Food, Family and Memory

If you’ve never read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “The Last American Man”, I suggest you pick it up this Fourth for a bit of quirky, patriotic fun.  It chronicles the true story of a modern day hero who lives in a teepee in the Appalachian Mountains, eating only what he himself picks, raises or kills.  The guy is an egomaniac and a genius, and the writing, especially when detailing how he forages in the woods, is funny and sensitive and page-turningly good.     

The only problem with that book is the title.  He’s not the last American man. My mother is.

She spends every summer, and most of every fall, wading through rivers with a fly-fishing rod, and hiking giant, shale-covered mountains to sleep under the stars.  She’s had staring contests with bears and cougars, weathered lightning storms under scraggly trees, and once hiked three miles back to her truck with a broken tailbone.   

“Named for the mythical winged horse that carried thunderbolts for the Greek God Zeus, Pegasus Café has a classic pristine feeling.”

Well, not the Pegasus Café I knew and loved. It’s probably closed now… too bad.  You had to be there to understand it’s unique charm.

My first visit to the uber fabulous Pegasus was for lunch one day with my Canon Eos rep, but I soon found breakfast was the meal of choice! As one of the photographers selected to do "A Day in the Life of California", I gleefully chose Pegasus as my first stop in the 24-hour cycle of reportage. 

To get to the docks in Long Beach from Malibu meant I awoke around 3 a.m. to leave by 4 a.m. somewhat alert in order to arrive in time for the café’s morning rush hour when the truckers started their day and the off shore oil rig guys got off their night shift.

I’m changing – slowly, but surely, morphing into some life form I no longer recognize as myself. With this neurotic thought stampeding through my mind, I rise this morning and put up a pot of Rose’s favorite coffee—Peets Major Dickason. Despite her penchant to skip breakfast, I prepare a healthful little dish, hoping my angel will think twice: a dollop of non-fat yogurt sprinkled with Urth Café granola and topped with a red glistening strawberry. Into the kitchen she comes, looking every bit the marketing director of an International law firm that she is and the woman whose bras I’m continually picking up off our bedroom floor. I proudly present her the breakfast plate. “Would you mind getting my dry cleaning today, honey?” she asks, walking by me to the coffee pot, where she fills her cup to the brim. I tell her I’ll think about it. A perfunctory peck to my cheek and she’s gone, off to work.

A few seconds later and a forty-pound school bag strapped to his back, Julian comes clomping down the stairs and into my face, “You’re nuts if you think I’m gonna eat that!” he warns, motioning derisively to the plate I find I’m still holding. In one large spoonful I consume the yogurt and take him to school, stopping along the way at Starbucks for his customary ham and egg sandwich; after numerous attempts at getting Julian to eat real eggs I have given up; begrudgingly conceded that the disgusting pale yellow layer in the sandwich he crams into his mouth each morning, while not the Real McCoy, is, at the very least, some distant relative.

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…