Confessions of a Daughter and 5 Things I Didn't Say

My parents called last night from their retirement community near the Duke campus. They settled on Durham, N.C. after my father made it known he’d had enough of living in Greenwich Village, and my mother said that after spending several long weekends at the condo they’d purchased in Delray Beach, she wouldn’t retire in Florida.

Miss Cuker, a marriage and family counselor, had suggested North Carolina as a retirement destination. Mom has a tough time making decisions, and with Dad all too eager to make snap decisions for anybody within his line of sight, Miss Cuker served as Mom’s gut check for all the years they lived in Manhattan.

But I digress. Last night’s phone call focused primarily on an acrylic, stocking hat with a pompon that had arrived earlier in the week. Along with bills and a birthday party invitation for one of Dennis’ grandchildren, I noticed the large mailing bag with Mom’s return address. Before knowing what was inside the bag, I felt a sense of irritation.

In the interest of candor, I felt disappointment, perhaps even hurt feelings – convinced that the bag's contents would confirm that Mom’s gifts have always said more about her wants or needs than mine. A fundamentally decent person with values I admire, she and I have never been close.

The stocking hat is now buried under a pair of ski mittens on a shelf in my coat closet. Come December, when my office takes up its holiday collection of hats for the homeless, I plan to contribute this hat that Mom told me she made in the knitting group that meets every Saturday morning at her retirement home.

Be assured I do have manners, and also “rachmones” or what we Jews call compassion. Up to a point. The evening after the hat arrived, I sent Mom an e-mail thanking her for both the hat and her thoughtfulness. The charitable side of me should disclose that her heart was in the right place, saying she hoped the hat would keep me warm when it gets cold in Boston this winter.

During the course of last night’s call, Mom wanted to talk about the hat. She wanted to me to know it was acrylic and hence washable – presumably in the event I wore it so many times it became dirty. I confess that I tried the hat on just to show Dennis how unflattering it was for me, and I swear it felt scratchy enough to pass for wool.

Finally, Mom pressed me with “Do you like it?” My response was tempered by distance and the knowledge that Mom has fewer years ahead of her than behind. “It was very thoughtful of you” was all I could give her each time she repeated the question.

Among the five things I didn’t say. . .

(1) Throughout her life, Mom has been obsessed with keeping one’s head warm – even when temps are as warm as the mid-50’s. She’s convinced that failure to wear a hat can lead to earaches. Needless to say, I hate wearing a hat.

(2) The stocking hat she sent me this week reminded me of a beige one she wore in the 1960’s – long after I rejected it as too unhip for a school where every day was a fashion show. The hat had metallic bronze discs hanging from loops of yarn – exactly where other hats might have had a pompon.

(3) Yes, Boston gets cold in winter, and a friend of mine who’s big on wearing hats once told me one can lose 40 per cent of one’s body heat without a hat. If temps drop to the 20's, I wear the fur-trimmed hood on my fitted down coat, or the hood on the Patagonia jacket Dennis got me for Hanukkah one year. If I’m sure nobody I know will see me because I’m running before dawn, I might wear my polar fleece cap with ear flaps, but not a stocking hat.

(4) I still haven’t forgotten the year Mom and Dad gave me Stratego for Hanukkah. Didn’t they know I would have preferred a doll, some Nancy Drew books or even bubble bath? If they insisted on getting me something that would “improve my mind,” I would have settled for a historical biography from the Landmark series. But I hate board games and certainly never asked for Stratego.

(5) The hat that arrived a few days ago also reminded me of the gift Mom sent me sophomore year of college, the week I was hospitalized with pneumonia. Did I ask for the boxy, plaid flannel pajamas? Not to mention that the pajamas were several sizes too big because Mom is, and always has been excessively concerned about shrinkage. Florence Podolsky, the mom of my friend, Terry, arrived in my hospital room with a lovely, stylish pink nightgown trimmed with flower appliqués, wrapped in a gift box with a nice bow. How could it be that a woman who had met me just a few times knew more about my tastes than my own mom?

