Brioche

It's a Saturday morning and, as is often the case, I decided to treat myself to a little piece of heaven and learn something while I'm at it.

Today's learning experience: Brioche.  The recipe I decided on is this one for Bubble Top Brioches from Bon Appetit. I love the single-serving aspect of the Parkerhouse rolls configuration. It's not the traditional shape but for my learning experience, this will do. Next time will include the fluted brioche tins and the little "head" on top.

Pulling out the cell phone out of my pocket, here's some evidence: 

Mine don't look as pretty as theirs, but holy mother of God are they heavenly. 

I have made yeast breads, biscuits, bagels, pretzels and the like before, so I was deceived by the texture of this dough. It was really difficult to overcome the temptation to add more flour, as it was so soft and sticky it just didn't look "right" or finished. But the OCD voice inside of me took hold, reminding me that the very first time you try a recipe you should follow it to the letter, so as to achieve the outcome as was meant by those who created it, only adding your own ingenuity and creativity once you've experienced the "supposed to be" version. The same voice pointed out the fact that they have you chill this dough overnight, perhaps this being the way to compensate for the gooey, pasty nature of this dough.

I'm so glad I listened to that voice, as the result would have been tougher and lacking in tenderness had I ruined it by adding more flour. Phew.

It's so worth it to bake from scratch when the outcome is this ethereal, fluffy, delicate, decadent and sinful (they tell you how many grams of fat are in one of these, which I'm still trying to figure out why I had to look at in the first place). 

 

Cake and bread came together in a tender, loving marriage with brioche as their offspring.

"Still Life with Brioche" by Edouard Manet, 1880

The Gift of Failure

Failure is an ironic phenomenon.  For something deemed so negative in the short term, it sure bestows us with some of the most positive gifts long-term. It affords us humility. It makes us stronger. It permeabilizes us to our own weaknesses. It’s a necessary part of life; without it, we grow to a state of incompleteness. In order to be truly successful in life, I believe that we need to fail.

We start young adulthood and embark on a journey to maturity filled with so many plans, so many dreams we’re so sure that we’re going to accomplish.   

With plans of college and graduate school, I carefully orchestrated a career in science, planning to go as far as necessary in my education to achieve the position of university faculty with my own research laboratory. I truly love teaching - such a position would have given me the perfect outlet, plus given me the scientific freedom to answer my own questions, satisfy my scientific curiosity, feed my intellect. Priceless.

I dreamed I would find the Romeo that every little girl dreams of finding. He would give me that wild, intoxicating feeling of butterflies in the stomach, mixed with frenzied heartbeats, trembling skin and weak, watery knees with so much as the mere thought of his name. I wanted “to have and to hold”. I envisioned “till death do us part”. I dreamed of “happily ever after”. I would give every ounce of my heart and soul to him and together we would start a family, the ultimate proof of our love for each other. Being a hopeless romantic is perhaps one of my greatest weaknesses. I always said I wanted more than one child so that they had each other once we were no longer on this earth. I couldn’t wait to be the best wife and the best mother I could possibly be. A dream.

We’re so gung-ho when we’re young. We set out to conquer the world. We’re bold, confident, so sure that we’re going to accomplish every single one of the things we set out to accomplish. And indeed, many people are lucky enough to be able to do it. But many aren’t.

My degree plans materialized only part way and therefore so did my career.  It’s not what I originally set out to do. It's just feels like a job.

My ‘to have and to hold’ plans have yet to materialize. After 7 1/2 years I have one failed marriage under my belt. I'm alone once again, still looking for “the one” with whom to go through the second part of my life. I guess I've always believed that we're not put on this earth to go through life with that kind of loneliness. Each and every single gift life gives you is so much sweeter and wonderful when it's shared with a soulmate. Every difficulty is made more bearable, every hurdle more easily overcome with that special someone, that rock.

My motherhood plans will never be, now unable to bear children. Adoption or step motherhood is my best bet, but neither would mirror my own flesh and blood.

Middle age is a crossroads. It allows you to see the obvious: one half of your life has passed, with no chance of ever recapturing any of it. But it also allows you to recapitulate, to look back, to reflect, to start fresh on the second half. How many of my plans did I actually accomplish? At how many of those plans did I fail? What am I going to do with the second half of my life?

It was a pretty hard blow to reach middle age and realize that I failed at pretty much every one of the major plans I had made in my early adulthood. The word "failure" never hit harder than at this point in my life.

But from this failure came humility. Enormous strength. From failing came wisdom. From failure came a state of completely realizing who I am as an individual. What I want, what I need, what I will and won’t put up with. I came out knowing myself better than I ever thought possible.

I don’t know that I should plan anymore. For the second half of my journey, maybe I’ll just let the chips fall where they may.  It would be nice to travel on this road with someone other than myself, but I’ll just leave it up to destiny to set that up for me. I’m tired of trying so hard to make that happen. I’ll take the journey one day at a time, for plans are just that: plans. Nothing in life is guaranteed. We only have today. We don't know a thing about tomorrow.

We’re a reflection of the road on which we’ve traveled. It has shaped us into who we are today. The past is a mirror; through it we can see what we’ve become. Failure has played a major role in making me the woman I am today.  I feel the strength, the confidence, the wisdom that were born from it.  What an irony that these gifts came from failure.  

"It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." - Bill Gates

Irreplaceable Love

Yesterday I made my annual trek to one of our local event arenas for the big dog show. For more than 15 years I have been attending this dog show cluster. Aside from having had to miss a couple of years because of way too much going on at work, I wouldn’t miss this show for the world. I always take a vacation day off and attend on Friday.

As in any other large all-breed dog show, you have your typical competitions happening simultaneously. You have the grand daddy of them all, conformation, where dogs are being judged against a breed standard devised by each breed’s national parent club and which takes into account the breed history and the old adage ‘form follows function’. Then there’s obedience, where dogs are being judged to perform a series of exercises alongside their handler (usually the owner) under a strict set of rules, without corrections or any guidance or communication from the handler other than the commands themselves. The crowd-pleaser, agility, brings together control, speed, and athletics as handler and dog are put to the test to navigate a challenging obstacle course in a specified order, following specific rules, as quickly as possible. Flyball is another fun crowd-pleaser where dogs and handlers compete as teams in a relay race to beat the clock, sending their dogs to make a mad dash over hurdles, retrieve a tennis ball and bring it back at lightning speed. Then there’s demonstrations such as frisbee, where owners show off the athletic prowess of their Frisbee-catching canine partners, and Musical Freestyle, where carefully choreographed routines between handler and dog are put to music, driving home the essence of ‘teamwork’ that so strongly resonates throughout the whole show, no matter which event you choose to watch.

