Case Study 124: "The Winter Baby Shower Cupcake"

There are so many things they never tell you about growing up. But that didn't stop me from wondering...

I had a great childhood. It was a lot of riding bikes until dark up and down the southwestern Connecticut hills. In the summers we'd live on pool decks, listening to our boombox and swinging high on the swim club swings. In the winters we'd build snowforts and sneak into town after dark, when the streets were white and the tiny clock on Main Street was the only thing that lit our way to go sledding down the elementary school's hills. My youth was idyllic and romantic in every way...but the minute I turned eighteen, I was ready to go.

Give me red lipstick and martini bars. Give me Italy and a corner office. Give me all night dance parties on great lawns and let me kiss a lot of boys.

Well I'm there now, and if I had to recap the past ten years of adulthood, I'd say they've been pretty great. Lots of adventures and lipstick, men kissed and cocktails drank. There have been graduations and moves and even a bunch of weddings. All of those things I knew would eventually come along. It's just, well, nobody prepared me for how utterly amazing and surreal life becomes when your people start making....people.
 

I was lucky enough to have at least one nephew as a primer before this started - albeit one very high set bar of a primer. But then, as my friends have grown up, more babies have rolled in. I got two at once, with blue eyes and sweet hearts; then there was a little lady, born with crazy hair, chunky legs and the exact spirit of her mother at eleven years old, when I met her.

Yesterday we celebrated the (very) soon birthday of my first New Yorker baby friend. There were lots of mimosas, MetroCard rattles and laughs about the nuances of raising babies in modern times and in the city. There were strawberry-stuffed vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and little baby penguins and icebergs on top to welcome this sweet winter child. But in the end, it wasn't any different my other friends' baby showers because it was all about love. About love, about wonder and awe and about how that all comes together when people make PEOPLE (will this ever not be mind-blowing?). 

I can't wait meet this new tiny friend and see how see or he grows. I've had the fortune of watching my friend hit some big milestones, but I really really can't wait to see how she grows as a mother, a wife and mostly, just in life. Because while our time on earth is amazing feat, there's no denying that the miracle of life is even more miraculous in itself.

Notes from the Field: The countdown is on...

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

- T.S. Eliot

 

As 2011 came to a close, I made a promise to myself that 2012 would be better. It was going to be my "Champagne Year," twelve months marked by growth, success and love to outdo the tough ones I had just been through. 2012 delivered.

It was a year of travel, on helicopters, in cars and on every train-line in the Northeast. It was a year of romance. New love and lost love, friend love, baby love and dozens of great Manhattan date stories. It was a year of joy. A year of wild Tuesday nights, 2AM skinny dipping, far too much champagne and a lot of best/worst decisions made. And most of all, it was a year of hope. A year of seeing hope in even the bleakest situations, finding hope in the simplest wonders of humanity and acknowledging how having even the littlest amount of faith can change the chemical reaction between your body and the world.

Sitting here on the last day of this year, I can't help but reflect on how just the smallest moments, like meeting a person or changing your view of a situation, can change your life forever. I'm amazed at how virtues like patience and acceptance can completely change the impact of experience in your life. And most of all, I marvel at how allowing yourself to explore people and places for the sake of exploring - with nothing to lose, except maybe yourself for a bit if you're lucky - can bring you back to what you knew all along about yourself.

Tonight I'll celebrate with a few of my dearest, a lot of bubbles and good vanilla cupcakes with gold painted champagne buttercream. 2012 may be coming to a close, but as we know, every end is in fact another good opportunity to begin. And so I raise a toast to the beauty and good fortune that this year has brought me, and look forward to much much more champagne in 2013.   

Notes from the Field: On turning 28...

Tuesday is my twenty-eighth birthday.   

 

I was going to whip up a nice long post commemorating the end of my twenty-seventh year. It would have been a chronicle of love. It would have talked about going all in, seeing things through and watching hard work pay off. It would have drawn a picture of four seasons in Central Park, helicopter rides to work and getting windblown on the northern California coast. It would have thrown in jokes about crying on New York City subways, a slew of hilarious dates and a one-toothed dog named Ferdinand. It would have told the story of new life, a wild summer and one thousand champagne cocktails. 