Five Back to School Memories

1959 – Mr. Tauschner, the principal at P.S. 196 in Forest Hills, tested me a few days before 4th grade began. As a transfer from P.S. 69 in Jackson Heights, I proved proficient in reading but deficient in math. This qualified me for the “middle” class in a school with two other 4th grade classes: one for “Intellectually Gifted Children” who considered themselves better than kids like me, and one sadly labeled the “dumb class” by kids in my class. The big difference was that when May 1 rolled around, the kids in the IGC class got to dance around a May pole of crepe paper streamers, just like the one Don and Betty Draper’s kids danced around in the last episode of Mad Men. My teacher, Mrs. Hamburger, capable and conscientious in many ways, also had a mean streak -- telling both Alvin Custin and Mitchell Polestein that they would one day be sanitation workers, except that “garbage men” was the term she used.

1968 – Independence at last! After driving through the sulfurous haze of the New Jersey Turnpike followed by what seemed like an endless series of tunnels in Pennsylvania, Dad and I arrived at a quadrangle of Pre-World War II apartments buildings, one of which was to be my dorm at the University of Pittsburgh. Dad helped me make my bed, shaking the scratchy, wool blanket into the plain, cotton blanket cover before he headed back to New York. I cried when he walked out the door. With the sounds of "Hey Jude" wafting through the halls, I sought out a few floor-mates to go out for a dinner of hamburger and fries at a local luncheonette. My roommate, a girl from rural Ohio who arrived several days later, stayed for a few months before saying she needed a more tranquil environment. Ironically, she switched to Kent State.

1970 – Having transferred to B.U. as a junior, I pondered a new future full of possibilities and the opportunity to reinvent myself. In a burst of optimism, I bought a ticket for a John Sebastian concert on campus. I loved his song, “Do You Believe in Magic?”, replaying it over and over in my head. The trolley was literally outside the door of my dorm, and I headed for the Harvard Coop, purchasing a Jimi Hendrix poster for my room, along with a “rug” that looked more like a bathmat. I’m sure these items were readily available in Kenmore Square, but Cambridge seemed a lot more sophisticated. Besides I loved traveling over the Longfellow Bridge, looking out over the Charles.

1979 – Free time for mom! With Daphne enrolled in a pre-school called The Apple Orchard, I relished the opportunity to pursue my budding career as a free-lancer for The Brookline Chronicle. Without any hesitation, my three year old leaped into the arms of a teacher posted to remove each child from the car with a warm greeting, and a comment on how lovely the child looked that morning. An only child gets very excited about having the opportunity to be with other kids – particularly when the “classroom” is a renovated red barn sited on a farm with several acres of pasture, and lots of animals, including a pig named Maple Mocha. Daphne ran off to feed the chickens without looking back. I drove down the long driveway leading back to the main road – tears streaming down my face.

1995 – Feeling terribly guilty about not having accompanied Daphne when she began her freshman year at Washington University in St. Louis, I welcomed her transfer to Barnard, determined that the drive to New York be a mother-daughter bonding experience. About a mile from home, Daphne uttered an “oh,” a signal she’d forgotten something. Despite my being compulsive about adhering to deadlines – even when the deadlines have little meaning, such as the time one is supposed to arrived at one’s Barnard dorm – I kept my mouth shut as I drove back to the house so Daphne could retrieve a desk lamp. When we arrived at school, she suggested that I wait in her room while she went to an orientation meeting. I caught the Edward Hopper show at the Whitney before rejoining my one and only for a late lunch at a falafel bar followed by a reception for moms and daughters. I drove home, comforted that I could visualize exactly where my daughter would be spending the year – close enough for me to drive up for a visit or for her to come home for a weekend.

Recapturing the Mystique of B.U.'s "700"

Photo credit: Absolute Astronomy

It’s late August in Boston and there are signs of college kids coming back to town. Walking east on Comm. Avenue early yesterday morning, I had just left the gym when I spotted kids wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Warren Towers 2009-2010.”

