SUMMER and TIME
SUMMER and TIME
CHRONICLE: LAS VEGAS, NV AND ASHLAND, OR, JULY 22-31, 2024
The last couple of weeks I’ve been away from home, so I haven’t been in the kitchen much. Honestly, it’s been nice to have a bit of a break from cooking, to dine out, to let other people feed me, both literally and figuratively.
On this trip, I’ve been visiting family and friends.
Last week I was in southern Nevada, Las Vegas to be exact.
How hot was it? Too hot to be outside for longer than it took to walk from the car into a restaurant.
It was 113 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact, each of the five days I was there.
I used to live in Las Vegas.
My son still lives there with his wife and their dog, Goku, a Labrador/Shepherd mixed breed. We’re all convinced he was sent directly from heaven.
There’s almost exactly thirty years between my son and me. I was twenty-nine when he was born. Last week, my son turned thirty-five.
In December, on Christmas Eve, I’ll hit a milestone birthday. Sixty-Five. Yep, it’s a big birthday for me this year. We, my son and I, are experiencing the changes, the continual growing pains that aging brings, no matter which decade we’re living through.
I remember turning thirty-five. Turning thirty-five made turning forty seem like middle-age was around the corner. And of course it was. Saying to people out loud that I was thirty-five made me feel old.
My son is feeling the same way.
But sixty-five?
Damn.
It’s hard to imagine being in your sixties when you’re smack dab in the middle of your thirties.
Now that I’m smack dab in my mid-sixties, I’m trying not to complain too much. In part because I know not everyone has the privilege of living to this age. My mother died in her fifties, fifty-two to be exact, before any of her grandchildren were born, before retirement, before she got to travel to all the places on her list, too soon in every way.
My recent hip replacement surgery has changed the way I think about myself. Now I’m somebody who timestamps events and activities in pre- and post-surgery terms. I used to be an avid tennis player, but I haven’t played tennis in so long because of my hip pain, it’s more accurate to call myself a former tennis player. That stings…and stinks. If you thought I made a typo, I didn’t! Both verbs are accurate.
I used to be someone who never had any ailments, who suffered few aches and pains, who rarely even got a cold. And I know how fortunate, lucky really, I am not to have diabetes or high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or a heart condition.
But like I said a minute ago. Damn.
I’m trying not to let turning sixty-five kick me in the butt.
When I left Albuquerque last week, the airport was crowded. TSA set up additional X-ray machines and luggage scanners to accommodate the volume of travelers. As I put my belongings into the plastic bins and placed the bins on the conveyor belt, I told the TSA officer I had a brand new titanium hip. She told me that my brand new body part would set off the machine since it was one of the older versions (sense a theme here?) and I needed to go to a different line where I could walk through the newer type of body scanner. You know the scanner I’m talking about; the one with the yellow feet stenciled on the floor where you stand with your arms are overhead.
As I made my way towards the body scanner line, another TSA officer told me “Wait right here with these other folks”. I recognized the gaggle of gray-haired folks the TSA officer pointed to as a group I’m now a member of. I stood there, wondering if these folks are as grateful as I am to no longer experience the pain of an arthritic joint. Do they, like me, marvel at the miracle of modern surgery? Do they, like me, have a twinge of sadness, a sense of vulnerability, about outliving the functionality of their original body part?
Do they, like me, feel the insistent drumbeat of time, a need to do things NOW while I still can?
This week I’m in southern Oregon. Ashland to be exact.
I’m visiting a friend, a longtime friend, one I’ve known since the seventh grade. How many decades is that?
Six to be exact.
Friends like this are hard to come by. We’ve not just stayed in touch. We’ve shared in life’s events big and small, despite living in different cities, sometimes different continents. Neither my friend nor me grew up with a sister. Sometimes, I think we’re like the sister neither of us ever had.
I know I’m lucky in the friend department.
Summer is a happening time in Ashland, home to the Oregon Shakespeare Fest. We have tickets to see Much Ado about Nothing and Macbeth. Monday night we went to a free folk music concert in Lithia Park. It seemed like the whole town was in attendance. And here’s a photo of some of the wildflowers we saw on display up at Mt Ashland last weekend.
Southern Oregon is known for its prolific grape growing climate and viticulture. Pinot noir, pinot gris, riesling, tempranillo, cabernet sauvignon, malbec, and syrah grapes all grow here. There are about a dozen wineries within fifteen minutes of Ashland.
When I first arrived in Ashland, smoke from the big fires in California and Canada made it unhealthy to spend too much time outside. But the wind has shifted, and this weekend, despite predicted temperatures in the upper 90’s, we’re going to a local winery (or two) to sip something cool, probably rosé for me, and dine amidst the grapevines.
I’m not much of a drinker. In fact, the older I get the less alcohol agrees with me. When I was in my thirties and forties, I sipped a glass of wine while I made dinner and then drank another glass with dinner. Now I feel a hangover coming on if I drink more than about two ounces of wine. Any kind of alcohol has the same effect these days. But since I’m here in Oregon, tasting wine while dining at the winery where it’s grown and made is an experience I’m not going to pass up. I’ll just make sure to drink plenty of water and stop drinking wine if I can’t handle the effects of the alcohol. It’s not worth the headache that invariably ensues.
I know I said I haven’t done much cooking while I’ve been away, and I haven’t. But Tuesday night, I cooked dinner on the grill at my friends’ house since it’s too hot to cook inside. And because cooking on the grill is just FUN!
Here’s what we had for dinner:
Spatchcocked Herb-Grilled Chicken
Baked Potato
Creamy Grilled Eggplant with Lemon and Garlic
There’s not a drop of cream in “creamy” eggplant. Creamy eggplant is something I discovered several years ago. Creamy eggplant is the result of a happy accident after forgetting I had placed a whole eggplant on the grill. I’d lost all sense of time. When I remembered the eggplant, thirty minutes later, I opened the grill lid to see it was charred, mishappen, resembling a shrunken head, looking like something out of a horror movie. I brought it into the kitchen, waited a few minutes for it to cool off, then sliced it in half. Expecting the worst, it was sort of miraculous how the skin yielded to the flesh, the meat, of the eggplant. Encouraged, I scooped the eggplant into a bowl, doused it with lemon juice, showered it with Kosher salt, stirred in two garlic cloves I grated on a fine microplaner.
I love cooking eggplant this way. It is smoky, creamy, and lucious. My favorite way to enjoy it is on a crisp cracker or crusty piece of bread. It doesn’t need any more dressing up or attention, but you could chop a bit of parsley or chives for a shock of bright green.
Here's what whole grilled eggplant looks like coming off the grill.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, states in an article in Prevention called Friends with (Health) Benefits that:
Research has found that going 10 hours without social interaction or stimulation (which can include exchanging emails, using social media, and reading fiction) produces a similar neural response or pattern of brain activation as 10 hours without food, showing that we have actual cravings for connection.
In previous posts I’ve alluded to feeling lonely at times, lacking a sense of connection as I’ve gotten older. Moving to places where I knew no-one over a dozen times as an adult hasn’t helped in making social connection easier for me. I’m an introvert. It’s challenging to find my “people”. It takes me a minute to warm up, to feel my way into new surroundings, to listen to my intuition.
I’m moving at a snail’s pace while the world is cranking away at lightning speed.
But being here in southern Oregon with my lifelong friend, surrounded by wineries, where grapes are literally encouraged to age, to ferment, to change from one form to another has served as a metaphor for my own recent struggles to come to terms with the aging process.
Maybe, just maybe, time is in fact on my side.