Just a Little Jog — 31

We continue on with the journal written in the COVID year of 2020. That should always be remembered when discussion turns to things such as upcoming elections. So very much has changed in five years.

Not breaking stride although the light is red, I hang a right onto Lexington Avenue and am at this moment directly across from the Lexington Square Café. I’m surprised to realize that I’ve only been there a few times in twenty years. It’s always been good, and one time it was special, so why don’t we go more often? I can’t say. You get in ruts, routines. I’ll go back with Luci for lunch sometime this spring.

The special time: It was a Sunday morning and overcast, nothing at all worth thinking about. We put on good clothes for church and drove down the Saw Mill in something between a mist and a drizzle, then through Chappaqua and up to Saint John and Saint Mary for the ten o’clock Mass. We had a brunch reservation for 11:30 at a place up the hill on the Armonk border—the restaurant might have been in New Castle or in Armonk or half in each; I could look it up, but there’s no point; it was at the top of Whippoorwill Hill, I can tell you that—and the promise of waffles would keep the kids well-enough behaved through the final blessing. They were young but not little; this occurred perhaps a dozen years ago. In the event, the three children fidgeted during Mass, standard American church behavior for all children and many adults but were pretty good. The kids kept their phones pocketed. I see that as respectful.

We exited the church, shook hands with our pastor, Monsignor Kelly, and then made sure to put our hats on as it had begun to just about rain.

Was it rain? It was that filmy, sleety strain of precipitation that meanders from the clouds and settles softly, creating lovely crystal coatings on the tree branches and foliage but a deathly ice slick on pathways and roadways. All of us, with our Westchester dress shoes ill-suited for the suddenly-New-England-and-where-are-my-Beans? conditions, nearly wound up on our asses as we picked our collective way to the minivan. At the time, I said “cabooses” not “asses” in front of the kids, and our younger daughter, then seven or so, was amused by the fun new word. She started to try out “cabooses,” gave it more than one whirl. I said, “Everyone concentrate. Don’t fall.” We all leaned on one another or held hands as we inch-by-inched across the parking lot. I wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad way to proceed. It felt like support, but if one of us went down, wouldn’t all the dominoes tumble in turn?

We made it. The children were laughing; Luci and I were not. In the Sienna, the defroster could clear the windshield but as we started moving forward, I, driving, concluded that nothing short of sand could solve the parking lot or Bedford Road. I didn’t share the assessment with my passengers, but I didn’t really need to since everyone could tell that whatever traffic there was ahead of us was barely moving at all. Most cars had pulled over. More than a couple had slid into the car in front. This was a Teflon-on-Teflon ice slick.

Nasty business, but, having grown up to the Northeast, I had been here many times before. Caroline was complainingly urging me to quit the effort and stop by the roadside, but I found I was rather enjoying myself—tap-tap the brake, light-fingers, resist the urge to grip, let the steering wheel guide itself, shift into neutral on the slightest downhill or simply because neutral feels like the place to be for the next fifty feet or so. All of my dad’s old techniques—sad to say not handed down in line with the classic American-Father-unto-American-Son transmission using good old Detroit Standard transmission, but, rather, Automatically, even on the station wagon—came instinctively back. “We’ll be fine,” I promised, wondering as I wandered.

We would be fine, although we opted to not even attempt the climb up Whippoorwill Road. Luci phoned the restaurant and cancelled. Further on Bedford Road—one mile or twenty minutes, measure it how you like—we decided that we couldn’t possibly negotiate the ten-yard decline of old Kittle Road to see if old Crabtree’s might be a brunch option.

I finally did pull over for maybe ten minutes, but no sanders passed by, so I edged back out onto Bedford Road. Caroline whined. I figured we were headed home now, but at the intersection with of Bedford and Lex—the juncture that I I just jogged through on this warmish day in 2020; the B & J’s and Dunkin’ intersection—I realized that I could not, under current conditions, plunge with my family aboard down through the innards of Mount Kisco. We would spin right into the Chase bank or lovely Ann Taylor store. Caroline would really explode.

So, we pulled into the parking lot of this here Heaven-sent super-convenient Lexington Square Café. Everyone sighed. The kids may have applauded.

We had our pick of tables and Luci and I quickly ordered Bloody Marys. I could’ve used a shooter but knew that I would be driving again soon enough. Our youngest was delighted when told that she could have both ice cream and whipped cream atop her waffles. The waitress couldn’t have been nicer. “Light crowd for a Sunday morning!” she said brightly. “My work’s easy! Happy to see someone!”

∞

That adventure transpired on a morning in, maybe, 2007 or ’08.

