Tag Archives: holidays

leslie meets frances, and we all flip out

Posted on December 5, 2017 | 10 Comments

After inundating Instagram with photos Sunday night, I thought I should probably take the time to write down what happened so that we could read it later and remember all of the details. It’s not likely that we’ll forget that night anytime soon, but it’s a fun story to share as well, so here goes.

M’s parents gave us an early Christmas present this year. They bought us some really special VIP tickets to see Leslie Odom, Jr. in concert with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. When I was first discussing this opportunity with my MIL, I waffled a bit about the whole VIP thing. The tickets were very pricey, and I wasn’t even sure if children would be allowed. I knew that the girls would enjoy the concert regardless, but their grandmother called the Symphony’s office to chat about the details, and ended up going for the whole shebang.

Since I was the only one with any real knowledge of the details (although I had blocked off the time on our shared calendar in September), I knew there was an extra sting to our cancelled Thanksgiving trip. It was our opportunity to open the tickets together as a family. Instead, they packaged them up, sent them (insured!) through the post office, and we set up an evening to open them over Skype. Frances squealed, but Ella had the most profound reaction. She raced out of the room in tears, and came back barely holding it all together. It was pretty cool to watch.

Sunday rolled around and we ate an early dinner and got dressed up for the show. E put some fantastic French braids in F’s hair, and there were zero complaints about fancy holiday attire or dress coats. I always think the girls are pretty cute, but I will say that F was looking particularly adorable in her dark blue twirly dress with tiny gold stars and I’ve missed those braids now that she prefers to do her own hair in a simple ponytail. She also stood out from most of the crowd because of her size. There were definitely other children there, but most were older elementary, middle or high school students. In the first three rows where the VIP’s were sitting, she stood out as the only little one, almost dead center on the stage, and just feet from the microphone where Odom was about to stand. You should have seen our faces when we walked down to find our seats! I think that’s when it really started to sink in – Aaron Burr was going to be right smack in front of us for the next hour and a half. We were already over the moon and the concert hadn’t even started.

Then he was there. People went mad. The electricity in that place was unreal. He walked out of the door and straight to that mic and our whole family was just giddy. He immediately started to sing “Wait For It” from Hamilton, and that’s when it finally hit me how special this night was. We had this whole concert ahead of us, Odom, his musicians, the entire orchestra, and then, when that was through, we were going to meet him in person. I knew we’d never forget this night.

And then, after singing some of his own music – (“Winter Song”, “Autumn Leaves”, good gracious, so beautiful), the whole night changed. E noticed towards the end of the third song that he had locked eyes with F and gave her a little nod and smile. E said she knew then that he’d say something about his smallest fan. (I was oblivious to this because I was convinced that he was really just singing to me the whole time.) E was spot on.

He looked right at F and asked her for her name. Clear as a bell she answered “Frances.” The whole theater ahhed. He put his hand on his chest and said “Frances. I love that name.” (Melt.) “How old are you Frances?”

“Eight.” She wasn’t shy, she didn’t hide her face or cling to her dad. She just looked right back at him and answered. He teased her that she must be so bored with all those LOVE songs, and was wondering when he was going to get to more Hamilton already. She cracked up and he laughed with her, promising her they were coming, just you wait. He continued to talk to her between songs, and then intermission happened, and the four of us just stared each other with our jaws dropped. It hardly seemed real.

We headed to the lobby to get something to drink – F was VERY excited about this because we also had VIP drink tickets, and she had a Shirley Temple on the mind. That’s when we realized that we kept hearing the name “Frances” around us. Everyone was talking about that lucky little girl, and trying to come over to talk to her. She giggled when she realized that she was “famous” now.

My phone had buzzed a few times during the show, so I checked it and found a slew of messages like these:

We thought it couldn’t get any better, but then the orchestra filed back in, followed by Odom’s musicians, and then the lights dimmed and he walked back in to thunderous applause, waving, and pointing a phone to record the crowd because “his social media manager said he needed to post more.” The crowd went wild, and then he walked to the center of the stage, paused, pointed directly at our row and said “Frances. How are you?” The crowd erupted. “Good,” she answered.

“Did you take a power nap during the break?”

Giggling. “No!”

“Did you eat some candy?”

Again, “No!”

M and I stared across the girls at each other in disbelief. The night was young, and it just kept getting better and better and better. He continued to check in with her, referenced her age when telling the story of the first Broadway musical that changed his life – his “Hamilton” – the musical Rent. He thanked the crowd for supporting the arts. He looked right at me, at M, and thanked us for bringing our girls tonight. He sang a bit of “Forever Young” to her. He sang “Dear Theodosia”, and I seriously thought I might lose it at that point.