Perhaps one of the biggest feasts to the eyes is the vendor area. Booths on anything and everything related to dogs and dog ownership can be found at this show! Importantly so, all incarnations of rescue organizations also set up informational booths there, and their work cannot be exulted or commended enough. But if you want to bring a few extra goodies home for your dog, or get a quirky t-shirt with which to display your pride in dog ownership, or get a great cleaner for your carpet to battle those pesky accidents, you are sure to find it here. Sometimes we find more than just the practical. There’s doggie décor, jewelry, and specialty things, like doggie art.

Many years ago one artist’s booth caught my attention, and from then on I've always made a point to stop by to see her work. I met her several times and have had the great pleasure of chatting with her. I would always come by asking “What do you have new on Dachshunds?” Depending on the answer I would walk out either disappointed or excited and with a bag in hand. However, her work is so beautiful that you can’t help but become a fan regardless of what your breed attachment is. She so beautifully captures the essence and character of the breeds. So it was with much excitement that I spotted her booth this year and picked up my step, quickly wanting to make my way over there once again.

This year it was only her husband at the booth. I made nothing of it and just started perusing the displays while he chatted with a customer. Finally that customer left and he and I were able to strike a conversation. I told him how much I enjoy coming to their booth and seeing what new work she has on Dachshunds. A sweet elderly man with a calm demeanor, he sweetly thanked me and pointed at a Dachshund piece that I already own. I told him I already have it and was wondering if she had done anything new. That’s when he shared the very sad news.

The artist passed away 2 years ago to stage-four ovarian cancer. At first I went into that initial state of shock that you go into when you hear that someone that you have known in one way or another and who you expect to see once again, has died. He went on to describe how she found out, the treatments used on her and what it was like for her. I was pleasantly surprised with his willingness to share this deeply personal information with a total stranger. Then again when you’re in dogs, no matter in what the capacity, one of the first things you learn is how much of a family the dog world is. I mentioned that I work in cancer research at a local cancer center and I think this made him want to open up further. He shared the story of a nurse that worked with them at the cancer center and that he ran into at the V.A. hospital some time later when he had to go there for medical care. As it turns out the nurse couldn’t bear the depressing nature of working in a cancer center anymore and transferred to the V.A. hospital. Getting to know the patients, developing friendships with them knowing you’re going to lose them to cancer was much more than she could bear. Indeed, it takes a very unique type of emotional strength to work in patient care at a cancer center.

At one point he became very emotional and, having difficulty fighting back the tears, he put his hand on my shoulder, stopped in mid-sentence, and said “excuse me…” while he tried to gather himself emotionally. I cannot describe how difficult it was for me to inject what strength I could into the moment, seeing how if I, too, broke down, it wasn’t going to help matters any. He was talking about the subject of Medicare, and the issues they had with them not wanting to cover an experimental treatment the doctors at the cancer center wanted to provide. The treatment was one successfully used on breast cancer and which, while tested and shown to work on ovarian cancer, was not yet accepted as standard treatment for it. The doctors felt very confident that this treatment could impact her positively. But it took a very persistent, obstinate team at the cancer center to unyieldingly fight it out with Medicare until finally the latter agreed to cover that treatment. The treatment’s impact was positive indeed – it extended her life by 1½ years. This determination to help is what made him emotional. His outpouring of gratitude couldn’t be more evident; he was overwhelmed.

As we kept on chatting I told him that I was definitely going to pick up a copy of her book, which had come out last year. It's a beautiful collection of portraits of puppies at play to which she added whimsical captions as if knowing what the puppies are thinking. It has a bit of a storybook air to it, making it so charming. You can truly see the magic of her character in this book, and what a special lady she was.

As I was paying him for the book, I asked if they had any children. They had two sons, neither one an artist. He commented on how he is asked about dating and whether he would ever consider it, and in a very strong, emotionally resounding manner, with all the conviction in the world, he shook his head and stated: “NEVER”, his head still shaking long after the word was uttered. “I mean, we were together 49 years... How can you replace that?” he explained, shrugging his shoulders, hands out as if silently begging for an answer.

I made some comment about how replacement couldn’t possibly be the goal, that if anything, it would be more about companionship. I said that, like most things in life, it would happen if and when it’s meant to happen. We have no control over that. He agreed. We chatted a little more, he bagged my book, we hugged, we said our goodbyes and I left. There weren’t enough colors of dog toys or styles of dog collars that could keep me from welling up multiple times after that as I perused the rest of the vendor booths.

I can’t get over how much beauty was left unstated in his fierce denial, in his rhetorical question. How much love, devotion, loyalty, and the sincerity with which he spoke. They made a family for each other, traveled all over the country exhibiting her artwork at the big dog shows, and he was right by her side through thick and thin right through the toughest time of her life. They stayed true to the vow, together literally until death did them part. Now he contemplates moving on, facing life's continuum. 

I can't stop thinking about that story of love, irreplaceable love. The love of loves, my dream of dreams. Meanwhile, another day goes by, another day alone, and I become more convinced that, like so many other things in life, apparently that dream, too, isn’t in the cards for me. Perhaps it has already come and gone, maybe remaining irreplaceable indeed. Who knows. After all, there's so much we cannot control.

Bon Appétit!

"Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all." - Julia Child

There aren’t enough words for me to express my deep and sincere love and admiration for this woman. I feel there isn’t any more room in my heart to love her any more than I already do. Julia Child was about so much more than fine French cuisine and cooking. To me she was about an attitude. She was the embodiment of a way of life.