Today, on this later and far less daunting winter’s day, the temperature is something like sixty degrees and I am delighted that the next mile or so of Lexington Avenue is downhill, for I am all a-sweat. This hill was a no-go for the Sienna on that Sunday in ’07, but today in New Balance sneaks it’s a go-go-go. Or: as much go-going as I’m capable of. I really don’t pick up the pace by very much. I’m enjoying the rhythm of the run, which seems to be allowing time to double-task by dwelling on pleasanter things than exercise, and also: I am finding it increasingly nice these days to takes things—almost any things—down a notch or two.

I’m looking around, noticing, seeking stimulants of further memories. That might be considered good news or unfortunate information by you. (That is, if you’re still here.) But it is my modus operandi—I freely admit it—and I’m going to go with this flow until I’m home.

I’m familiar with all of these establishments on Lex, although I’m a frequenter of only some. If we have been to the Lexington Avenue Café but a handful of times, neither Luci nor I have ever been to Mardino’s, a fact that surprises me just now and would surely seem absurd to a loyal clientele that has kept the place running for longer than my family has been here. I’m generally a supporter of institutions—venerables—so it’s odd to me that we have, so far, skipped Mardino’s.

I certainly have supported another tried-and-true up here: Mount Kisco Seafood. This is an area icon, as are its neighbors Mardino’s, the Hurtado Brothers’ Mount Kisco Smokehouse across the street and the Kittle House just down the road. It’s like a little wing in the Kisco Hall of Fame; they are, much like Spencer Optical, the Tavern (Sinatra went there!) and Reader’s Digest once were: They’re part of the eternal furniture. I learned a while ago that both Mount Kisco Seafood and Mardino’s landed here on upper Lex about the same time as the other guy, maybe thirty or thirty-five years ago. The Hurtado Brothers are relative newbies, having hung out their shingle in 2000, the same year Luci and I chose this town.

Mount Kisco Seafood means, to me and to many, Special Occasions. If the Pats have made the Super Bowl yet again, we drop by and pick up some shrimp. Every Thanksgiving Eve, I happily wait in line for a parking space, then wait in line to order, then wait for our order of shrimp and oysters to be retrieved, then wait to pay. Mary Grace always accompanies me, as she does when I take Lulu for her check-ups with Dr. Dan at the Fine Animal Hospital up on Bedford Road. These are semiformal outings for her: ritualistic trips that she insists upon, versions of little local pilgrimages, like, in her old days, that 7:30-Sunday-a.m.-Mass-with-Lange’s-bagel-follow-up used to be. At Mount Kisco Seafood, while I’m waiting, our youngest picks out a couple of sushi assortments to add to our purchase, then heads for the lobster tank and asks if she can “pet” one of the crustaceans. The workers who are in constant conversation and perpetual motion throughout the shop are happy to fish her one and let her cradle it until her dad’s finished paying. At the animal hospital, Dr. Dan allows her to act as a nurse. At visit’s end, he gives her dog treats, rubber gloves and a small stethoscope so she can take care of Lulu at home. Dr. Dan is a fine vet. Whether the dog’s health figures in that assessment is immaterial. Dr. Dan is the best because he’s the one who has had the most time for my daughter. Lulu likes Dr. Dan just as little as she liked Dr. Fox.

For a decade or so the visit to Mount Kisco Seafood has marked the launch of Thanksgiving weekend just as definitively as the hanging of outdoor lights starts Christmas season. In our first years in town, we didn’t have fixed holiday plans. Our kids were young and so were my sister Gail’s, up in Massachusetts, and Luci’s sister Marie’s, down in the Manhattan. Mom (my mother) and Mrs. Rossi were still alive. In fact, my dad was still alive when the children were youngest. So, everything was more complicated, and each November and December we would sort through our obligations—school schedules and pageants, who might host Turkey Day, the need to explain Santa’s juggling of arrivals at different houses in different years—and strategize that’s year’s holiday attack.

With the eight children grown and several of them away, and with Marie and Dave’s family having been posted to London for a dozen years or more, things have gradually become simpler. In a classic season, Luci and I do Thanksgiving in Kisco, Gail and Scott do Christmas in Wellesley. Anyone who can come, from any of the three families, can come. If Marie and Dave are stateside, they join in. If a child for some reason can’t make it—ski invites, training trips—then they can’t. No recriminations. Nevertheless, we’re happy to say that, so far, everyone still tries hard to get to the table. Sometimes, a kid or two takes flights to get there, or takes flight right after dessert.

