The Hollandaise Theory of Life

A little before Christmas, I came up from New York and helped move Dad from the hospital into a rehab facility. With his usual optimism and determination, he intended to do extra physical therapy in order to be home with Monique and good scotch sooner than predicted.
Upon discovering that his room came equipped with an actual television, he asked us to find the PBS News Hour. As it happens, the PBS news hour is not aired 24 hours a day.
What was showing on that wintry afternoon was a vintage cooking show. The most vintage and venerable cooking show of them all. Julia Child, wise Francophile giantess with the mid-Atlantic vowels and a fearless way with a whisk.
What you need to know about a proper hollandaise sauce, and what Dad and I learned that afternoon from Julia Child, is that an egg yolk can only absorb so much butter, and no more. If the sauce is too buttery, you must whisk in another golden egg yolk, and when the sauce is too eggy, you whisk in more butter. Julia continues this dialectic, this dance of the ingredients, until the sauce has reached the perfect consistency and flavor, and then, as she would say, Bon Appetit.

In other words, Julia cooked as Dad ate. Confronting a selection of stinky cheeses after a good meal, he needed the accompaniment of a good red wine. And then like Julia Child, he kept ratcheting upward in order to maintain the appropriate ratio of wine to cheese. He performed this balancing act with meat and gravy, with salad and salad dressing – he was the only person I know who finished off his salad dressing with a fork - with meringues and whipped cream, with sardines and beer. What mattered was ending the meal in harmony, where all the food was finished and all were satisfied.

Is it too much of a stretch to say that he sought and achieved the same balance, of taste and texture, of meat and gravy, of savory and sweet, in his life? His first eight decades were spent building up his textile waste company, seeking sources of raw material all over the world – often in the kinds of places where he would be served rabbit heads for dinner, and yes, he appeared to enjoy it all, even the eyes, a delicacy. He worked hard because he loved his work. There was no occasion too random that he could not steer the conversation to possible uses for recycled fibers, or the price of Rainforest coffee, or the sugar quota. He started each morning with a Cheery Good Morning that was famous on five continents, and pored over inventory spreadsheets with his first cup of coffee.

Then at 80 he suffered his first stroke, and once it appeared that he would survive it, he settled in and savored the yin of life. With his constant traveling curtailed, he stayed at his beloved Orchard, he went back to his beloved Harvard and became a ‘Learner in Retirement’. And back at Harvard he enjoyed weekly lunches with the succession of (mostly vegetarian!) grandchildren who followed in his footsteps there. In his 9th decade he even read a few, - admittedly only a few, admittedly only those written by a close relative - books of fiction.

After 8 decades as an omnivore who generally declined dessert, in his 9th decade Dad developed a sweet tooth. He came to enjoy the tip-of-the- tongue sweetness offered at the end of the meal. He savored pear tarts, Tres Leches in Nicaragua, Cata’s apple pie, fresh honeycomb, chocolate chip cookies and ice cream with crushed brandy snaps.

He balanced the meal.

Even his death was the balancing act, manifesting of the Platonic ideal of Moderation in All Things, including Moderation. Having decided with Monique and his children that he was sick and tired of crises that meant being rushed to the ER and being painfully prodded with needles, Philip came home for good. He spent a week in state in his old bedroom. All five of us were there, every day, reading him the OpEds from the Times and poems of Yeats and Kinnell. Carl, he of prodigious memory, recited Robert Service. Dad listened to Maria Callas singing Verdi and Brigitte singing hymns. On his last day on earth he was visited by his dear friends from Central America, who brought him blessings and love from the coffee farm he so loved; and that evening he peacefully passed away surrounded by all his children, one intrepid grandson, and his still beautiful wife of sixty-one years.
The life is done. His plate was clean.

The Egg Hats of Berlin

The Egg Hats of Berlin

I realize that most people visit Berlin for the currywurst, or the head of Nefertiti, or Checkpoint Charlie that is no more, or figuring out from which window of the
Hotel Adlon Michael Jackson dangled his young son, or Frederick the Great’s summer cottage at Potsdam, and those are all fine things to travel for. But the Egg Hats of Pension Kettler are also an excellent reason to visit the once-divided city. Let me explain.
Thanks to the diligent research of Anna, extremely stylish art-historian and young mother, Bine and I stayed last week at the Pension Kettler on Bleibstrau Strasse. The price was right and the rooms were straight out of the 1920’s, including the plumbing. Each room is named for an artist, and I thought this was because the named artist had actually once stayed in the room. This misapprehension was the result of my pint-sized German. But so what if Maria Callas never stayed in my room: outside my door there was a handmade diorama featuring the highlights of her career. Across the hall, the Peggy Guggenheim (who likewise never actually stayed there) diorama featured a pair of exotic sunglasses.
Frau Isolde Josipovici, the proprietress of the Pension, is known in certain Berlin circles as the “Fountain Fairy” (die Brunnenfee) on account of her work restoring Berlin’s derelict fountains. She also takes great pride in preparing breakfast and delivering it to your chamber. The only problem is that the esteemed Frau has a bad hip, a very bad hip, and if I understood correctly is awaiting her hip surgery, but meanwhile she limps rather extravagantly, which makes it impossible to carry a tray laden with teapots, coffeepots, cups, saucers, eggcups, honey, cheese, ham and bread. And eggs hats. But this problem was solved when one of us went to the kitchen, midway down the famous 40 meter hallway, and carried the tray back to the Maria Callas zimmer. Followed by the careening Frau Isolde. Once we had deposited the tray, our hands were summarily swatted away - “This, I will do!” – by Frau Isolde who has a very special way of arranging the table. And each morning our boiled eggs (neither soft nor exactly hard) wore a different pair of hats. Though at first I did not realize that there would be new hats each morning, but soon this became clear, and even when I felt that could not stomach another egg, I also could not forego the chance to see which hat would come next.
No, we never exhausted the collection.




If you want to know more about Frau Isolde and Pension Kettler, you can read here from the English version of the website:
She rented an old-Berlin apartment after the career as photo-model and mannequin beginning of the 70er years. In originator-time - and Art-Deco-Stil, she " did her/its/their pension " from it.
Pictures, gifts of friends, hang at the walls of the 40 meters long hall. The widow of a Jewish art-historian and -händlers puts down beauty and individuality against cold uniformity. Her/its/their living room resembles a parlor of the 20er years. No coincidence - meets here regular Berlin artists however. Not art-connoisseur par excellence but as lover of distinctive pieces sees her itself.
Why the commitment for it, that the wells flow? " The beautiful has no unmitelbaren benefit for many people. Exactly therefore, I want to fight for it that gets it remains ". Watches, like in this city " the culture the brook down goes ", that can can her. So, she commits herself also to the conservation of the Berlischen gallery.