Yesterday at 5 pm. I stood across the street from the French Culinary Institute on Broadway at the corner of Broome. It's a wide, noisy street with one-way car traffic barreling toward Canal but the pedestrian traffic flows every which way. I was like a fat rock in a rushing stream with my bulging FCI-issued bag, stuffed with the uniforms I'd gotten the day before at orientation, and the notebooks and black non-slip shoes and protein bars and water bottles and band aids and Neosporin and deodorant they told us to bring too. I had my steel lock for my locker and bobby pins for my hair which would have to be hidden under a chef's hat. I clutched the double espresso I'd just gotten from Starbucks to ensure I'd make it through the next six hours on my feet and another one driving home, since all this was going to be way past my regular bedtime. I let people pass me and bump my bag when the light turned green. I wasn't ready to cross. I wanted to take in all my caffeine, but I also wanted take it ALL in.
There was the bright orange banner flying in the hot breeze that marked the building as the INTERNATIONAL CULINARY CENTER, home to The French Culinary Institute and Italian Culinary Academy. On the ground floor was L'Ecole, the school's restaurant and real-time classroom, where I'd spend the last part of my program as a working cog in the wheel of that kitchen. To the left was a few steps and a non-descript door that lead a tiny foyer and an elevator. That's it. No big impressive lobby. No sprawling, picturesque campus like the school my son attends. Still, as I tossed my cup in the corner trash and entered that modest foyer I was acutely aware of the fact that my life was about to shift in a seismic way. I was entering a world, the culinary world, not as a reality-TV spectator, but FOR REAL.
It was over 80 degrees and humid outside but indoors was not much better. Add to this the weight of my crisp new chef's jacket embroidered with my name and the FCI logo, my high-waisted checkered chef's pants, my heavy black work socks and shoes, a shin-length apron tied around my waist adding another layer and a monk-like, head hugging chef's cap plastering down my hair. My earlobes and lips squeaked out the only gasp of femininity in the whole outfit: diamond studs, tiny hoops and a bit of gloss. If not entirely sexy in the outfit, I most definitely felt hot. Sweaty hot, and this was just as I was leaving the locker room.
We wait in a holding area that leads to the many kitchens along the 4th floor. We are being issued ID cards and the last bit of "orienting" before class starts. There are 24 of us in this Tues/Thurs/Sat evening, 9-month Culinary Arts session. Five women and 19 men. I'm wondering if one of the women, an ivory-skinned red-head who is attending as an homage to her late foodie father and hopes to one day leave her disappointing fashion industry job, is over thirty. If she is, it's just barely. Otherwise everyone else is most definitely in their 20's. Except me.
I don't know everyone yet, despite the icebreaker at the orientation where we all got to say our names, where we were from and our last best meal. We hailed from Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, The Bronx, Brooklyn, one or two from the South or vaguely "out west." Names...fuggedaboutit for now. But it will be interesting to watch the personalities unfold, including my own. When I watch culinary reality shows I always wonder how I would handle it when the oil hits the pan? In the heat of the kitchen, at the height of the competition, which of the stock characters would I show myself to be? Debbie Downer? Drama Queen? Sadie Sabotage? Lacey Lazy? The Whiner, The Bullie? The Screw-Up? The Winner? Would I be the one Gordon Ramsey is secretly rooting for or can't wait to rip the coat off of? Would the public love me or hate me? Though we are not on TV here, I suspect that this kitchen we enter and inhabit for the next six weeks of Level One will cook up some dramatic dynamics and we will learn a lot about ourselves and who we are under the pressure to succeed.
Real Knives
The kitchen in divided in to six commercial grade work stations, each station has two ovens and four work areas which consist of a small stainless steel working surface and shelves, four commercial gas burners, a flat top "grill" area, and a ventilator hood. At the head of the "classroom" is a marble topped demonstration area where the Lead Chef and the Chef Instructor conduct the class. A white board is crowded with the terms we will have to learn as part of Session 1. Our Lead Chef tells us to just call him Chef X in his precise French-accented English. I read online at the FCI site that he is originally from Corsica, and has 30 years cooking experience in France and the US earning accolades along the way. He is still a working Chef by day and a molder of culinary souls by night.
