Dearest Melissa,
Two letters? I feel so lucky. The following letter feels more like a narration than a letter, a cluster of thoughts, a wishing-we-could-meet-for-a-pot-of-tea kind of flare in the darkness. But here goes.
It’s a strange day in Portland. The sky is gray and the streets are eerily quiet well, except for this morning, when a snow plow and industrial snow blower worked their way down my street with a procession of six empty dump trucks behind. The workers are trying to widen the street and make room for driving and parking. It’s a slow process. After each dump truck filled up to the brim, another one took its place. The City used to dump the snow right in the ocean, but they can’t anymore because of the salt, so it gets trucked off to some destination unknown to me. I wonder where the pile is, how high it has gotten. I wonder if it will melt before July.
Last night was my dad’s birthday, and since my mother is away visiting the English contingent, he came up to Portland to celebrate. We had afternoon tea and cake, of course, though I wasn’t too pleased with my chocolate cake. The marmalade in the middle and orange zest frosting were delicious, but I think I put a bit too much baking soda in the batter.
tea and cake
tea and cake and the books & beer I gave my dad
In any case, we headed to Boda for a delicious dinner; it always reminds me of its Barcelona counterpart, Bangkok Cafe, except it’s bigger and less spicy. There is always a wait, but it’s worth it.
This morning, we went to Longfellow Books for the Maine Writer and Publisher’s Alliance “cash mob” to help with the post-holiday lull for our “fiercely independent” bookstore, but also to honor one of the co-owners and a favorite bookseller of mine, Stuart, who sadly died after a long battle with cancer. I’ve told you of my love for Susan Conley, novelist (Paris Was the Place), memoir writer (The Foremost Good Fortune), and co-founder of the Telling Room, which sponsored the reading we went to in December. She was MB’s teacher at UNE back in the day, and wrote the most beautiful tribute to Stuart here; get your tissues out.
My purchases (with two gifts for my niece and nephew)
But back to the quiet streets. Another 8-12 inches of snow is expected to fall tomorrow into Monday and no one is leaving their homes (or parking spots). As my dad and I trudged back up Munjoy Hill, we both commented on how it seemed like we were in a movie set for “The Calm Before the Storm.” Standard Bakery, usually hopping with customers, had no line. The Post Office parking lot was empty. The crosswalks were clear. My dad headed north for NH and I climbed up the stairs to my apartment, where it took me five minutes to get out of my boots and layers.
I am glad you are reading (and seemingly enjoying?) Lena Dunham’s memoir. While I found parts of it self-indulgent (says the woman writing a blog post about her life) and I’m not sure it quite stacks up to the memoirs of her contemporaries (Fey, Poehler, Kaling), I laughed throughout the whole book, *guffawed* at the chapter on dieting and feel like I better understand Girls knowing more about her dark comic genius. I almost sent you a photo of the “platonic bed sharing” chapter, but didn’t want you to add a dog to the mix. One of my favorite things about living in my big space in Portland again is having a sparsely furnished bedroom.
Since turnabout is fair play, here are four confessions from me for the day:
1. I like washing dishes and, though I don’t currently have a dishwasher, I am an expert dishwasher loader. This would probably mean I would fall somewhere between your sister and father on the spectrum of forcing you out of the kitchen during cleanup time. Sorry, Cat.
2. I love waking up just after school time on the weekends. This means I sometimes get up at 6:30 or 7 a.m. on a Saturday. I like the quiet. I like feeling like I have the whole day ahead of me. And I judge people who sleep late. Sometimes I make the effort not to judge over-sleepers, but it doesn’t usually work. I do not judge naps. I am aware this makes little sense.
3. I am oddly obsessed with letter writing. My dad asked me how my poetry was coming along last night. “Oh, so-so,” I replied, “but I have been writing a lot of letters.”
4. This part of your second-to-last letter “We arrived to find that (almost) everything was closed in honor of the Fête du Mouton–or Eid Al-Adha–which means the streets were filled with sheep being carted back to homes for their annual sacrificial slaughter. Which also meant that the following morning the streets were rivers of blood (photo elided). I certainly hadn’t packed footwear for the occasion” made me laugh for ten minutes.
I am about to start reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel about a futuristic flu epidemic. What could be better for this chilly and gray afternoon? The novel begins, “The King stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored. This was act 4 of King Lear, a winter night at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto.” How delightful.
It’s about 9 p.m. your time, so I imagine you are figuring out what to have for dinner. Will you cook or go out? Will you find a suspect looking tupperware at the back of your fridge and dress it up with some parsley? For breakfast this morning, I heated up some leftover veggie chili from perhaps too-long ago, fried two eggs and melted cheese on toast. My dad is usually the pancake maker in the family, and I read your letter just a tad too late to make Peruvian American pancakes. There is always tomorrow.
Love and miss,
T.
PS Just a bit of meta for your evening:
Things With Tea 