When I was a teenager I watched Julia Child cooking shows on PBS. Four things in particular struck me about her. Right away was the peculiar and colorful tone to her voice. Along with that I remember thinking “wow, that lady looks to be really tall!” as she often appeared to be hunching down over those counters in her quest to cut and mix things – and at 6 feet 2 inches tall, understandably so. Thirdly I absolutely loved the fact that she made mistakes - this made her normal! While everyone else on TV these days always tries so hard to make everything look so flawless, here was this cooking show pioneer who might grab incorrect utensils, have something fall off of a dish when plating, or not land back on the pan after a flip. She would seem a little startled, but nevertheless she would simply recover, act like it was no big deal, and move right along with her recipe. But most importantly, this woman emanated an enjoyment and a passion for what she was doing so electric, so genuine, so sincere, that you couldn’t help but feel that it was part of the lesson as well.  Her teachings went way beyond “Add 2 tablespoons of butter and 3 sprigs of chopped parsley.”  She was teaching you to embrace cooking as one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Julia brilliantly said that: “Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.” Should the worthiness of pleasure be measured strictly as a ratio of time invested to enjoyment derived, where if this ratio is deemed too high to put in the effort, then engaging in that activity is automatically silliness, a waste of time? Is there no importance, no value at all to be placed in the enjoyment of the activity itself? Does that not carry any weight at all? At Le Cordon Bleu, Chef Bugnard taught Julia that "You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made” and that “Even after you eat it, it stays with you – always.”  

I propose that someone who thinks it’s too much trouble to make mousse au chocolat is someone who has yet to experience the true meaning of ecstasy.

Sometimes people travel great lengths or stand in line for multiple hours to buy tickets for a concert, sometimes camp outside overnight among strangers waiting in line for the store to open to buy something they really desire, be it the latest and greatest in electronics or the newest fad in toys for their kids. This shows that all that is necessary is the strength in will and desire and people will stop at nothing to get what they want. But somewhere along the way something happened to food preparation in our culture and cuisine has become just food, just fuel, just something to take in on the go.  Cooking as an experience worthy of respect with endless possibilities for enjoyment and pleasure has evolved into a ‘means to an end’ activity that at best is deemed as something that should be “quick and easy”. At worse, cooking has evolved into an activity considered not worth the time by some, or just too complicated by others. I cannot understand this phenomenon.

Having decided when I was in my early 20s that I was going to teach myself how to cook, I then picked up the 1975 edition of that infamous bible of American cooking, Joy of Cooking, which at the time became my encyclopedia of all things culinary. Twenty-some years later, it has followed me everywhere, its binding cracked, with multiple pages wrinkled from moisture, and its 2 red ribbon bookmarks still carefully in place. I guess I selected it over anything Julia wrote seeing how I was in America starting my life as a young adult, and after all, “When in Rome…” 

My early 20s and 30s found me pouring myself over this book. Whether it was casseroles, breads, pastries, sauces, I cooked many, many things out of “Joy”. I especially enjoyed reading the introductory portions on each section, be it on the different types of flours, or cuts of meat, or the different types of cakes.  I could not get enough of the technical know-how, and found myself steering more and more in the direction of baking as my favorite specialty. I noticed that baking would often be regarded as the “make you or break you” in cooking, considered too much of an “exact science” and enough to turn off some of today’s renowned food celebrities. Maybe from being a science geek, it is this exactness necessary in baking that was precisely what attracted me to it so much in the first place. Rolls, breads, biscuits, cakes, bagels, pretzels… I had to try it all. Every weekend was an experiment in “the home lab” which, to this day is how I refer to my kitchen.  It was with much excitement that I discovered when reading Julia Child’s “My Life In France” that she shared in the love of this scientific approach to cooking, taking care to measure, care to know about the ingredients, care to test and optimize recipes. One of the many things I adore about her.

I owe my technical start to Joy of Cooking. But I owe my respect for food to Julia Child. I owe my understanding that it’s not “just about eating” to Julia.

A dear French friend once explained how in France people dine so differently than they do in America. In America dining is all too often hurried and fast-paced, as so many other things are. You sit, are served, you eat, finish, and off you go. “In France,”, he quipped, “dining is an experience!”.  An outing to a French restaurant could easily take upwards of 3 to 4 hours, he explained.  He said people aren’t in a rush, staring at their watches, making “speed of service” one of the key criteria on which to base their opinion of the establishment. Food has the power to bring people together and take them into that magical world of pleasure and enjoyment. The French understand that. They take nothing for granted when it comes to food.

But we just can’t seem to make the time anymore. Somehow food doesn’t matter. Life has gotten so busy that priorities have shifted, and somehow extra curricular activities 1 through 14 have taken the place of preparing and enjoying food – and I’m not saying every meal should be at least a 5-course feast with lists of at least 20 ingredients. But book after book, cooking show after cooking show, it's all about how “everyone’s lives are busy”, and we need something "quick and easy" in accordance with “today’s busy schedules”.  But who created these busy schedules? I say that no one is holding anyone at gunpoint and forcing them to make this their way of life. Nobody said: “Either you involve yourself and your children in 14 different extra curricular activities or your days are numbered.” I believe that this over-involvement epidemic is completely self-imposed. I believe that every ounce of time that people claim to not have is an ounce of time that they took away from themselves. I believe that this “spreading yourself too thin” is by choice. And to each its own, I understand that. It's just a shame. After all, it was Julia herself that said: "You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients."

The thing about Julia Child is that she was about so much more than just cooking. Julia was about appreciating even the simplest things in life. She was about living life to the fullest. She was opinionated and unabashed; a real, down to earth person.  She took the time to stop and admire the world around her. She respected and appreciated people for who they were, doing so with stereotype-free eyes, with an open mind, and with such a carefree, “stop to smell the roses” attitude about her surroundings, taking nothing or no one for granted. She had such a passion for cooking perhaps so much so because she had such a passion for life itself, understanding that food is such an integral part of it.  She was so much into having fun and enjoying whatever it is that you do in life. I can relate to her personality at so many levels it’s eerily like looking into a mirror as I read about her or watch her in old videos of her shows or interviews. She had precisely that passion and that ‘joie de vivre’ which fuel every step I take every day of my life. She embodied such a wonderfully positive attitude not only about cooking, but about life.  I can't love her enough.

For The Children

It's a phrase uttered by many parents who may have contemplated divorce but have decided to stay together. A common reason to choose to work through the problems instead and stay married is "for the children". If only these parents really knew what they are doing to the children if they perpetuate a rocky, loveless marriage. 