I am delighted with his French accent. The lyrical lilt of it makes me feel nostalgic, for what, I don't know, since my French father was hardly the charming Maurice Chevalier type. He was more like Napoleon on steroids. But still, my childhood soundtrack was populated with the accents of my parents and relatives from France, Germany, and Belgium; Edith Piaf records played while we cleaned the house Saturday mornings, the scenes were set with jugs of wine and cloudy Pernod- and-water filled glasses. Chef X's voice, despite his warning that he was the toughest, that he would not tolerate our lateness, incomplete or unkempt uniforms, our absences, or our incompetence, made me feel like I'd come home. He calls me "Rahchelle" like my parents did and I tell him I don't mind. I try to show off and speak in French to him. I use up my limited vocabulary in a few sentences and vow to spend more time with the Rosetta Stone lessons my husband gave me for Mother's Day.
We launch into our knife kits, a multi-zippered and Velcro'd affair that could easily pass as a the kind of satchel you see movie assassins toting on their way to roof tops to pick off their targets. And indeed this one is stuffed with German engineered, high-carbon stainless steel weapons: the big chef's knife, the boning, filleting, paring, slicing and serrated knives with a sharpening "steel". Another unzipped compartment reveals a parisienne scoop (melon baller), canneleur (channel knife), kitchen scissors, trussing needle, a vegetable peeler, a rubber spatula, a wooden spatula, an offset pastry spatula, two sizes of whisks, five pastry tips, a stem thermometer, a chef's fork, a pepper mill and tongs. One more zip and there are boning tweezers, a 2-oz. ladle, another vegetable peeler, a "female" slotted spoon, a "male" whole spoon and a pastry brush. I slip out the little white card from behind the plastic window on the kit's front panel, fill in my name and phone number and slide the card back in place. I take ownership of my shiny and sharp tools of the trade.
Next there are the pans and the pots and various vessels we must be able to recognize and retrieve from the four corners of the kitchen. I'm familiar with all of them but not by the French names we have to memorize. Marmite, poele, sauteuse, rondeau, russe, sautoir, rotissoire, chinois, chinois etamine. Chef X holds up a pan and randomly calls on people to shout out the names. I go blank or get it wrong. Memorization will be a challenge. They might as well re-name menopause as MEMO-PAUSE because it's about the time you start losing all short term memory. I can remember what I ate on my third date with my fifth boyfriend but I can remember what I did with my car keys....until I open the refrigerator and see them in the butter compartment.
By now it's around 7:30 pm. I'm starting to get really hungry. The salad I had at three o'clock before I left the house is not going to get me through the night. I left my organic protein bars in the locker. I vaguely remember something from the orientation about a meal we may or may not get around 8:30. Chef X tells us we only stop to eat if the class is performing well, and on time. I make a mental note to make sure I always hide a snack in my knife kit, just in case. My lower back is aching but it's nothing compared to the pinched nerve between my shoulder blades and the ache along the bottom of my feet from standing in one spot for over two hours. There are no chairs in the kitchen. I bend over to try and stretch my back and right away Chef asks "Are you OK?" The last thing I want to project is the image of the old lady in the group who can't handle it. I straighten out, assure him I'm fine and proceed do a lot of leaning and shifting my weight from side to side to "rest."
The next hour is spent watching the chef produce a series of vegetable "taillage" or cuts into various shapes and sizes. He demonstrates with onion, leeks, carrots, cabbage, turnip and tomato. Emincer leaves an onion thinly sliced and Ciseler is a fine dice done without removing the onions core. A neat trick. Julienne, thin elegant strips that break down into smaller strips called Cheveaux or into tiny dices called Brunois; Jardinere, a thicker long stick that could also be a shorter stick called an Alumette or a cube called a Macedoine. A still thicker long stick called a Mignonette that could be broken down into a hair-thin tile Paysanne. He concasses a tomato leaving it seedless and chiffonades a cabbage leaf into ribbons. He tells us we will have to duplicate his efforts tonight, but blissfully he announces we will take a 15-minute break to eat.
