Creek folk

Just because you bought a house on a creek doesn't mean you're creek folk. The transformation takes time, and drought time produces a lot less of it than rain time. Certainly we're feeling much more creeky now than we have at any time since buying the place last August, as a nearly dry bed filled with three feet of water, seemingly overnight. And, having risen, it is now a constant presence, a sound I expect to grow to depend upon.

Let's just hope we can depend on our retaining walls....

The Family Christmas Letter

I don't get many Christmas cards, and most of them don't contain a "Family Christmas letter," that annual report for the unincorporated, and besides no one calls it the Family Christmas letter anymore, do they? Well I do, and here it is in what I trust is good form--personal, but not too much so, a bit jokey in parts, some detail but punchy punchy punchy, and, of course, late.

2013 was a year of transitions. Talia left full time employment to examine her parachute's color, Gideon changed preschools, Felix began the numbered grades, I learned what it is I do for work, and we all moved. More on each below.

TALIA:

Sick of her commute to Oakland Talia bid Mills College farewell. Since that time she has discovered the Fitbit, found sunglasses that really suit her, and reinvented her hairstyle. I mention these three things not because they are the most important things she has done this year, but because I'm convinced that none of the three would have happened without the break from Mills and the increase in free time that brought. Also, I really like all these things about her. When not improving herself personally she is improving our new house, improving our new lawns and gardens, and consulting. She also handles more than our family's fair share of school involvement. Her addiction to the Office has been replaced (though never exceeded, no, not that) by an addiction to some other show that I think is supposed to be about an imaginary politico's PR crises. I am surprised by this because this other show isn't even supposed to be funny and I'd thought she liked to laugh.

GIDEON:

Gideon discovered He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and that's it, game over, it's all he cares about anymore. It's a recent discovery though, and since this is a report on the entire year we should mention that he turned three, learned to swim or at any rate is willing to throw himself into a pool, and is still waking us up more nights than not and if I find myself writing that again in 2014 I'm just going to die. He did change daycare and now doesn't complain about going but does fall asleep in his dinner afterwards, both plusses as far as we're concerned.

FELIX:

Felix can read. If you are not currently dancing around the room it's because you don't remember what a relief it is for a parent when their kid learns to read. Also for the kid. Anyway, it's great news and he's otherwise a super student and everyone loves him. If only he'd stop saying "peace, people, peace" all the time he'd be just about perfect. He's a first grader, he's broken his first addiction (nail biting), and he claims he wants to learn to play the flute. Yeah, maybe when you're seven. Or maybe not.

ALEC:

Alec's almost at his two-year anniversary with Autodesk, which is kind of creepy because he's never stayed longer than two years at any job before. Also creepy, he's begun writing a will (you're not in it...or are you?) and other worst-case-scenario documentation. This is in part because he's down two joints but mostly it's because he bought a house and that demands a lot of documentation anyway. Alec has finally found underwear he likes but accidentally composted his good camera so, you know, you win some, you lose some. He had to take a "selfie" with his second best camera because nobody ever takes pictures of him.

THE HOUSE:

We bought our dream home by which I mean that as we lie in bed shivering we dream about how nice an insulated home would be. Seriously, our contractor looked at one of the many large glassed openings we have in our walls and pointed out that "technically that's not even a window," which I take as generally symptomatic. Still, in the late afternoon or when we are not experiencing the California winter, there's a lot to like about the place. Some highlights: no sharing our bathroom with the boys, a stove that is older than almost anyone we know, really nice neighbors including some owls, one outbuilding per adult, more land than we know what to do with (though spring is coming!), a spare bedroom in every sense. (That last was a hint and a warning.)

THE VACATIONS:

For some reason everyone always tells you about their vacations in their Christmas Letter, so here's the report on ours, in pictures.  As this suggests, it was a very nice year for us, and we hope as nice a one for you.

The River of Dreams

I sing to the boys most nights, and most often, Felix being much the less resistant, I sing just to Gideon, and so to his requests. He certainly has his favorites: "City of New Orleans," "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume," "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Most of these he's learned to choose by following Felix's lead on those nights Felix manages to stay awake a bit, but there's one he requests regularly that Felix, as it happens, has never heard: "River of Dreams."

