She Wrote, He Wrote

CLAIRE WROTE:

Dear Veronica,

Today you are six months old. Half a year! And you’re healthy and thriving and more beautiful every day.

I remember back when I was in my prenatal yoga class how my teacher Dee used to encourage us to work on our posture. She said that once our babies arrived we would be spending all our time looking down at them, and straining our necks.

Pah, I thought. I couldn’t imagine wanting to stare at a baby all the time, even my own. But boy was she right. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked at another person as much as I’ve looked at you. Your eyelashes, your soft downy head, those apple cheeks and your soft, smooth lips.

There was a period a couple of months ago when I couldn’t stop revisiting your birth. I guess after getting to know you for a while, and after completely falling in love with you, I couldn’t believe that it was YOU in my belly all those months, especially since I was so afraid of who you might be (namely a boy).

I realized that it’s also been impossible to see you change. Each you that you are is the you that I know, and so when I look back on photos of you just after you were born, I can hardly comprehend how you’ve so swiftly become the robust and golden girl you are right now.

I hated being a parent at first. Well, there was that dreamy, hormone-fueled first couple of weeks in which all of us were in awe of each other. And then I realized that you were here to stay. And that your primary occupation would be to keep me from sleeping, or enjoying languid meals (and showers), to completely stop me from spending time by myself, to limit my drinking to only one glass or so of wine, and to teach me how to snap at your father on a regular basis (poor Greg).

And then somehow we turned that corner. Either you lightened up on a few of those things, or I just got used to them. In any case, all those lessons you were determined to teach me finally seemed to coincide with you emerging from your larvae-hood, to become a little person who was suddenly smiling and cooing at me. But I swear you never smile more at me than when I’m crying. And then I just have to smile back at you, despite my tears. Tricky, very tricky.

Life has certainly changed a lot in these last six months. I went from being a pretty carefree and adventurous young woman with plans of jetting off to this place or that at the drop off a hat, to….scratch that. I’m still feeling adventurous and hey, didn’t I already drag you off to California with me, just the two of us when you were barely 5 months old? It’s all just more challenging now and I’m not just talking about airport security.

But the truth is, that for every fancy media dinner cocktail and travel writing trip I’ve given up, there have been whole little moments (who knew poop could be projected that far??) that have been more fulfilling than even the most finely-crafted sazerac.

Your Dad and I are taking you to New Orleans in February and I can’t wait to go out into the world, just the three of us. As complicated as you are determined to make our lives, you’ve also made them the very opposite of boring. And I think that ever since I was an angsty teenager, I’ve been swearing to myself that I would not live a boring life. Maybe I should have had you years ago, huh?

Anyway, I just want to thank you for being here. I truly can’t imagine my life without you now.

The other day I was crying over what will someday be known as The Great Christmas Card Debacle of ‘09 (you are going to think we are so weird when you’re old enough to see the card) and I was missing my parents so much, and I looked down at you smiling and laughing up at me as my tears dripped onto your pajamas and I realized, as I looked into your eyes, that I have them back. My parents are in you now. And so are their parents and Greg’s parents and his siblings and my aunts and uncles and all those Boose relatives spread out across Ohio, and my dad’s weird relatives in Michigan, and wow, I thought, you are full of so many good people.

You better live up to them all, little bug. Happy six month birthday.

CLAIRE WROTE:

This past Monday Greg and I were asked to present a story about our writing partnership at a salon, in particular about SWHW. Below is what I read out loud:

In the beginning, all we did was write. I was living in Los Angeles, in a sunny little apartment by the beach. I’d quit my job to work on a book and each morning when I got up I’d make coffee and then sit down at my computer, where there was always an email from Greg waiting for me. He was living in Chicago, working some job that I never quite understood the details of, in a tall building in the Loop — something I was unable to picture since I’d never been to Chicago. I’d never met Greg either but nonetheless, his emails quickly made my day feel incomplete in their rare absence.

Both of us being writers, we’d become acquainted with each other through a website we both wrote for. It was a community of writers, this website, and so this guy, Greg Boose in Chicago, who wrote surprisingly funny vignettes about odd situations he found himself in, seemed safe. We wrote to each other about our lives in big cities, about the people we went on dates with and about nights we returned home alone. We wrote a lot about writing, about our ambitions and the ways in which words filled us up like nothing else could. These letters back and forth were addictive, each one more carefully composed than the next and each one just a bit more revealing than the last.

