Love

I love chocolate.  I have always loved chocolate.  I have lived my life by the principle,  So much chocolate, so little time.  The expansiveness of my love of chocolate is such that it would be impossible for me to name a favorite – it would be like asking me to pick a favorite among my children. (Or maybe not exactly like that; after all, I only have one child). 

On the other hand, if you asked me to name three of my favorite chocolate moments: Life begins with Hershey's kisses and chocolate bars, in my case, Nestle's Crunch, Three Musketeers, Milky Way, Cup-O-Gold (a chocolate shell with embedded cocoanut, filled with a gooey white cream that was supposedly marshmallow but tasted like the residue of some lab experiment gone terribly wrong) and, most significantly, the Mounds Bar. 

This summer marks my thirtieth year as an attorney. But when I think back to the summer of 1978 it is not a courtroom that I see; rather I recall a brilliant sunny July day barbecuing at the base of the Seattle Space Needle on a Weber grill. About  twenty of us from the country’s largest pork producing states  were vying for first place in National Pork Cook-Out Contest. Truth be told though the southern states, principally North Carolina, Texas and  Tennessee are known for barbecue the big boys of pork are Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska and  Kansas. They were the guys to beat.

For me the event was the culmination of a 2-year grilling odyssey that began in 1976 when I entered the North Carolina State Pork Cooking Championship and came away with a respectable but disappointing third place for Orange Flavored Pork. Despite the loss (and despite my New York Jewish heritage), I knew I had it in me to bring home the bacon so to speak.  Though I had always loved pork – mostly in the form of ribs slathered in ‘duck sauce’ from the local Chinese take out joint – I really never really embraced the true pig in me until I had come to Chapel Hill, North Carolina two years earlier to attend law school.

I have yet to go on a date in New York without breaking into a mental sweat.  When scouting for potential mates, I have learned pretentious is better than shallow, irritatingly intelligent better than vapid.  But every time I find myself two blocks away from any appointed date destination, panic ensues.

I literally go through the syllabi of every course I can remember from NYU and every legitimate news article I have come across in recent memory.  A friend of mine once told me she discovered the best conversation starters from a semester seminar she took called 'The Darwinian Revolution.'  To this day, I regret not enrolling in that class.  I could be married by now. 

Recently, I went on a second date at Casa Mono in Gramercy Park with a screenwriter.  As we sat at the crowded bar, reviewing the tapas menu, all I could think of was the impending birth of the "Brangelina" twins.  

My mother had a way of inventing traditions.  “It’s Lizzie’s birthday!” she’d proclaim periodically and everyone in the family would don a party hat and sing happy birthday to one of our English Springer Spaniels.  The announcement of the dog’s birth and subsequent celebration of it could occur at any time – on April 5, say, or December 12.  It could happen twice a year or once every few years.  But however haphazard, it became a tradition. 

Every so often, we’d gather in the living room; my father on the bongo drums someone had given him for a birthday present, my sister on her recorder, me banging the big copper-bottomed soup pot with a wooden spoon, and my mother on piano, playing from our “American Folk Songs For Piano” songbook.  “Love oh love oh careless love,” she’d sing, entirely off-key, “Love oh love oh careless love, love oh love oh careless love, see what love has done to me.”