In an encounter that lasted just seconds, I had to tell them that I too had lived in Warren Towers, back in 1970. I assume the kids in the T-shirts were B.U. orientation leaders. No doubt they were amused to see this baby boomer – Clover brewed, Kona tall in one hand and a carton of Panera Bread bagels in the other – trying to tell them they shared something in common.

I entered B.U. as a transfer student, after determining that the odds of my finding a husband would be a lot more favorable than at the University of Pittsburgh, where it seemed that my male counterparts preferred football, beer, and fraternities to academics. Warren Towers, an 18 story dorm housing 1800 kids in three towers didn’t get its name until 1976. By that time I was happily married --with a home in nearby Brookline and a new baby named Daphne.

On the Labor Day weekend Dad drove me up to Boston in his Buick, and moved me into Warren Towers, it was simply called “700,” a reference to its location at 700 Comm. Avenue. Were it not for Wikipedia, I would have no idea that I had lived in the second biggest, non-military dorm in the country, bested only by the Jester Center at the University of Texas. I have not checked to see if there's a Facebook Group for this dorm. But given the fact that few of the women I knew in those years kept their maiden names, such a group might be useless.

Though our relationship was reasonably polite, my roommate and I had little in common. Paying for her education through a combination of work-study jobs and waitressing at the Blue Parrot in Cambridge, she came from Oswego, fancied herself a student radical, and loved going to demonstrations. With Grandma paying for my education, I felt an obligation to study hard and get good grades – at least when I wasn’t looking for a husband.

Next door to us were two gorgeous blonde, brown-eyed sisters from just outside New Haven, one of whom had a boyfriend. He sent her several pair of bikini underpants on Valentine’s Day in a year when I received not so much as a Valentine from Mom.

Also on our floor was a babe from Scarsdale named Barbara Bloom. With straight, shoulder length platinum blonde hair, dark fake eyelashes and a body to die for, she shared tales of dates with the brother of a Red Sox player, and dinners at Pier Four with her dad in town on business. She also recounted phone calls from her mom, wedded to the belief that if Barbara would just get married, any concerns about passing her courses would evaporate.

In that cast of unforgettable characters was also a girl from Flatbush named Allyn. With a Rubenesque build, magnificent red hair styled like that of Farrah Fawcett, and a mother who forever nagged her about losing weight, Allyn would tell anybody within hearing distance that she had “excellent proportions.” Clad in cashmere sweaters, gaucho pants and buttery soft leather boots, she whined that given her mom’s own weight problems, the nagging was unfair. “Yes, but I’m not looking for a husband” was her retort, at least according to Allyn.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the kids I saw yesterday with the Warren Towers T-shirts worry a lot more about figuring out how to pay for college than about finding spouses for life. But such was not the case for many of us in 1970.

The following September, I was thrilled to get a single at 700. I could look out the window in the morning and see the rowers on the Charles. At night I could see the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. With a hot pink cotton pique bedspread, a clear, vinyl blowup throw pill with a hot pink and orange bulls eye, a poster with hot pink and orange balloons that said “May Beautiful Things Happen to You Today,” and a new stereo on which I loved playing Elton John’s “Your Song,” I was on top of the world.

Less than a month later, I met a psychiatrist at a mixer in Sargent Gym, and invited him to listen to music on my new stereo. By August we were married. The intervening years brought me grad school, a career in public relations, widowhood, remarriage to a lawyer named Dennis, and more recently Daphne’s own marriage.

Before the real estate market collapsed, I would read stories about colleges developing condos near campus for baby boomer alums hoping to recapture their youth. Though I will forever be seen as a New York transplant, staying in Boston after college continues to make me feel young – despite the amused looks on the faces of those kids from Warren Towers.

What are your own experiences at "700," Warren Towers or B.U.?