My parents were big on sit down dinners. However, oftentimes my dad had to work late, in which case my mom would give us dinner first so that we wouldn't have to wait so long to eat. She would sometimes wait for him and they'd eat together so he wouldn't eat alone, or she would eat with us, depending on how late he'd be coming home. One evening he came home particularly late. We had already eaten and I was helping mom with kitchen cleanup while dad was in the dining room eating. I couldn't have been more than 10 years old.  While mom and I were in the kitchen cleaning, dad came in, complained about the food being too cold, and next thing I knew food was flying left and right. He threw the plate with food at my mom. There was rice all over the stove, and the plate landed on the floor. There was screaming, yelling, crying and insults flying. I had to get out of there. When the waters calmed I came back and helped clean up, all the while mom uttering a mixture of sobs and insults under her breath.

I must have been around 8 or 9 years old at the time of this one. The reason for the argument is not what I recollect. What I remember is my dad lifting the dining table, then throwing a dining chair at my mother. One of the legs of the chair happened to catch on my mother's big toe, which started bleeding profusely. I can still see my mom's screaming face in my mind, curtains of tears coming down her face, which turned red like a tomato. I remember she yelled at him every insult in the book amidst tears of pain. I must have been maybe 4 or 5 feet away from the scene when the chair flew, and was still standing by as the chaos continued to unfold. Desperate to try to make my mom feel better I suddenly thought of something:  Duchess. Duchess could make mom feel better. Duchess was one of our 2 little dogs - a little Pekingese furball, and mom's favorite. I figured that if I got her Duchess, maybe mom would stop crying and start feeling better. I spotted Duchess on the furniture, went and got her, and handed her to mom. Mom took her in her arms, hugged me and thanked me.  At that instant dad turned pale and numb. It was as if dad had totally snapped out of the trance. As if whatever demons had taken a hold of him loosened their grip entirely and the dad I knew had returned. Dad said to go get mom some bandages, and the focus turned to mom's toe.

Fighting was constant. Verbal abuse was daily. My room was right next to theirs, and I could hear the fighting through the wall. In the morning, at night.... Sometimes we'd be sitting at dinner and a fight would erupt out of nothing, or there would be no talking at all.  It was living in a constant state of tension. You never knew when the next fight would happen. Unbearable. Mom packed us to spend nights at grandma's because of a fight more times than I care to enumerate. Many times I would have to serve as the intermediary when mom and dad weren't speaking to each other - mom would need to tell dad that dinner was ready, or dad needed to ask mom something, and I was used as the "messenger". 

If someone asks me to recount my happiest childhood memory, I honestly have a very difficult time with this question. I'm sure I could come up with something, as there were some happy times, but it's not a question I can answer immediately. I really have to stop and think about it. Even when we went to Disney World there was fighting. Even when we went to the beach there was fighting. No matter what. No matter where. Fighting.

I don't know how many times they threatened each other with divorce, but it always seemed easier just to stay together. Neither one ever did anything about it and the threats never progressed from just that: empty threats. 

I remember my happiest times were my sleepovers at my friends' homes on the weekends. (Could this be the answer to the happiest childhood memories question?) I got to get away from that and enjoy fun, happy times. Better yet, I was completely relaxed and in no tension at all. I wasn't worried that there was going to be any fighting. Then Sunday afternoon would roll around and in my heart I dreaded having to call to be picked up. I had to return to the hellhole that was the endless fighting. I remember thinking "I wonder if they're talking to each other or not". 

But no day was happier than August 13, 1983. I'm forgetful about a lot of things but tend to be pretty good with important dates, and that date was huge: my flight off to college. It was important for many reasons, one of which was that finally, after all those years being raised watching the two people to whom I owed my life display so much hate and disrespect towards one another, I got to leave all of that. I swore I was never coming back. Except to visit, that is. I could not bear living like that again.

One of the reasons I felt that my first serious significant other was "the one" was just that: we never, ever fought. I remember distinctly telling him in the beginning that I wasn't going to be able to handle being yelled at, and I proceeded to explain my upbringing. Years later when I married - to a different man - one of the key reasons I was the one to file for divorce was that my ex-husband and I fought. I couldn't let history repeat itself.  

Years later I asked my mom why didn't she just leave. She had already had one divorce; she didn't want a second one. And then she uttered that infamous phrase, the phrase that I have come to resent more than any other phrase I have ever heard in my life: "I did it for you, for my children."

For us?

Thanks. Thanks for the gift of witnessing hate. Thanks for the gift of learning how couples insult one another. Thanks for the gift of the mother of all emotional scars. 

Stay married because you truly love and are in love with one another. Respect the institution and what it represents. If you're not in it for the right reasons, if things changed, if people changed, whatever the problem may be, then by all means... don't stay married. Is a loveless marriage really the example you want to give your children about what marriage is all about?

Children are so aware of what's going on. So aware. They can hear through the walls. They can read body language. They know. And they...we... do NOT forget.

I wish couples really knew what they're doing to the children when they say that they're staying together for the children.

They Don't Make Them Like Him Anymore

Sunday Morning Hypocrites

Another Sunday morning has come and gone, and the so-called good Christians of this country have concluded their weekly ritual with their families, content in knowing that in the eyes of society they are seen as "the good people of the world". They have done what's right: they have gone to church. They can go on with their day knowing that come Judgment Day, they will be seen with the most favorable of eyes by their Lord on high. They are church-going, Bible-reading, Lord-fearing, good Christians.  Exemplary members of our society, they are. They went to church.

Sadly, far too many of these so-called "good people of the world" practice such a deviant, hypocritical form of Christianity once they exit those church doors that I question what kind of God they pray to, because it sure cannot be the same God I was brought up to believe in.

I refuse to believe that my God thinks that some of us are better than others and doesn't love ALL of His children equally. I refuse to believe that my God thinks that the color of our skin makes any difference and that how we should treat each other, what jobs we should get, and what, if any, 'breaks' in life we might get should be based on that skin color, or for that matter in what country we were born. I refuse to believe that my God would send to hell some of His children because they go to bed with someone of equal gender to theirs when God Himself made them this way. I refuse to believe that my God would approve of this never-ending infatuation with guns by the political right when one of the 10 commandments is 'Thou Shall Not Kill' and we all know that there is one and only one purpose to a gun.

I believe in a fair God. A color blind God. A God that is ashamed of the way in which His children justify this out of control love affair with guns.  A God that punishes bigotry and prejudice. A God that expects His children to be honest and truthful and looks down on hypocrisy.

