Seeing Beyond

I visited my friend Dina the other day and got depressed.

Dina is the sort of person I would hate if I could. She has been blessed with more talents and skills than any one person I know: she can sew and cook to a professional level, she can draw, paint, sculpt, and embroider. She can wire a house, plaster walls and put in her own tiles. Dina can build and fix things, she can butcher road kill, she can skin animals and raise her own vegetables. And she knows the name for every goddamn plant under the sun.

Four years ago, she and her husband bought a house. I went to see it with her before they moved in and was not impressed. It was an ugly, graceless box of a place with no distinguishing features. The kitchen stank, the floors were manky, the bathrooms were small and pokey, and the extensive back and front yards were filled with rubble and weeds. There was a view of a telephone pole in the backyard, and a row of ugly, stunted little bushes, plus a big black hole where someone had burnt a lot of junk. But the very worst thing was an ancient Victorian greenhouse which was falling down in a rather spectacular way: every single pane of glass was shattered or broken, the outer wall looked to be crumbling, and the inside was filled with rubble and weeds. The area around the greenhouse had more dock weeds and dandelions than I've ever seen in my life.

Dina stood, surveying all of this, and smiled. 'This place is great,' she said. 'Look at that little bubbling brook!' I was surprised: she was right! There was a lovely little brook a stone's throw from the house, but you could barely see it for the trees. Beyond the brook was a beautiful field dotted with gorse and heather, but you could hardly see that either. What you COULD see was a whole lot of junk and rubble. It was depressingly, overwhelmingly obvious that the place was a dump. To everyone, it seemed, but Dina.

During the past four years we have made many trips to Dina's house, and the transformation has been amazing. First she knocked out the two back windows and made them into sliding glass doors. All of the bedrooms were painted and decorated, walls were knocked down here and there, and the change was phenomenol. A huge deck was built outside, trees were chopped down, opening up a fantastic view of the neighboring fields, a hedge was established to hide the telephone pole, and the large burned area was dug out to form a fish pond. The greenhouse was demolished over a few scary weeks, and in its place is now a stunning artist's studio of glass and wood surrounded by a tiered herb garden with driftwood sculptures artfully placed.

But it is her gardens that fill me with envy. Everywhere you look there is something beautiful or interesting. Near the brook is a fairy garden with a wood-chip path surrounded by woodland flowers and whimsical touches: crystals hanging from trees, tiny hand-crafted sculptures strategically and unobtrusively placed. On the far side of the house is a wildlife garden shaded by tall trees and bursting with a splendid selection of wildflowers. The house is surrounded by every climbing vine you can imagine: wisteria, honeysuckle, climbing roses, golden hops, clematis, ivy, Virginia creeper. Her herb garden is a riot of different colors and textures: soft, wooly lambs' ears, fluffy bunches of bright green parsley, silvery green and blue catmint, variegated lemon balm in butter-yellow and green, dainty plumes of fennel, and golden clumps of marjoram. Her vegetable beds are filled with neat rows of strawberries, runner beans and Chinese broccoli. There are roses and peonies and hydrangea and azaleas -- flowers and shrubs too numerous to mention. Everything is thriving and a lot healthier than the plants I've been agonizing over in my humble garden for the past two years. For God's sake, I've paid to go into less attractive gardens than hers.

What amazes me most is Dina's vision. I saw what was in front of me: a nasty, drab, dull-as-dirt box of a place surrounded by a world of junk; she saw endless potential.

Last year, I happened to go to the beach with Dina and we found an old rope which she insisted on dragging back to the car.

"What in the world do you need an old rope for?" I asked. It smelled, after all, and it was falling apart.

"I can use this in my garden."

I should have known, but all I could think about was how much trouble she'd have getting rid of the thing once she'd realized how gross it was.

Yesterday I noticed it hanging down the side of the house from the balcony on the second floor. It is smothered in wisteria and looks like a million bucks. Driving around the area, I've noticed a fair amount of wisteria about, creeping up frames and trellises and spreading up garden walls, but you've never seen anything like Dina's wisteria-up-a-ship's-rope garden feature.

Like I said, I'd hate her if I could.

Sugar and Honey for Breakfast

My kids are never satisfied with what they've got. Buy them the rubbish breakfast cereal they've been clamoring for and they only want more. Donuts. Candy. Packaged cakes. If it's got E-numbers, saturated fats and practically no nutrition in it, they just know they're going to like it.

Like all kids, all of their friends have it better than they do. According to them, their friends' parents buy them anything they want, any old time. I point out that I bake my own bread and cookies and other mothers don't necessarily do this, but they won't go along with that. They can't see that it's an advantage to have a Mom who cooks and bakes from scratch; they can only see that I am one of those tiresome Moms who refuses to buy them Kit-kats on demand. Who actually reads the ingredients on cartons and packages. In the supermarket, I fumble around for my glasses to read the fine print on a box of cereal and they die a thousand deaths. 'Oh, Mom!' they mutter anxiously, glancing around on the off chance that one of their friends is going to find out their horrible secret -- that Mom is a Stickler.

If they had their own way, my kids would have nothing but sugar and honey for breakfast. In a bowl, mixed together, perhaps with a little butter in it.