Warren Towers

Pre-Birthday Open Letter to Daphne

(Photo Credit: Roberto Gonzalez)

Dear Daphne,

Your Facebook post lamenting your inability to get a Carvel, custom ice cream cake for your birthday touched me deeply – especially in the context of your profile pic showing a stunningly beautiful woman with bridal veil pulled back to reveal her large, dark eyes. Then came your e-mail saying how much you loved my birthday cards: one with a cupcake decorated with sparkles, and the other of a dog wearing glitter sunglasses, which I thought would be perfect for a daughter who has a blog called “Animal Crazy.”

Yes, I raised you to be independent, and feel proud of your accomplishments as a journalist, and also your life choices. I love Etan as a son-in-law, and take comfort in knowing that the two of you will celebrate your birthday together this weekend with a romantic stay at a historic hotel in St. Augustine. At the same time, I delight in your childlike wonder in life’s simple pleasures, including birthday cakes.

While I have no regrets in encouraging you to leave the Northeast to pursue your career, I feel sad that we won’t be together on your birthday. I’ll have to make do, reflecting on things that happened along the way:

(1) Mrs. Bernard, our neighbor from across the street, questioned my judgment about not having you wear a hat the first time I took you out in your blue, Perego coach carriage. Who wears a hat in August? Who could know the same hatless baby would one day find herself so addicted to Captain Kangaroo that she'd resist getting dressed for pre-school? Or that she would later introduce me to Mad Men and that I'd introduce her to Nurse Jackie?

(2) Grandma Pearl questioned my judgment about putting you in Pampers. She also had serious doubts about the detergent I was using to launder your stretch suits. Given my absolute lack of confidence and experience in parenting, I was defensive – lecturing her about what I’d read in parenting books. I was slightly more receptive to a specialist at Childrens Hospital Boston, the one who told me that I needed to let you select your own clothing -- even if what you mixed and matched didn't match. Based on that Coach bag you selected for this year's birthday, I can see she was right about your eventually developing your own sense of style.

(3) The first year you celebrated your birthday in Williamsburg, VA because your job took you there, I surprised you with a Death by Chocolate cake from Trellis that you could share with your colleagues in the newsroom. You would have been perfectly happy with a Carvel, non-custom ice cream cake from a supermarket. But with you living away, I wanted something that would top the Big Bird cake with sculpted butter cream feathers I’d ordered for your fourth birthday.

(4) I think it was your first year working in Orlando that I picked you up at Logan Airport. It was a sunny day with temps just in the 70’s, perfect for al fresco dining. You and I lunched on lobster rolls at the Boston Harbor Hotel – followed by a walk down to Faneuil Hall. (Was this a throwback to the days when you were just a toddler and I’d put you and your stroller in my Ford Maverick and the two of us would throw together lunch from the concessions at Quincy Market?)

(5) When you have a mom who does very little cooking, a request for a birthday dinner at home should not come as a surprise. Dan Johnson and Kyle Paine joined us for my special glazed salmon and rice pilaf, followed by a custom ice cream cake from Herrell’s in Brighton. The three of you were long since out of college, and I recently came across the pics from that party in one of my albums.

I’ve always wished you happiness on your own terms, hoping that life brings you what you want, not what I might want. A Carvel cake, custom or one from the supermarket shelf, is o.k. (I have a vague recollection of ordering one, but only at your request, for one of your birthdays during your high school years. It had chocolate crunchy stuff between layers.)

But I can’t really say I’m devastated that the Carvel store in Brookline, ironically just down the street from where Dennis and I now live, was transformed into a Dunkin Donuts. Were you back in Boston for your birthday, I know I’d try to talk you into something a bit more upscale. Perhaps an ice cream cake from JP Licks?

Love,xxxxxxooooooxxxxxxooooooxxxxxxx
Mom

What Does Home Ownership Really Mean?

“Home should be a place to build a household and a life, a respite from the heartless world, not a pot of gold.” – Thomas J. Sugrue, The Wall Street Journal, August 15-16, 2009

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article by Penn professor Thomas J. Sugrue suggesting that in light of what we know about the current foreclosure crisis, it’s high time our government stopped promoting home ownership as the ideal, while stigmatizing renters.