Truthfully, I never thought anything would come of it. I certainly didn’t think that a year and a half after beginning those emails I’d be here before you, pregnant and married to Greg Boose from Chicago who still works that same mysterious job in the Loop. But, to everyone’s amazement, including our own, something in those letters and emails took hold, perhaps proving that words are sometimes stronger than they seem.

It’s a funny thing to partner with someone. Sometimes it happens before you know it. Our partnership has almost always taken shape in the form of writing. It became automatic, before we’d even met in person, to send each other drafts of what we were working on, to use each other as editors. I would send excerpts of the book I was working on and he would send irreverent humor pieces that made laugh out loud, startling the sleeping cat in my lap.

Greg and I are different writers. His words smack of sarcasm and a sharply twisted humor. I tend towards the more introspective and reflective. Rather than make up stories, which we rarely do, both of us tend to draw observations, commenting or immersing ourselves in some situation or experience past. It was easy to read his work — easy to comment and criticize since it was so remarkably different than my own. And I suspect he felt the same way about me. Had we both been writing thoughtful essays about the shadows of our lives or absurd lists of “Yo Mama” jokes, it might have been different. There might have been a competitiveness there, or a sharper nit-pickiness that neither of us has ever displayed.

Eventually Greg and I met in person, a few months after we’d sent those first emails back and forth. The meeting took place near an empty baggage claim carousel at O’Hare airport, and I suppose that it was then and there, in a simple way, that our partnership truly began. I was fresh off a flight from Boston, having decided at the very last minute to stop in Chicago on my way home from a trip to the East Coast. Greg had been pacing the airport for over an hour and had already changed his shirt once in attempt to conceal how sweaty the whole ordeal was making him. And ever since that warm May afternoon, when I finally got to know both Greg and Chicago in person, we’ve been working together on love and life and writing…and all the other things that fall somewhere between the three of those.

Six months after I moved here I convinced Greg to start a writing project with me called She Wrote, He Wrote — a website in which we would review restaurants and events and situations from a dual perspective. I figured that given our different writing styles and varied backgrounds, something interesting might emerge. And from fancy cocktails to running mixes to surf lessons in Costa Rica, Greg and I have proven over and over, to ourselves and to our readers, exactly how two people can have the same experience yet be in two completely different places. And it’s proven to me over and over the exact strength of our partnership — that as merged as we are, as combined as our days and hours and lives seem to be, we each still live in our own world, albeit one enhanced and enriched by the other.

CLAIRE WROTE:

(She’s busy recovering from major abdominal surgery. Cyst, be gone!)

CLAIRE WROTE:

The thing about being a vegetarian (which I admittedly am only about 80% of the time) is that you end up eating a lot of side dishes. Mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, greens, salad, hunks of crusty bread, extra cheese and crackers, all because you’re in search of something filling.

Creating a complete vegetarian meal, something that feels as fulfilling as your mom’s Sunday chicken dinner, is a hard thing to do. I don’t necessarily believe that each meal needs to represent the classic protein-carbohydrate-vegetable portion plan, but when your menu is so often relegated to a sampling of side dishes, the three-portion plan starts to seem like a rare treat.

And that’s why–and I hate to say this–I was disappointed with my dining experience at Shawn McClain’s upscale vegetarian restaurant, Green Zebra. It’s not that the food wasn’t wonderful. It definitely was. Bright flavors, local and seasonal offerings, diverse ingredients. It’s just that the whole menu is arranged a series of small dishes and it made me feel like I do when I end up at a dinner party where steak is the main course: resigned to an evening of side dishes.

The way the menu works: The dishes at Green Zebra increase in size and guests are advised to kind of design their own five-course menu from offerings like fresh burrata cheese with piparras peppers and oregano, ricotta gnocchi with honey-roasted figs, potato tots with a sunny-side up egg and heirloom tomatoes. Our party of four shared these, along with some of the slightly larger small plates like the squash tortellini with purple cabbage and a mushroom popover with blue cheese and browned butter.

But as good each dish truly was, I left with a fully belly, still wanting for a meal.

