Food, Family and Memory

My daughter Celeste recently returned from a semester abroad in Dakar, Senegal.

She spent several months in the West African city perfecting her French, learning Wolof, the unofficial language, and studying West African culture, art and Islam. One of the biggest adjustments for her was the custom of eating out of a communal bowl….with toddlers no less! Boy, I wouldn’t want to share the plate with my own family, and we’ve been exchanging the same germs for decades.

So, what did Celeste miss most after months of mutton and rice en famille? Bacon, avocados, pie, eggs from her back yard AND Mexican food.

I don’t want to sound mean.  Because I’m not.  That said, I would sometimes ask my dad who this guy was or that guy.  It would be a random dude that let’s say was always hanging around Jan Murray or Red Buttons.  Sorry I’m not coming up with bigger names, but these were big names in my world.  I guess I could say Frank.  We’ll get back to Frank.

My dad would answer, “He’s a WITH.”  And I will now explain what he explained to me because by this time in life, I knew what a “WITH” was.  It’s a full-time, unpaid career of being best friends with someone famous. The prerequisite is that you usually did not have a real job and you just sort of hung around with someone.  If you’ve seen “Entourage,” it’s sort of the modern day version.  Okay, getting back to Frank, I have one name.  Jilly.  I’ll say no more.

Duke, my dad, had a way of getting his friends, in between wives and with no place to stay, to move in and help take care of him.  (If you’re new to my blog, he was handicapped as a result of childhood polio.)  Mostly, they were friends with lives and jobs and it would only last for a short period. 

And then one day Tony moved in.  Was Tony my dad’s WITH?  Maybe.  Although I’m not sure it counts if you’re not with someone famous.  And Duke was not famous.  His friend Mickey Hayes had a “WITH” and he wasn’t famous, so yes you can have one regardless.  But Mickey had a ton of money.  Duke was neither famous nor rich.  Being my dad’s with was more like being butler to a poor man.

From the time I was in nursery school until I graduated from high school, I never spent a summer in my home state of Michigan. Most summers we went to Maine, but for three summers, we headed not to the rocky, Atlantic coast, but across that ocean to Europe. The middle summer when I was fifteen, we explored England, Italy and France deeply and passionately. My mother, possibly the best trip planner ever to draw breath, spent nearly a year before the trip selecting the perfect bed & breakfasts,  auberges and pensiones for us.

The things we wanted to see were an odd mixture of The Things One Sees in Europe (The Coliseum, The Louvre) and things my father wanted to see (the famous “Black Madonna” of Urbino). A consummate networker long before the days of the internet, my mother communicated her charm and enthusiasm via weightless, pale blue aerogrammes that appeared in the mailbox all year, one memorably addressed to “La Famiglia Graham;” by the time we boarded the plane for Frankfort in June, deposits were made, and an assortment of feather beds, duvets and hand-embroidered pillow cases awaited our travel weary bodies.

We fell hard for Florence, so hard that my mother cancelled our reservations in Venice and booked an extra week. Our “insider” guide was a colleague of my father’s, an Italian professor named Bob (and a “real” Italian), the leader of a group of Michigan State University students studying  in Florence for the summer session. Bob had rented a villa at the top of an impossibly steep hill lined with Cypress trees to which we ascended one afternoon for bread, cheese, olives, and a plate of salami, soppressata, and prosciutto.

What do you get for the man who has everything, wants nothing, but gets anything he does want for himself? No, it’s not a trick math question; it’s my real life, eternal conundrum.

My husband has worked since his early 20s. He has taken care of his children, his parents, bought homes, cars, and all that he has ever needed. Now it’s his Big Birthday. All that I have to give him is love.

But shouldn’t we do something to mark the occasion? What? Where? A party?

I will give him a name for the sake of this story. Michael. Michael will tell you he has no friends, so no on a party, since there will be no one to invite. He exaggerates. He has some friends. Most of them live in New York. That is where he’s from and where he would like to live. But we live in L.A. He goes to New York whenever he gets the chance. He is a much happier man there. I rarely see him as happy as he is during those few days before leaving to go home to Manhattan. He often tells me he only came to Los Angeles on a business trip. It turned into a very long business trip. One, in which he married, had two kids, divorced, and remarried – me. But, how can I make him happy by moving with him back to New York when all our kids live here in Los Angeles? This is our home.

Months before the Big Day, I began coming up with ideas. “I think I know where we should celebrate your birthday. This is perfect. You want to visit your aunt so – Miami?!?” I didn’t get a big yes on that. I only got an “I’ll think about it.” Moving on, I came up with, “Let’s go to Santa Barbara for a night -- but with all the kids and everyone can have a room in the groovy hotel?” I got another, “I’ll think about it.”