But no sooner do so many of these so-called Sunday morning, Bible-abiding "Christians" conclude their weekend march that they turn around and walk a path headed in such a different direction to where they claim to be coming from. How can so many members of the Christian right call themselves "Christians" and house so much hatred in their hearts towards anyone that does not think or look like they do? How can so many members of the Christian right be so self-righteous about Christianity and blatantly practice infidelity on their spouses - did they think their Sunday morning hypocritical march would make them exempt from the vow of fidelity? How can so many members of the Christian right stand on their Bible-beating soapboxes and turn a deaf ear of indifference towards anything other than their own needs and just not CARE? How can so many members of the Christian right call themselves "Christian" and then discriminate towards others on the basis of skin color or who they sleep with, as if that's any of their business, as if we aren't ALL children of God?

I guess those so-called "good" Christians can go on with their day thinking that come Judgment Day, they will be seen with the most favorable of eyes by their Lord on high. Maybe their Lord.

This is not to imply that the Christian left is in any way shape or form perfect, or that there is any level of impunity that shall be granted to it for their imperfect actions. However, a more boisterous, holier-than-thou, self-righteous group will never be found than the right. If they so exuberantly claim to be the examples of all that is correct, then it behooves them to practice what they preach instead of gathering every Sunday, distilling hypocrisy, coming out ever more inebriated than the weekend before, and being the poster children of bigotry, prejudice, hate, and all things non-Christian.

That's a totally different flavor of Christianity and a totally different God than that with which I would ever want to be associated. And boy am I ever proud of that.  The last thing I would want is to be amidst the Sunday Morning Hypocrites.

The God that I believe in is far more merciful. The God I believe in loves ALL His children equally. The God I believe in doesn't stand for bigotry, hate, social indifference, discrimination or prejudice. He's patiently witnessing all of those that make that hypocritical Sunday morning march. He's watching. 

Music

(originally written on May 10, 2011)

Some time ago I saw a treble clef pendant in a catalog with the phrase “Music is what feelings sound like” engraved on it. I had to have it. I fell in love with this phrase as I’ve been in love with music since childhood. Few things move me more than music. I wonder why that is. I wonder what is it about music that is so important to me.

I come from a somewhat musical family. From my mother’s side comes the love of singing. My uncle, a famous Latin American singer and guitarist, was awarded two Gold Records and was inducted posthumously into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame. His son, singer, composer and guitarist who followed in his father's footsteps, has acquired much fame all over Latin America and is still actively making music. And boy, you give my mother a microphone and she’ll eat it up until she loses her voice.

From my father’s side comes the love of instruments. My uncle had an orchestra when I was growing up – the same orchestra that played at my “quinceañero” in our house. I remember seeing him on tv when I was a little girl, with his then wife as the lead singer, and I recall hearing about how he played in night clubs. That kind of life took the best of him and, many years later, he decided to devote his gift to his church instead, which he does to this day along with his current wife. I believe he plays saxophone, piano, and guitar, while his wife plays bass and I think guitar as well. Fairly recently I reconnected with a cousin on Facebook who is a musician in a band. Even my dad has toyed with the Spanish guitar as an adult. He has taken lessons on and off and enjoys it. Another cousin has been a dance instructor her whole life which, while not qualifying you as one who creates music, makes you one who has "la musica por dentro" (the music inside) as we say back home.

The first instrument I ever played was the organ. My parents owned the gift department in a department store and the music department offered organ classes. My parents enrolled me and I enjoyed it, though I don't recall it lasting a very long time. I thought it was a lot of fun, with the two tiers and bajillion pedals. You had to pay attention to so much - it was complicated, and fun, but it did feel a little nerdy, even for me. We never owned one at home. Though I didn't get any in-depth instruction on reading music and such, it did give me a good technical basis for the piano. Indeed, that was the whole point - if you wanted to learn piano, it was a good idea to start with the organ.

I started taking piano lessons when I was around seven. My first teacher was this strict Cuban lady who taught me everything I know about how to read music - everything in Spanish, of course. Much to my amusement when I first came to the States I learned that here notes are letters instead of do, re, mi, etc… I thought B, C and F were grades you got at school! To this day it's extremely difficult for me to think of notes as anything other than do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. The teacher would always start class with ‘solfège’ – bless that woman for having taught me the art of solmization, rudimentary as her version might have been (after all, she wasn’t teaching me how to sing). It felt so boring to a seven year old, but a class could not start without it. After the solfège lesson came the writing lesson, with every note and clef having to be drawn perfectly on the staff.  She was such a perfectionist. Then finally we’d hit the bench, where she would select the piece to work on, and she’d patiently watch as I stumbled, fumbled and grumbled over the keys. To this day I don’t know how she got me to that first recital.

I was such a nervous wreck. I had two individual pieces – one by Chopin and a Clementi Sonatina which I adored. I could practice that one all day and all night. Then the ‘pièce de résistance’, Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers – a duet with a boy as nerdy and nervous as I was. I don’t know whose glasses were thicker. I’ll never forget my mom taking me to that boy’s house to practice – awkward! Then the little mistake that I made during my Chopin piece at the recital that probably no one in the audience caught but which, of course, resonated inside my head like bombs exploding during World War II. I walked off that stage with curtains of tears streaming down my face because I had made that little mistake. Oh was I distraught.  My parents, aunt, grandma, all kept saying “but no one could tell!”, but I knew. And it was categorically the end of the world.

My second piano teacher wasn’t as great. I didn’t care for her piano with smelly, sticky, dirty keys. She wasn’t as strict as the first one and I don’t recall solfège lessons from her. I did one recital with her but it says a lot about her impact on me the fact that I cannot even remember what my pieces were from this second recital.

I’ve always adored the piano. When college time drew near I recall throwing the name Juilliard around – not that I would have ever made it in. My dad said I probably wouldn’t make much of a serious living out of music, and that was that.

There’s a certain regal serenity and beauty in the sound from those 88 keys. I love how you can produce both delicately innocent and majestic sound from it. And so much range for harmony! It’s pure, exquisite beauty.

Thanks to the piano I had a wonderful introduction to classical music and grew up to think of it as one more type of music and not as "music for the snobs" as so many people think of it. By learning the nuances of how to play it - learning how to achieve the andantes, the fortes, the staccatos, learning about the styles of the different composers...  I grew to understand it. This was and still is an immense gift. I feel extremely lucky to have received it. To this day I wish I had at least minored in music in college. Alas, one more regret to add to the list.