CLAIRE WROTE:

It took me almost a whole week to convince Greg to spend election night downtown. He really wanted to stay home on the couch, watching the returns, yelling at the television, double-fisting his laptop and his phone, and not missing a moment of it.

I, on the other hand, wanted to be out, in the city, in Chicago, with all the thousands of other Obama supporters, whooping it up for change. I promised Greg that we’d find a cozy bar from which we could watch the footage. I advised him to wear something comfortable to work that day. I commented over and over again on what a historic night it would be and how lucky we were to be in Chicago for it. And when I scored tickets to the rally in Grant Park, he finally agreed.

The last two years (I’ve been an Obama supporter for a long time) have been a slow build to the last six months. Six months of intense obsession, of constant emails and a thousand clicks a day through all the news sites I call home. I don’t think a day has gone by in the last half year when I haven’t spoken about this election. It’s dominated my thoughts and my emotions to the point of paralyzation at times. And all because I have never so passionately believed in a leader as I have in Barack Obama. I believe in him in a way that I didn’t think my generation was capable of.

And to prove it, I’ve tried my damnedest to do my part for him this last year. I’ve given money, time, calories, words and more words in support of Barack Obama, and being there to see him win this presidential election was something that I knew I would never forget. As Greg and I left our cozy bar where we’d had dinner with friends as the early returns came in, we set out for Grant Park in awe of the streets around us. It felt like New Year’s Eve, Y2K. The streets were filled with people, filled with energy, with cheers and anticipation, and with more Barack paraphernalia than I’ve ever seen.

We stood in line for over an hour outside Grant Park, in a streaming river of people all waiting to get inside the park, to be part of this thing that we all felt part of. Cars drove by honking and waving, news traveled down the line about which states had gone blue, cheers and shouts erupting from those around us. Finally, amidst a human swarm of political passion, we slipped our way into Grant Park, crushing in amongst the thousands, all of us turning around and around, taking it all in, the crowd, the city skyline, the feeling that nothing like this had ever happened.

And just a half hour after we’d gotten inside, the giant screen showing CNN announced that Obama had taken Virginia. And then that he’d taken the presidency. I could hardly take it in. What, no fight? No contesting of ballots, or fraud, or of some other ridiculous thing? That’s it? Barack Obama has won?

Barack Obama has won.

We were all hugging and crying and the whole field tingled with something new, something no one had ever felt before, or at least hadn’t felt in a long time. My head was spinning. We’re going to end the war, I thought. People will have health care, I thought. The world will stop hating America, I thought. And then I realized how used to things I’d been, how resigned and unhopeful and uninspired I’d been these last eight years.

I’m still taking it all in. I’m still brought to tears thinking of it all, of all the different things electing Barack Obama means. I’m still taking in the idea of hope. And of what it feels like to be proud of my country and the people who live here.

CLAIRE WROTE:

Can I do it tonight? I’m about to nap a little. xx

CLAIRE WROTE:
I grew up going to dinner parties. As the only child of two much older parents who loved to entertain, I think half of my childhood was spent flouncing around the living room while my parents’ guests sipped cocktails and mingled in their Saturday night finest.

Growing up in that environment did two things for me: not only do I now love to host my own little soirees, but I’m very appreciative of the details that go into someone else doing the same. Throwing a dinner party isn’t just about the food. Even though the evening may revolve around that very thing, there are so many other factors that come into play when designing a successful get-together in your home. From the people you invite, to the lighting, the music and even the arrangement of furniture, each angle must be accounted for, otherwise your party may end up feeling a little off, like a table with one leg too short. On the other hand, there’s nothing quite like attending a truly successful dinner party. The feeling you have, upon walking out the door, still slipping your coat on, a warm glow rising up through you, a smile lingering on your face…there’s nothing quite like that.

We went one such dinner party just the other night. Andrea Newberry of the blog Forkably Hip, hosted a fantastic evening in her home in Humbolt Park with her fiance Ira on Sunday. Andrea’s blog is billed as “Slow Food for Fast Living” and uses these events to demonstrate exactly what she means by that. Sunday night’s event was deemed “Forkably Hip” and was co-hosted by fashion blog writer Amber Mortenson of Painfully Hip, thus ensuring that not only would the food be good but the guests would be fabulous (and well-dressed). The menu was French Provincial (a caramelized onion tart to begin, Coq au Vin as the main dish and a luscious dessert of plum dumplings) and Andrea had cleared out the living room, giving way to space for three long tables at which we all sat.