During the demo our food had arrived from some other kitchen in the building...other students doing Level 3 or 4 production for our benefit and sustenance. We line up with our plates and utensils to get our portion of aromatic baked chicken breasts on the bone, roasted vegetables, potatoes with bacon and melted cheese and a salad with vinaigrette. We eat, standing at our stations. I get a chance to talk to my station partner, even if I get no relief for my back and feet.
A tall young man, of Asian descent, soft spoken, with a kind, handsome face. He asks me why I'm doing the program and I ask him the same. He's been an accountant for several years right out of college and is not happy with the work. "Since I was in high school, I pictured myself owning a restaurant. I don't think my parents are happy about my choice, but I'm 25 years old and they don't exactly have a say in it at this point. But I know they are not happy. All they think of is the money. Make a lot of money and you are a success." He looks at me directly. He's sure of what he wants to say. "I don't measure success the way they do." We chat a little more about passion and vocation...that a life lived doing work that is meaningful to you is as much a measure of success as any bank statement, if not more. The food and the conversation is satisfying. I'm refreshed in body and spirit.
We tackle our taillage, at first confused about the directions or how we are supposed work as a team. I adopt a kind of "mother hen" protectiveness over my partner giving him directions here and there, checking up on him, but soon realize he knows what he's doing better than I do and I'm lagging behind. The cuts go excruciatingly slow—no flashing knife work here. My shoulders are up around my ears and tense. I'm grazing my fingernails and coming dangerously close to trimming my fingertips. My carrots are too thick, I'm wasting too much. The Chef instructor, Mark, stops at my station and answers a question, congenially showing me how to smooth out my "steam engine" movement of the knife and use the back of the blade to achieve my cut. I do better but am still struggling. I hear Chef X shout "five minutes" and get the first taste of trying to complete a culinary task against the clock. I look at my sheet pan and samples and realize I've completely forgotten the two cuts of onion. I race to the far side of the kitchen and get an onion and attack it. I am sweating. My partner is peeling a carrot and I realize that without thinking, I stole his already peeled carrot for my cuts. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking." He tells me not to worry about it, but I'm sure he'll avoid being on my station next time around.
Real Tired
I finish my demo piles just in time as Chef X passes our station to inspect. I present. "Good, a little thick but good, this is good," he points to carrots and turnips and leeks. The onions are good too but mentions some nuances, some improvements. "Well done for the first time. You will get better."
"I hope!" I say.
"Not hope. You will, I'm telling you." With him in charge I would progress, of that he seemed to have all the confidence in the world.
We clean and pack our knives, clear and clean our stations. In the locker room I slowly change into my street clothes. When I hit the cooling night air with my bulging bag and heavy knife kit and waddle the four blocks to the parking garage, I am both overwhelmed and elated. I ask myself the question "What Have I Gotten Myself Into?" feeling both overwhelm at the enormity of what I've committed to, and awe at the fact that I'm actually here and doing it. I am bone-achingly tired and bone-deep happy. My buzz takes me through the Holland Tunnel and the hour ride home without so much as a yawn.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Fear on High Boil
I did not count on the fear.
I thought when I'd finally made the commitment, finally found the funding and signed the FCI enrollment agreement and sent it in, I'd feel more along the lines of: Relief. Anticipation. Excitement. Satisfaction. All these capitalized emotions would be buoying me up, bouncing me along the gentle wave of the weeks before I enter the Culinary Arts Program at French Culinary Institute. After all, I'd be following through on a long-simmering passion. I'd be starting a new "course" of my life. I'd be turning a new page. ( And I'd be mixing metaphors with wild abandon!)
Instead I'm feeling kind of nauseous. And scared. Very scared. What if I can't handle it?
Parts of this undertaking—like rearranging my stay-at-home mom, homemaker and writing routine to include 3 weekly evening forays into the city (an hour drive each way) for classes; like whether I'll be fit enough for the 5-hours-on-my-feet classes; like being in a class full of people likely to be at least 25+ years younger than me if not more; and worrying about having enough energy and mental acuity to pull off not only school, but my vision for the Mrs. Fabulous Feasts business I want to start after I graduate—are gnawing away at me, eroding my tenuous mid-life confidence.