A keyboard is nothing more than a very expensive guitar tuner.  I don't even like to call it an electric piano as this still brings the word 'piano' in too close proximity to it. Mine was a gift and budget and space allow me no more at the time. I can still maintain the skill of reading and playing with it, so not all is lost. But you cannot play classical the way it was intended on a keyboard. The notes may be played, and it doesn't go out of tune which is a plus, but the interpretation cannot be achieved to the level of the real thing. Whoever thinks otherwise should be institutionalized.

I did always have a secret desire to play the guitar as well. Being Hispanic, the Spanish guitar plays a prominent role in my culture. Classic guitar is breathtaking to me. The sound is mesmerizing, hypnotic and so deliciously sensual. Plus I just thought it would be great to play a portable instrument for a change. It wouldn’t be until my adulthood when I decided I was going to teach myself how to play the guitar. My father, together with his brother and wife selected my Spanish guitar for me as a Christmas gift five years ago. I named her ‘Margarita’ because her sound is beautifully sweet, and a margarita - Spanish for daisy - is a beautifully sweet flower. The electric guitar that followed, a Fender Stratocaster, is ‘Sunshine’ because she brightened my life. They joined my Casio keyboard, ‘Buddy’ - named so because the piano has always felt like a comfortable pair of slippers, like an old pal and, while not a real piano, it was the next best thing I could have at the time. I started to learn the guitar first through lessons and then by getting a couple of books and learning on my own. It’s still a work in progress.

As childish as naming my instruments may seem, I do have my reason. Guitarists will tell you that every Spanish guitar - or every acoustic, or every electric - has its own distinctive sound. The same certainly goes for pianos - even keyboards won't all sound the same. It's as if each one is an individual. So while my instruments may lack flesh and blood, I feel each one has its own heart and soul. That’s why I named them.

It’s interesting, the memories we keep from our past relationships. Whether they knew it or not, I received a gift of music from every relationship I’ve had. Short or long-lived, every significant other influenced me musically, and this I truly do cherish. In college it was the boyfriend who introduced me to Art Garfunkel, my first time hearing “American Pie”, all things Windham Hill, and in particular a pianist I simply worship: George Winston. To this day, his song “Thanksgiving” is one of the most sublime pieces of music on Earth. Then the guy junior year that lived down the hall who, besides having told me he was infatuated with me, introduced me to The Kinks and T. Rex - thank you! Then the next boyfriend who was crazy about Kate Bush – I’ll pass. One can also learn what not to like. Then came grad school, the first serious boyfriend, and the introduction to all things classic and Southern rock, and blues – another big thank you! The influence has sort of dwindled after that.  Few human beings could ever move me the way music does.

It’s so true, that phrase, “Music is what feelings sound like”. Music can both create and depict feelings inside of me. I can feel sad and a song can perfectly reinforce that. I can feel depressed and a happy song can completely change that. What is it about Jimmy Cliff’s “I Can See Clearly Now” that can instantly turn any feelings of depression in me into spring sunshine? That’s power. I hear music and enter a sort of wonderful trance. Violins, flutes, cellos, piano, bass, my brain automatically starts dissecting it all. I get pulled by harmonies, melodies, key changes, chords, arpeggios, powerful voices of those so gifted with the instrument. I am completely dissecting the music in my head. I can be at the grocery store and stop in mid-aisle to listen to a song. I’m at a coffee shop and approach the cashier to ask what that song is and grab my notepad in my purse to write it down. I can be at a table with people at a restaurant and temporarily be pulled from the conversation because something about the music yanked me away and made me enter the trance. I hear songs that grab me and have to study the lyrics. I love sitting at home just listening to music with my eyes closed, in that ‘music trance’ dissecting everything in my head, analyzing and absorbing every note. I can mark moments of my life based on a song, listen to that song and burst into laughter or tears remembering the moment thanks to that song.

The power of music is intrinsic to life. It can shake us to the core. Love, fear, anger, passion, all can be communicated musically. If feelings made a sound, what else could be expected but for it to be musical.

"Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought." -- E.Y. Harburg

Motherhood

(originally written on May 9, 2011 - Mother's Day)

I sit here on Mother’s Day, with the only “children” I have ever had – the four-legged kind - wondering as I often do how come I ended up without the one gift I dreamed of since I was a little girl: motherhood. ‘Everything happens for a reason’, I keep telling myself. Some things I figure I’ll just give up trying to understand.

As a little girl my cousins and I often played “house”. Male cousins would play dads, the girls and I would play moms, using dolls as the babies. We’d use cloth diapers to change them, we’d shove water and baby food in their stiff mouths, then stick them in the bathroom sink to give them a bath with Dial soap and then put on a fresh change of clothes. As a teen I fantasized about being married to a handsome man with brown or black hair and blue or green eyes who was taller than me. I’d love on him day and night, tend to his every need and desire, spoil him rotten, and yes, we’d have children.

I think we want to be the type of parent ours weren’t, in a way, in the sense that we want to improve on it. We want to keep those things we loved in our parents, but then compensate for the deficits. If our parents were cool, great listeners and non-judgmental, then we vow we’re going to be the same way with our own kids, because we found those to be such great traits in our parents. But if our parents were judgmental, or hit us, or after a while started sounding like the adults in a Peanuts cartoon, we swear we will never be like that when we have kids.

When I started graduate school I met the guy I thought was “the one”. We met and the chemistry was there from the very beginning. He gets credit for the first kiss – I’m too old-school to have made that kind of initial approach myself – and everything just flowed perfectly after that. As the relationship grew more serious – moving in together, him flying to my home to meet my parents - it became apparent that it may go somewhere someday, but we were both too broke to plan anything. When it came time to select the next graduate school step (we both wanted doctorates), the talk of marriage came up. We said we’d do it one day (though he was your garden variety male making endless jokes at the mere mention of the “M” word), but not until we finished all of our schooling and had enough money to do it, as we didn’t want to burden our parents with that. I remember there was a toy in a Captain Crunch cereal that we saved one time – a big plastic blue lock. He put it around my finger one time saying that it was all he could do since he couldn't afford a real engagement ring. We both had a good, long laugh over that! At any rate, marriage – and therefore, children, too - would have to be postponed. At that time I was in my mid-20, prime time for childbearing. Education was prioritized.