There was only one person that Greg somewhat knew at the party and I knew no one; the rest of the guests were a really interesting mix of magazine editors, aerial theatre performers and historical book restorers. Conversation, as well as wine flowed through the night and Andrea disappeared and reappeared throughout night, presenting us with a delectable meal. As Greg and I pulled on our coats at the end of the night and walked down the steps outside of her apartment, a smile graced both our faces — a sure sign that Andrea Newberry knows what she’s doing.

CLAIRE WROTE:
Today I officially started going out with Lanny. I haven’t been out with a boy since 6th grade which is pretty sad considering that I’m in 8th grade now. I used to like him last year. I don’t know if this is going to work though. It’s so hard to be his friend now.

And so begins the first entry in my 8th grade diary, dated Monday, May 4, 1992.

From the time I was able to put pen to paper I was writing in a journal. And I’ve held onto every single one of them. All these years, I’ve carted them from city to city, amassing even more as I continued to scribble down my thoughts and feelings in their once-blank pages. My personal collection of journals and diaries now line a tall bookshelf in our guest room. There are so many that I can’t imagine someone actually considering snooping into them.

There are too many to chose from. Where would they even start? With my 4th grade diary in which most of the stories center around my golden retriever Annie? Or how about my 6th grade diary — the year in which I vowed to wear a different outfit to school every day of the school year, resulting in dozens of fashion disasters? Or maybe my 9th grade journal which mostly consists of my poor and angst-ridden attempts at poetry? Or even my 11th grade journal all about the dramatic ups and downs of my first real boyfriend?

I thought of all these journals the first time that Greg took me to see Mortified at The Green Mill in Chicago. Billed as a “comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids,” Mortified promises that you’ll “witness adults sharing their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.” Yup, that’s the show. Real people get up on stage and read from their real adolescent diaries. And it’s one of the funniest and most heartwarming things I’ve ever experienced.

And the great thing about Mortified is that it’s really well executed. It’s not some kind of open-mic situation, as I feared the first time I went. Rather it takes place in a cool bar in Uptown, the performers (who have auditioned and been through a screening process) read on a stage, there’s a likable emcee and there’s even an opening a closing musical act called The Blue Ribbon Glee Club.

Last week was the third time I went to see Mortified and we took two of our friends, Erica and Elizabeth, with us for their first time. The show never disappoints. Each time there are different performers, different childhood sagas and lives and relationships and hurts and embarrassments, and each time I can’t help thinking about how connected we all are, even when we feel just the opposite.

This time around we heard from a girl who was obsessed with Rick Springfield and whose ultimate fantasy was to move to California and become a pizza delivery girl in the hopes that she would be able to deliver a pizza to Springfield. He’d be “wearing purple jeans and a pink top,” she wrote in her diary. We also heard from a girl who was a young Republican in 1988, writing passionate entries about her admiration for George Bush Sr. Her readings were peppered with her own ironic laughter now that she is a staunch liberal.

After that there was a guy who was torn between two girls who wrote of nothing but the existential terror that encapsulated this drama. He was followed by a woman reading from her high school diary about joining Weight Watchers (she wasn’t very good at following the point system) so that she could be skinny and pretty like all the other girls at school. Her entries elicited a lot of ohhhh’s from us girls in the audience, presumably those of us who have also wished to be the skinny, pretty girl at school. And finally, we heard from an Ani DiFranco-obsessed lesbian at Oberlin who wrote angst-filled songs about the straight girl she had a crush on.

And throughout each, I couldn’t help relate to something these people wrote. I couldn’t help but realize how much we all struggle to find ourselves, to fit in, to become who we are.

If you get the chance to see this show, I highly recommend it. It plays in different cities around the country.

CLAIRE WROTE:

The last political fundraiser I went to was for Howard Dean back in 2004. The fundraiser was in the shape of a fancy party held at director David O. Russell’s (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees) house in Beverly Hills. I was there under the pretense of working with the caterer, but really I was there to see Howard Dean.

