L for Look

Look.  It’s one of those words that sounds like what it is commanding.  Pointing at the sky, the clipped syllable could almost be emanating from the projecting finger.  Look.

I’ve been thinking about looking lately as I’ve been struggling to get a good pair of eye glasses.  The last pair was shipped back to the US when, after two weeks of continual headaches and less than adequate vision, I gave up on the really chic frames and asked for a refund.  Which put me back at the beginning.  No glasses except the pair I had made in December 2010.  Vision is great in them, but they were beginning to show some serious signs of wear. 

Off I went in search of a Singapore eye doctor and my good friend, L, (seriously, L is her first initial, so very appropriate for today’s posting) put me onto Dr. Izaac at Paragon. Off I went for my reconnoiter.  I learned this years ago during one of my early moves.  Always visit the office before you make a commitment.  It was more than up to par, so I introduced myself and made an appointment for the following Monday. 

The doctor called me in, I explained my dilemma and the difficulty I’ve had as I get older and my glasses get more complex, and he assured me he could make a pair of spectacles that would work for me. Forty-five minutes later after a battery of tests and options – which is better, 1 or 2, 3 or 4, you know the routine – I went out to select the frames.  The doctor’s mother was visiting from LA (another L) and, with her input and the help of the optician, I found a pair that fit my face and my taste, if not my budget.  Then out came the doctor again – he approved and spent a few more minutes marking the frames.

Five days later, back I go, apprehensive, skeptical, and still a bit in shock over the cost.  Twice as much as I’d paid in the U.S. The doctor comes out to greet me, takes me back to the examining room, puts the new glasses on me, and I can see!  Yes, I can see immediately.  No blurring, no straining.  With the last pair, I had not been able to see when I first tried them on.  The optician assured me they would settle…I tried to convince myself it was true, that my brain would eventually adjust.  It never did.

I was delighted.  How had he done it?  Well, he explained, he had owned the entire process – the exam, the prescription, the frames, the fitting, the delivery.  This wasn’t the case in the U.S.  The process is fragmented – the doctor who examined me there never knows whether his prescription was made correctly or whether it worked for me in the end.  The involvement with the patient and the product from beginning to end over 30 years, Dr. Isaac explained, was a great source of learning about how to do what he does.  Imagine that – it’s about the relationship, not efficiency, not cost, not speed, not pushing product.  Improving vision by talking to the patient, understanding what works and what doesn’t and then being committed to the end product?  What a great idea!

The Industrial Revolution separated our hearts from our hands as work became fragmented, impersonal and mechanized.  How can we recapture the humanness?  Perhaps we cannot change the underlying structures, we probably don’t want to in many cases because the modern world affords us a lot of conveniences, but we can own the part of the work that is ours.  We can take pride in what we do.  We can treat one another as human beings, not customers, clients, fans, followers, headcount, or any other dehumanizing and relationship-choking terms we may put on the people we work with and serve every day. Easier said than done, I know.  But we can start by putting names to faces – the clerk in the grocery store, the teller at the bank, the janitor in the office, the weird guy who never looks up as we pass every day in the corridor on the way to the coffee room. We can start with a greeting and smile for every human being that we encounter today. We can start by looking.  There. Right there. Look.

K for Kitchen

"And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kitchen?...The scoured gleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling from hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, before which my mother bowed in perpetual homage, a fringe of sweat upon her upper lip and the fire glowing in her cheeks.”   Angela Carter

K is for my favorite room in the house.  The kitchen.  The word comes from the Latin “coquere” meaning “to cook” which in noun form becomes “coquina” and then finally, in modern English, to our beloved “kitchen.”

My earliest memories feature this bastion of nourishment, both physical and spiritual.  In the summer time, we’d be called into dinner, sometimes coming reluctantly because the kick ball game was just too much fun, other times, dashing in because our bellies were ready.  Fried chicken and spaghetti were common fare.  Or hamburgers and hotdogs.  Mac and cheese.  Mashed potatoes.  It seemed Mom was always getting ready to cook, cooking, serving or cleaning.  Oh, add canning to that – pickles and tomatoes mostly.  There was no shortage of activity in that kitchen.

Right down the sidewalk was my grandparents’ house – and another kitchen!  If there was nothing readily available for snacking at home, I could head there and look pitiful.  Mary Louise would conjure up something for me. She made the best cinnamon toast – it was the powdered sugar that made it so irresistible. 

At Thanksgiving, we would go to my aunt’s and uncle’s house – four or five of my mom’s siblings, their spouses and kids – a whole house full and then some.  It was a big old farmhouse and the kitchen was roomy enough for all those women.  And that’s where they spent most of the weekend, cooking, drinking coffee, talking, shooing the kids and the men out of their domain.

In my first home, my dad’s constant complaint was the size of the kitchen – too small.  Mom and Dad changed all that when we moved to the house on State Road 9.  The kitchen was gigantic.  It was about that same time that Mom went to work outside the home and Dad took over in the kitchen.  His experience in feeding people was in big quantities – my grandparents owned the Hope Café where he worked as a young man before going off to the Army where he was assigned to the kitchen because of this background.  His specialty dishes were made in a gigantic pot that could feed whoever showed up.  Chili.  Sauerkraut and dumplings.  Vegetable soup.  No one went home hungry from our house. 

When buying a house over the years, the kitchen was always the first consideration for Charlie and me.  The bigger the better.  Than we moved to Geneva and everything got proportionately smaller.  We learned when it comes to kitchens, size doesn’t matter.  We made lots of great memories in that efficient little Swiss kitchen.  Finding the right kitchen was a bit more difficult here in Singapore.  A lot of kitchens are very small and many have no air con.  But we’ve been blessed by a nice kitchen and, just like in the US, it’s the gathering spot whenever we entertain.

How we select our food, prepare our food, consume our food – these are sacred activities easily forgotten in our busy world.  But whenever I’m feeling homesick or low energy or just a little blue, I find an old recipe, or a new one, and start cooking.  And whenever I’m feeling especially happy and blessed, I find an old recipe, or a new one, and start cooking.  Well, full disclosure, I am the sous chef in our family.  Charlie is the chef. I typically plan the menu, do the marketing, and assist – his culinary skills far exceed mine.  But together or with friends, we have our times of fellowship and gratitude in the kitchen as we feed our bodies and souls.