Little did I know at the time, but that relationship would end a few years later. Despite my changing my first choice of graduate schools and choosing a different one to be closer to him instead, the relationship still had a five-hour drive, long distance component. Add to that a new person in the mix and, well, he found someone with whom he felt he was more compatible. By then I was in my early thirties. Still an “OK” age for childbearing, but I suddenly found myself partner-less.

Fantasies ended for a long while. I’d never find another person to call “the one”, how could I ever again find someone to feel so perfect, I thought, so dreams of motherhood shattered for a while. I felt so jealous of everyone my age whom I saw having children, and me sitting there perfectly willing and capable, yet circumstances rendering me perfectly unable. I asked God once, twice, a million times why. I never felt I got an answer. Never sensed an answer. Never saw it. Never read it.

Then along came marriage several years later. At age thirty-five, I married for fear of ending up alone in life. I have always believed that we were not put on this Earth to remain alone. Why else would we have natural instincts of attraction towards one another, of love, of want, of need for one another. However, ironically enough, as much as I cared for this person, I was not in love with him. I guess I married “in care” but not “in love”. Probably one of the biggest lessons life has yet to teach me: Marriage HAS to be about honest, true love; only then will it prove successful. But yet I thought that maybe this was my chance to finally become a mother. If nothing else, I thought, here’s my chance at motherhood. That, like the love in the marriage, also proved to be lacking.

Four months after my wedding I had to have a myomectomy. This was the beginning of a 10-year gynecological ordeal the likes of which I was not prepared for. On the first follow-up visit with my doctor, he was crystal clear: “If you want any children, you have to have them now”. Without any medication to prevent the regrowth of fibroid tumors or prevention of further endometriosis tissue from forming, the longer I waited for pregnancy, the harder the latter would be on my system. It might entail bed rest during the last trimester, bleeding, etc. I could carry to term, but there was a chance they wouldn’t be easy pregnancies. And of course, they would all have to be C-sections. My husband was always afraid that financially we would not be able to support a child. So the postponing began. As much as I wanted a child, the postponing continued. As much as medically I had to have one soon, we continued to postpone. Finances were prioritized.

Meanwhile, the marriage continued to take a turn for the worse in other aspects. It got to a point where, as much as I felt like I wanted motherhood, I questioned whether or not I wanted the other half of my child to come from this particular person with whom I was not in love. Being a terminal, hopeless romantic, I have always felt that a child should be a reflection, a product of love between two people, and therefore if I had a child, it should be with someone with whom I was deeply and truly in love. For that reason alone I started rethinking and questioning my desire for motherhood, and I stopped pushing the issue. I felt like I shouldn't have a child "just to have one" the way you purchase an iPod or a fine leather handbag. Then in my early forties, with medical risks mounting and emotional questions resonating in my mind, it appeared like I was having to say goodbye to the one dream I had embraced since childhood. It was during this time that it started to hit me that I may not ever have a child.

I found myself envious, jealous and angry at the world at times. So many women have more children than they can care for. So many women are abusive towards their children. So many women don't nurture their children. So many women are just plain unloving to their children. All I ever wanted was to give birth to at least one and love it more than I could ever love myself.  But somehow it wasn’t in the cards for me.

My marriage came and went, and my reproductive health got progressively worse. The evening before I was scheduled for my hysterectomy I received a phone call around 9pm from one of the gynecologists in my doctor’s group wanting to go over procedure one last time, and giving me one last chance to ask questions. While the plan was for them to let me keep my ovaries, she reviewed the possibility that these, too, may have to come out, depending on the extent of the endometriosis. This they could only determine when they had me at the operating table, she explained. If they found endometriosis was extreme, the ovaries would have to come out because if they left them in, endometriosis would continue unchecked, I would continue experiencing severe pain every month to where it might require future surgical intervention. I said I understood and agreed to this. But there was a little part of me that was clinging to a tiny little bit of hope that I might get to keep my ovaries, and that the little ‘seeds’ inside might miraculously lead to a child via in vitro fertilization someday. But the day after my surgery, when one of the physicians in attendance at the OR was explaining what happened, I learned that my ovaries, too, had to come out. He paused his explanations to apologize, as he watched my face flood with tears. "I'm sorry, I thought they had already told you" he said. There was a female resident with him – she turned to look away as I cried. I doubt that she really knew why I was crying so much in that hospital bed.

I’m sure he didn’t know the real reason for my tears, either. At that moment, every single glimmer of hope was officially, completely obliterated. At that moment I was told there was no way on this earth I could ever have my own flesh and blood. I knew going into that hospital that I would not be able to bear children when I came out. I went in knowing there was a chance that I wouldn’t be able to genetically have them as well. But I guess sometimes we want to hold on to hope, perhaps foolishly so. That night in that hospital bed, when no one was watching and the tv was off, I continued to cry. I held my own private, silent funeral, mourning the children that never were and never would be. That dream had to officially be put to sleep.

Now I sit here on yet another Mother’s Day thinking about how I’ll go to my grave never getting a Mother’s Day card to hang on the fridge, or flowers, or breakfast in bed. Most painful of all, I’ll go to my grave never hearing the word “Mom”.

They say everything happens for a reason. I’ll just never, ever understand the reason for this one.

Still Madly In Love

(originally written on May 14, 2011)

That was the caption that one of my friends wrote to describe a photograph he posted on Facebook of his grandparents during his most recent vacation back home to Lebanon. The woman, staring adoringly up at her husband with a smile from ear to ear; the man, looking into the camera full of life, confident and gleaming with happiness. I remember last year when my friend visited his family and posted a similar picture of his grandparents and I commented what an adorable couple they were. He said how much they love each other. This year his caption read “Still madly in love”. It brought tears to my eyes to see them again and to read that caption. I don’t know this couple but, for some reason, I love them. Or maybe I love what they represent.

I can’t help but wonder what their secret is – that elusive secret to an everlasting marriage and love. How can two people be married for so long, have children, grandchildren, and still be just as deeply and madly in love as when their story began. If anything, it is proof to the cynics of the fact that it is possible. But to Man Of La Mancha-style dreamers like myself, it makes me wonder if I’m just dreaming the impossible dream. I’d like to think that I’m not. I’d like to think that those really are windmills.