 

But instead, I'll tell you about Saturday night, when we gathered around a long harvest table in a tiny uptown pub bathed in candlelight and laughter. Thanks to the storm, it was intimate. There were a few hurricane refugees and the ones who could make the trek uptown. There was flowing champagne, sparkler fires and tiny crown fascinators atop our heads. There was a bar takeover, and we played musical chairs, had a soul shakedown and convinced complete stranger friends to join us for a birthday limbo. It was perfect. 

 

And then there were these: pumpkin cupcakes topped with vanilla buttercream, fresh figs and a gold-flecked caramel drizzle. They were shared with family, friends, random bystanders and a few of our favorite British pub boys in the world. They were divine.

When I think of what really makes a year, I am reminded that it's what we learn from the ups and downs, the experiences, the trials and those moments that we find completeness. Saturday night was a reminder that I so have what I need and more. I'm overwhelmed at what twenty-seven brought. It was everything I could have never even dreamed of, and one hell of a trip around the sun. I can't wait to see how my new year unfolds.  

Case Study 119: "The Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcake"

Good God, it's lovely out there. There's something about autumn in New York that makes it more wonderful than the smell of roasted nuts, burning leaves and cold hayrides together. It's the light. 

Put on your headphones and head to Central Park. Dave Brubeck should come first:"Take Five." There are young women walking arm and arm down Park Avenue in capes and brogues. The church bells at St. Ignatius Cathedral toll 6pm and there are tourists huddling on the stairs of The Met. The street musician dressed like Michael Jackson drops his horn to play their hasty photographer. Head north and a bespectacled gentleman in a navy blazer strolls past Guggenheim, trailing cigar smoke behind him. A Westie in a plaid coat trots leash-less at his side.   

Cross the Rhododendron Mile and take a lap around the Reservoir. Now your song is Duke Elligton's "Take the A Train," but you're still on foot. The sun begins to set and the light on the water is illuminated a sort of yellow tinge under the watchful eyes of The Eldorado's twin peaks. Golden indeed. Head back across the Eighty-Six Street Traverse to the Great Lawn and weave down to the Lake. Put on the Armstrong and Fitzgerald version of "Autumn in New York." Stop to see the way the Weeping Willows cast monster shadows across the water past the Boathouse.  

Take off your headphones as you climb the steps at Bethesda Terrace. A lone trumpeter stands where the shade meets the sun through the arching elms on The Mall, and he wails a dirty wah-wah version of "Summertime." In memorium, you think, but you carry on. Under statues of literary greats, an accordionist plays Edith Piaf's standard "Autumn Leaves." Your heart aches a little every time you hear it, but it's in the way that only fall can cause an ache, by juxtaposing warm sentimental feelings with a time of year when everything dies. Turn on Coltrane's "Central Park West" and make your way back uptown. 

Back in my kitchen, I can't help but keep things cozy. Candles are lit, windows are cracked open, and I throw on wool socks and flannel while my oven heats up. I bake and I bake and I end up with these deliciously airy pumpkin cupcakes topped with coffee and vanilla bean buttercream and a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie on top. I eat them for breakfast, I deliver them to friends and on my way back home, I head back to the park.

This is how I dreamed it up. As a child, I imagined New York as a sort of love affair, and it always took place in the fall. We'd hide away in the dark of Bemelman's while the sun set gold outside, secretly wishing and praying that on any other day but Monday, Woody Allen would stroll right into The Carlyle and fill the air with a clarinet sound even moodier than the clinking of ice cubes in Scotch and the quick swishing of white-coat waiters.

I'd smooth out my skirt and he'd straighten his tie. We'd throw on our trenches and slip outside - skipping first across Fifth to the Ramble, where we'd make a dash for the steps of the Museum of Natural History. We'd ascend, step by step by step, until he stopped. And time would slow, nothing else would exist and the chilling city would whirl at a million light years' speed around us, just as is does on every other day of any other year.

If you come to the city and open your eyes and ears, you'll find it. There's romance all around, and there is no season and no city that reminds you of that quite like autumn in New York.