Then it was time. The orchestra was at attention. The musicians were alert. The lights changed. And Leslie Odom, Jr. looked right at F with a knowing nod and launched into “The Room Where It Happens.” Full force Hamilton, just as promised. The girls’ faces. M’s face. My goodness, let me remember this bit the longest.

…..

We were one of the last people to head downstairs to the lounge where we were scheduled to meet Odom. There were maybe 20-30 people in the room, and no other children. We waited a few minutes, and then the door at the top of the stairs opened and he came downstairs. F was standing on the landing, and he stopped, smiled and said “Frances – how did I know you’d be here?!” stooping over to hug her around the shoulders. Then he greeted the room and started meeting people one by one.

It was fun to be at the end of the line, because we got to watch him interact with everyone. He was hilarious and sweet and exactly as we imagined him to be. When it was our turn, each girl talked to him on their own, posed for several photos, and had him sign something special to them. F had him sign her lanyard, and E brought our big Hamilton book. He asked her if she had a page in mind, and she flipped open to a full page head shot. “Wow, that’s one handsome man,” he said, pulling out the marker to add his signature. “Well, I prefer the one of King George, but this one will do,” she teased. He cracked up and they talked for another minute of two. She seemed so cool and calm and it was just amazing to watch her charm one of her idols. Kids are just so cool sometimes.

We posed for a few family photos, and M shook his hand and thanked him for a night we would never forget. He thanked us again for coming, and we gave a shout out to the grandparents for the amazing Christmas gift. “Thank goodness for Grandmas!” he yelled, and we floated up the stairs and out of the quiet theater (pausing for a final celebrity Frances sighting and photo op!) into the night.

In the words of a favorite book we used to read years ago –

Wow. All I can say is wow.

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Posted in general

Tagged family, gifts, holidays, my girls

gratitude cake

Posted on November 28, 2017 | 5 Comments

I started this post several months ago, and for some reason I just never finished it. Last week, in a series of serendipitous events, I remembered it, and so now I’m sitting down to finish the first story, and start the second one.

The last thing I made for my grandfather was this cake. It was several years ago, and we were visiting over the Labor Day weekend, and I brought a plum torte with me. It was sort of a birthday cake, although I’m sure we probably also had homemade ice cream that my parents made. It’s probably one of the few things I ever made for him to eat. I didn’t cook much as a kid, and I’ve lived away for all of my adult life. When we visit family we are usually fed, not the other way around. When he would visit us in the early years of our marriage we would always eat out somewhere around town – his treat! – and I wasn’t much of a cook in those years either.

Still, so many of my memories of my grandfather center around the table. There are holidays and birthdays and all the food traditions of home, of course. But the ones that I think about when I think of him are simpler. At least once a week over the course of my summer internships during college, I’d leave the office at noon and cut through a few neighborhoods to his house for lunch. My grandmother would make me a sandwich, and my aunt would fill one of their tupperware tumblers (avocado green with a white rim at the top) with ice and water from the front of the refrigerator. The water would smell like tupperware and my grandparents’ kitchen. I took a drink from a plastic tumbler the other day and it all came rushing back – it’s such a signature smell to me.

There are just a couple of weeks when Italian prune plums are in the stores, and I’ve learned to buy them all when they arrive. They show up near the start of September, right before my grandfather’s birthday on the 4th, and my niece’s birthday just a few days later, on the 6th. This year I bought over 150 of them, and I started making a couple of these plum tortes a night. The house smelled delicious for a week or more. I began to think of them as a gratitude cake. Each year, to honor my niece’s birthday, we do acts of kindness in her memory. I brought this torte with me everywhere on her birthday – sharing it with people that are special to me, people doing work we appreciate, people we love.

I made so many tortes that I decided to freeze a few. I served a couple at the Open House reception I throw each year in October. They were a hit. I love to share food with others. I love to watch people smile when they eat it, to turn and tell their friends to grab a slice before it’s gone. One third grade boy started hanging out with me after he finished his slice. He asked me a lot of questions about the ingredients, and how I made it. He told me it was delicious. He brought his mother in to share a slice. She’s a new friend to me, and I love that we stood together for a few minutes and talked while she ate. She mentioned the cake again at a birthday party last month. She’s still thinking about it, and that makes me smile.

We had two cakes left in the freezer, but when M picked up some pasta orders from a school fundraiser last Friday, our freezer got very, very full. He sorted and rearranged everything, and managed to fit it all in. But when I opened the door later that weekend, I noticed the cakes sitting on the top of the pile, and thought I’d put one in the refrigerator to thaw. Maybe for a Tuesday night, post parent-teacher conference treat. Maybe to throw in the car for our trip to spend Thanksgiving with family. Maybe for a little bit of late summer in November.

