Basil

The first thing I did this morning, after getting my little pug her breakfast, was check on my basil plant. It was out on the balcony, and last night, its leaves had been shriveled, drooped in the surprising humidity of an early June day.

Defeated: that’s what it had looked like, although it’s possible I’d been projecting my own emotions. Yesterday afternoon on the train home from work, the temperature had hovered at 95 and the air conditioning had been broken.

Shirts that had been crisp and white on the morning commute clung to armpits, shoulders, stomachs, backs—places that should never have so much attention drawn to them. Men and women who had gone confidently into work in the morning were, in the afternoon, avoiding eye contact, aware of every drip of sweat coming off their reddened foreheads. Buttons were undone as far as propriety allowed. Suit jackets were shed and would’ve been thrown from the train windows, if they opened, which of course they don’t, and we were all thinking dramatically of what it would feel like to grab that emergency fire axe and take out our overheated aggression on the windows.

Some tried to read the paper or play a game on their phone, but no distraction could scale that wall of heat. I watched one woman wipe down her iPhone screen several times; her sweaty finger as she played Candy Crush kept leaving trails, and she eventually gave up, thinking, like everyone else on the train, “Oh, what’s the use?”

I’d made it home to the air conditioning yesterday afternoon and stepped out on the balcony to check on my plants. And there was my sad little basil plant, looking every bit like every commuter on the westbound 4:15 train. “Oh, what’s the use?” its deflated leaves asked. “If I can’t make it through a June day, how will I ever survive July?”

Filling the watering can at the kitchen sink, I thought again of what I could make with the basil, if only I could keep it alive.

Caprese salad with those grape tomatoes that taste nothing like the big, tough, bland supermarket tomatoes we all now think of as a tomato.

Zucchini crostini with burrata. I’d chiffonade the basil, slicing it into very thin strips I could sprinkle over the sautéed zucchini and that creamy, mild but memorable cheese.

Wouldn’t it be delicious, a just-right summer taste, with grilled peaches and vanilla ice cream?

And there must be a cocktail I could make, one to call my signature summer 2016 drink—perhaps a gimlet?

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I bought my little basil plant at the farmers’ market last Saturday. It had been early—8 in the morning—and I will admit to feeling smug superiority for beating the crowds by being a natural early bird.

Later in the morning, around 10 or so, the aisles of the market are always packed with strollers and people trawling for free samples of just-shelled sweet peas. Inevitably, there is a girl pushing her cruiser bike—the kind with wide handlebars and brakes that you use by pedaling backwards, as if it were a child’s bike—next to the stand selling microgreens. She always pauses, considering if she really would like to spend $10 for very tiny scraps of arugula, just enough to make a salad for a fairy or a woodland creature. While she imagines the very small dinner party she could build around these microgreens, traffic stops behind her, unable to get past her handlebars. Deciding against the microgreens, she slowly moves onto the raw honey stand, and by the time she leaves the market, she will have nothing in her basket but a single sunflower and an iced latte. Which she bought at Starbucks on her way to the market.

Every summer, just once, I make the mistake of agreeing to meet a friend, someone who is not a natural early bird, at the market later in the day. And every summer, as I watch the bicycle girl examine honeycomb as if she’s actually going to buy it, I am filled, all the way down to my toenails, with an urge to tell her to get over herself, something I wish someone had told me when I was 22—and at the very least, to get out of the way of the eggplant I’m trying to reach.

But at 8 in the morning, the aisles are always clear, the eggplant easily accessible, and last Saturday, I’d smiled at every vendor and every other early bird: We were going to get the proverbial worm.
I’d come away from the farmers’ market with:

• Rhubarb that would become a crumble to celebrate the first day of summer
• Shelled sweet peas that would be sautéed in a little butter and a lot of garlic, then tossed on top of pasta carbonara
• Pain au chocolat, made by a French nun whose life I always wonder about. How did you end up here, in middle America? Do you speak French in your convent? Do you ever go home to Auvers-sur-Oise or Castelnaudary or wherever you’re from? But I have yet to work up the courage to ask. The most I have done is to throw a “Merci et bonne journee” to her in a small, timid voice, hoping she’ll hear my accent and lead us into conversation.
• And the little basil plant.

On the way home from the market, I’d stopped at the Pet Supplies Plus. Even in just the few minutes it took to buy dog food, the inside of my car began to boil, the sun already so hot at 8:30 that when I opened the car door, waves of sticky heat emerged, practically tangible. And there, just as strong as the heat, had been the smell of basil.

