Saturday February 8
Spent most of the day cooking. Reconstituted dried wild mushrooms and processed them for a pseudo pate, puréed the pumpkin, made tres leches bread pudding (pretty heavy). Ann, Richard, Liz and Geoff all showed up at six. Ann brought me a late Xmas present, great shirt and an adorable little Salvation Army spoon. Talked a little politics, Geoff described a book covering the East Indies Company; Richard was recommended for Hudson industrial Development Agency.
Joe has got in touch with me yesterday. Peter Brown had told him about my cancer. His wife Mary is also in last stage lung cancer and is taking a combo of immunotherapy and chemo. This would be similar to the chemo I would take if my Keytruda fails. I asked him about her side effects. He said she wakes up very morning with nausea but takes ginger and doesn’t vomit. He says it’s like a roller coaster. Do I want this again?
Sunday February 9
Worked in the diary in the morning. Then had two-hour conversation with my daughter. Really pleasant call. Got a little murky when we talked about the past. Her memories still hold that I was impatient and didn’t seem to want her around. Mine that I always loved seeing her and being with her. What I feel doesn’t always get expressed or experienced by my kids. On the cooking competitions shows that I watch the chefs are always thanking their mothers and grandmothers, who are warm bundles of unconditional love and support. I have not idea how you become one of those women. Almost always, the maternal influences are Italian or Hispanic or Asian. You almost never see anyone thanking their WASP mothers.
She described her book and research in depth. Wonderful work. I told her that we were doing well under the Trump stock market and to let us know if she needed help with tuition or school debt (not only her kids but also if she wants do go back to school). Al is hitting 60 this year and believes he has failed in his life, but he’s a wonderful writer and has actually had a novel published. He’s also an excellent musician and has been a wonderful supportive husband and father. How can that add up to failure? Their only failure is in cutting connections for minor infractions with people who could enrich their lives and help support them emotionally when things get tough.
Reheated Brussels sprouts and ham for dinner. Watched the last episodes of Sex Education.
Monday February 10
Spent the morning preserving lemons, making sauerkraut, collating fruit compote. Made a dump run and went to Casa Latina for lunch. The place is so cheerful, with aqua, pink, green, and yellow cut paper squares hanging from the ceiling, like jolly stalactites. Latin music fills the small space. In the tiny kitchen squashed against the back wall, the owner, an Ecuadorian woman about fifty, with dark eyes and a smile that breaks your heart rolls out discs for puposa from bowls of dough and heats them up on the grill. Her fellow cook, a large man, who later sits at the counter eating tripe soup next to the pretty waitress and a couple adorable young girls who had just come in from school. They looked like they all belonged to each other.
Salvation Army volunteers dinner tonight. We sat with Jill Wishon, her husband Jim, and Jessica, a fellow volunteer cook, and her partner Jeffrey. A couple hundred volunteers have come to line up at the buffet in the cafeteria of the former Catholic school for the chicken parm, ribs and salad that Darcy and Ria cooked during the day. This is Darcy's first year running the volunteer dinner, handing out certificates to those of us who worked in the kitchen and all the bell ringers who stood in the cold to raise money--local Boy Scout troops, firemen. Irish fraternal groups, kids from the community college, and random good-natured families with kids. It was all over in an hour. Charlie was still eating. It’s an evening that is both boring and inspiring.
Tuesday February 11
Off to Sloan Kettering on the train. Very foggy day. We were in early and had a couple of hours before the appointment. To my great delight, we found Raku, a Japanese restaurant, about a block from the medical building. I've really missed great sushi. When we got to MSKCC, we waited another two hours until we were finally seen by a nurse practitioner, we was with us no more than four minutes, telling us the scans were good and to carry on. Back on the train. So the four-minute appointment probably cost about $200 not counting the doctor fee, whatever that it. But I did get sushi! Worth it.
Went to Ca Mea for dinner.
Wednesday February 12
After my speed date yesterday at Sloan Kettering, I had an appointment today with Duncan Savage, my beloved radiotherapist. It was exciting to see comparisons of my scans with the previous tumors melting down, but It’s clear my cancer bores my professional team right now. Most of the time spent with Dr. Savage was noticing how burned out he was, especially when he talked about wanting to go to Tahiti. “Are you going?” “No.” And he seemed sad. I told him how good his therapy was. And he sighed. “Not always.” Must have had a bad experience with a patient. Or maybe marriage trouble. He’s been taking care of a terrible mother in-law, and I think his husband might not be helpful. Just guessing on this however.
Spent most of the day finishing Jim Krisniski's very long book. Essentially it’s a massive therapeutic exercise out of which he could carve a couple very interesting books and a bunch of short stories. He writes vividly about the fifties and sixties of his childhood and is a very authentic and astute observer when he’s not wading into self-pity or torturing sentences in an attempt to be writerly
Last night went to the movies with Ann, Liz and Geoff and friends of theirs, where we watched the film 1917, which just won an Oscar but seemed overly aware of itself as a solemn homage to the futility of WWI, with far too many cameos (“Look there’s Colin firth briefly playing an officer in the trenches. And there’s the terrific actor who plays Moriarty in the Cumberbatch Holmes series. And there’s the great Batch himself.") After watching Peter Jackson’s wonderful documentary on WWI, dramatizations of that terrible war just seem to trivialize it. Also after years of WWI movies, books, and songs via life with Richard, 1917 just seems a less interesting and authentic variation of trenches, mud, rats, and the wasted lives of hundreds of thousands of young white men.
Went to the Red Barn, a good local fish restaurant afterward. I liked Liz and Geoff's friends and I thought the food was great, but something is wrong with my relationship with Ann. She’s been snarky for months and I don’t know why. I'm not going to confront this, however. That never works.
Thursday February 13
Off to see Dr. Luyun, my regular St. Peter’s oncologist today. As I expected, this was nonevent, which I'm fine with. He talked about his travails in being restrained by hospital budgets from treating the 100s of patients a day that he fantasizes.
Home to New Mexico green chilies from Sarah!
Lazy afternoon. Watched Master Chef and cooked a surprisingly good leftover dinner, turning three boneless thighs into roulades stuffed with ham and mozzarella that had been languishing in the fridge. I braised them in chicken stock and sliced and threw in some nasty withered limes along with artichokes from last week's dinner.
Friday February 14
Valentine’s Day. Spent most of the day writing a lengthy review of Jim’s book. Hope it doesn’t offend or discourage him.
Picked Willie up at the train. Janet was on the same train so we dropped her home. Willie was uncertain about whether to sit next to her and made the wise decision to choose the seat behind her. As usual Janet seemed very happy to see us, as if she liked me. It occurred to me that she has qualities reminiscent of Samantha, the expression of affectionate that seems so genuine that you think, “She really really likes me.” And weirdly I think that they do at the moment, but don't think you can move any closer into those relationships to the point where you threatened their control.
Home to a green Chile rice thing and vegan sausages (Catholic Friday meal). Willie played an amazing Sam Cook concert album made in 1963.
Watched Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels. Guy Richie must have been ten when he made it.
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