“So how did Damon and Stefan get to be vampires – were they born that way?” he inquired gamely, steering the car through college town traffic on a bright, October Saturday.
“Well, in the book and the show, you know, they’re different in a lot of ways, but in the book and the show they only talk about ‘made’ vampires. In the book they became vampires because of Katherine. If a vampire drinks your blood and nothing else happens, you just die – like that girl Vicky – but if they drink your blood and then you drink some of theirs, you become a vampire, and live forever. You have to go through a lot of changes, but eventually you’re a vampire.”
“They must be great in bed after a few hundred years as guys in their twenties,” he mused.
I am a person who remembers absolutely everything. I remember being sick when I was two years old and believed (one, hopes, due to fever and not psychopathology) that tiny men were marching out of my laundry hamper. I remember the first day of kindergarten, the exact words in the note from Eric saying he didn’t like me that way in fifth grade, the way the flap of skin looked after I jumped on a clam shell in Maine when I was ten, and the phone numbers of all my friends from high school. I remember the way the air smelled in Boston on a day when it carried the ocean into the City, and the diesel smell of the streets in Europe. I remember slights and offenses and try hard to forget them. I remember generosities and kindnesses, and try to cherish them. I remember to do the things I say I’m going to do, unless I’m under enormous stress. (That’s a whole different issue).
Despite my family of garlic haters, I love garlic. And I love lots of
it in all forms. A very close older family friend eats it raw and
rubbed on toast, then spread with butter or rendered duck fat. It's now
his daily health ritual since he learned garlic has been shown to keep
the heart healthy and keep cancer at bay. Maybe he knows a thing or
two, because he's going to be 90 next year. Sometimes I even indulge in
a slice of garlic toast too. Though I try to keep the practice at a
minimum because I don't want to go around smelling. Even so, almost all
my cooking and the recipes on this site start with sautéing garlic.
Garlic is just one of those vegetables that many people use and it
crosses many cultural boundaries. It's a base flavor in Mediterranean,
Asian, and North African cuisine. I have always wanted to use garlic
for something more than just a base, instead a main ingredient.
It’s officially autumn, and you can feel the magic in the air. While some are sad to see the summer weather disappear, I welcome the new chillier climate with open arms. 
I was a weird kid. I never ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My mother never had to tell me to straighten my room. And I liked Halloween more for the decorations than the candy.