In the heat of the car, the basil had preened. Feeling the sun on its leaves, it had burst forth with the smell of summer, of evenings in the garden, of southern France or southern Italy or some other sun-soaked world where people eat dinner on terraces overlooking vineyards. That smell of basil was a day spent reading in a hammock, fresh-pressed olive oil, a bike ride along the sea, a morning where you don’t have to wake up to an alarm, and dangling your feet in the teal coolness of a pool.

Standing in the asphalt parking lot of Pet Supplies Plus, suburban traffic of SUVs and minivans crawling past on their way to some soccer game, I wanted everything that little basil plant was offering. I wanted to drink up the world, which I was certain would taste of basil and gin.

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I brought home that basil plant and found the sunniest spot for it out on the balcony. I told my little pug to not eat it. I watered it and I admired it.

And then yesterday the humidity got the best of it, as it does to so many of us. Last night, I sprinkled water from above so it was like a cool rain shower. I told it not to worry, that it could still recover, but inside I was thinking: What a waste of a farmers’ market purchase.

And I was thinking: Why can’t I keep anything alive?

And I was thinking: I probably shouldn’t have imbued this little basil plant with all my hopes for the summer, which are defeated and shriveled now, too.

And I was thinking: That’s kind of a dramatic turn to take; it’s just a plant.

The first thing I did this morning was check on it—and it has sprung back to life. I’m once again ready to drink up the world, which will definitely, certainly taste of basil.

find your fall rhythm

"Find your fall rhythm."

This is part of the Starbucks fall ad campaign, and the poster I saw this morning had a woman wearing a creamy, dreamy cardigan, haloed by golden autumnal sunshine, and smiling beatifically—presumably because she was thinking about a pumpkin spice latte.

Starbucks gives suggestions for your fall rhythm: leaping into leaf piles and screaming at the sidelines, but aren't those more high notes than rhythm?

Those are the things that make fall so enticing, so iconic, so memorable&dmash;but they can't be part of your everyday rhythm, the beat alternately pushing and pulling you along.

Leaping into a leaf pile every day would mean:

• you'd need rake leaves every day, or
• you'd need to closely monitor your neighbors for their raking habits—sneaking in to jump in their pile just when they look up to appreciate the color play between the red leaves still on the tree and the blue sky
• you'd eventually reach a point when you see a pile of leaves and want to run screaming from it. Too much of a good thing.
• Also, you may end up with leaves in your hair a lot. The wood sprite look, you know.

A fall rhythm is for finding a groove—not a rut but a beat for walking through your day, and you can't find a beat if you're randomly jumping into leaf piles.

It's about buckling down for work and feeling proud when the job is done and done well, an idea that must be in our DNA from generations of harvest time. To see the sheaves of wheat in a field at sunset: that is a fall rhythm, and with the first brisk morning, we are drawn to it.

And if that first time you see your breath again in the early morning doesn't make you think of wheat, it might make you think of school. You may have been out of school for years—longer than you were even in it—but come mid-September, you may feel a need to buy every college-ruled notebook you see at Target.

You may yearn to draw up a schedule for the day, one that beings with free reading time in your homeroom {No, seriously, why can't we begin every work day with that?}.

Perhaps you want to pick up a textbook, cover it with an old grocery bag, and then, finally, really get straight what the Stamp Act meant.

A fall rhythm is about order and closure.

But paradoxically: it's also about disorder and beginning.

The leaves fall chaotically, and we make plans for winter projects, many of them involving a facet of self-improvement.

I will cook one new recipe a week.

I will swim twice a week.

I will read Dickens and Austen.

That sort of self-improvement thing: as the world becomes a stripped down version of itself, we want to build ourselves up, perhaps yearning to fill out all the gaps nature is leaving behind in color, warmth, and growth.

So you see, fall's rhythm is confused and always changing temp; by its very nature—its very weather—fall keeps us guessing.

As much as it makes us long for stability, it's, of course, a transition season, and you never feel that more than in the early morning as you're trying to figure out what to wear.

It may be 39 degrees out at the moment, but you know that by mid-day, it'll be in the upper 60s or even 70s. How to prepare for this? How to dress?

