There are times when this whole dinner ordeal is a burden. Take tonight. I have the dinner all planned, and it’s not too involved or anything: grilled swordfish, some rice, and some kind of vegetable that’s in the crisper and that I bought today, but I’ve completely forgotten. Granted, I genuinely enjoy having dinner with my family. Tonight, however, I want room service. I want to be in a hotel ordering something that will taste good from a cart and that comes with a metal cover. I want to stay up late and watch Charlie Rose.
Why Charlie Rose? He’s having a tribute broadcast to Wendy Wasserstein tonight. That shouldn’t make any difference in a family dinner blog, but it does make a big difference to me. I feel so completely sad about her death. I’m a huge fan of her play “Uncommon Women and Others,” but I never saw anything else she ever wrote. Still, she always impressed me as somebody who enjoyed life, approached it with a great sense of humor, and (it seemed) knew how to be a friend. The thing we have in common is that we both gave birth to baby girls in the winter of 1999. She wrote about the birth of Lucy Jane in the New Yorker and then in her collection of essays Shiksa Goddess, and it’s such a compelling story of love and faith (in her doctors, in her daughter’s will) that it moves me no matter how many times I have read it.
Work isn’t exactly a piece of cake these days either, but I won’t go into that right now. Can I add that the hot water heater broke down over the weekend, the roofer came last week, and the washing machine repair man stopped by too. Such a klatch of home improvements experts (no matter how friendly) don’t brighten my mood. And to make matter worse, I just had a birthday, inching my way toward the unspeakable.
So perhaps I’ll get in a better mood by the time I start making dinner or by the time I sit down at the table. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll at least break one rule and have a gin and tonic before Memorial Day.
2 comments:
I sympathize and wish we could at least order in. Creamy Indian masalas perhaps?
I know what you mean about Wasserstein, even though I don't feel quite the connection you do. That iterative refrain from Uncommon Women:
by the time we are 25, 35, 45. It always shored up my resolve to be great at every age, not waiting for later. And now, at 55, Wasserstein is not. But we each get to live on through the art we make, good works we do, and children we mother.
I stayed up late and watched the Charlie Rose Show, and it was worth it. They had a half hour of clips from her talking about her work and then Frank Rich and other talked about her. She said something that I thought was great about Yale Drama - Their job was to give their students the confidence to tell their stories.
No ordering in from Hastings (except pizza). When we were in the city we could get a mean biryani delivered!
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