Tuesday night conferences never happened. M called me around four that afternoon and told me that he was headed to radiology for a CAT scan for a suspected ruptured appendix. Suspicions were confirmed, and our evening plans and travel plans and holiday plans all came to screeching halt. I raced around to pick up the girls, rushing to get us all back to the hospital to see M before he was taken into surgery. But the surgery had to wait – there are necessary interventions first. We sat up most of the night, piled onto a tiny hospital bed, and then a second one. Later, the girls and I climbed into one bed at home to sleep for a couple of hours. I snuck out before dawn to return. Hospital minutes drag on and on and on, and just when you nod off for a moment, someone comes in to wake you up and talk some more. There was little sleep, and little eating.

Two years ago our Thanksgiving travel plans to visit M’s family abruptly changed when my grandfather fell ill and entered the ICU. We decided we needed to be there, and to provide some support and relief for my parents and my sister and her family (which included a newborn). We packed quickly, and I scooped up a stack of cookbooks on the way out the door. During the drive I mapped out a meal plan for the rest of the week, enough food to feed eleven people as they moved in and out of hospital watch and through those foggy first weeks of infant care. I wasn’t sure how much we could to do ease the burdens of those days, but I knew that I could make sure that everyone was fed, and had a table to sit down to each evening. I wasn’t cooking for my grandfather, although I longed for him to be sitting there at the table with us. But in a way I was. When we visited him in the hospital, my mother was telling him all about the food we had feasted on the night before. My husband was feeding him scrambled eggs, and coaxing him to drink some water, and he was listening to the description of our thrown together Thanksgiving while he ate. He seemed the most alert during that time. I think he knew we were all together, and understood the significance of that gathering.

Thanksgiving morning felt pretty heavy last week. We were all exhausted and disoriented. The fridge had been cleaned out in anticipation of our travels. We had planned to be fed for five days, and now we were home from the hospital, tired and off schedule, with no real appetite for anything. We thought we should get some fresh air, find some coffee (for me), stretch our legs a bit to get the blood pumping again. We went to the garden and stayed for a few hours until mid-afternoon. We searched for a few places that might be open on the holiday, but struck out everywhere. We headed home to make peanut butter sandwiches and call it a day. Everyone traipsed upstairs to watch the recorded Macy’s parade, and I started to dig through what was left in the fridge.

The first thing I saw was this cake. I put it out on a cake stand, and set it in the center of the table. The sunlight was streaming in the back window as I dove back into the fridge for more inspiration. I turned the oven on and tossed some squash and brussels sprouts onto a tray for roasting. I started some water to boil, and pulled out some of that new pasta in the freezer. I diced up a lone pretzel roll into bite size pieces to share. Raw veggies came out of the bin and into dishes. I poured pear juice into wine glasses for the girls. I called them all downstairs for sandwiches and surprised them with this.

And there in the center was that plum torte. One of a dozen or more. One that I first made years ago for my grandfather. One that I share every fall with others. A gratitude cake that showed up just when we needed it most.

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Posted in holiday story(ies)

Tagged family, food, holidays, kitchen story(ies)

father’s day in the garden

Posted on June 19, 2016 | 2 Comments

We’ve settled into our new summer routine, and so far it’s going pretty well. This past week was so very hot – high nineties every day, and very, very humid. We had our first show at the Muny on Tuesday night, and so I let the girls sleep in on Wednesday as late as possible. It was ninety before nine o’clock anyway, so we weren’t too sad to miss our garden walk this week.

M wanted to head over to the garden this morning before church, so we woke the girls up and headed out. It was warm, but nicer than it’s been for awhile, with a great breeze. We walked around for about an hour, which is just the right amount of time for a visit.

Everything has changed so much. There are still interesting allium varieties everywhere, but the lilies have exploded into seas of color throughout. I’m not a huge lily fan, but I always question that statement around this time of year. The varieties and colors are stunning, and in the early hours the light hits them just right, and the whole place just glows. Even the orange ones in our backyard are amazing.

We walked through so much green and white and light – it’s like the rest of the garden knew it was the lilies’ turn and let them be the show.

There were a few hints at heat loving tropical plants – the kind of flowers that get me excited for far flung beach days to come.

And then the landscape turns yellow and orange and salmon and russet and golden. Lilies taller than the tallest dad in the garden (ours), held up with bamboo and twine.

They are renovating our retirement home in the center of the garden – did I mention that M and I will live there one day? I’m sure they won’t mind. The copper was shiny and bright.

There’s a spot where you stop and look across the lilies and the sun hits the white stone beyond, and it’s so pretty and peaceful and you are a million miles away from all the errands and tasks you need to get to later today. After the swimming and the custard and the presents and the sunny summer day together.