In Praise of Serendipity
and finding the right book at the right time
Last week,
asked me to to name a life-changing book I had recently read. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t think of one. I could think of books I’ve loved and books that mattered to me when I was young, and some things I’ve recently read and liked, but no book that has changed my life now, at the ripe old age of 62. (You can read Alicia’s interview with me next Wednesday on ).I’ve been chewing on this for days. Here’s where I landed. To me, life is like a book, made up of chapters that together weave their way into a complete and hopefully satisfying story. This far into the narrative, I’m not expecting anything that is inconsistent with the character I have been developing for decades. I’m the sum of my experiences and, though I am open to and planning on having more novel experiences, I expect these will enhance rather than change my life.
To put it in foodie terms, the building of life experiences is like layering flavors into a satisfying slow-cooking stew that you know and hopefully love. It usually gets better with age.
How about you? Read anything life-changing lately? Tell us in the comments, please.
That said, lately I’ve been in a reading slump, uncharacteristically starting and abandoning books. If ever there was a time to be transported, this is it. But I fear I’ve done damage to my attention span because of the distractions offered by my iPhone. I’m also worried that reading on a Kindle, which is handy for insomniacs like me who don’t want to disturb their partners, isn’t always conducive to losing yourself in a good book.
How do you handle reading slumps? Do you stick with a book for a certain number of pages? Do you set aside a book that’s not right for now, but will be right later on? Do you feel guilty when you abandon a book?
On the heels of tummy troubles that left me shaky and weak, I got slammed with a nasty cold. I was feeling grumpy and restless and cheated of “good days” when I read about a new antiquarian and used bookstore in my neighborhood. Too exhausted to go the gym, I decided that my Saturday exercise, and a much-needed break from the monotony of illness, would be a walk to that bookstore.
It has a charming reading room with antique upholstered chairs and a beat up leather desk and shelves of leather-bound volumes of obscure and quirky tales. For a moment I wondered who would trek to my neighborhood to buy what are clearly collector’s items. Then I decided to just give into the magic.
The main room looks like a room in the house you grew up in — bookshelves crammed with alluring titles collected over time that make for fun browsing. I poked around those shelves and remarked to the bookseller that I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d perused a bookshelf with no particular book in mind.
He was probably my age and could relate to the uncurated experiences of discovery that used to be the norm.
“Whatever happened to serendipity?” he lamented.
It’s been a year since I stopped working full time and three months since I became a full-time patient. I haven’t been able to think about the road ahead because I’ve been too busy focusing on the day-to-day —managing pesky side effects, like bloody noses, metallic mouth, and add-ons like stomachaches and colds and a stye in my eye. I guess you could say that each week’s unexpected side effect has been a kind of serendipity, just not the good fortune kind that the word is usually associated with.
I feel like one of those books that I keep starting and stopping. I am eager to get on with my story.
Chemotherapy is winding down and we are preparing for the next treatment phase - a month of daily radiation (weekends off). We had an intake appointment with another badass female doctor, a radiation oncologist. Like all the doctors on my oncology team (all women), she was confidence-inspiring. And like all those first appointments, the amount of information to digest was overwhelming.
“They’ve cut me open, they’ve poisoned me, and next they are going to burn me,” I remarked to J. “Yup,” he agreed. “We’re putting a lot of trust into this protocol.”
We laughed that the doctor said that the radiation facility is so nice that patients are often disappointed when the treatment is over, because they miss coming in every day.
Time will tell.
After that appointment, I decided that coming to terms with daily burning and learning how to hold my breath to protect my heart from radiation warranted a nice boozy lunch.
Serendipity to the rescue! Driving past Pike Place Market, I remembered that I’ve always wanted to try Matt’s in the Market, which can be hard to get into. We were early enough to score a table. Despite the dysgeusia (which my doctor friend Sam says is the official term for metal mouth taste), my catfish sandwich and seafood chowder were delicious and the glass of Sancerre made me feel like my old self.
Yet I know I will never be my old self again, because I have layered on some new experiences, visible in the scars and soon tattoos (another bonus of radiation) on my body.
But as I emerge from the all-encompassing fog of treatment, I have a growing realization that this tedious chapter is finite and it’s time to think about rekindling my future plans so that my story can continue to unfold.
Finding a tale about Portugal in the used bookstore felt like more than just serendipity. It felt like kismet. It’s time to start planning our next trip there and resume plans for the move.
The day after chemo this week, I had tea with some old friends at a neighborhood cafe. We parted ways and I set off for a long walk. Somewhere along the way, I realized my credit card was no longer in my pocket. I retraced my steps to no avail and called the cafe to see if they had the card. They didn’t, so I went back there and looked for it myself, without success. #chemobrain. On the walk home, I got a call from the cafe. Someone had found my card outside on the sidewalk and turned it in.
