It's been over a month since we returned from our trip to Maine. Most of that month was taken up with Pandering to Teen Daughter because Her Parents who Ripped her From Texas Feel So Guilty. The Great Pander, as I like to call it, consisted mainly of driving her and whichever friend was visiting from Texas to the beach, the movies, stately gardens, shopping, and more shopping.Yes, the beach, or as Douglas Adams would have it, that perfect venue for "Sun, sand, and suffering." The beaches on Long Island's Atlantic side are, I discovered, as good a place as any to lose a teen. Not that I became aware of this ocean's teen-sweeping qualities right away. What you notice first is the coldness. And then you notice the waviness. They're big, especially when you compare them to the Gulf, a body of warm liquid mud that I never liked much, not even as a kid. Growing up for 3 years in Alice, Texas, some 45 miles from Padre Island, my mother and the mom next door would occasionally drive us all to the seaside. We would play in the water while our mothers would safely drink beer and have a snooze, confident that those puny little caplets wouldn't do much harm to us. Except for the odd sting of a Portuguese Man-of-War (treat with lashings of Clorox), moms and kids always returned home happy.
But the Atlantic is a much riskier proposition than the Gulf. The first time I went to Robert Moses Beach this summer, with Jesse and her first visiting crony, the undertow was freakishly strong. While we watched, the life guards rescued one swimmer after another. The people being rescued weren't drowning, as far as I could tell. They had simply ventured beyond the second breaker and discovered they hadn't the buoyancy or the strength to ride a wave back to shore. They could either really give it their all, or they could flag a lifeguard down. The lifeguards, once flagged, would trot out with a rope attached to a lifesaver and reel the embarrassed swimmer back in.
The second time we went, the undertow was revealed not to be freakish at all. It was the norm, at least for the summer of '09. This time, the waves were even bigger and the lifeguards busier. The National Guard, every so often, swept the shoreline in buzzing 'copters, scanning the waves for signs of bobbing heads that the lifeguards had missed.
But still I was somewhat complacent. By the time the third trip to the beach rolled around, I figured little could go wrong. It being a sunny day, the beach was thronged by frolickers, so much so the girls had a hard time finding a spot on the shoreline where they could dive into a wave rather than a person. Once they did secure a spot, I noted that the nearest life-guard tower was no more than 60 yards away. And judging from the swimmers all around the two girls, it looked as though you'd have to be an Olympic qualifier to swim past the first breaker, where the rip-tide was.
So, the girls were safe, right? I planted my gear and started reading, returning to check on them every quarter of an hour or so. After checking on them for the forth time and finding again that that they were no more than six feet from shore (the waves were strong enough to knock you down even that close to the beach), I decided it was time for a nap. Stepping past many a lunatic just lolling out in the sun, I returned to the shade of my big beach brolly. The sound of crashing waves was lovely, loud enough to drown out the masses all around me.
A half hour later I woke up, rose up, and walked back to the spot where the girls had been playing. They weren't there. This didn't perturb me at first. I was calm. Completely calm. Really. But then my head started pounding with all the reasons why the girls' absence was ominous. They had no money, so they wouldn't have gone to the concessions stands. They're not over-endowed with initiative, so even if they had gotten thirsty, they would not have considered the possibility of the free water fountain just a few hundred yards away. And their love of nature being fairly minuscule, it was jolly unlikely they might have gone for a walk to the prettier, non-swimmable part of the beach.
So, obviously, they must have drowned.
I looked for them for another five minutes, the certainty that their bodies would never be found growing in my mind. My finger was on my cell-phone, ready to make the terrible phone call to Mike. Fortunately, some sliver of common sense was still struggling against the rising tide of panic. "Talk to the lifeguards," I told myself. "They'll have a procedure. Let them go through that procedure, then panic."
Of course, it's utterly predictable what happened next. The life-guards were duly sympathetic and happily radioed the girls' description to all the other life-guards. The sharper of the two guards said, "You're from Texas, aren't you?" I could tell what he was thinking: silly desert-dweller does not know how to behave at the beach. "Chances are," he said kindly, "they are looking for you. I know it's hard, but the best thing for you to do is to go back to your umbrella and wait for them."
I simply wasn't ready to do that. I walked up and down the beach for another twenty minutes until I finally swung back to my umbrella and found the girls there, looking exhausted. Shocked that I could have thought anything might have happened to them, they explained that they'd been walking a long time. Though they were never immersed in water for more than seconds at a time, that was enough time off their feet for the current to gradually push them several hundred yards along the shore. When they decided they were thirsty, they realized they weren't even sure what direction they had floated in. It took them awhile to find the tiger-striped towels that they recognized.
I sheepisly walked back to the guards, and told them to stop looking for the girls.
I felt pretty stupid, but I also decided that until my kid was quite a bit older, I probably wouldn't be letting myself fall asleep at the beach again. It's not far-fetched: a 14-year-old girl sees the cool kids going further out into the water, past the second breaker, but these hypothetical cool kids don't know my kid and don't even notice that she's getting into trouble. The life-guard is yakking with his girl-friend and doesn't notice her either. This is the stupid age and in some ways a teenager who doesn't know how dangerous the world can be is just as unsafe as a toddler. I have not shared this realization with my kid, of course, who feels she's ready for pilot training (I kid you not).
The other most notable day in the string of days that made up The Great Pander, involved one of the several trips we made into New York City, aka "The City." We needed to return one of Jesse's Texas buddies to her parents, who were staying in the city for a mini-break. We got the train to Penn Station, our preferred method for getting into town and emerged above ground to find the weather uncharacteristically dry and temperate for a July day. Our friends, like myself, preferred to walk when at all feasible, so we spent much of the day walking around lower Manhattan. The highlight of that walk was a visit to The High Line, a park that has been created on the bones of an old elevated train track. Raised thirty feet above the city street and planted with all the beauties of a New York summer -- russet grasses, the last of the orange day lilies, and yellow, er, asters? -- it was a reminder that every garden is a step closer to heaven.
And I never go to New York without mentally calculating how feasible it might be, over the course of a life time, to visit every cafe and restaurant that looks enticing. And a lot of them look enticing. Our friends K&J took us to one of celebrity chef Mario Bartali's restaurants, Otto. It's a family-oriented place, the least impressive, we were told, of Bartali's establishments. I can't imagine how good the top Bartali restaurants must be. (One of them is so booked up, you can't even get in unless you just turn up when someone else has canceled). In the little eatery we dined in, everything was a balance of the homey and the unusual. I never would have thought of serving just wilted rabe as an antipasto, but the dish was beautiful, oozing with garlic and olive oil and anchovy.
After that lunch and a glass of wine, we visited a strip of Indian restaurants and sari shops somewhere in the middle of Manhattan (yes, I'm still fuzzy on the geography). I'm not sure what I'd do if I lived a mere tube stop away from an Indian grocer, where I could just buy some asafoetida any time I needed it (not that I need it -- a very smelly spice preparation -- that often). I succumb to the notion, a notion that my new goddess, Nigella Lawson, says is a great fallacy: the belief that an adventurously stocked pantry will make me a decent home cook. Goddess Nigella warns her readers not to clutter their shelves with things they only use once in blue moon. So, in this new house, I've been trying to practice some restraint. The great danger I face in having too much variety is that I forget about the variety I have. Then, stuck at the store, I buy another one of whatever it is I think I might need. So, naturally, I threw out 2 jars of asafoetida just before we came to Texas.
Must do better. Tomorrow. Because I could really use some kalonji today.
