Melting manners with molten marshmallow

A Woman Asleep at Table by Vermeer, 1657

The time had come to proclaim our family officially and properly settled. There were still boxes to unpack and the whereabouts of a battery charger remained a mystery, but the house was decent enough for friends.

If we had any.

So I started looking in parks, down grocery store aisles, along the sidelines of soccer fields. They've been hard to find and I blame it on the Seattle Freeze, that tendency for people to be polite, yet distant, friendly to all, but friends with few.

"Seattle is like that popular girl in high school," Julia Summerfeld wrote in Pacific Northwest magazine. "The one who gets your vote for homecoming queen because she always smiles and says hello. But she doesn't know your name and doesn't care to. She doesn't want to be your friend. She's just being nice."

After much searching, the targeted family was identified, an invitation extended -- accepted (!) -- and I began to plan. I simmered beef, mushrooms, carrots and baby onions in red wine, poured in Cognac and ignited the stew. For dessert, I planned individual chocolate cakes with a crackly exterior and an interior that oozed molten marshmallow. It was a meal designed to melt manners.

These cakes need just seven ingredients (most likely already in your cupboard), can be whipped up hours in advance and popped into the oven as dinner ends. They are crowd-pleasers, show-stoppers -- and I over baked them.

They didn't burn, but the marshmallow disappeared, leaving a hollow and dry cupcake. I served them because I had no back up, and, as it turned out, the evening was still a success. Maybe because the family didn't need to be unfrozen after all. Turned out they're not natives, but expats from Europe.

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A week later, I made the cupcakes again, this time shortening the time and keeping a sharp eye on the oven. It made all the difference.

Joe's Molten Marshmallow-Chocolate Cakes
by 13-year-old Joe Kozal, published in Sunset, October 2004

Serves 6
1 1/3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
6 large marshmallows
Powdered sugar, optional

In a sauce pan over low heat, stir chocolate chips and butter until melted and smooth. Remove from head and whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla until well blended. Stir in flour.

Butter and flour six ramekins or a cupcake tin. Fill about halfway. Press a marshmallow into the center of the batter. Spoon remaining batter equally over marshmallows, completely covering.

Bake at 350-degrees until tops are puffed up and crackly, 10 to 15 minutes. Do not over bake. Let cool, then run a knife along the inside of the ramekins or pan and invert to release cakes. Place right side up on plates. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve warm.

My style and my mind alike to roaming*

"I am not the woman whose voice animates my essays. She's made up."
-- Nancy Mairs, "Carnal Acts"

The sun blushed. Her lover kissed ear, cheek, jawbone and eye, whispering goodbye to each part of her as flamingo feathers delicately settled on the blue belly of the morning sky.

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My youngest son attacks art. Fingers chase a scribble across paper, crying out for help before crashing into another line. When he paints, hands splat and fart globs of color. "Get 'em, get 'em! Aaah!" he yells as he forces red and blue into a violent shade of purple. But I don't worry that he peppers his day with destruction, that he prefers the punch to the hug, that he insists city buses be equipped with guns, because he is the same boy whose color choice is pink, be it nail polish, cupcake or crayon.

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In the photograph, a girl in a pink dress sits on the edge of a chair at the end of a driveway. Her feet are crossed and dangle in the air, her shoulders are up around her ears and she's smiling. If you squint, you can spot the shadow left from a lost tooth. Next to her is a jug, hanging from her side is a coin purse, and propped up with rocks at her feet is a painted sign that reads:

lemon

ade

25 $

It is a hot day. The shadows look dark, cool, but she sits in sun that bleaches the sign to near whiteness and melts the ice in the jug. There are similarities between my 12-year-old daughter and the small girl who inhabits that photograph, but they blur as I forget who she was and she searches for who she will become.

+++

Pink is the color of painted nails, girls, early morning, cold fingers, the excitable penis. Wrap your hands around this and you'll get warm, the lover suggested. Oh yeah? What do you take me for, a novice? she replied. Pink is love, a carnation, the cheeks of a corpulent, satisfied man. Later, she searched in her closet and found the sunrise hanging between a fleece jacket and a little black dress with dusty shoulders, so she wrapped it around her neck, climbed the bus and went out into the day.

