When Chloe was three, we lived on Martha’s Vineyard. She was an unusual three year old. She didn’t like pink, or dolls but her most unusual quality at that tender age, was her love of lobster.
Every summer, our friends from Chicago, rented the home next to ours for the month of July. We had celebrated their return this particular year with a big lobster feast – This is when, to my knowledge, Chloe tasted her first lobster and the love affair began.
The following morning, I heard our friends next door calling over the fence, “Chloe’s here.”
It was about 7am! I rushed through the gap in the garden to find Chloe, still in her pajamas, sitting on the back porch steps, expertly devouring a whole lobster that had been left over from the night before. She wasn’t interested in anything or anyone, except the massive coruscation as big as her arm that she was pulling apart and devouring.
The conversation went something like this…
I turned fifty-two last week. While I’m told that fifty-two is the new thirty-eight, no one told my metabolism. It seems to have slowed even more than I have. Knowing this, and knowing that the only way to really celebrate a birthday is to eat and then eat some more, my wife, Peggy, and I had been dieting from the end of the holidays to the big day – ten whole days. And when the big day came, we wasted no time in returning to our post-holiday fighting weight. Here is how we did it. 
My dad clumsily peeled the skins off a few garlic cloves and then looked up at me with an expression I didn’t recognize. He looked like a little boy.
Fall has arrived in San Diego. This morning on our hike Jeff and I could see our breath in the blustery morning air. We loved it.