Not just someone. A woman I had worked with almost ten years ago, who unbeknownst to me had recently moved to my neighborhood from the opposite end of the city. Her kids go to the elementary school down the street from my house, where my kids went. We had a nice time catching up and she invited me to an impromptu gathering of 30 women (one celebrating the end of her breast cancer treatment) that night, where two more of our former colleagues would be. I was able to stop by for a half hour, drinking water and eating crackers and catching up with old friends.
Serendipity for the win!
The Best Thing I Ate Last Week (and Some Good Things I Cooked)
Rudy Lopez’s New Mexico green chile stew with pork
(check out Rudy’s real estate photography business here.)
That darn dysgeusia was really doing a number on me last week and I realized that intense flavors seemed to improve my sense of taste (looking at you, pink guava gelato).
So it was fortuitous that my friend Jennifer Lopez (yes, we call her JLo), who was scheduled to bring us our post-chemo dinner reached out a few days before and said, “I noticed you’ve had a lot of soup. Would you be interested in a stew? Yes? How spicy?”
JLo admits that her husband Rudy, a native of New Mexico, is the chef of the family, though she grated the cheese that was the chef’s kiss of the stew, and brought me lemon bars. This was just the jolt my metal-battered taste buds needed.
Rudy Lopez’s New Mexico Green Chile Stew with Pork.
Makes a large pot.
2-lb pork loin, cut into bite sized pieces
4 large potatoes, cut to various bite sizes
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
Canned whole tomatoes, 28oz. Squish the tomatoes
16-oz canned green chile or equivalent home roasted, or more if desired. Rudy says you can’t go wrong with more chile.
1 qt chicken broth or water, more if you want a thinner stew.
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat a large pot over medium high heat and add pork pieces. Cook until browned then remove to a container. Add olive oil to the pork fat, then add the onion. Cook over medium until translucent.
Add potatoes and garlic and stir, allow to cook on medium for 20 minutes, adding 1/2 cup water or broth and stirring occasionally to deglaze the pot. The longer the potatoes cook, the thicker the stew will be.
Add tomatoes with their liquid and the green chile, continue to cook for another 10-20 minutes, adding water or broth and stirring occasionally to keep from sticking.
Add the browned pork and enough liquid barely cover. Simmer for 15-20 to reduce, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Add enough liquid to cover and simmer to desired doneness. Allow to cool a bit before serving.
Like many stews it will be perfect the next day.
***
During my few bursts of energy, I did some cooking and I will once again sing the praises of
and Subscribe to them both on Substack and buy Alison’s books. Her recipes are reliable winners.I made Alison’s Semolina Cake with Lemon and Fennel from Sweet Enough. So good! I’m glad I had the foresight to put some of it in the freezer because, after several days of normal eating, metal mouth is back and that cake is going to come in handy.
It’s not
‘s fault that I gorged myself on her Brussels sprouts Hullabaloo, but I’m sure she’ll be relieved to know that I paced myself when enjoying A Personal Farro Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Granny Smith Apples, and Whole Lemon Dressing.I eat a lot of gloppy comfort food and sometimes you just need a satisfying crunch. Remember, I still have two free trial subscriptions to Emily’s hilarious Substack,
. Hit me up in the comments if you want one.
Is there anything better than a good bookstore? The last life-changing book I read was the memoir STAY TRUE by Hua Hsu. It brought back those intense first experiences with young adulthood and death, and inspired me as a writer to really (REALLY) follow the thread of those stories in my life so I can finally explain why they were so profound to me (even if just for my self-gratification).
After not reading at all during the first 2.5 years of the pandemic I’m back into it. What a joy — nothing like having a good book to lose yourself in, one you can’t wait to get back to. (I also converted back to paper books a year ago.)
I’ve been lost in memoirs lately: Stay True by Hua Hsu, Janet Malcom’s ‘Still Pictures’, ‘The Salt Path’ (Raynor Winn), ‘Lost and Found’ by Kathryn Schulz, ‘Tastes Like War’ (Grace Cho). And I just reread ‘Barbarian Days’ (William Finnegan), which could have been the most annoying, bro-iest surfer dude book in the world but is absolutely wonderful, honest, self-reflective and captivating. You don’t have to be a surfer (I’m not) to like it, but loving travel and nature help. Also reread ‘River Town’ by Peter Hessler — what a great writer he is.
The book that got me back into reading: Bewilderment by Richard Powers, and The Overstory after that.
Best of luck with your continued recovery.