Until age nine, when my parents bought a row house in Forest Hills with help from my grandparents, we lived in rental apartments in Queens. In retrospect it amuses me that people in Queens, where home ownership was the exception rather than the norm, used to talk of living in a “private house,” I don’t recall any stigma about rentals, provided the rentals were in well-kept buildings.

As a nine year old in Forest Hills, I envied the kids who lived in rental apartments in buildings with balconies, uniformed doormen, and art deco lobbies. My memories include dinners at the home of an only child named Evelyn born to a beautiful blonde named Greta. Greta impressed me with her ability to exhale cigarette smoke through her nose or sometimes with a mere flick of her tongue.

The bedroom I grudgingly shared with my sister Phyllis, in our three bedroom house had two mismatched beds and one beige Steelcase desk. By contrast, Evelyn’s room had been done by an interior designer. In addition to having a Murphy bed that could swing out from the wall, the room had a wicker pole decorated with stuffed monkeys wrapped around it, and a caged parakeet.

Our house had a pine-paneled, finished basement with an enormous u-shaped banquette, a lovely bar, and indirect lighting in rainbow colors, which in theory seemed pretty cool as a play area. Still it seemed more fun playing in Evelyn’s bedroom.

Evelyn’s father was a used car dealer, and during the summers when she wasn’t sent to an expensive overnight camp, she and her mom traveled to Europe. The fact that they were renting rather than owning reflected personal choice rather than being unable to afford a house, and certainly conveyed no stigma.

My parents sold the house after I got married and Phyllis went off to Bryn Mawr. Like many empty nesters in Queens, their dream was living in Manhattan. Although their house sold within a week, they swore they would never buy again because they loved the freedom of being able to move at will. They lived in that first Greenwich Village apartment for two years, before moving on to another with beautiful views of the Manhattan skyline and three different bridges.

I don’t think I sensed any stigma about being a renter until I began living in Boston, where renting seemed acceptable for students and newly-weds but not for families or singles with established careers. One of my dearest friends, a Bostonian through and through, constantly laments the fact that her 40 something, single son, who does very well in venture capital, chooses to split his time between two rentals. One is in Manhattan and the other overlooks the beach in Santa Monica. To hear her tell it, he’s “throwing money out the window” by renting.

As a homeowner myself, I smile knowingly when I read what Wall Street Journal columnist, Neal Templin, otherwise known as Cheapskate, or a former WSJ columnist, Jonathan Clements, have said about home ownership. Their message is that after factoring in maintenance and home improvements, home ownership should be seen as providing a place to live rather than an investment opportunity.

My friend would discount the columns because I don’t think her belief in the importance of home ownership is really about the economics. Deep down, I think she and others associate renting with shiftiness, a generalized lack of stability in one’s life, or a refusal to grow up.

We bought our first house after our landlord, Freddie, came upstairs to say he needed our apartment because his daughter was moving back home with her little boy. But I never thought of the house purchase being about anything other than needing a place to live, in a neighborhood with well-maintained homes and a good school district with easy proximity to Boston.

Home ownership, whether it’s a standalone house or a condo in a building with several other units, allows us the delusion of having control over something sacred. Though I have no plans to sell my condo, I have no expectation that it will ever sell for more than what I paid two and half years ago. Yet at the end of each workday I have the comfort of knowing I can return to a home I cherish in a neighborhood I love.

8 Reasons Why I Wouldn't Do a Vacation Home Exchange

It’s August, summer has finally come to New England, and much of the world is on vacation. Based on what I’ve been reading in the papers, a lot of people are saving money not by going to a Motel 6 or camping in tents, but by exchanging their homes with other vacationers.

Here are 8 reasons why I wouldn’t do a home exchange:

(1) My son-in-law Etan says it’s not for me. Yes, last summer his brother and sister-in-law had a good experience swapping their townhouse in Wilmington, Delaware for an apartment in Paris. But Etan was probably thinking about the time I felt grains of sand under my feet as I walked along the hardwood floors of my condo – only to remark “Doesn’t anybody shake the sand off their feet before leaving the beach?”

