COOKING FOR ONE

Greetings, friends, from the Widow Standard.

I am alone now, trying to make the best of it

and experiencing unexpected blows at every turn.

When I'm not looking, a memory will jump out and
bite me.

Today, I went through a transfile of Michael's papers. It put me in touch with the vigorous younger Michael, the man I met when he was 29. So now I have this revised image and the memories that flow from it. Instead of the dependent, disabled, somewhat demented old man, the one who made messes and couldn't initiate anything, I see the man who traveled the world, who argued before many courts, including the Supreme, who had friends who adored him in all those unreachable places: Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua, and in the jails of our own great country.

Now I am thinking about him the way he was. The charmer, the totally generous and impossible Jew. The echt New Yorker.  I miss all the signs and symbols of that old fashioned New Yorker in my life. And who, in this age of homogenized culture, intersperses conversation with Yiddishisms?

He and I had the same take on people. Even recently, he recognized a jerk when he saw one. He'd look at me and we'd know. We thought the same things were funny. Even diminished, he sometimes could make a joke.  Nobody, ever, is going to tell me I look pretty.

Now that I'm cooking for one, I make all the stuff he didn't prefer: string beans and zucchini given to me by friends. Veal chop (cost a fortune) more zucchini with tomato and onion. Sea scallops with more string beans and zuccs. The refrigerator is quite empty and when I open the door it seems too bright in there. Tomorrow night: short ribs plus more string beans. I throw capers in everything. I spread the most bitter orange marmalade I can find. I eat fig paste or guava paste off a knife. Eggplant becomes a staple. Oatmeal with raisins.

I could go out to eat but not for a while. For now, I'm

sticking close to home, a place that had been a refuge and

a cage until July 02, exactly one month ago.