This is why, I believe, the fleece vest was invented. It is the epitome of the transition clothing and helps keep one part of you warm while letting another part breathe easy. You are ready for cold and warm at the same time, plus you look outdoorsy and like you might take a hike at any moment, maybe over to the Starbucks, where you will order a pumpkin spice latte and think: Fall, can you please stay forever?

the air tasted of fall

On my run this morning, the air tasted of fall.

The sun rose behind me—a pinkish-orange that was so striking, I wanted to stare at it, even if you're not supposed to do that and so I ran away from it.

My shadow stretched in front of me, and I thought of where my legs had been running recently: on a bike path next to the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs, on a golf course in North Platte, Nebraska, through subdivisions in Dublin, Ohio, and on a wooded trail in Rochester, New York.

Over the past two weeks, I have been everywhere on that road trip across America, and I was always on the go. Even when I was sitting in a car, I was, of course {so obvious!}, moving, and my mind was always moving, too.

Running this morning, though, away from the summer and away from the sun, I felt—ironically—everything slow down.

Not my legs, mind you. Those keep turning over, but it was my mind that stopped turning over and churning.

And I think the answer to why lies not in how early it was or how I've settled back into my routine or how when you're given a break, you always appreciate your life more.

Why did everything slow down? Because the air tasted of fall. It tasted of an expected and welcomed change, and my mind slowed down to expectantly welcome it.

It was the sharp edge in the air, the slight chill as I ran faster, that put me in mind of changing colors, falling leaves, and much later, winter nights with wine.

Hours later, it is now hot, and it seems ridiculous to have thought of winter just this morning as if it were around the corner.

But I did, and throughout the day, as the tasks and conversations picked up their pace around me, I thought of my run this morning—and slowed down.

jane austen, i disagree with you

A quote from Jane Austen: "Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation."

More correctly, it's a quote from Emma, my least favorite Jane Austen book because I can't work up much sympathy to someone who meddles so much in other people's lives.

So Jane Austen via Emma, I disagree with you.

I realize this is an atypical thing for me to say. Me, the girl who proclaims to have learned lots of things from Jane Austen. Me, the girl who takes it as the highest compliment possible to be told that I'm like Elizabeth Bennet. {Other high compliments include Audrey Hepburn and, of course, Mary Tyler Moore.}

But Jane Austen—in this quote—is not teaching me about planning ahead and careful organization, and I'm a little disappointed in her because of it.

I want to say to her: Why not spread out the pleasure over a long planning period? How often is happiness increased by preparation, glorious preparation.

But maybe that's just me and my attachment to my planner speaking.

Maybe I'll schedule in some journalling time to work through that attachment. And to work through how I'm disappointed in a dead woman and wanting to argue with a fictional character.

I'll schedule it for a long time from now so that I have much happiness and pleasure to look forward to.

slow down. you move too fast.

I kicked through leaves today.

Just a small pile—strewn along the curb so that I could keep one foot up on the curb and one foot swinging through the leaves.

Step, kick.

Step, kick.

It was a rhythm that reminded me to slow down.

Slow down; you move too fast. Got to make this moment last now.

Slow down and see the small changes in the day around you.

Like on my drive to and from work. In the morning, I try to take mental snapshots of the trees that are just starting to change.

Snap: that one on Lorraine has one bunch of red. Just at the top, slightly to the right.

When I drive home, eight or so hours later, I try to see if more fall color has seeped into the leaves.

Is there more red? Is there any yellow? Orange?

If I simply sped past, focused on the next, I would miss these little changes.

I would, one day, be on a drive home from work—one of those days when the light filters just right and the blue of the sky is like a child's drawing—and I would realize, with a twinge of sadness, that most of the leaves had already changed.

Without me seeing it, really seeing it.

So as I kicked through leaves this morning and breathed in the almost-fall air {brisk, slightly, with a hint of humid memory}, I reminded myself to slow down.

Step, kick.

Step, kick.

we go to church every morning

The couple walk toward me, he with a cane, she in a brick-red wool coat.

They move slowly and not just because they are old. It is icy; it is treacherous.

But even on those days when the snow still covered the sidewalks—in the days just after the blizzard when shoveling felt like an archaeological expedition, layer after layer of snow and story—

even on those snowy days, I saw this couple.

He with a cane, she in a brick-red wool coat.

If I time my morning walk just right, then I will see them. Ten to eight, slowly, grandly stepping their way down Hillside.

I do not see them every morning because I do not always time it right. Sometimes the coffee doesn't get started right away. Sometimes I can't find the gloves I want to wear. Sometimes I don't get up when the alarm first goes off and so I chip away at my morning routine and my morning walk is whittled down.