(2) Whenever I so much as hint to my husband Dennis that we could save money by renting a vacation condo instead of going to a hotel, he gets testy, offering his stock comment: “I’m not setting up housekeeping.” Dennis makes our bed religiously each morning, always arranging the pillows covered with white eyelet, decorative shams, and the Lily Pulitzer bolster as if expecting a visit from House Beautiful. In his mind, going on vacation gives him a respite from this task, not to mention emptying the dishwasher.

(3) Dennis and I once did a one-sided home exchange – with friends of his who insisted that we use their second home in Scottsdale. Knowing the friends were safely ensconced in the Washington area, we made every effort to be model “guests,” laundering the sheets before heading to the airport. But it didn’t feel like a vacation because I denied myself the joy of being a slob. Only a hotel stay allows for the luxury of tossing wet towels on the floor, secure in the knowledge that housekeeping will replenish them with dry ones.

(4) “In tens of thousands of exchanges, we've never had a report of a theft, malicious vandalism, or a case of someone getting to their exchange home and finding a vacant lot,” says Home Exchange® on its web site. I like the phrase “malicious vandalism” because it obviously doesn’t cover the act of a stranger brushing the back of his freshly polished shoe against one of my goldenrod, ultra-suede barrel chairs and leaving a dark mark I may or may not be able to remove, using quick dabs with a white facecloth dampened with a solution of water and Ivory Snow.

(5) For the record, Dennis and I eat meals out when we’re on vacation. As for the imaginary family living in our condo, I’d probably anticipate them leaving me one or more of the following mementos: Droplets of maple syrup stubbornly adhering to a shelf of my refrigerator door, particles connecting grapes to woody stems on the floor of my kitchen, or heaven forbid, something that would feel sticky underfoot.

(6) Articles about home exchange frequently advise putting breakables into storage. Frankly I find it a major effort packing and unpacking the clothing, sport gear, makeup and special hair products I want on a vacation. Dennis went to a lot of trouble to find that big blue and lime green Waterford vase that complements the lime green, Venetian glass lighting fixture hanging over our dining room table, and it would be a royal pain to have to pack the thing. Not to mention having to box up the oversized Waterford bowl and vase Dennis found for the glass coffee table.

(7) Dennis recently observed that I had more than a dozen bottles of Arm & Hammer Daily Shower Cleaner stored in the laundry room, and gently suggested that I not purchase any more for at least a month or two. If you asked him, he might say that I have a fetish about not allowing mold to build up on the tile of my walk-in shower and his shower with tub. Need I say more about strangers showering and not remembering to do the right thing?

(8) The Home Exchange® web site, intending to be comforting, compares exchanging one’s home to online dating. Does this mean that prospects shave years off the age of their homes, exaggerate proximity to public transportation, or neglect to tell you that their apartment – which looks great in the online pics – is on the first or second floor, adjacent to a bar attracting loud revelers?

Julie & Julia Evoke 6 Paris Memories

Last night Dennis and I headed straight from work to a showing of Julie & Julia at the Fenway Regal. With no Red Sox game in town we quickly found a parking spot in the outdoor lot at the Landmark Center, and even had a few minutes to grab a bite.

Bound for a film about fine French cuisine, I enjoyed the irony of dining on a strawberry/banana Vivanno at Starbucks, accompanied by a lusciously buttery oatmeal raisin cookie. Dennis needs something to chew with his beverage, even if it’s a smoothie laced with extra protein powder. Still feeling hungry, I wandered into Panera Bread for a toasted whole grain bagel with cream cheese.

After being subjected to more previews than we cared to see – including one about a psychopathic, killer stepfather -- the movie finally began. Seeing the scene of Julia Child and her husband, Paul, arriving in Paris in the early 1950’s to live in an apartment with a magnificent courtyard made me yearn for a Paris that no longer exists.

