Three Things Before the Big Trip
Thinking! Brioche! Ham!
What I’m Writing…
You might remember that I am starting revisions on a new novel. What that means is that for the past two weeks I haven’t even looked at those pages. What I’ve been doing instead is thinking.
In general, we don’t spend enough time quietly sitting with our thoughts, do we? In my almost four decades as a writer though, I’ve developed that habit. An ex of mine would come upon me sitting or lying on the couch staring at nothing in the middle of the day and say with an equal amount of exasperation and disdain: “What are you doing?” My answer was always the same (and given with an equal amount of confidence and joy): “Thinking my thoughts.”
A big part of my revision process is thinking about my story. I have my editor’s notes bouncing around in my mind and as I chop onions or walk to the post office or knit—or lie on the couch with a cat on me—I’m writing new scenes, rolling sentences around, imagining all the places my story can go. Friends, I don’t climb mountains or surf big waves; this is what’s exhilarating to me. Thinking. Imagining stories.
Soon I will be in the next phase: pen to paper. More on that when I get there…
I happen to be writing this on an exciting day!
Happy paperback pub date to The Stolen Child!
What I’m Knitting…
Oh! I am so excited about my Loopy Mango Brioche Summer Top in Barely Pink! Like all Loopy Mango projects, it knits up pretty fast. And an added bonus: I’ve learned a new stitch! Brioche. Which makes me think of all things buttery and sweet. All in all, a most lovely knitting project after my abandoned one.
Unfortunately, I can’t take this with me on our Big Trip because, well, it will grow too big to squeeze into my one personal item.
So thank you to Julia Morris-Myers, who suggested Purl SoHo’s Giverny Cowl as a comforting knitting project. Look at this yummy Manos de Uruguay Lovebird yarn! A perfect traveling companion. And with size 10 1/2 needles, I’ll probably come home with a finished cowl.
What I’m Thinking About…
Ham!
In particular, Easter ham!
When I was growing up, my Italian-American family had very particular rituals around Easter. They actually started the week before, on Palm Sunday, when we kids brought palms to all of our elder relatives—aunts and uncles, godparents, grandparents, great aunts and uncles…
We recited a sentence in our Italian dialect that sounds something like “Cooma wanna, wanna cabette,” and means something like, “I give you these palms this year, may you be here to receive them again next year.” (With apologies to anyone who actually speaks Italian as I know this is not quite right!) Then they gave each of us a quarter and it was on to the next relative’s house.
Cooking and baking for Easter breakfast started midweek: egg biscuits topped with a glaze and colorful sprinkles; wandis twisted like pretzels, showered with powdered sugar, kept in a handwoven basket; wine biscuits shaped like an S; a fat frittata filled with sausage and ham; homemade basket cheese; pastera, which is a rice pie; deviled eggs; sweet bread; and, of course, a ham.
What holiday traditions do you cherish?
That ham appeared the following week in two different incarnations.
My dad’s beans (note to readers of my beloved’s
Substack: these beans appear there too. Poops would be proud!):
After he died, I called my Aunt Bo in Indiana and asked for the recipe. “Well,” she said, “you put a pound of navy beans in a pot with the ham bone, cover them with water, and simmer them.” “That’s all?” “Yup,” she said. “How long do I simmer them?” I asked her. “Till they’re done,” she said. Less than two hours later, I had the perfect pot of beans.
Before my dad made his beans, my mom cleaned all the ham from the bone and made her famous ham salad:
That recipe is in my book Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food. (So is her recipe for meatballs!)
This year, Easter was on our anniversary so we celebrated a week later. Fake Easter, we called it Feaster! But there isn’t really anything fake about cousins and their spouses and kids gathering around a table groaning with food, a baked ham as the centerpiece and the ghosts of all those now gone relatives floating among us, is there?
And just like that, a door opens, and there I am, a little girl in my church clothes, my arms laden with palms, and smiling back at me, quarters in their hands, is Auntie Rosie, Auntie Angie, Auntie Dora and Uncle Chuckie, Auntie Etta, Auntie Ellen, Nuneen and Uncle Rum and Uncle Carmen. All of us, smiling.
What I’m Thinking About…
The Big Trip!
When you are scheduled to teach in Ireland and France just ten days apart, the only smart thing to do is stay in Europe, right? That’s how we ended up going on the Big Trip—Donegal and Dingle, Bilbao and San Sebastián, Hondaribbia and Collioure. And a night in Paris, because at this point, why not?
For weeks I’ve been booking flights and trains, beach pods and well placed hotels, food tours and museum tours. Now the trip is just two days away and my thoughts have turned practical: what to pack for two weeks in chilly rain and two weeks in warm sunshine?
Well, this is definitely coming with me…
The Lingua Franca Marathi skirt works with t shirts and oversized button downs and sweaters; sneakers and boots and flip flops. I wore it on a recent rainy evening and it brightened up the room.
And although this will not help me in Ireland, I will wear it practically every day in Spain. (Truth be told: I have worn it every warm day we’ve had here in NYC!) Thank you, Zara!
What else? Leggings and those aforementioned tops. A silky skirt that looks good with all of the above. And a few linen dresses that fold nice and flat in my suitcase. Including, of course, my old standard…
I’m sure I will have stories of our many adventures in my next newsletter, which I hope to get out while we’re away (I’ll be in Dingle when the next one is due).
Also…
I had the great pleasure of doing a second FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED, this time about writing memoir. Here’s a few minutes of my talk: https://myfivethings.com/class/ann-hood-writing-memoir/
The wonderful Mark Nieker has offered readers of this Substack a discount. Enter the code SUBSTACK10 in the discount code field to immediately get 10 dollars off the ticket price.
Thank you, Mark!
PS…
My darling husband
has a terrific essay, You May Ask Yourself, in , edited by the wonderful Sari Botton. It’s about finding the right person and the right place at the right time.
Of course, it made me think about my own return to my beloved NYC and how every day I have to pinch myself to be sure I’m really back. I am! The joys of hopping on a subway and being in a Broadway show twenty minutes later…
…of walking around the corner to the Whitney Museum to marvel at Amy Sherald’s brilliant paintings…
…to take a short walk to a Georgian restaurant…
…to look up on your way to work and see this:
These things—and more—continue to delight me every day, as they did all the years I lived here and all the ones where I sublet to keep one toe in the city.
I wrote here about Palm Sunday and Easter, my relatives, my mom and dad. All gone now, making Rhode Island less my home and more the place I am from, where happy holidays and long summer days at the beach, Sunday suppers and Saturdays at the mall filled my childhood; where I raised my kids; where my cousins and I, as we lost our parents, became the older relatives and hosted holidays.
Here’s to next chapters! The literal ones I’m writing, the ones I’m living, and to all of your next chapters too!
As always, thank you for reading! Remember to take time every day to think, perchance to dream.
Happy anniversary!!
You have been my favorite author forever!
I live in a 55+ community about two miles down the road from where you grew up.
So all the mentions you make of Providence and especially where and how you grew up are extra special to me.
Don’t ever stop writing!