Sometimes I walk slowly, too, hoping to time it just right to see them.

Walking slowly is not hard to do, once you get the hang of it. When you spend so much of your time walking with purpose:

to the car
to the office
to the post office
to church

when walking is simply a mode of transportation, a here-to-there thing, it can be hard to slow down.

But if you're in the habit of a morning walk—and though I'm not in the habit of handing out advice, I do suggest you get in the morning walk habit—then you want to slow down.

You slow down to notice the pink clouds behind City Hall and the ice tricking your eye into seeing a world made of glass {a very brittle world, indeed}. You step slowly to hear the crunch of snow, and you think of a time when the ground will not crunch beneath you. When it will be warm and you will not have to find your gloves in the early morning in order to take your walk.

They are in the habit of a morning walk. He with a cane, she in a brick-red wool coat. I want to see them every day because of the way she tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow. She's holding on to him, and you get the idea that he's been offering her his arm since they were 16. Even though now she's supporting him more than he's supporting her, he offers his arm and off they go.

I stopped them the other morning with a smile.

"Where are you going every morning?" I'd made up enough stories for them, and now I wanted the truth.

Stories:
He grew up in Brooklyn; she grew up on the Upper East Side.
He fought in the D-Day invasion, where he got his limp.
They got married when they were 17, contrary to her parents' wishes.
He buys her tulips every chance he can.

But now truth: Where are you going every morning?

"To church. We go to church every morning," he said, and all three of us looked down the block to St. Petronille's, the big Catholic church with the school attached to it.

"And then after church, we go for breakfast," she speaks before his sentence is done. "I told him that for Christmas, I wanted to go out to eat more, and now we go to the bagel shop every day day. After church, of course"

"Of course," I said, wanting their routine, their familiarity, their years of knowing each other.

"And where are you going every morning?" he asked, clomping his cane up and down a bit.

"Just around. Just for a walk to begin the day before I go to work."

"Oh, how good for you! What a routine!" she said, and I swear she winked at me from behind her big glasses that draw attention to her eyes.

We all have our routines, our ways of appreciating these days we've been given. It is good to be reminded that there's pleasure in your routine.

And with that, they kept on their walk to church, he with a cane, she in a brick-red wool coat.

my closet of happiness

There's just something satisfying and thrilling about filing, isn't there?

I'm not being glib.

When I file, my soul trills, the kind of trilling normally reserved for the first time someone you like accidentally {on purpose?} bumps into you.

I spent part of New Year's Day After surrounded by hanging folders, manila folders, tabs, and a recycling pile. I was going through my spare closet, located in my spare room/craft room/office.

I would like to point out that the closet wasn't disorganized before, but in my little world, there's always room for more organization. And color-coding. And ways to keep track of my life.

There are always more ways to bring my life in line, and that brings me calm, like how you feel when you wake up to a new snowfall and the streets haven't been plowed yet. To me, it always looks like the unbroken white is ready for a story to be told on it.

I didn't decide to re-organize the spare closet simply because it was New Year's Day After, although that did have a hand in it.

As I wrote on New Year's Day, I like to do things that day that I want to enjoy for the rest of the year. This year, I extended that to the whole weekend—the beauty, I guess, of having New Year's on a weekend.

Organization was slotted in for Sunday, New Year's Day After, and as I sat in the midst of paperwork—I thought of it as a moat, which I guess would make me a castle—I decided to create a closet of happiness.

I think that calls for caps: A Closet of Happiness.

Instead of thinking of it as the mismatched, hodge-podge, slash closet {paperwork/fabric/storage/miscellany}, I decided to put in there things that make me happy.

Not so I can sit and stare at it when I'm in a fouled-up mood—willing myself happy by some sort of shrine I've built to that glib-est of words to describe an emotion we all aim for.

I've always, by the way, harbored unhappiness about the word happy. We English speakers over-work it, making it serve as a good wish {Happy birthday!}, as well as a way to convey joy and contentment {a much deeper sentiment than the happy birthday wish you write on someone's Facebook wall}.

Doesn't the word contentment feel better and fuller than the chipper little happy?

I have just decided to rename my Closet of Happiness the Closet of Contentment.

In it are things that bring me calm.

Sewing projects.

Boxes of old letters and cards. I save them all and think ahead to the day when I'm 92 and I read through them all.

Cleaning supplies.