My own Paris experiences span a one-week stay in March 1982, followed by three week visits in ’83 and ’84. Daphne’s dad, a psychiatrist whose undergraduate years at MIT had imbued in him a love of theoretical math, got invited to participate in international roundtable discussions at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, and we got to tag along. Not nearly as glamorous as Julia’s apartment, ours was on the IHES campus on the outskirts of Paris, an easy walk to the RER station.

Of course we covered all the museums and landmarks my trusty Guide de Michelin proclaimed worthy of one's time. But here’s what I remember most vividly:

(1) Walking to the local patisserie in Bures-sur-Yvette on our first morning in Paris. It was raining hard and the trees were wondrously green. A six-year-old Daphne, clad in a red and white floral printed vinyl raincoat with matching hat, beamed as a white-haired man in a black beret, towering over all of us, insisted on kissing her hand. It was Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman, the British mathematician, eager to commence talks with her dad about catastrophe theory as a model for affect tolerance.

(2) Daily early a.m. trips to that same patisserie for freshly baked, buttery croissants for me, pan chocolate for Daphne, and brioche for her dad. Without regard for calorie counts or carbs, I began each day with at least two croissants – always willing to sample the brioche and pan chocolate as well.

(3) Frequent visits to whatever market streets Patricia Wells had recommended in her Food Lovers’ Guide to Paris. With Daphne in tow, I timed these trips for late afternoon so we could take dinner back to our apartment. The one I remember best is Rue Cler in the 7th arrondisement, probably because the man behind the counter of the charcuterie greeted us like regulars – regardless of whether I ordered the rotisserie roasted chicken with all the trimmings or the spicy lasagna laced with sausage.

(4) Visits to the playground at Luxembourg Gardens on warm, sunny days, and a site-seeing moment evoking smiles on the part of an American mom and daughter not accustomed to public displays of nudity: A five or six year old boy carefully spread his towel on the ground before stripping down to his birthday suit -- reveling in the opportunity to feel the sun on his body.

(5) Long walks along the Seine, punctuated by stops at Berthillon on the Île Saint-Louis for ice cream accompanied by a small, stainless pitcher of hot fudge the likes of which I’ve never tasted. Perhaps young children have better nutritional judgment than their moms because Daphne always opted for a dish of sorbet – pamplemousse, fraise or anana.

My Struggle with Julia Child

photo credit: WebExhibits

Julia Child is back in the news, five years after her death and at least a decade after I handed my gently worn copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II, to a man at my office. Given to describing in excruciating detail what he had cooked the night before – often using vegetables from his garden – he struck me as a worthy recipient. The truth is that despite purchasing both books at the Harvard Coop in 1972, I never actually cooked any of Julia’s recipes.

Nora Ephron’s new film, Julie and Julia, which intersperses details about the lives of Julia Child, the woman who brought French cooking to the masses with a critically acclaimed PBS series, and Julie Powell, a blogger who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Julia’s autobiography, opens tomorrow. I saw the trailer with Meryl Streep’s Julia and Amy Adams’ Julie, and I liked it. If my husband, Dennis, is amenable, we might even try for the showing near my office at 5:30 p.m.

Ah to be a 22 year old newly wed living just outside of Harvard Square in 1972, within blocks of Julia Child’s home, and literally around the corner from Julia’s butcher, Joe Savenor. Married to a psychiatrist named Jerry, I and I alone put myself under intense pressure to demonstrate that I could hold my own, making elaborate dinners for other psychiatrists and their spouses, the youngest of whom was 10 years my senior.

This was an era when being able to cook Julia’s recipes was the ultimate status symbol. The wife of one psychiatrist in our circle cooked deliciously elaborate dinners, claiming to have attended classes at Le Cordon Bleu. The kitchen of their suburban home had a big butcher block island and lots of whisks and copper pots, pans and mixing bowls hanging from hooks.

Strictly a wannabe, I went through the motions. In our tiny apartment I had a collection of Rosti plastic mixing bowls in bold, primary colors, imported from Denmark – keenly aware that copper was the gold standard for making one’s egg whites get to just the right degree of stiffness for folding into a soufflé mixture. Although I’d gotten a hand mixer as a wedding gift, I bought a wire whisk just to be au courant.