Our parents were like many post-Depression and postwar parents who, having seen how transitory life could be, wanted stability, safety and tradition for their children. Which is to say, my parents, like so many optimistic Americans who were choosing to start families after the apocalypse of the 1940s, sought not only newness but sameness, a bit of grounding, a lack of drama. Which is to say further: When it came to the holidays, my mother and father leaned on repetition. If you looked at the history of their annual holiday productions, as the years progressed, you would develop deja-viewed with such a well-ordered, reliable, entirely unsurprising progress of Big Days— only the weather might change. Thanksgiving meant Chelmsford-Billerica 10 a.m. football on a frozen field followed by the tail end of Betty White and Lorne Greene at the Macy’s Day Parade followed by the retrieval of Mom’s mother, Mama, and Mama’s sister, Margot, at their home in Lowell followed by turkey back in Chelmsford followed by warmed squash pie and cheddar cheese followed by couch naps in the presence of the Detroit Lions. Christmas meant turkey as well, with, on Christmas Eve, Mom’s not-entirely-informed nod to her French roots. She would put out a candlelit spread including various fish dishes and exotica like pate on little toasts. I, as a boy, best enjoyed Mom’s ritzy rich coquilles St. Jacques and lobster newburg, which dishes I would attack with both a fork and a spoon. How I found room for the turkey next day I do not know, but room I did find.

Luci and I do turkey on Thanksgiving, too, but Luci knows how to bring the bird from prep to carving in under three or four hours. Mom’s salmonella-friendly process saw her victim stewing in in the oven, aswim in its onion-imbued juices at a low heat, for an entire night. Mom’s motto seemed to be that whatever takes longer, or at least takes more work, must be better. God’s way, perhaps, or Julia Child’s—or someone else who, we now know scientifically, was a practitioner of food-poisoning.

Mom and Dad always set out some oysters among the holiday appetizers. In those days, Chelmsford’s fishmongers never thought to ask, “Ya want the shells crack’d heah, o’ ya do it atcha home?” Dad, strictly a twice-a-year shucker, used to battle his Cape Cod bivalves into submission with a screwdriver.

Gail and I have always included oysters in our family feasts as well. We are, after all, our parents’ kids, and I think oysters have as much to do with tribute as taste. I like oysters a lot and so does Gail; Scott and Kevin will each try one to be polite; Luci will forgo. But Mom and Dad had oysters, and so will Gail, and so will I. There’s no more foie gras, knowing what we’ve learned about the force-feeding of geese, but, still: oysters, because this is a blood tradition. Literally, in the old days: a covenant authorized in blood. Each of us—Dad, Kevin, Gail and I—was bloodied employing this “seems logical?” knife or that one, or Dad’s screwdriver technique. Now, Gail’s family and ours have the same model “easy to use oyster opener” in the utensil drawer. It takes none of the fun out of the meal, if some of the drama.

As for whose oysters are better—mine from our Mount Kisco Seafood at Thanksgiving, or Gail’s from Wellesley’s Captain Marden’s at Christmas—the jury remains out and, I’m sure, will stay hung regardless of future deliberation. I will say that Scott, Gail’s non-confrontational but always opinionated husband, has whispered to me offstage that half of the Mount Kisco dozen must always include “the ones with the wrinkly shells.” He has insisted upon a private blood oath on the matter. I can never remember if these are the “Eastern” ones called (but not containing) “Pearls” from out by Montauk or the “Westerns” from the Great South Bay off Fire Island, and so I tell the guy when making my phone order, “half smooth and half wrinkly shells.” “Wrinklies! Absolutely! You betcha!” Mary Grace and I always confirm wrinklies when picking up our brown bag, and make sure that the mollusks’ casings have been left intact so that I can make a great show of my swashbuckling (if technologically defanged) shucking skills. I would like to say that my technique was learned from my father, since that seems the sanctifying way to put it, but it wasn’t.

Mom and Dad’s Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions didn’t include a walk, but ours do. At Thanksgiving we rally the troops before oysters; at Christmas, Gail leads the way after nightfall so we can see the house lights of her so-called Poet’s Corner district. Kevin enjoys the Thanksgiving walks better because he’s always been an off-trail perambulator—in personality, in spirit and in practice. He likes hills and trees much better than neighborhoods, therefore our troop troops on Thanksgiving morning to the top of Captain Merritt’s Hill. There’s a thin trail through the woods on the backside and Kevin annually offers his opinion that a couple of cleared slopes down towards Target and the rest of the small the Mount Kisco Commons mall would make for a fine little ski area. Some years during this hike, we pick our way back down on early-season ice. Sometimes we can proceed lightly and carefree. Soon enough, we’re back at the intersection of Emery Street and Mountain Avenue, where Kevin wonders anew whatever happened to the senior home, not to mention all of its senior citizens. Year after year, Luci and I have no answer to this, and we all head down Emery and home to the oysters. The menu, the Christmas lights, our annual answer to Kevin about the old folks: all hallowed traditions by now. I look forward to revisiting them in 2020 even as I sit here in springtime.

Seven months from today, it is hoped on a day as fine as today, we will all gather and rehash the year. How it went, how the recent Election went, how the Sox fared and how the Pats are faring. Then we’ll see the kids off as they zoom to Vermont’s ski slopes and Floridian pools. We senior citizens will hit the hay.