My files. Of course.

The Normandy flag—where I used to live in France. It has two leopards on it, looking very regal and very much like they should be protecting William the Conqueror, that man from Normandy who took over England in 1066.

That Norman invasion is how we got so many French words in English, something I learned in my college language classes. The textbooks from those classes are in the Closet of Contentment, too.

I'm going to show you a picture of my Closet. I believe it belongs on the front of Real Simple. Or that Jesus is smiling down on my Closet—look at that ray of bright shining approval emanating from my Closet.

If you have any questions about what you see, lined up so adroitly in my Closet, let me know. I have a contented reason for everything in here.

take comfort

It's the first of the month, and I can't help but think of my friend Lauren, who is, most likely, sitting in a cafe at this very moment reading the newest issue of Real Simple.

I know this because that's her tradition. She subscribes to Real Simple and so she gets the next month's issue two weeks or so in advance. And then she saves it until the calendar page flips.

I've never discussed this particular part of the tradition with her, but in my head, when she pulls that magazine out of the mailbox, days and days before she will actually read it, she doesn't even deign it with a glance. She averts her eyes, shoves the magazine to the bottom of the mail pile and becomes quite taken with everything else that came that day: bills, flyers, the passing paper of daily life.

I see Lauren wanting to crack open the magazine, just take the littlest peek. Especially at this time of the year—when November's issue arrived in mid-October, who wouldn't be giddy to think ahead to that very autumnal feast of Thanksgiving, followed quickly by ornaments and wrapping paper and gift lists you should get started on in, say, mid-October?

But she doesn't.

She gives herself a treat every month, right there at the beginning of the month. She schedules a bit of break in her busy life, and from the outside, it's just this small thing.

It's a magazine.

It's a Starbucks in suburbia.

It's learning new uses for old things and plotting easy weeknight meals.

It's just a cup of coffee, surrounded by other people who are busy, too.

Oh, but it's more than that, and Lauren, more than anyone else, has taught me joy of everyday ritual. She's a mentor of mine in that way, although I'm sure, as she's reading this, she's laughing out loud, a practically-shouted "HA!" She thinks she doesn't have anything to teach me, but we all have something to learn from the people who criss-cross our lives and criss-cross our hearts.

Lauren is the kind of person who, when I told her that the flowers on my balcony weren't doing so well this year, said, "Oh, K!" That's what she calls me, an abbreviation usually preceded by that OH, which makes it feel like she's constantly reassuring me. I like that.

"Oh, K!" she said. "Maybe this is just your year for mums. Maybe your garden will be best in the fall."

And just like that, I laughed. I felt better about my flowers, and I started to anticipate {more than I normally do} fall. Maybe it would be my year for mums. Such a thing to look forward to!

Lauren has mastered this, this looking forward to what other people may classify as mundane. And that means that her life is filled not with the mundane {although inevitably, there are slices of it here and there} but with small flashes of anticipation. It's all in how you see what's coming your way.

She gets excited by Mondays because they mean a new week is beginning and you never know what may happen in a week.

Her favorite holiday is New Year's, not because of the crazy party, but because it's all about looking ahead and dreaming about what the year could bring.

When she comes to visit me, she doesn't need to be taken into the city, out to a swanky bar, charmed by the theater. What she wants is to see what my daily life is like here in this niche I've carved out for myself. She wants to meet my friends and hang out at my favorite cafe and go grocery shopping.

{This makes planning for her visits very simple.}

There's that Starbucks ad campaign going right now: Take comfort in rituals. For a country looking for familiarity and connection and reassurance {my positive spin on the current election season, which will, thankfully, be over tomorrow}, that slogan pulls.

It reminds us of the big rituals, our cycles of routine: of children trick-or-treating dressed as fairy princesses and Luke Skywalker and of Thanksgiving turkeys and of mistletoe.

And those do bring comfort.

But it's the little rituals that get us through another Monday, another month, another challenge.

It's stopping for your morning coffee, wherever that may be. It's meeting a friend for a quick workday lunch at a sandwich shop halfway between your offices. It's having a favorite TV show. It's the smell of just-dried sheets and the sound of your furnace kicking on.

It's Real Simple at a cafe on the first of the month.

I just saw that Lauren called while I was writing this; in her message, she said, "It's November 1st, and I bet you know where I am!"

I do. I sure do.

And now I'm thinking: What are small traditions I could create out of the everyday? What are small traditions you could create?