As I said to my glazed-over husband during the 12th (or so) round of laments on this subject while accepting yet another a wad of tissues from him, "What if I can't become Mrs. Fabulous? What if I'm no good?" Doug wisely adapts an aspect of civil law for our relationship and exercises his Miranda rights at times like these...."the right to remain silent, for anything you say may be used against you...." He pats my hand and looks at me in a meaningful way and nods his head. Most likely he is thinking about the basketball championship games and hoping I won't want to "talk" while they are on. And it doesn't matter what he says, because even when he does tell me You'll Be Fine, and You'll Do Great and This Is Your Passion it doesn't really put out the wildfire of fear that is consuming any rational thoughts I might be trying to have on this subject.
Over the course of my life I've thrown myself off of many a cliff, dove into the unknown, taken an inordinate share of physical, emotional, spiritual risks. So...I'm asking myself..."what's up with the fear and doubt now?" I was vaguely aware that when I made the commitment to go to school that the "growth process" would begin right away, (remember est?), and not on the first day of classes. I'm beginning to understand that there is something I'll need to face to make this new phase of my life a success...some realization I may need to have in order to allow myself to be happy, satisfied, engaged...to be of service. Whatever that realization is my whole being wants to vomit just knowing it's coming. I let you know as soon as I hear the angels chorus that signals my epiphany has arrived.
Over the weekend I got a "push" along this path from the "universe" via an old college friend— a boyfriend I hadn't seen or talked to in nearly 30 years until he contacted me through Facebook. He posted a bunch of old photos from 1975 or so..our "FDU Daze." The photos brought back a rush of memories but also an odd sense of memory lapse when I saw one he posted of me when I was just 18. This younger version of me was staring straight into the camera giving, what he captioned the photo as "the look." When I looked at her, this girl in the photo, I couldn't remember her. I couldn't feel what she was feeling. I wanted badly to know her and to talk to her and hear her. She was the me that was irrepressible, unstoppable, fearless. I wanted to borrow her bravado.
One could easily say that she had the recklessness and naivete of youth, that at 18 she could still afford to be wide-eyed and optimistic. After all, risk is no risk when you have nothing to lose. But was it true? Was it merely youth that made her so confident? Was it only youthful enthusiasm that took her to New York City after college to chase her dream of becoming an actress? Was it only boundless energy and health that had her waiting tables and bartending at night then taking the dance classes, acting classes, voice lessons and endlessly making the rounds to agents offices and cattle call auditions during the day?
Or was it something else? I looked at that picture again and again over the next few days. Who were you? The 52 year-old me wanted to know. This was no Pollyanna. She was not the pampered child of doting parents who could rightfully judge the world to be a safe and generous place to pursue a dream. Her father, an Algerian immigrant, had been raging, violent and sexually abusive to her. Her mother, a German Jew, was a Nazi concentration camp survivor, whose life was populated with grievous loss, poverty, abuse, neglect and pain.
One of the first things this young "optimist" did when she graduated college at 19 was to hire a lawyer and extricate her mother (and 15-year-old sister) from her 24-year-long abusive marriage. She found her mother a job, an apartment and a new life before this young girl went on to start her own. Not much about her upbringing would lead her to believe that life would deliver her happiness on a platter, but her actions—her strong, determined, fearless actions— meant she believed she had a right to that happiness and that was willing to do what it took to make it so .
She had courage.
When my own son faced irrational night-time fears as a child I remember trying to explain to him that his fears would teach him how to be brave. They were a gift! Since he spent much of his days at the time imagining himself to be a Power Ranger or a Ninja Turtle, bravery was a commodity he was interested in. "If you aren't afraid of something, then it takes no courage to do it. It's as easy as pooping!" I could always get a laugh on toilet humor with my kids. "But if you are afraid, and you go ahead and do it anyway, then that's brave."
Somewhere in time I had courage in spite of, or maybe because of the hardships and dark secrets of my childhood. I knew what courage was and how to talk about it with my kids. So what happened? Why is fear of taking this new step, of taking on this new challenge about to derail me?
