April 3: So what was the best part? Was it the sun finally breaking through the clouds to illuminate the whole baseball field? Was it the enormous American flag gripped by two hundred hands undulating across the outfield to the national anthem? Or the precision flyover by the Air Force jets? The Budweiser Clydesdales? The friendly usher who remembered me from last year?
Those were all great. But my favorite thing — other than cheering baseball again in Nationals Park — was the handoff of a baseball from a Negro Leagues historian to a nonagenarian who, in the 1950s, played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, to young woman playing in the brand new Women’s Pro Baseball League (!!), and eventually to an 11-year old boy who fired an absolute strike from the mound to home plate……
Ugh. As I composed those notes, Shohei Ohtani hit a three-run homer for the Dodgers. (Put down the phone, Carol Ann; it’s a jinx.) I kept typing. Then the Nationals’ nemesis, Freddy Freedman, hit a two-run homer for the Dodgers. (I put down the phone.) The Los Angeles Dodgers were now on their way to a 13-6 victory.
(Reframe, Carol Ann. Reframe.) Golly, I saw a home run hit by Ohtani, perhaps the greatest player of our age! The Nats scored six runs! And Freddy Freedman seems like a super nice guy.
(Grrrrrr, anyway.)
April 4: Last night, my sister, my two nieces and my nephew arrived in town for Easter weekend. Kevin, Jeremiah and I welcomed them with ice cream, a few lingering cherry blossoms, and a Nats game (different day, same outcome).
We also played games — very, very loudly.
On Friday night, over beer and popcorn at our local brewery, I pulled out some dice to help the cousins decide who got first pick of the most desirable sleeping arrangements. (If I know beer is in the forecast, I carry dice.) We all ended up playing Five Dice, our family game of risk, reward, reversals of fortune and — inexplicably — relentless rooting for everyone else to achieve a successful roll. The game also involves a lot of groaning, laughing and urging other people to take outlandish risks. We nearly closed down the brewery.
Today, before jumping on the Metro for the baseball game, we played a game called Aggravation Rummy (or Irritation Rummy, or Irrigation Rummy. Don’t ask.) Again, we were outside in splendid weather. Again groaning and laughing ensued. Again, a winner was decided, but who cared?
As my niece Tara said last night after recounting a bunch of good things that happened to her that day, “. . . and I liked both beers I tasted tonight! Best day ever!
Bonus: If you’re curious about the rules for Five Dice, take a look at an old post from 2022. Seriously, all you need is five dice, a pen and some paper.
April 5: We celebrated Easter today at a table ornamented by a bouquet of fresh-cut lilacs (thank you, Honora) and lots of really good chocolate. My feast preparation was definitely on the modest side, and — yes, believe it — I actually served Pillsbury refrigerated cinnamon rolls for an impromptu dessert. (They were a big hit; apparently, no one missed my homemade rum cake.) Consequently, I was super relaxed and my very best self.
We then sat down to watch an afternoon movie, Tampopo, which may be the best movie about food ever made. Jeremiah describes it as a “ramen Western,” complete with tons of Western tropes (cooking “duels,” hokey fist fights, and strangers arriving in town to chasten the bullies and uplift the hometown striver, a widowed restaurant owner who learns to make the perfect bowl of ramen). Woven into the main story are funny, sweet and sometimes naughty vignettes celebrating the sensuous power of food and people’s myriad experiences of it. I’ve watched this movie seven or eight times and I love it more with each viewing. And everyone I coerce to join me likes it too.
Truly, after cooking all day, treat yourself to this 1985 Japanese movie. Watch it on a full stomach or, perhaps, on an empty stomach. And stay for the closing credits, where our experience of food all began.
Bonus: Here’s the trailer for Tampopo.
April 6: We inherited a glossy-leaved tropical plant from a friend, and the first spring it bloomed spectacularly. It bloomed again a year later, and again. Then, two years ago, the plant seemed destined for the compost pile.
What the heck: why not try major surgery? I cut back the few remaining leaves, cracked it out of its pot, drove a shovel through its roots, pulled apart five different root systems and planted them in five new roomy pots. They survived their first winter.
Suddenly, last spring, one of the transplants produced a flower. The rest grew more glossy leaves, but stayed green. This spring, a different transplant produced the flower you see here, with the rest dormant.
By now, I’ve deduced why the original grower wedged them all into one pot: to assure a bloom each year – from at least one of them.
I kind of like our new approach: one pot in bloom each year — preceded by a “will it/won’t it” guessing game!
April 7: Sometimes being stuck in Washington, D.C., traffic can be a tourist’s delight. Yesterday evening around dusk, after dropping my nephew at Reagan National Airport, I joined hundreds of commuters edging slowly homeward along the Potomac River. My view, however, gave me the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, a splendid blanket of red tulips tucked around a small river-side memorial, two eight-person crew shells hugging the riverbank, dozens of joggers and cyclists, and one cyclist in particular — could that be Kevin?!
This was his customary route, after all. And he had started his bike ride shortly before my own trip to the airport, so it was possible. But no: my “Find My Husband” app told me that Kevin was a mile ahead of me and pulling away. I wouldn’t see him until we both got home. But at least I’ve finally seen the views that delight him every day.
Here is one of my favorite photos, of the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Bridge, taken by Kevin on his customary sunset bike ride.
April 8: Speaking of tulips….
It turns out that when you stagger through an airport after an overnight transatlantic flight in quest of your hotel, there are definitely worse things than boarding the wrong train.
Instead of a quick ride to Amsterdam, where I would be spending the next five days before embarking on a Tulip Cruise with my friend Kathy, I took a loooong ride to Den Haag, in the opposite direction. At the end of the line, I disembarked, found the right train, and over the next 40 minutes saw the most wonderful things from my window: windmills and canals of all sizes, charming towns and snug houseboats, clusters of tiny houses surrounded by tiny gardens — and fields of tulips. Painted with an artist’s brush in wide bands of red, purple, white, pink and yellow, the fields alternated one color at a time in dozens of columns two hundred yards long.
Sure, I almost got off at another wrong station (rescued once again by other travelers), but my bleary-eyed detour proved to be the perfect welcome to the Netherlands!
April 9: Still running on fumes yesterday afternoon, I visited the Stedelijk Museum to savor its collection of modern and contemporary art. Although an enormous, gorgeous 100-shades-of-indigo painting by Barnett Newman almost induced a hallucinatory state, I’ll show you this beauty by Robert Delaunay instead.
On to the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum on Friday!
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Fashioned For Joy 