Dear Kate,Ā
How are you? Give big hugs to your family and please send me pics of whatever luxurious desert you baked for Thanksgiving. Joanna Gainesā apple pie, perhaps? Ina Gartenās brownie tart?
Iām distressed to hear your fiddle leaf fig is not doing well, but I know it will recover. It is strong and resilient, just as we are. It will turn to find the sun. This week, I rescued three small vegetable plants from the sale section at Home Depot, and I am delighted to find they are brighter and stronger every morning. Welcome to the family my little celery, cauliflower, and broccoli sprouts.
I told my next door neighbor, āWeāll have food through the winter!ā and she laughed.
It took a few moments to realize how silly I sounded. My neighbor, 81, grew up in rural Texas in the 1940s. She knows her way around a vegetable plotāone that really does provide food for the cold months.
It was a reminder to remember the generations that have come before us, and to be thankful for their work. My neighbor hoed and planted, peeled and scrubbed, pickled and canned to raise a generation that wouldnāt have to.
Thereās so much to appreciate all around us.
In the spirit of American tradition, hereās my little list of things Iām thankful for.
-You.
-Our dear friends. (Rebecca, Lauren, Nikki, Dillon, Chris, Kyle, Madison, Chase, Stephen, Julia, and anyone else who nods politely at my off-color jokes. I suspect it is the indulgence of your cooking and Rebeccaās baked goods that has enabled our friends to tolerate my verbal performances at dinner parties for all of these years.)
-The small birdfeeder my mother hung outside my kitchen window. She chose just the right tree branch for the birdfeeder so I can watch the action from my breakfast table. Each morning, tiny sparrows chirp and whirl it around like a tire swing.
-The perfect, musty, well-worn copy of Maya Angelouās Poems I found hidden in a back shelf at Half Priced Books.
-This essay about Martha Stewart, which highlights a delightfully passive aggressive passage from her first cookbook, Entertaining, in which Martha is planning the 175-person luncheon for her brotherās wedding: āThe evolution from February, ādancing in new barn, if George finishes constructing it;ā to May, āGeorge works frantically on barn;ā to July, āReserve dance floor for center of tent because barn not done,ā is truly a marvel.ā
-This essay from the Pope.
-This essay by C.S. Lewis.
-The four chickens kept by my neighborhoodās elementary school students. The chickens peck at a slice of watermelon each day at lunch. The students collect eggs. The students also wonder why a strange, wandering 25-year-old has time to come hang out with the chickens in the mid-afternoon. (I just like to stop by every once in a while, alright.)
-The family of peacocks with brilliant blue and purple feathers that live down the street from my house. (Lots of fowl around here!)
-The men who keep me sane: Vonnegut, Bradbury, Orwell, Baldwin, Salinger, and Fitzgerald.
-The men who keep me insane: Michael Barbaro and Donald G. McNeil Jr.
-Peanut butter smeared on hot toast.
-My family. Forever.
-And finally, this quote from our friend Stephen, a casual little remark he dashed off over coffee and a bagel at CafĆ© Amrita as the snow fell on 110th street in New York. Itās been one year since that coffee. But what he said still rings in my ears, almost daily, with all the solemnity of a prayer:
āIn the end, there is only one question worth answering. Did you love them well?ā
This year, Iām thankful that irrespective of any circumstance, be it plague, pestilence, predicament, or peril, I am loved well.
XOXO,
Ali
Donāt forget to enter to win a mystery plant! Weāll reveal the winner next week.