Thirty-four years after that college picture was taken that girl has discovered that sometimes, many times, her best efforts don't always take her where she wants to go.
Life doesn't always say "yes."
But I can... keep saying yes, that is. That 18-year-old me would want me to just stare this new challenge in the eye and give it "the look." And that's how I'll turn myself into Mrs. Fabulous.
I thought when I'd finally made the commitment, finally found the funding and signed the FCI enrollment agreement and sent it in, I'd feel more along the lines of: Relief. Anticipation. Excitement. Satisfaction. All these capitalized emotions would be buoying me up, bouncing me along the gentle wave of the weeks before I enter the Culinary Arts Program at French Culinary Institute. After all, I'd be following through on a long-simmering passion. I'd be starting a new "course" of my life. I'd be turning a new page. ( And I'd be mixing metaphors with wild abandon!)
Instead I'm feeling kind of nauseous. And scared. Very scared. What if I can't handle it?
Parts of this undertaking—like rearranging my stay-at-home mom, homemaker and writing routine to include 3 weekly evening forays into the city (an hour drive each way) for classes; like whether I'll be fit enough for the 5-hours-on-my-feet classes; like being in a class full of people likely to be at least 25+ years younger than me if not more; and worrying about having enough energy and mental acuity to pull off not only school, but my vision for the Mrs. Fabulous Feasts business I want to start after I graduate—are gnawing away at me, eroding my tenuous mid-life confidence.
As I said to my glazed-over husband during the 12th (or so) round of laments on this subject while accepting yet another a wad of tissues from him, "What if I can't become Mrs. Fabulous? What if I'm no good?" Doug wisely adapts an aspect of civil law for our relationship and exercises his Miranda rights at times like these...."the right to remain silent, for anything you say may be used against you...." He pats my hand and looks at me in a meaningful way and nods his head. Most likely he is thinking about the basketball championship games and hoping I won't want to "talk" while they are on. And it doesn't matter what he says, because even when he does tell me You'll Be Fine, and You'll Do Great and This Is Your Passion it doesn't really put out the wildfire of fear that is consuming any rational thoughts I might be trying to have on this subject.
Over the course of my life I've thrown myself off of many a cliff, dove into the unknown, taken an inordinate share of physical, emotional, spiritual risks. So...I'm asking myself..."what's up with the fear and doubt now?" I was vaguely aware that when I made the commitment to go to school that the "growth process" would begin right away, (remember est?), and not on the first day of classes. I'm beginning to understand that there is something I'll need to face to make this new phase of my life a success...some realization I may need to have in order to allow myself to be happy, satisfied, engaged...to be of service. Whatever that realization is my whole being wants to vomit just knowing it's coming. I let you know as soon as I hear the angels chorus that signals my epiphany has arrived.
Over the weekend I got a "push" along this path from the "universe" via an old college friend— a boyfriend I hadn't seen or talked to in nearly 30 years until he contacted me through Facebook. He posted a bunch of old photos from 1975 or so..our "FDU Daze." The photos brought back a rush of memories but also an odd sense of memory lapse when I saw one he posted of me when I was just 18. This younger version of me was staring straight into the camera giving, what he captioned the photo as "the look." When I looked at her, this girl in the photo, I couldn't remember her. I couldn't feel what she was feeling. I wanted badly to know her and to talk to her and hear her. She was the me that was irrepressible, unstoppable, fearless. I wanted to borrow her bravado.
One could easily say that she had the recklessness and naivete of youth, that at 18 she could still afford to be wide-eyed and optimistic. After all, risk is no risk when you have nothing to lose. But was it true? Was it merely youth that made her so confident? Was it only youthful enthusiasm that took her to New York City after college to chase her dream of becoming an actress? Was it only boundless energy and health that had her waiting tables and bartending at night then taking the dance classes, acting classes, voice lessons and endlessly making the rounds to agents offices and cattle call auditions during the day?
