Stories

What I Wore: A silk beige diagonally checkered shirt that my mother bought when she was 16 from the Beverly Hills General Store [if my mother and I were both 16 at the same time we would have been best friends] and a brown Armani tweed skirt that I have never worn because it is high-waisted and way too big for the only part of my body that is truly tiny, but luckily I was in New York where there are three tailors on every block, one of which was able to pin it for me so that it added two creases that looked as if they were meant to be, and brown Ralph Lauren heels that make me feel confident because the struggle to find the second shoe amongst the insane amount of boxes at the Union Square DSW to this day still makes me feel triumphant.

The Occasion: Opening Night of the second of a rotating cast of “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” an off-Broadway play my two aunts, Nora and Delia Ephron, wrote together. Since the play is all about clothes, I knew I had to dress the part, despite getting off an airplane two hours before the curtain. I packed my best Mad Men inspired outfit freshly pressed so the suitcase could do minimal harm.

Summer is my least favorite season. I am a ghostly pale person, I sweat easily, and I do not garden successfully. I am allergic to chlorine and can’t spend days by the pool without breaking out in hives, and I am not generally given to hiking, camping, kayaking or doing any of those other things that involve being outside, sweating, and getting burned. I complain a lot about the heat, which may explain why I often find myself alone in my air conditioned house drinking iced tea and reading.

Today, though, today it was 80 degrees after an interminable and bitterly cold winter. Stepping outside tentatively in my cotton skirt and flip flops, I was overwhelmed by sense memories, good ones, the kind that made me sit down on the peeling porch steps and savor them. As the hair at the back of my neck coiled inexorably into ringlets, and the warm air extended its seductive fingers to touch parts of me that have not been unwrapped in public for five months, it seemed that maybe I didn’t hate summer any more.

I remembered all of the Only Summer things, the Farmer’s Market on Sunday morning, bags full of vegetable love in the form of tiny Patty Pan squash, gritty zucchini, scallions with shining white bulbs, garlic scapes, baby eggplants, tiny and fiery Hmong peppers, and the tomatoes, oh Lord the tomatoes in their juicy, flashy glory.

I was particularly popular last week. It began with the arrival of our pin up boy president, Barack Obama, just blocks from my house. Since local streets were closed to prevent us local aliens from crashing the political party, and no one was going anywhere, I decided to throw a blocked by Barack block party in my front yard, to celebrate our proximity to all the action at the Beverly Hilton. I fired up the gas grill and texted the next door neighbors whose kids sent tweets to others to bring sweets and treats, and we all e’d others and within an hour we drew a crowd. Folks “came as they were” with whatever was in their refrigerators “as it was.” I have no idea what the expiration dates were on most of the U.F.O’s (unidentified frying objects) on my barbecue, but I sauced, smoked and fed about fifteen denizens of my block who flocked with sniffly progeny to my yard for a gangland eating orgy. Partay!

Broccoli is my least favorite vegetable. To me, there is simply nothing appealing about its taste, texture, or appearance. The sign above it at the farmer’s market, heralding “broccoli crowns cheap today” does not make my pulse beat faster or my heart sing. I’ve tried chopping up those crowns and hiding tiny slivers among carrots and zucchini. I’ve buried florets in omelets, fajitas, and quiches and covered them up with sauces ranging from hollandaise to mole to duck sauce and ketchup. I’ve tried arguing myself into taking just a bite or two under the category of “strong medicine” for the sake of health and wellness. But nothing has led me to reconsider my position: I don’t like broccoli. This may in fact be the only philosophical stance that I share with former president George Bush, who once went on record to declare his aversion to this particular vegetable.

I realize, as George Bush soon discovered after his impolitic announcement, that broccoli has its aficionados, but I cannot find a single thing about it that’s enticing. Its very name is off putting. There is nothing sensual or succulent here: just that harsh opening of “br” followed by the even harsher short ”o” and “k” sounds (and not just one “c,” but two). And even then the word isn’t finished. It continues on, through two more syllables, the final syllable with its “l” and plural end form—i—working together to produce a sort of shriek that makes poetic hash of its singular form’s more musical ending (broccolo). It’s an altogether unappetizing and uninviting name.