This was before he’d lost his credibility as a candidate and he was still, in my opinion, the most interesting candidate to choose from. When he spoke at the party that night, Dean was funny and frank, his short stature giving him a kind of solid presence I hadn’t expected. David O. Russell was impulsive and strange, sitting and standing at wildly inappropriate moments throughout Dean’s speech on his manicured back patio. I stood quietly on the fringe of the small crowd in my caterer’s black pants and white button down shirt.

Last week, attending a Barack Obama fundraiser deemed “The Audacity of Beer” at The Galway Arms in Lincoln Park, was quite a different experience. Rather than spending an evening with the Hollywood elite, Greg and I joined a few friends for a laid back night of Irish ale and Obama enthusiasm. It’s certainly not hard to find Barack supporters in Chicago these days, but nonetheless it was nice to be around a large and enthusiastic group of them.

We all got something to eat downstairs before heading up to the second floor to peruse the games and tables that had been set up. There were bumper stickers and pins to be acquired, voter registration information to be gleaned, life-size George W. Bush cutouts to pin things on, George W. Bush voodoo dolls to stick pins into (all the pins, save one in his heart, were stuck in his crotch), a Dick Cheney-as-the-devil poster to pin a tail on, and lots of little games like Connect Four featuring Barack’s and McCain’s faces.

Although it wasn’t the most amazing event I’ve ever been to, it was nice to be around like-minded people. It was kind of fun to take some jabs at the soon-to-be-former administration. It was satisfying to donate money to Barack Obama’s campaign and it was great to enjoy an evening out with friends while supporting a political figure I whole-heartedly believe in.

While there’s still more I could be doing, and more I plan on doing, to support Barack Obama’s campaign, I was glad to do at least this small thing: drink beer in the name of the man I hope will run soon run this country.

So, I’ve been mostly vegetarian for the last month or 6 weeks or so and I’ve been feeling really good about it, physically and mentally. There have, however, been a couple of times in the last weeks in which I’ve strayed from a vegetable-friendly diet. One of those times was last week when Greg and I dined at Powerhouse in the West Loop. And man, did I deviate.

But here’s why: At the start of our meal, before we’d even really ordered actually, Chef Jeff Mauro came out to chat with us and tell us a little bit about himself and his vision for the menu at Powerhouse. He spoke of utilizing Chicago’s fantastic farmer’s markets and he talked about the dishes he felt really confident in on the menu, and he even had the humility to admit which ones he felt hadn’t quite found their place yet. He also talked about his dedication to food resourcefulness and to teaching his staff how to truly appreciate the produce that comes into his kitchen.

Chef Mauro looks a little like a young Edward Norton. He speaks quickly, as if he’s afraid that if he doesn’t say everything all at once, he may not get up the gumption to do it in two breaths. I liked him right away and I leaned forward in my seat, as he spoke, in rapt attention to the way he talked about his kitchen. For instance, he recounted the story of an entire pig that they brought in recently. I showed the staff how to use the entire animal, he said and he talked about the difference in seeing the animal in its full form, as opposed to fillets shrink-wrapped in plastic. His eyes glowed with respect and reverence. We even named it, he said. I had to ask. Hank, he replied. I smiled.

And I ordered it. Wild Boar Rack and Loin with Artisanal Rice Grits, Poached Farm Egg, Truffled Pecorino & Ancho Chile Sauce:

One (not all) of my issues with eating meat these days is the way in which its treated before it arrives on your plate. I just can’t stand to think about the inhumane ways in which animals are grown, kept and slaughtered, and I’d like to think that I can do my small part to keep from perpetuating this problem. Now, that may sound silly to you, but cultivating a respect and reverence for all life has become important to me.

And when I have strayed these past few weeks and eaten or cooked some form of meat, I’ve made an effort to truly think about the animal I’m preparing and ingesting. As Chef Mauro said, it’s such a different experience to just cut open a plastic package containing a bloodless chicken breast or a slab of bacon. It’s so easy not to think about the animal from which it came. It’s so easy to dismiss the life that was lived. But when Chef said that he’d even named the boar I was about to eat, I recognized a man after my own heart… or at least my palate.

And so with gusto, I ate the perfectly tender Hank with his delightfully runny poached egg and rich ancho chile sauce, and with each bite, I savored and gave thanks for the animal gracing my evening.