The Poor Atlantic

We spent time at the Atlantic shore every summer when I was a kid, and one of the sense memories I can still recover from that time is the smell of kerosene.  We used it to clean tar off our feet before we came inside the cottage.  That ritual seemed normal, like showering off sand or leaving starfish on the porch to dry.  Below is a poem I wrote two years ago after visiting Lewes, Delaware. 
It appears in Freshet 2010.



30 Lines about the Atlantic

You might think it’s like this big tub of pickling brine,
aerated and wildly churning, able to hold every exotic
and unwanted thing – parrot fish, behemoths, barges
of municipal waste – so vast, accommodating and
cleansing, that when you stand on one shore under
a blue sky and watch coquinas wiggle down into wet sand,
you see only goodwater that nourishes magic – God-made,
cerulean, able to paint bivalves with yellow and purple
stripes; wash jellies and stars, horses and urchins to your
toes; make pearls; fill a bay with moony phosphorescence.


But from that clean edge you sense there’s spoiling
going on: upstream pipes pointing effluent into rivers, sick
watersheds and dying sea grass, oily sediment. An Aquafina
bottle, caught in kelp. Ulcerated flounder. Hermit crabs
scuttling aimlessly in the estuary. Horseshoe crab shells
everywhere, their primordial exoskeletons collected, made
into doorstops. A BP tanker on the horizon. Syringe
or two on the island. Coral, oysters, blue crabs, shrimp –
exhausted from filtering the relentless sludge and metals.
Even the herring gull seems glassy-eyed and frazzled.

You wonder when this happened, when something so poetic
on its frothy surface got fouled. How the ingress and egress
of humanness gummed it up – laid down boats and planes,
concrete and diapers. Whether our trash might hold back its
rise and retreat with the moon; why we build where barrier
islands shift; don’t notice that the water’s warmer – sense
only how it quenches the empty spirit – clear and sweet, azul.
We feel how sunlight rushes over its surface. Think nothing bad
can penetrate our pores, that we can lift its sweet foam in our hands
as the hot dolphin leaps, as the tired snail closes its pearly operculum.

200 Days of Galaktoboureko

My daughter, who is half Greek and a marathon runner, likes challenges and shared adventures. In the spring of 2007, we decided to attend all of the Delaware Valley’s Greek festivals – which in 2010 total 19 -- and evaluate their culinary merit based on their execution of one dish: galaktoboureko.

Unlike other Greek pastries, galaktoboureko is perishable, a delicate milk custard thickened with semolina and sandwiched between soggy-sweet phyllo. It comforts -- like lemon chess pie, cheesecake, tapioca or rice pudding. We loved the thick, generous rectangles of custard that were served by the ladies of Evangelismos of Theotokos, and the syrup-drenched phyllo that wrapped the servings we bought at the Annunciation festival. But best of all was the country version that came from the St. George Cathedral, baked with a chewy, thick dough that made it similar to a sweet kugel.

One Styrofoam carry-out container after another came home from the festivals and went into the fridge. We were specialists, evaluating quality, and unconcerned with quantity. Had we been less impressionistic, we might have learned that each 2x2-inch square of galaktoboureko represented at least 400 calories’ worth of research. The bathroom scale suggested that we abandon the project, and with some disappointment, we complied.

That anecdote is one of many that I’ll recall on this Mother’s Day, because it illustrates the nature of the relationship that I share with my adult daughter. In spite of the geographic distance that now separates us, we share enthusiasms and cheer each other on.  We recommend good stuff to each other: British mystery series on public television, short stories in The New Yorker, skin care products, flatbread pizzas and clever gadgets. We enter into self-improvement pacts, create challenges and consider joint projects. Some of them, like 200 days of galaktoboureko, don’t work out. Others, like producing a piece for This American Life, await us – ideas glistening, sweet as pastries.

At twenty-nine years my junior, and with a love of long-distance running, I admit that most of the energy for these new projects is being initiated by my daughter. But there was a time when I tried to plant seeds of inquiry and imagination that might ignite her interest: sharing the story of Miss Rumphius, the lupine lady; encouraging her to document the streets of Tarpon Springs with her camera; investigating the origins of a mysterious statue found in the Alleghenies; experimenting with the pottery wheel; making up stories about a family of Klutzes.

I was thinking, she said, earlier this spring, that we might both enjoy a trip to Ireland this fall.

The Cliffs of Moher! I said. And within the hour, she’d sent me the link to Galway Tours.

I am going to research Irish deserts. Imagine, eight days of apple barley pudding.