Felix passed out before I even started this evening, but Gideon was ready with his desired playlist:  "Dr. Livingstone," then "City of New Orleans," which I vetoed in favor of more Moody Blues, specifically "And the Tide Rushes In," but he interrupted that to ask for "the song about searching for something." OK then:

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To a river so deep
I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross

And even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and I stand on the shore
And try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find what I've been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep
And I've been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I would never lose
Something somebody stole

I don't know why I go walking at night
But now I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn't take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is that I've been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To a river so deep
I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night

I'm not sure about a life after this
God knows I've never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That runs to the promised land
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the desert of truth
To the river so deep
We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We're all carried along
By the river of dreams
In the middle of the night

Somewhere around "the jungle of doubt" Gideon began making noises I took to be caused by the heavy breathing associated with deep sleep. I finished the song nonetheless but in the quiet room realized he wasn't asleep at all but was instead sobbing into his pillow. "Why are you crying, little guy?" I asked, repeating myself twice more before I got an intelligible answer: "I'm missing something too-hoo-hoo-hoo."

I'd had some indication previously that Gideon listens to lyrics. Perhaps you saw this exchange on my Facebook feed:

Gideon, coolly: Dad, you have to die.
Me, keeping my cool: Why's that?
Gideon: Because every man has to die.

This was a reference to "Brothers in Arms," a favorite I've since retired for what I trust are obvious reasons. I hope I don't have to do the same for this Billy Joel number: it fits my range precisely and has many good associations (Hi Honey!), among them a lovely day in Central Park, when I encountered a barbershop quartet just killing it over by the bandshell. I can't pretend, solo, to be replicating their sound (it was something like this, except as sung by four large, animated, black men, native English speakers all, snapping their fingers, tapping their toes, and with simply magnificent voices), but I do the song upbeat, nothing of the dirge to it. Still, Gideon gets it.

We will never know what it is Gideon is missing, but I can tell you why he's so terribly sad about it: he always gets histrionic the evening of a day spent in his new daycare. Overtired I suppose, and overemotional, but whatever the cause we can't end the day like that. So we turned to another old favorite, one I sing slow and somber, but which Gideon, listening to the lyrics, knows means well: "Sunny."

Home: Some photos

There's a lot to like about our new place.  Here's some of it:

Lots of big windows with little people behind them:

Plenty of space for projects:



A deep tub:

The BARn:

And the hayloft above it:

Lots of gardening opportunities (Hi Seneca!):

Construction, too:

Then there's all those interesting encounters with wildlife:

Our creek:

And the grand tree that crosses it:

Time to rest at the end of the day:

Come see for yourself sometime....

Eat now: an elegy

Today is the day after Johannes's birthday, the day I traditionally wish him "Happy Birthday" except, of course, that Johannes died this past September. I remember birthdays only because they appear in my online calendar, as Johannes's does on the ninth of October, so if I deleted that entry I would never again think about Johannes's birthday. It occurred to me to do so, but Talia corrected me, pointing out that it is a reminder and opportunity to think about him, dead or alive. Talia is a sensible person: I am keeping that entry and I am thinking about him. And what I am thinking about him, or one of the things anyway, is what a terrible loss this is for the Netherlands.

When, in late 2001, I found myself living in Amsterdam with disposable income, I quickly learned that money could buy you good food in the city but, almost without exception, it couldn't buy you a good meal. Dutch restaurant chefs had a real talent for taking the excellent produce, meats, and other ingredients available to me as a private shopper (and so certainly to them as professional ones) and turning them into garbage. So I cooked for myself, and once or twice for Johannes, and Talia came and cooked for us both, and the years went by and the restaurants very slowly started to get better. By the time we left in 2009 it was no very difficult thing to find a good meal in Amsterdam and the cause, in my biased but no less correct view, was Johannes.

Johannes was a food writer first and a restaurant critic second, as he himself would insist. Those food writings, and in particular the Dikke van Dam--illustrated randomly here--constitute an important and enduring legacy, but in his lifetime what really mattered were his restaurant reviews. Under his gimlet eye and slashing pen Dutch chefs and restaurant owners suffered but they learned. He drove their communal improvement, not the Hotelschool Den Haag, though I respect that institution, not the biologische movement in Nederland, though it's done much else praiseworthy, not my years-long near-boycott of the Amsterdam restaurant scene. Everybody read his reviews and everybody responded to them, going where the numbers were high, leaving the other restaurants to the miserable business of feeding tourists or, depending upon location, feeding no one.

Now that he's gone what do you suppose will happen? I'll tell you one thing for sure, we won't see his like anytime soon. He was blessed with abnormally acute taste buds, a talent for writing, and rare probity. He created for himself an encyclopedic (literally) knowledge of all things food-related. And he worked at his craft almost without stop for decades on end.

Johannes is gone, who knows where, and his memory won't long serve to goad the Dutch restaurant scene upwards. I've told you before and remind you here: eat now, for what today you have to dine upon, and who you have to share it with, will not be at table forever.