Foresweetening

Last Friday I took the day off to see The Three Sisters so I finally had a little time to meditate. Naturally the day had a pure, spacious feeling the way all days off graced with a snowfall will. Sitting on the sofa I nearly fell asleep, but this is good, because I value my time in that liminal space even more than a visit to the finest art show in Chelsea.

At some point while in this dreaming state I realized I was being a given an odd fruit that I wasn't familiar with, shaped vaguely like a minaret. It had three sections inside of seeds dressed in a greensih pulp which tasted slightly sweet and tart. I also found myself tasting a spritz cookie in my waking dream, savoring its odd granularity and creamy sweetnes that 's familiar to me from days baking with my grandma, back when her arms were useful to her. Soon after I had to leave to walk through the park to the play, and on the way had the mistaken notion that I'd be able to buy some spritz cookies like that, half delusional with the serious spritz jones I had at this point. Lonleyville, shuttered now, was not my ticket to cookie heaven, nor any of the delis since the closest they offer to homemade is Paul Newmans.

But in my desperation I bought the Ginger Paul Newmans, thinking I'd eat some before the play. But never felt right about it. Soon the play was underway and Irina, the youngest of the three sisters, was talking to the doctor, asking to know why she'd woken up so happy that day. She understood everything at that moment, that work was the answer to the problem of life. She said she felt like a white bird flying in the sky. Her happiness doesn't last, it takes a real beating during the course of the play as she watches her dreams dashed on the rocks, as people she knows sink into insanity and abusiveness and needless self sacrifice as they covet the sense of joy they get from white bird of her spirit.

At my mom's I found a tin full of spritz cookies she made over the weekend. Actual. Three Dimensional. Perfect. Spritz. The perfect grade of sweet, buttery creaminess, the absolute perfect degree of crunch in the sprinkles and hills and valleys. She doesn't usually make them, but under the influence of her friend Deb she couldn't have done a better job.

Deb visited us and we spoke for a while, not about cookies, but about the meaning of pain and suffering, about how hard it is to understand how people, especially children, have to suffer and sicken the way they do. Like Irina, she had an epiphany as a girl as she traveled by ferry to Nantucket. She left her family below and headed for the deck to find relief from her sea sickness even if it meant being pelted with sleet out on the sea. She had a moment then of intesne happiness, where she understood everything and it all made sense. No doubt she's needed to revisit that moment at times since then, perhaps during the occasional tragic event she's had to witness as a midwife and a nurse, a mother and a daughter.