Or was it something else? I looked at that picture again and again over the next few days. Who were you? The 52 year-old me wanted to know. This was no Pollyanna. She was not the pampered child of doting parents who could rightfully judge the world to be a safe and generous place to pursue a dream. Her father, an Algerian immigrant, had been raging, violent and sexually abusive to her. Her mother, a German Jew, was a Nazi concentration camp survivor, whose life was populated with grievous loss, poverty, abuse, neglect and pain.
One of the first things this young "optimist" did when she graduated college at 19 was to hire a lawyer and extricate her mother (and 15-year-old sister) from her 24-year-long abusive marriage. She found her mother a job, an apartment and a new life before this young girl went on to start her own. Not much about her upbringing would lead her to believe that life would deliver her happiness on a platter, but her actions—her strong, determined, fearless actions— meant she believed she had a right to that happiness and that was willing to do what it took to make it so .
She had courage.
When my own son faced irrational night-time fears as a child I remember trying to explain to him that his fears would teach him how to be brave. They were a gift! Since he spent much of his days at the time imagining himself to be a Power Ranger or a Ninja Turtle, bravery was a commodity he was interested in. "If you aren't afraid of something, then it takes no courage to do it. It's as easy as pooping!" I could always get a laugh on toilet humor with my kids. "But if you are afraid, and you go ahead and do it anyway, then that's brave."
Somewhere in time I had courage in spite of, or maybe because of the hardships and dark secrets of my childhood. I knew what courage was and how to talk about it with my kids. So what happened? Why is fear of taking this new step, of taking on this new challenge about to derail me?
Thirty-four years after that college picture was taken that girl has discovered that sometimes, many times, her best efforts don't always take her where she wants to go.
Life doesn't always say "yes."
But I can... keep saying yes, that is. That 18-year-old me would want me to just stare this new challenge in the eye and give it "the look." And that's how I'll turn myself into Mrs. Fabulous.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Building Muscles
I've been going to the gym regularly for at least 30 years. I remember those brand new Nautilus machines that popped up in the health club off the lobby of my apartment building on East 22nd Street. There was that swirling seashell mechanism that hypnotized you while you were doing your leg curl reps: "You will burn off this cellulite, you will burn off this cellulite" it hummed to me and I hummed back. I'd fallen in love with the power of the workout to transform my body, and purge my mind, even if it did little for my soul. I stood across from the mirrors and clamped my butt tight and twitched my hips and marveled at my abdominal obliques sticking out from my formerly chubby belly. I was a Jew with burgeoning 6-pack. Everything, as far as I was concerned, was now possible. There was nothing in the universe I could not make malleable with my determination, my physical prowess and my health club membership. I had muscles.
And if that wasn't exactly true, if I could not always bend the universe to my bidding, if I could not somehow orchestrate a successful acting career, or make my first marriage work or figure out a way to make more money flow into my life than out, I could always, always mold my body in the gym. I'd do the cardio and this split routine of weights and I could maintain my 130 5'9" frame and look and feel years younger than the number that was my age. How I felt about myself had a lot to do with the degree to which I could turn heads when I walked into a room.
Until about 3 years ago when I noticed I was old.
And this year when I noticed I was really old. Overnight it seemed that the menopause vampire had sucked all the hormones, energy and short-term memory out of me. (Why did I come into this room? Why are my car keys in the fridge?)
And the workouts didn't make me feel in control of my body anymore. The exercise became an exercise in futility. No matter what I did in the gym or how I power-walked myself up and down the many bucolic hills in my neighborhood, I could not stop my skin from dissolving into crepe or my ass from looking like 10 lbs of cottage cheese in a 5 lb bag. My weight crept upward and would no longer retreat to lower ground even when I unleashed my Weapon of Mass Destruction: Ground Zero Carbs and Nuclear Cardio. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the gym now only reflected my shame and disgust at having somehow allowed myself to be ambushed by aging. I might as well just eat the ice cream and stop working out that hard. And that's what I did.
Sure, I went through the motions a couple of times a week. Sometimes I skipped a week. I did enough to stave off the aches and pains in my hips and shoulders and to keep the scale from approaching the dreaded number over which I could not tolerate my jeans. But I'd surrendered to inevitable aging.
Then I decided to go to culinary school.