* Title courtesy of Michel de Montaigne, father of the essay.

Potential

Courtesy of Magic Madzik.

It's a flat, gray sky, no dimension or variation to the clouds that have been pulled over the treetops like a giant blanket. Another day under cover and I sigh as pinto beans skip across the counter and I sort out the moldy ones. After the beans are simmering on the stove, I take one of the rejects and push it into the wet soil outside my kitchen door . Tomorrow, when I wake, I'll find a giant beanstalk growing there, its thick truck bending and pushing through the fence that divides my yard from Lorna's. I will step out onto the kitchen stoop and, setting my cup of coffee on the steps, will grab hold of a thick leaf stem and pull myself up. The stalk is firm and fleshy, the leaves wet from the night's rain, so I climb slowly so I won't slip, yet I make progress. Cool shreds of cloud swirl around my arms and neck and far below I see the patchwork of roofs with their mossy tiles. A crow eyes me from its perch on a tree. Great view, I tell the bird who doesn't respond, and since there's no one else to talk to, I climb on, wishing I'd worn something more sensible than a purple bathrobe. Tiny drops of water cling to the fabric, making it heavy and damp. Up I go, pausing now and again to cup my red hands and blow warm air on my fingers, but not wondering where I'm going nor what I've left behind, just climbing to the next leaf,  then the next, and the next, so I don't notice when the gray lightens and thins, until I've poked my head through the top of the cloud and am engulfed in light. It tumbles out of a blue sky, bouncing and giggling across the brilliant cloud-floor. I blink, squint and, finding the surface springy, yet firm, haul myself up and look around at nothing going on forever. No castle, no giant with nostrils sniffing for an Englishman's blood, no bag of gold or harp to steal, just endless sky and light, and now me there in the emptiness, too.

Unexpected

Just you and me.

At its best, the day was going to be spent grocery shopping, and at its worst it looked as if I would be locked in a laundromat, washing a night's worth of soiled blankets, but instead the day turned into a series of small, sweet surprises.

• I ordered my groceries online and scheduled them to be delivered in the afternoon.
• I inspected the laundry and discovered only one blanket needed laundering, and it fit in my washing machine.
• The sun shined. For hours.

Oh, happy, happy day.

Lessons

McDermitt, Nevada.

Please, for one minute, indulge the writerly side of me, the part that salivates over a carefully constructed sentence, that is awed by the clarity and thought given to a subject, that is excited over a newly discovered word, that, right now, is so thoroughly enjoying the rambling sentences and divisive topic of the short essay "Irreconcilable Dissonance" by Brian Doyle.

Pause, for two seconds, to appreciate the opening sentence:

 "I have been married once to the woman to whom I am still married, so far, and one thing I have noticed about being married is that it makes you a lot more attentive to divorce, which used to seem like something that happened to other people, but doesn't anymore, because of course every marriage is pregnant with divorce, and also now I know a lot of people who are divorced, or are about to be, or are somewhere in between those poles, for which shadowy status there should be world like 'mivorced' or 'darried' or 'sleeperated' or 'schleperated,' but there aren't so far."

Now I've thought similar thoughts as I've watched the marriages of friends and acquaintances teeter and sometimes collapse, but never have I articulated my observations into a sentence coming near the length of Doyle's 104-word behemoth. Here are a couple more:

"The saddest word I've heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered blanket is 'tired,' as in "We were both just tired,' because being tired seems so utterly normal to me, so much the rug always bunching in that one spot no matter what you do, the slightly worn dish rack, the belt with extra holes punched with an ice pick that you borrowed from your cousin for exactly this purpose, the flashlight in the pantry that has never had batteries and never will, that the thought of 'tired' being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce gives me the willies. The shagginess of things, the way they never quite work out as planned and break down every other Tuesday, necessitating wine and foul language and duct tape and the wrong-size screw quietly hammered into place with the bottom of the garden gnome, seems to me the very essence of marriage; so if what makes a marriage work (the constant shifting of expectations and eternal parade of small surprises) is also what causes marriages to dissolve, where is it safe to stand?"

