Oh god, this episode! It brings tears to my eyes every. dang. time. (via thegreg)
(Source: monstrothewhale)
What Makes Me Feel Beautiful
Beautifully touching essay by Anne Roiphe.
It was mid-December of 2005. I don’t know why he said it. I don’t know if a shadow had fallen across him, something appalling he saw out of the corner of his eye. I don’t know if it was just coincidence or intuition that prompted him, but about a week before my seemingly healthy 82-year-old husband suddenly died, he emerged from the kitchen ready to go to his office, his face clean-shaven, his eyes shining, smiling shyly, holding the copy of the Anthony Trollope book he was rereading, and said to me, “You have made me very happy. You know that you have made me a happy man.” There I stood in my work outfit, blue jeans and a T-shirt. There I stood with my white hair and my wrinkles and the face I was born with, although now much creased by time, and I felt beautiful.
“What?” I said. I wanted him to repeat the words. “You heard me,” he said and put on his coat and drew his earmuffs out of his pocket. “Say it again,” I said. He said it again. “You’ve made me happy.” We had been married 39 years. We had held hands waiting in hospital corridors while a desperately ill child struggled to breathe and thankfully recovered. We had made financial mistakes together. We had spent hours out in fishing boats. We had raised the children and then second-guessed our choices. We had stood shoulder to shoulder at graduations and weddings and we were well-worn, but still I had made him happy, and I was proud and flushed with the warmth of his words.
I know I looked beautiful that morning. Perhaps not to the young man holding his toddler in his arms who rode the elevator with me; perhaps not to the friend I met for lunch, a true believer in Botox; perhaps not to passersby on the street; but I knew it for a certainty. I was beautiful.
I don’t believe that inner beauty is sufficient in this cruel world. That’s the pap one tells a child. I don’t believe that positive thinking improves your skin tone or that loving or being loved changes the shape of your nose or restores the thickness and color of hair, but I do know that there is a way of being beautiful, even as age takes its toll, that has something to do with the spirit filling with joy, something to do with the union with another human being, with the sense of having done well at something enormously important, like making happy a man who has made you happy often enough.
Ten days after that morning conversation, my husband and I returned from a concert and dinner with friends and walked down our windy block toward our apartment house when suddenly he stumbled and fell and died within minutes. As I waited for the ambulance, I remembered his words, a beauty potion I would take with me into the rest of my life.
(via Cup of Jo)
Obama’s speech at his sister’s wedding
From The Obamas, a dishy little page-turner.
The key to a lasting union, he told the gathering, was to choose the right partner — “somebody who sees you as you deserve to be seen,” he said; someone who recognizes your potential and your vulnerabilities.
As you deserve to be seen. I like that.
Then I got the ring and loved it, and a year later, on Valentine’s Day, I proposed to him in Santa Monica. That was four years ago. The callous on my right hand is long-formed—and not from masturbation. I’m dying to move over to the other hand. I’d also like to call him my husband. I’m not the biggest fan of the word “partner”: It either means that we run a business together or we’re cowboys. “Boyfriend” seems fleeting, like maybe we met two weeks ago. I’ve been saying “better half” for as long as I’ve been able to. I think it’s a little self-deprecating and clearly defines that we’re in a relationship, but it would be nice to say “my husband.”
— Neil Patrick Harris (via apsies)
(via mariahnotcarey)
Three years ago today we went on our first date. We had been friends since September — since that fateful night when Mike Cirino put one and one together and told us hey, you guys should know each other — and though there were sparks, nothing quite caught fire ‘til I saw him clean-shaven and in a (snug) t-shirt for the first time behind the bar at Whisk & Ladle for Cirino’s birthday party (we really owe you a bottle of Armagnac, my friend). He looked (I’ll just say it) hot, and I did that girl thing where I casually touched his bicep in conversation and, um, I liked what I felt. (Girls can be leches, too, you know.) We got in a rather heated discussion about politics or something and the next morning, I wrote him a flirty email, asking him out on a date.
Or was it just a friendly dinner? M. wasn’t sure, but the following Thursday he took the train to Park Slope, bearing one of the sweetest little gifts I’ve ever gotten — two chocolate cats that looked just like our two Obama kittens — and, knowing I was sick with a cold (a cold that kept me from celebrating Jane’s birthday with her the day before), and knowing, too, that I was following a self-imposed experiment with eating meat just once a month and only if I knew it was locally and ethically sourced, he brought me to a restaurant that sadly doesn’t exist anymore, just a block and a half up Union, which had all the local/ethical credentials I needed to eat my single serving of the month.