Did you ever watch Top Chef? Iron Chef? Hell's Kitchen? These are not beauty contests. With the exception of Padma Lakshmi, everyone wears these formless trousers and comfortable shoes. The boxy chef jackets could conceal a 9-month term pregnancy. Sweat pours out from underneath schmattes tied across the contestants furrowed brows. There are no big mirrors. There may be egos, but in the end it's all about what ends up on the plate. How I looked was not going to matter. What I would need to be successful in the field was skills, determination, creativity, passion, and stamina. I had the emotional/spiritual component, without a doubt. The skills I would get at French Culinary Institute.
But the stamina and strength? I suddenly had my "raison d'etre" for going back to the gym with a vengeance. My efforts at the gym would never give me back my 70's disco-ready silhouette but I could use the dumbbells to keep my wrists strong for that cool way those chefs flipped the ingredients in the steaming saute pans. I could maintain my ridiculously low resting heart-rate and blood pressure in order to navigate the high pressure of the kitchen with grace. The shoulder presses would give me the muscle I needed for that rapid-fire chopping (maybe not that rapid...) and the roast pan lifting. The core exercises and the cardio would give me the stamina I'd need for what might be long days on my feet.
I could stay strong. I could feel powerful. I could stop saying "Oy" everytime I bent over as if I was my 86-year-old mother.
I was planning on culinary school giving me the lessons I need for a new career. But even before my first day of school I'm seeing how it's giving me some new lessons for living my life.
Let go of the superficial. It can only take you so far. Focus on inner strength. Be the best, strongest, most graceful you can be at any age. When I told my close friends and family about my decision to go to culinary school, I got an outpouring of bravos and support, but it was an email reply from my brother, six years my senior that meant the most to me. He's a seasoned freelance camera jockey working in professional sports in Florida, still holding his own in a field populated with the impossibly young. He wrote:
"Who has bigger balls than you???? I admire what you are doing! NEVER SURRENDER!!!!"
While there might need to be slight shifts in focus along the way, I don't believe I ever will.
And if that wasn't exactly true, if I could not always bend the universe to my bidding, if I could not somehow orchestrate a successful acting career, or make my first marriage work or figure out a way to make more money flow into my life than out, I could always, always mold my body in the gym. I'd do the cardio and this split routine of weights and I could maintain my 130 5'9" frame and look and feel years younger than the number that was my age. How I felt about myself had a lot to do with the degree to which I could turn heads when I walked into a room.
Until about 3 years ago when I noticed I was old.
And this year when I noticed I was really old. Overnight it seemed that the menopause vampire had sucked all the hormones, energy and short-term memory out of me. (Why did I come into this room? Why are my car keys in the fridge?)
And the workouts didn't make me feel in control of my body anymore. The exercise became an exercise in futility. No matter what I did in the gym or how I power-walked myself up and down the many bucolic hills in my neighborhood, I could not stop my skin from dissolving into crepe or my ass from looking like 10 lbs of cottage cheese in a 5 lb bag. My weight crept upward and would no longer retreat to lower ground even when I unleashed my Weapon of Mass Destruction: Ground Zero Carbs and Nuclear Cardio. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the gym now only reflected my shame and disgust at having somehow allowed myself to be ambushed by aging. I might as well just eat the ice cream and stop working out that hard. And that's what I did.
Sure, I went through the motions a couple of times a week. Sometimes I skipped a week. I did enough to stave off the aches and pains in my hips and shoulders and to keep the scale from approaching the dreaded number over which I could not tolerate my jeans. But I'd surrendered to inevitable aging.
Then I decided to go to culinary school.
Did you ever watch Top Chef? Iron Chef? Hell's Kitchen? These are not beauty contests. With the exception of Padma Lakshmi, everyone wears these formless trousers and comfortable shoes. The boxy chef jackets could conceal a 9-month term pregnancy. Sweat pours out from underneath schmattes tied across the contestants furrowed brows. There are no big mirrors. There may be egos, but in the end it's all about what ends up on the plate. How I looked was not going to matter. What I would need to be successful in the field was skills, determination, creativity, passion, and stamina. I had the emotional/spiritual component, without a doubt. The skills I would get at French Culinary Institute.