For years I found my salvation in James Beard’s American Cooking, a book Dad had given me a few days before that first marriage. Like Julia’s recipes, those in the James Beard book all called for multiple sticks of artery-clogging butter and heavy cream. But the recipes seemed a lot less pretentious than Julia’s and had fewer steps to follow.

I dutifully sliced potatoes paper thin with my Henkles chief’s knife, drizzling each layer with lots of butter, for a crispy potatoes Anna that made me feel if not proud, at least adequate. A prime rib roast or veal scallops pounded paper thin, purchased from Savenor’s of course, would send the message that I cared to serve the very best – regardless of my limited culinary skills. Completing the picture was a salad with Roquefort dressing I’d make in a Waring blender, a lemon soufflé cake with cream whipped to just the Chantilly stage, and enough crackers and Brie to serve an army.

If James Beard proved my salvation at a time when I felt The Joy of Cooking would be seen as déclassé, I still felt the need to pretend at least a nodding acquaintance with Julia. So it was that I purchased tickets for Jerry and me to see a cooking demonstration featuring Julia, James Beard, and Pierre Franey of New York Times recipe fame. All I remember of the demo was that it took place on the Harvard campus as a benefit for the Schlesinger historic cookbook collection at Radcliffe, and that James Beard, armed with a Sharpy, autographed the chief’s apron I bought at the event.

As The Boston Globe recently noted, who cooks like Julia any more? Who cooks like James Beard any more? These days I’m a lot more likely to prepare than cook.

My James Beard cookbook, literally falling apart -- with lots of handwritten recipes calling for items like canned soup tucked between the covers -- hasn’t been used in at least a decade. It has found its final resting place in the drawer of one of the end tables in my living room – along with my cookbook from the B’nai Brith of Passaic, New Jersey.

5 Tips for Successful Workplace Outings

(1) Select an island venue with limited ferry service. This will guarantee that self-important types waste what they believe to be precious minutes of their valuable time -- arriving at the dock too early amid fears of missing the boat and being perceived as screw-ups. Count on at least one of your Chicken Little colleagues asking about “contingency plans” in the event of torrential rains, blistering sunshine, high winds, or a text happy ferry captain.

(2) Hold the event on a mosquito-infested government reservation many miles away from the office, not accessible by public transportation. Unhappy campers will arrive whining about the hours they spent sitting in traffic. This outing will generate lots of after buzz, as attendees spend the next several days back at the office talking about their bug bites, fears of West Nile virus, etc. N.B. This particular outing works best when the head of your outfit has a big gut – ordinarily camouflaged by a suit -- accentuated by a snug fitting golf shirt.

(3) Hold your outing in the conference center of a local community college and hire a “facilitator” to divide the participants into four different groups based on an ersatz personality inventory. The groups can then huddle in four different corners of the room, roll their eyes, and ask: “So what?” Count on at least one colleague with delusions of superiority to query what the “facilitator” is being paid, and for goodness sakes, why?

(4) Convene a mandatory softball game. This outing requires a cheerleading H.R. manager with a long T-shirt emblazoned with Red Sox or the name of your city’s favorite team -- to be worn over Capri pants. Count on colleagues still smarting over never having been picked for the softball team during their elementary school years, or with deep-seated feelings of inferiority about poor eye-hand coordination to make snarky comments: Isn’t there important work to be done back at the office? Wouldn’t this day have been better spent as a team-building exercise painting an orphanage?

(5) Arrange for a sightseeing tour of your own city. This works beautifully if you’re lucky enough to live in a place with large bodies of water, amphibious tour buses and landmarks such as prisons or hospitals worth seeing from a different perspective. As hokey as this sounds, this outing can actually keep the misanthropes at bay – particularly when followed up by lunch at a nice restaurant.

What are your own secrets for a successful workplace summer outing? Please use the comments space to share.