I first read "Irreconcilable Dissonance" in "The Best American Essays, 2010" and it's the one piece I keep returning to, first re-reading it, then reading it aloud to Marcel, then re-reading parts of it for although there are things I can learn about rhythm and structure, there's even more wisdom to be found in the meaning within those sentences.

Twenty-one answers in an afternoon

 The Circus, 1870-1950 by TASCHEN, courtesy of KReEsTaL.

Afternoons are hectic affairs, but yesterday it felt as if I were tossing bricks. In an effort to keep moving, keep managing, I started scribbling down the requests received between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

1. Can I get on the computer to research my science project? Yes.
2. What's for dinner? I don't know.
3. Is a hexagon a quadrilateral with perpendicular sides? Hmm ... what do you think?
4. I want an egg. Mom, can you peel my egg? Sure.
5. Can someone open the door? (Translated from cat scratch-ese.) Yes.
6. Doe a square have perpendicular lines that intersect at right angles? Hmm ... what do you think?
7. I want some milk. Mom, are you getting me milk? Yes.
8. Can you test me from one to 100 in French? Okay.
9. Can Max and Sam play? After homework is finished.
10. Which way is north? It doesn't matter in order for you to solve the math problem.
11. Is the distance between the park and the lake nine miles? What do you think?
12. Where's my milk? I'm waiting for you to bring me a cup.
13. Can I check my Gmail? No.
14. What's for dinner? Frozen pancakes and scrambled eggs.
15. My homework's done, can I call Luke to see if he can play? Yes.
16. Where's his number? Look it up.
17. Where's my milk? I'm still waiting for the cup.
18. Is this his number? Yes.
19. Did you buy kitty litter? No. 
20. Then how do I change the cat box? You don't.
21. Hi, I'm home. Kiss?

And after replying to that final question, I whispered, "Tag, you're it." Then I walked into the bedroom, closed the door and didn't answer to anyone for a whole half hour.

A resolution

Excerpt from "Letters to a Young Poet," by poet, novelist and art critic Rainer Maria Rilke:

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You sent them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest laces of your heart; acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all -- ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into your answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you must meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

Three habit-building tools:

• Writers' Rooms is a newspaper series that showcases where authors create. 
• Daily Routines, a blog about how writers, artists and other interesting people organize their day. Although the blog's inactive, there's plenty to read.
• Keep your goals to yourself. A TED Video.

Effulgence or writing with film

i-ful-juhn(t)s
noun

1. The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

There is a stretch of highway in an empty corner of Nevada where the sky takes over the world. The earth is flattened, the mountains squashed under blazing blue. Clouds, squeezed of snow and rain were breaking apart, their ribbony shreds floating like jelly fish above our heads. The sun sang a symphony.

I wanted to drink up the light.

Later, long after the sun had stopped reciting poetry to the storm clouds and we'd driven the length of the valley and climbed over some smallish mountains and descended into another lonesome basin, I wondered what would've happened if I had swallowed the effulgent light? Would I glow like Christ, a small sun radiating from behind my head and my stomach illuminated? Or would I look like my father, who, after three rounds of chemotherapy, was as solid and unchanged as the desert floor?

My dad is okay and that was something I needed to know, that cancer hasn't stopped him from doing what he's always done -- fix pipes, translate Spanish novels, hold babies. My mom is okay, maybe better than okay, for she's strong and happy not in spite of the cancer, not because of the cancer, but because she and my dad have a good life together, cancer or not.

This trip was about understanding, illumination. Although I brought my notebook I didn't open it because I couldn't find the words to define what I knew to be beautiful. Instead, I found myself with camera in hand, documenting, recording, not thinking, just absorbing the light.

I was the negative.

And so I began to know, to comprehend, to believe that the parts of me I left behind are not struggling, but thriving, that this is life, sometimes fighting, sometimes coasting, but always here, right now, with clogged pipes and grandsons wrestling like puppies in the living room and it's 5 p.m. and no one knows what's for dinner but somehow a meal is made.

And it nourishes.