But the stamina and strength? I suddenly had my "raison d'etre" for going back to the gym with a vengeance. My efforts at the gym would never give me back my 70's disco-ready silhouette but I could use the dumbbells to keep my wrists strong for that cool way those chefs flipped the ingredients in the steaming saute pans. I could maintain my ridiculously low resting heart-rate and blood pressure in order to navigate the high pressure of the kitchen with grace. The shoulder presses would give me the muscle I needed for that rapid-fire chopping (maybe not that rapid...) and the roast pan lifting. The core exercises and the cardio would give me the stamina I'd need for what might be long days on my feet.
I could stay strong. I could feel powerful. I could stop saying "Oy" everytime I bent over as if I was my 86-year-old mother.
I was planning on culinary school giving me the lessons I need for a new career. But even before my first day of school I'm seeing how it's giving me some new lessons for living my life.
Let go of the superficial. It can only take you so far. Focus on inner strength. Be the best, strongest, most graceful you can be at any age. When I told my close friends and family about my decision to go to culinary school, I got an outpouring of bravos and support, but it was an email reply from my brother, six years my senior that meant the most to me. He's a seasoned freelance camera jockey working in professional sports in Florida, still holding his own in a field populated with the impossibly young. He wrote:
"Who has bigger balls than you???? I admire what you are doing! NEVER SURRENDER!!!!"
While there might need to be slight shifts in focus along the way, I don't believe I ever will.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Back Story Blues
So I can see that this blogging business is not much different than keeping a diary and I'm having much the same anxiety about it as I did when I was 12 and it involved a small upholstered-in-fake-leather book with an impossibly small key or when I was 23 and made efforts at what was now referred to as "journaling" in a composition notebook. My anxiety is about this: what, if anything about my life is worth recording, and once I record it how embarrassed am I going to be to read it in the future. And...how much backstory do I have to provide?
Unlike a diary, a blog is meant to be read by others, so do I have to catch everyone up with
everything that ever contributed or led to my decision to go to culinary school or do I just jump in with the present moment? Or are there no rules and I just have to "stop analyzing so much" as my dear, wise, exasperated-with-me German mother was compelled to shout at me from time to time.
So I think this is how I'll proceed. Stay in the moment, unburdened by the responsibility to write my back story here (blah, blah, blah) but if the moment requires or inspires a flashback, then so be it. I say "stay in the moment" as if I'm freakin' Eckart Tolle and I have mastered this ability to hang in present time, unattached to the outcome of things, Piaf-like in my lack of regret, but the truth is I spent 99% of my life either looking back (why did I do that? why did they do that to me?) or looking forward (someday, when I win the lotto I'll....).
So....present moment.
I'm 52 years old. (All comments about how much younger I look are welcome.)
Wife to Douglas, actor, chiropractor (willenwellness.com), loving husband whose endless belief in me and patience for my damaged-goods craziness leads me to conclude that he is a walk-in from another planet sent to study how humans react to unconditional love and support. I am his lucky case-study.
Mother to the handsome and hilarious Max Robbins, 20, currently enrolled in The Culinary Institute of America, Culinary Arts degree program, Hyde Park, NY. It was touring culinary schools with Max last summer that began this for me. Walking the halls of CIA and later, FCI, I couldn't stop my eyes from brimming over. The kitchens, the smells, the din of cooking, the hustle and concentration of the student chefs, the passion of the teachers made me feel like ET raising a glowing finger to the sky and hearing the distance call from a long-lost home.
Mother to the fierce, fiesty and fetchingly beautiful Lily Willen, 13. Honor student and incredible athlete. I am delighted with her humor, wit, insight and ability to live life so joyfully and our growing closeness as she matures... and scared out of my mind at what that maturity will bring over the next 4-5 years.
I'm enrolled in The French Culinary Institute's Culinary Arts Program beginning June 25, 2009. For nine months I'll be spending 5 hours each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings in FCI's SoHo facility training in classic French culinary technique and re-inventing myself in the process. Stay tuned.
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