I did something strange, something I’ve never done before or since (which is probably the tip-off that this was no ordinary date-or-maybe-just-dinner): I ordered fried chicken. I barely even eat fried chicken, let alone order it for an entree, but I guess I was doing that other thing girls do, eat like a boy to impress a boy, and maybe it worked. Of course, we were too busy talking nonstop for me to actually eat so I brought almost the whole meal home and I think I ate it with my fingers later that night, reliving the night in my mind — especially the small and chaste but absolutely wonderful kiss at my door — a greasy happy smile on my face.
We were both in DC for the inauguration the following weekend and we met up a couple times, most memorably after the ceremony itself, warming our sock-clad feet before the television after long hours in the cold, but the tipping point was a month later, the Valentine’s/President’s Day long weekend. I made him dinner on the 14th and he brought me to Blue Hill at Stone Barns on the 15th (which just so happened to be the restaurant of my dreams). Somewhere between those unforgettable nights my skin erupted in some of the most disgusting acne I’ve ever had. Huge, painful whiteheads that seemed more like a vengeful contagion than anything else. This was not what I imagined for our first sleepover — in truth, I was absolutely miserable and mortified, constantly turning my face away just when I was starting to feel that I never wanted to be out of this guy’s presence — but it was like he didn’t even see it. That spoke to me in a way that nothing else has. When you’re a pretty girl — when you enjoy being a pretty girl — you sometimes put a little too much stock in your looks. This was a guy who could see my beauty even when (trust me) it wasn’t there. I still marvel at it.
It has not been an easy road, not by a long shot. We have had troubles that for obvious reasons I have never and probably will never speak publicly about. Which is why three years is something I’m really proud of. It says commitment. It says faith. It says that though we’ve both been hurt to our core by medical tragedies we are not afraid to love again. It says we have had to learn a lot, make efforts that sometimes seemed impossible or just not worth it, and do the work to build a lasting relationship.
I love you, baby, with every bit of me, beautiful and otherwise, and I promise to keep doing better by you, work harder to listen to and support you, and to do what I need to do to become in full the woman you deserve. Here’s to the next sixty.
Duck a la Plum at Wong in the NYT.
“IF you want to have some fun, bring friends to Simpson Wong’s new restaurant on Cornelia Street and watch them taste the duck-fat ice cream in a dessert called duck a la plum.
First they stop talking. Then they stop moving. Their eyes shut, and just when you’re wondering how long this will last, they pop open again, bright with the pleasure of discovery.”
This is probably going to shock no one, but M.’s a bit particular when it comes to dining out. Not in an obnoxious way. Just in a sincere I’ve-been-eating-in-the-world’s-best-restaurants-since-I-was-eight-and-I-can-probably-cook-this-at-home-in-my-sleep sort of way (he would never SAY any of that, mind you, but a lady understands such things).
We love (and frequent) places like Five Points and Fort Defiance because they’re great, consistent, and familiar, but for the most part, the farm-to-table schtick bores him to tears. Give him fried chicken and barbecue, high-wire, three-star dining, or some excellent and obscure ethnic cuisine, and he is a happy camper. But do not give him a $26 filet mignon with horseradish cream at a place where he has to wait two hours to get a table. No. Never. (“Filet is the cut for people who don’t really like the flavor of beef.” Or something like that.)
I get where he’s coming from. Life is short. Our opportunities to eat, while extensive, are ultimately limited. If you can make perfect pan-fried skate wing and elegant butter-poached lobster at home, why pay for it at a restaurant? (Especially if that restaurant is full of hipsters who read the same Table for Two review in The New Yorker as you did.)
Trouble is, I have a soft spot for the farm-to-table, new American ethos. I like candles flickering in Mason jars and faux letter-pressed menus. It took me ages to get him to go to Edi and the Wolf with me, and that was only for brunch. After perusing their dinner menu, I don’t think he has any interest in going back (Seasonal, their flagship haute Austrian restaurant — that he loves).
Which is all to say, when I find a new restaurant that seems unusual and possibly even up to his high standards, I get a little frisson of excitement. It it happens to have white-washed brick walls and vaguely industrial-looking lighting, well, all the better.
A New York Times review is already a mark against it (we’ll have to go on a Tuesday for a chance at a relaxed dinner) — but I’m hoping Wong passes the sniff test. Duck a la plum sounds too intriguing to pass up. The only thing that gives me pause is that it may be too gimmicky. If there’s one thing he dislikes more than twee, it’s gimmicks. Perhaps scallops with crispy duck tongue meatballs instead, then. I dare say he’s never met a duck tongue he didn’t like.
So, darling, I’m dying to know — what do you think? Shall we make a reservation — or is Mr. Wong Mr. Wrong? (Sorry, had to.)
My boys.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Bobby Bland, “I’ll Take Care Of You” (via beautifulordinaire)
Shake it up baby.
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