Part of me feels for them. My parents used to embarrass me, too. I grew up in California in the sixties. Nowadays, you can't turn the corner without finding another vegetarian, especially in California, but back when I was a kid we were just about the only vegetarian family around, and we were absolutely the only non-drinking vegetarians I'd ever heard of. I used to go to friends' houses and see the pork chops in their refrigerators, the hot-dogs and rump steaks and bottles of wine and beer -- and the thought of our own spare cupboards and our refrigerator with its meager selection of cabbage and carrots shamed me to death. I wanted my parents to be the sort of parents who had gin and tonics, who grilled hamburgers on their barbecues and knew the difference between burgundy and chablis.

My father was what was called a health nut back then. The sort of person who sprinkled wheat germ on everything, made sure we had plenty of produce to eat, watched the saturated fats he consumed, and chose to buy nuts and fruit instead of candy. All of my friends brought things to school that my parents would not have dreamt of having in the house, let alone allowing us to eat. I opened my packed lunch and just knew that the world could see that I had a sandwich made with wholemeal bread and cheese when they were proudly taking out white bread and bologna. And I was so ashamed.

A few years back, my best friend and I were talking about our childhood. Her mother and father were way up on my wish-list of parent perfection, the sort of parents that in my heart of hearts I wished I'd been given. "Your family were such trend-setters," she said, "vegetarians back when almost no one was a vegetarian. And your mother tried different things, too -- the first place I ever had Chinese food was at your house. I used to love eating with your family."

I was gob-smacked by this revelation. Maybe in years to come, my kids will be born again healthy eaters. Maybe their friends will comment approvingly on my broccoli soups and low-fat stir fries. Maybe, in time, they'll even forgive me for not letting them eat their weight in candy. For nixing sugar and honey for breakfast.

Women are Muesli, Men are Bacon Sandwiches

"I'll have the full British breakfast," the man tells me eagerly as I stand there, pen and order pad in hand. "What does that include, again?"

The man is somewhere between 50 and 60. He has a bulging waistband and a bar-code comb-over -- and more worryingly, a wheeze and obvious shortness of breath. I try not to be judgmental, but I find myself wishing my first aid training were more recent; this fellow looks like a heart attack just waiting to happen. And when I asked him what he wanted for breakfast, I could not help but notice that his wife winced.

I try not to look at her now as I answer him. "Eggs any way you like them, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, and beans. Toast of course, either white or wholemeal, and coffee or tea. Orange, grapefruit, or apple juice, and fresh fruit salad. And it really is fresh, too, and not out of a tin."

"Lovely. Great. I'll have fried eggs, please, white bread for the toast, and --" (ignoring wife's expression of exasperation)-- "the bacon and sausages, of course, but could you hold the beans and tomatoes? I don't want those."

"What about the fresh fruit salad?"

"Oh -- no thank you, I don't need that."

The wife might be a few pounds overweight, but she is Twiggy next to her husband. Her voice is terse with strained patience. "I'll just have an egg," she says in clipped tones. "Poached, please. On wholemeal toast." The 'wholemeal' is pointedly stressed.

"Fresh fruit salad?"

"Yes, please. I'll have a small bowl of that too.' She eyes her husband before adding an ironical aside: 'I might as well indulge; after all, we're on holiday."

As I serve the couple their breakfasts, the wife glances at the husband's plate as he tucks in and I can see her jaw set, a look of dismay settling over her features. I feel awful: like the enabler I know I am.

"Excuse me,' the husband asks, avoiding his wife's eyes, 'could we get a bit more butter here?"

I do my best to avoid the wife's eyes as I place the dish of butter on the table.

Later, walking past the table I hear snatches of conversation:

"Don't think you're going to have this again tomorrow!" hisses the wife. "I don't even want to think about what your cholesterol count is going to be when we get home!" I try not to eavesdrop, but I hear her mention the words 'salt' and 'butter' in an aggrieved way -- more than once. No doubt about it, she's made her views on the subject known before.

In the entire time we ran our B & B, I can only recall one wife who ate more -- or more unwisely -- than her husband.

We served up to eighteen people breakfast every day for the better part of two years, and I am here to tell you that if it weren't for their wives, a lot of men would be in really bad shape. I don't think it is the least bit surprising that married men live longer than their single counterparts. Knowing what I know now, the wonder is that so many single men live as long as they do.

I'll bet that a lot of men might assume from this that their wives are spoilsports who don't want them to have any fun. The truth is that we just want our guys to live as long as possible. If I were a man, I'd be a lot more worried about a woman who encouraged me to have fried bread and sausages, who didn't clear her throat when I grabbed the salt shaker before tasting my food, or spread extra butter on my bread.

If I'd had my way, I'd have served heart-healthy breakfasts. Poached or boiled eggs; muffins made with canola oil instead of butter and with plenty of fiber and wheat germ; porridge made with skimmed milk; muesli, fresh fruit, and assorted cereals. Bacon and sausages on occasion perhaps, but leaner, less salty versions whenever possible. I'd have made a big point of advertising our healthy breakfast fare and I'll bet that women everywhere would have been queuing up to make reservations.

My husband, naturally, would not hear of it.