Postcards

I called my sister today as she was just finishing lunch: Trader Joe’s lentil soup, rice, and yogurt, with a serving size package of almonds for later and oatmeal packets in her desk drawer in case of extreme hunger.

I know this because we talked about it for at least 15 minutes, and had I not had a deadline to meet about, I would have quizzed her about it for longer. “You eat this every day?” I asked, sounding, no doubt, as surprised as I was. The twin sister I remember did not eat a meal that sounds like something out of a Self magazine “Make Your Body Over” diet plan. The twin sister I know loved California Tortilla and Starbucks gingerbread lattes and frosting and not nuts or yogurt and definitely was not organized enough to bring lunch. Or if she was, she’d forget it.

We spend time on the phone and email catching up about Major Events, about which lunch does not qualify. So I was surprised at the window into her life that her lunch offered – and how suddenly, deeply sad it made me that I didn’t know these things; how little I know about her day-to-day life, especially compared to how much I used to know.

The last time my mother came home from the hospital – when my sister and I thought it was yet another in a long string of scares – my sister went grocery shopping. In an attempt to get my mother to eat, she bought (and made) comfort foods special to our family, or at least, to my sister, my mother and me: turkey meatloaf (a recipe of my mother’s, made with French onion soup mix and yogurt), Stouffer’s spinach souffle. The foods sent a message, had my mother been able to receive it.

My sister doesn’t eat meat of any kind any more, and she’s a die-hard Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods shopper – the kind who’d turn up her nose at the chemicals that are probably in a Stouffer’s. (In the days when we ate Stouffer’s, no one looked at the ingredients). The Great Starts frozen breakfasts we used to love have sausage – see “vegetarian,” above – and, if I remember correctly, more calories than is recommended for breakfast and lunch combined. When we last lived in the same city nearly five years ago, she was on an Annie’s whole wheat mac and cheese kick, but I have a feeling that’s long over. It makes me unbearably sad that if ever I wanted or needed to do for my sister what she did for my mother, at this point I’d have to ask her husband. I’d have no idea what to make her.

* * *

O. and I went to see Treats and then got dinner last week. I quizzed him about the Fig’s behavior, asking him whether he would agree to a drink with someone he sorta dated and then just weasel out on coming up with a date as opposed to just saying no in the first place. Or as opposed to just not answering the drink question at all.

“Well, seeing as I’m currently sleeping with three of my ex-girlfriends, I can’t really answer that,” he said.

My mouth dropped open.

“I’m sure I told you that,” he said.

“No-um-noooo you didn’t,” I said.

O. did not look sheepish. “Well, Emma was really drunk,” he said. O., however, does not drink any more. And yet still slept with Emma, aka the girlfriend before the one who is currently eight months pregnant with his child, aka the girlfriend who was such a drill sergeant (and so bad, seriously painfully bad in bed) that he and his friends used to refer to sleeping with her as Camp Breadbasket, after the British-run camp in Basra where prisoners were tortured.

He proceeded to tell me about a “revolting” birthmark she has – one of the few details he apparently managed to leave out in the conversations we had when the two of them were dating.

I was revolted, but fascinated at the same time. There are loads of things women think men don’t notice or don’t care about (haven’t a newsstand’s worth of women’s magazines told us every single month that men don’t really notice any of the little flaws you think you have) that at least some men notice. I know perfectly well that if someone is really that into me he’s probably not going to be complaining about any of the things O. and his friends complain about, but it is horrifying to hear just the same.

“If you keep talking like this, I’m never going to be able to date anyone again,” I said. “Please, can we change the subject?”

I added, laughing: “You can even complain about Sarah and the baby again.”

O. squinted at me, raised his eyebrows – and thankfully, mercifully, changed the subject.

* * *

A friend and I spent the long Easter weekend in England’s Peak District, about three hours north of London and a world away. There were sheep (and lambs!) and horses and – at one point – cows blocking an underpass we needed to walk through to get back to our hotel. The sun was shining, the grass was brilliant green, and daffodils bloomed everywhere. We took long country walks. I loved it.

The English call it walking and not hiking, and there is a difference. In the U.S. we treat hiking like something to be accomplished – we hike mountains, charging our way to the top (checking our watches to see if we’re making decent time) and fortifying yourself with trail mix and Power Bars like the workout we often see it as. Almost anything else is just a stroll. In England walking includes country lanes and hills, but almost all the published walks include stops at scenic (and not so scenic) country pubs – and some even have stops for lunch and cream tea.

I much prefer theirs (and not just because of the food!) It was more relaxed, and – even though I’ve seen beautiful scenery in the U.S. – more about the journey than the destination.

And yeah, I had a molten chocolate pudding with chocolate mousse for dessert Saturday night – this on top of a leaving lunch with champagne for two colleagues on Thursday, plus random other "I'm on a trip" food over the weekend – and still lost two pounds this week.