn
your knees to jelly. The wine list at the cafe is 27 pages of size 8
type, I gather the one from Restaurant Champagne (upstairs) more then
doubles that number.
Two tastings of a sauv blanc from normandy, the gargantuan serve of
pommes frites and a strawberry and lemon curd tart with a hazelnut
mascarpone later 3 hours had flown by and 10 years had disappeared.
He told me of sailing, music, his incredibly itchy feet, plans for
travel with Alexia around Europe from July to October and his truly
touching love for his new girlfriend. The look in his eyes when he
told me of the tandem bike they recently purchased and the 4 course
birthday dinner he secretly made for her on a 3 burner gas stove in
the berth of the sailboat he hired for the weekend with descriptions
so intricate Gordon Ramsay would sit up and take notice extracted an
enormous range of emotions from me. He is absolutely head over heels
for her and it's beautiful. The excitement of first love which can only really reach full potential,
however fleeting, at that transitory point between adolescence and
adulthood. That is something I missed out on completely and I feel
somewhat lesser for it. I always wondered what that would have felt
like but I'm not sure I could have really survived through its
ultimate, supernova end. I'm not sure why I'm putting this in here but
it feels very good to write it so I think I'll leave it. Feel free to
disregard.

I am now munching on a "green tea mint" which apparently has 1/3 of
the polyphenol content of a cup of green tea. I suppose one could
simply save the mint and indulge in a cup of tea with a full serving
of the aforementioned antioxidant but this is delicious. I adore the
array of foods on offer here (as I'm sure I have mentioned once or
twice).

Mostly I think this trip has served to re-ignite the fire under my
personal activity burner. I don't like sitting around all the time or
perpetually selecting "movie", "dinner", or "tv" as options. I like
sailing and biking and exploring. I love the feeling of wind on my
face and diving across the hull of a sailboat, racing to wrap the
lines around the winch in time for a perfect tack. I want to fly
gliders and go rock climbing (which I'm booked to do at
the enormous REI rockmountain downtown next week - eep!) and travel,
travel most of all. I never intend to revert to the girl you knew for
a while over the past few months, you were telling me to be true to
myself and I was doing the opposite. I know better who I am now and
incredibly I'm finding that woman is someone I want to be. Who knew?!

Je suis tellement heureuse d'être moi, mais vous me faire encore mieux.