Mother's Day on Sybelia Drive

This Mother’s Day the mamas of SYBELIA DRIVE—Eva, Minnie, and Lillian—are sitting together in lawn chairs by the lake, little paper umbrellas in their drinks. It’s cool in the shade, and they’re laughing and laughing. Want to join them? 🌸🍹🌴☀️

Buy your own mama and yourself a copy 💕

Braddock Avenue Books

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Scents of the year, of the past – Reverie 2011 – Day 13

In winter.  Peppermint, balsam and pine, cypress, smoke, soot, dust, litter.  Coffee, cocoa, beef stew, burgundy, anisette.  Citrus – bitter like grapefruit, sweet and rich like blood oranges, green and trimmed with tang like limes. 

Once a boy kept whispering to me in a college class on southern literature.  No matter how I ignored him, he kept on.  In the ground floor classroom, where mildew swelled in the folds of linoleum, I glared, and still, he kept on.  Finally, the class ended and he followed me, walking backwards before me, bowing and eventually saying that I smelled of snow.  Even in a city below sea level where snow rarely flew, I couldn’t shake him off. 

When he took me dancing, the bar smelled of hot bodies, rum, tobacco, and the sulfured remains of poppers. Midnight meals of buttery omelettes, thick-cut fries, and creamy orange freezes.  In the morning the thin papery odor of exhaustion.

In spring.  Wet grass, sage leaves, mint in time for juleps in early May.  Double-barreled bourbon, wood smoke, charcoal and steaks on the grill.  Wet dog, morning breath, cloves, patchouli, and ashes.  Pears poached in pale wine and sugar and vanilla, star anise and cinnamon sticks floating atop the syrup as it turns darker and thicker.  There was a chicken in the oven, doused in sherry.  There were potatoes au gratin, turning velvety and coppery, begging forgiveness.  There was a salad of endive with a lemon vinaigrette, croutons, anchovy dares and salted secrets.

On the last morning of the year, we crush mint into the fresh tangerine juice, and we don’t even bother to add the dry and silky Prosecco bought especially, especially, especially to accompany the Benedict, Hussarde, Sardou.

Traditions - Reverie 2011 - Traditions

Christmas in Kauai.  That sounds like an amazing family tradition, doesn’t it?  And maybe one day it will be.  This Christmas is dedicated instead to the dog we love – Atticus!  You could say he ate the family vacation.  The trip funds were certainly swallowed alive.  All due to one little ACL gone awry.  Yeah, sure, we know that dogs don’t have ACLs.  But they do have knees and the lovely ligaments that sometimes don’t last, and Atticus now sports a revised sort of knee to the tune of thousands.  Throw recovery, rehabilitation, and therapy in for good measure.  We are there!  On the family dog vacation of a lifetime!

So the tradition of walking the dog continues.  We are two months out and serpentining hills and traversing uneven ground once more!  Surfing and sailing and walking on the sugary beaches of the westernmost Hawaiian island will surely come another year.