Finally!
Rocky Point.
Pièce de Résistance
I’ve been going on and on about our weekend, everything was amazing, everything was wondrous, and I meant it — but nothing can compare to Saturday night. The ten of us will not soon forget it. After all, how often does one eat steaming cups of stew seasoned with water from the Long Island Sound or skinny dip in shark-infested waters? But I’m getting ahead of myself. Just before sunset we loaded up the cars and our arms and made our way to Rocky Point Beach (previously seen here and here)… 
Last May, as you may remember, I dreamed of making a big pot of cioppino for all my friends on this very beach, inspired by the Italian seaside stew of San Francisco fishermen. But truth be told the task of bringing all the elements together (big pot + plenty of stock + lots of vegetables + pounds of seafood + (illegal) fire + good weather + great people) made my dream seem more like a raisin in the sun.
This is where a man like M. comes in handy. He’s never once balked at my zany ideas:
a birthday party worthy of F. Scott Fitzgerald?
devoting days to making gumbo and bo ssäm, just ‘cause?
an adventure in the Colombian jungle with merely a scrap of directions to guide us?
He’s game.
My 29th birthday wish was no exception. On Friday he presented me with a great big stockpot — “To the Countess of Cioppino, the Grand Dame of Gumbo, the Sultana of Stews…” — and he made the rest seem effortless. It helped that we had Meghan, who in addition to being a ridiculously talented baker is the person I’d want with me should I ever be trapped on the side of a mountaintop. She built a grade-A cooking fire on the beach, plenty hot and long-lasting, while M. made the cioppino and the rest of us gathered driftwood, ate cheese, and enjoyed the beauty.
(Thanks, Laura)
(Thanks, Laura)
The cobalt water and tangerine sky, the setting sun and the rising harvest moon, the soft breeze and the sound of waves against rocks — it was a magical evening. So magical, in fact, that a handsome fisherman began to look an awful lot like a handsome merman, one whose charms were not lost on the womenfolk….
(Thanks, Laura)
The cioppino was a crowning achievement, a warming broth of tomatoes, fennel, and seasonings with meaty monkfish, mussels, and chowder clams as big as my hand. The secret ingredient? The original salt: two cups of water straight from the Sound, just as it is traditionally made in San Francisco (or so they tell me).
After we ate, we defied the ominous warnings of the merman who told us his father, a seasoned fisherman, spotted 4-foot sharks in these very waters on this very evening and by no means should anyone set foot in the Sound!, and went for a moonlit skinny dip.
Ah!
There is simply nothing like a moonlit skinny dip for making a girl feel at peace with the world.
And we ogled the moon and the stars and the clouds. And we ate the Most Perfect S’Mores Ever Invented: marshmallows sandwiched between crisp Tate’s chocolate chip cookies (fresh from the source!). And we drank many, many bottles of local wine….
(Thanks, Laura)
Inevitably, we got a little silly …
… and I laughed ‘til my stomach hurt (is there a better feeling?). Nights like this are rare indeed, and perhaps now you know what I mean when I say the weekend was “magical.”
To my friends: I’m so grateful to all of you for making my birthday so special. And to those who couldn’t join us — you were very missed! But you shall have another chance, someday: I decree that Saturday, September 25, 2010, is the first in a grand tradition of moonlit bonfires and steaming pots of stew upon picturesque beaches. Coming from the Countess of Cioppino (and her handsome Count), you know that’s a promise that shall be kept.
Tomorrow I begin my 30th trip around the sun. I’d be lying if 29 didn’t seem daunting, and I never lie to you. So, yes, 29 is daunting. In the past couple weeks, I’ve had the headaches and ungrounded-fights-with-M. to prove it.
There is the obvious: just one year left to do 20-something things — or one year left to have that as an excuse. But I’ve found the 20s (at times) so difficult and confusing, and I’ve heard so often that women ‘find themselves’ in their 30s that I am in many ways looking forward to aging. (Better than the alternative, etc.)
But there is also this: my birth-mother died at 32 and that age has loomed large since — well, since before I could even count to 32. When I was a child I believed that I would grow up, get married, have a little girl, and die — just as surely as other kids believed they’d grow up, get married, have children, and grow old.
Even as I’ve grown and learned that no, not all mommies die and in fact most don’t, the number 32 has remained a not-so-subtle reminder of my own mortality.
One of the reasons my 20s was difficult was because I was not spending my time — and her inheritance — in ways that would make her proud. I went to New Orleans after Katrina in part do to penance to Denise. Five years later, I’ve realized that what I do for a living is very similar to what she did for a living, and there’s no way she wouldn’t be proud of me. I can’t think of a better way to close out my 20s.
(And yet.)
I’m not sure how to conclude this. I could admit that I have a primordial feeling — no, not a feeling, not even a sense: a single neuron firing — that my death is just three years away. (The answering neuron: What will I leave behind?)
But that is too morbid (nevermind that I grew up with death and it isn’t scary to me as it may be to you). Just know that I’m thrilled with what the next hours and days hold: a trip to the North Fork with the love of my life and dear friends, old and new, a tour of vineyards on bikes, cioppino on Rocky Point beach (a wish fulfilled). Let’s call it fuel for a burst of creativity and confidence: a race to see what I can do before the clock strikes three-oh, or three-two, or one-oh-oh….
And as for that single neuron: let’s call it a reminder of what I have to be grateful for.
Thank you. You know who and what you are.
There are few things better than a day at the beach with a good book, your favorite food, and your favorite boy (who protects you from jellyfish and climbs rocks, as good boys do).
Saturday…
(the day after Friday) began at a pool in Tarrytown and ended with the sunset at Rocky Point beach (with pit-stops in between to water the plants and pick up corn and beans and wine and fish and whatnot). M. kept saying, “I can’t believe we started the day in a pool in Westchester and we’re ending it in the sea on the North Fork!” Ain’t it cute when they marvel about 100-year-old technology like it’s the frickin’ iPad?
J/k, lovah. It IS pretty awesome.
[Interlude….]
Lieb Family Cellars White Merlot. If you’re like me you said, a white merlot?! Believe it baby. And bonus: profits go to breast cancer research. Thumbs up.
Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!
Your house is on fire and your children all gone.
(I like old nursery rhymes. They tell it like it is. Kids can handle how it is, believe me.)