If only I knew what that couple’s secret is. Or is there really such a thing as a secret? Is the real secret just being lucky enough to find the right person? For once you find the right person, shouldn’t it all come about naturally? Shouldn’t the magic then just… happen? Is it really all just luck?

Sometimes I wonder if it’s even luck. When I was 21 I thought I had found the perfect person. He was an intellectual – if he could spend every waking moment of his life reading, he would – and oh the conversations about religion, politics, philosophy, science, often until the sun came up. He had wit to charm anyone’s socks off. A staunch liberal – anti-war rally, with a dad who worked in city government in his hometown, democrat of course. I loved how political he was. A fellow scientist – biologist as well, though different specialty from mine, something that would come to haunt me later on. A consummate hippie, though born around 10 years too late, I’m afraid – barefoot every time he could except in the laboratory and only because it's not allowed. Longish curly hair, hippie clothes, hated socks, John Lennon reading glasses, hippie music complete with a Grateful Dead concert. A total slob when I met him – suffice it to say the days-old piles of dirty dishes in his sink would often have LARGE six-legged creatures come out when you moved them. Nevertheless, love was born instantly. I usually fall in love with a mind, a heart and a soul and the love that ensues builds a great deal of tolerance, so I accepted him the way he was and learned to keep a can of Raid handy just in case. We never, ever argued. If we had a disagreement, we discussed it and reached a common ground. One couldn’t ask for a more civilized relationship which, after the environment in which I grew up, I felt was a special gift God sent me. I truly felt he was “the one”.

I received a phone call one week before my birthday. I heard a very familiar voice say: “We have to break up”. I can only equate the feeling at that moment to that of those dreams you have where you’re just falling down some unidentified precipice. You just keep falling and falling and there’s nothing you can do, nothing to hold on to, and you’re terrified that any minute you’re going to hit a concrete bottom and meet a swift, painful death. Discussions, explanations, nothing made sense. Amidst the mushroom cloud of the A-bomb that had just been dropped upon me I vaguely heard that I was being told a week before my birthday so as not to ruin my birthday by being told on the day itself. I was being shown a shred of consideration in what otherwise felt as the end of life as I knew it. He then visited on my birthday that following week. Probably one of the grayest, grimmest birthdays I have ever experienced. The funeral to a six-year relationship.

So there I sat, thinking how could it be that I thought I had it all in that perfect-for-me person, I thought I had found true love, and it was not to be. It taught me that even when we think we have it all, there are no guarantees. So how do we know, then? What’s the secret? Even when you think you have the perfect person, it can all come crashing down in a New York City minute. Nothing is guaranteed, take no one for granted; the only guarantee is right now. We know nothing about tomorrow. We really don't.

As for healing from blows and heartbreaks as big as this and moving forward, all we can do is take a chance, and good things may happen or bad things may happen. But one thing's for sure: if we don’t take a chance, nothing will ever happen. It's a lot like playing the lottery or learning how to swim: how can you ever win if you don't ever buy a ticket. You'll never learn how to swim if you don't ever get in the water.

As much as I have issues with organized religion, I have always considered myself a very spiritual woman and deeply cherish my one-on-one relationship with God. There is a passage in the Bible which I came to know years later that defines love and which I adore and regard as "The Love Commandments": 

“Love is patient, kind and never envious. 

It does not boast, it is not arrogant or conceited. 

Love is not rude and it does not insist on its own way. 

Love is not ruled by anger, but forgets offenses and forgives. 

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 
-- I Corinthians 13:4-7. 

Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the secret. As long as you find someone that shares in this definition of love and if both make that lifetime commitment to put it to practice, bliss will surely ensue. What is so magical about this passage is how, despite being found in the Bible, this definition of love clearly transcends all religions and cultures. It must, because I know my friend’s grandparents are not Christian, and yet one look at them and somehow I’d like to think that they are the embodiment of I Corinthians 13:4-7 and that this is how they’re “still madly in love” after all these years. Therein lies the transcendental magic within this biblical passage.

It's not about a secret, then, is it. 

It's just.... magical.

Baggage

(originally written on May 9, 2011)

I’ve tried online dating multiple times since my divorce three years ago, I guess in that masochistic quest for the elusive “Mr. Right”. Amidst the myriad of obtuse and unappealing profiles, one recurring theme I noticed was a request from men for women to come without “baggage”. It appeared that they were looking for either cookies a lot tougher than I will ever be, capable of going through life perfectly unscathed, or for 20-somethings who would be relatively baggage-free by virtue of the fact that they’ve barely begun to live in the first place. I realized that I could never fulfill this unrealistic requirement, nor would I want to. At what I like to call my "halfway point" in life: I have loved, I have (inadvertently) hurt, I have been hurt, I’ve experienced failure, success... So if this means I have baggage, then by all means I do. The more I thought about it, the more I started to formulate my own theory on the whole concept of “baggage”. 

I believe that when we’re born we’re all handed a certain number of figurative “suitcases” to take with us as we embark on the journey of life. As in any other journey, it is in these suitcases that we are to carry everything that we deem important to bring with us. There is one rule, though: we don’t get any more suitcases during the journey. The ones we’re given at birth are the only ones we get to keep until death. Therefore, it is up to us to “clean house” throughout the journey, evaluating what we get to keep and what we get to throw out, making room for new belongings to pack as we experience new things throughout our lives. So what happens when we run out of space? The wisdom we gain through age and experience is what allows us to gauge what is truly important to hang on to and what was too trivial to have kept in the first place and should be done away with. In this act of cleansing comes the realization that some things are too hurtful and damaging to keep, or too unimportant in the grand scheme of things, or too pointless to cling to. We have to learn to let go and empty those things from our suitcases. They weigh us down and make it harder for us to go on our journey. At worse they can cripple us by preventing us from moving forward - how can we let our past be a handicap into our future? We should keep only the truly treasured possessions which are near and dear to our hearts - lessons learned, their value immeasurable though hurtful they may have been, and all the beloved memories forever cherished. We gather a plenitude of thoughts, opinions and viewpoints along the way as we realize that we are coming closer than we ever thought possible to that once elusive point of “finding ourselves”. We have come to know who we really are, and we are happy with it.  Slowly but surely we realize that those suitcases we’ve been carrying are becoming treasure troves filled with nothing but golden lessons, invaluable experiences and a lifetime of priceless memories. 

Baggage, you say??

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet" - William Shakespeare