Linda Simoni-Wastila – Letter from a Friend

Once upon a time, when my jean size was enormous somewhat larger, Linda Simoni-Wastila sent me a jar of homemade peach jam. I gobbled it up, so fast the postage stamp wasn't even dry yet. It looked, and tasted, like she had reached out into the sky and captured sunshine with a butterfly net, then mixed it with crystalline sugary sweetness and preserved it, with love, in a pretty glass jar. 

The jam is long gone but its flavour lingers. When I think of Linda, my thoughts are tinged soft with peach.

I know a number of Lindas (when I was in school there were as many Lindas as Cathys and Susans) so sometimes Dave has a hard time knowing who I'm talking about. "Which Linda?" he'll say, when I mention a story she has written, or something witty she has posted on one of her blogs, leftbrainwrite or bluetruedream. All I have to say is, "The jam Linda," and he nods and says, "Ahhh."

Funny, isn't it, how we come to identify our blogging friends with such labels. I'm glad that it's jam that labels Linda with Dave, because I have a much more sobering label that forever links me with her. We've both lost our fathers; me, a few years back, hers, not all that long ago. Whenever I write about my dad, Linda is there with a reassuring comment. The same when she writes about hers. I realize that everyone in the world can be connected by grief, but somehow our own connection has solidified over the last couple of years by this sadness.

We understand each other. And that's good.

While I feel like I know her intimately, what I actually know about Linda wouldn't fill more than a couple of paragraphs. She lives in the United States, somewhere near Baltimore, Maryland. She's a part-time writer, like me, only she's way more committed and has actually finished a book, and we hooked up through Friday Flash. She's a mom, she's an academic, she's a minister's wife and she's a fabulous cook. She takes writing classes, she's on board with the Weight Watchers program (but I mean, pffft, she's like Twiggy next to me) and apparently she's as bad at cross-country skiing as I am. She struggles with the business of the everyday, like all of us, and somehow she keeps the many and varied aspects of her life in balance. 

Linda is observant, intelligent and sensitive. She has a quality of dignity about her; a gentle strength, that shines through every word she writes. 

One of the words she writes the most is "peace." She signs every comment with it. And when you see it, that signature word, that peace, you feel her spirit, her quiet goodness, her offer of friendship, and sometimes, when you're feeling low, it is powerful enough to make you weep.

Hello friend!

I hope this letter finds you happy, writing like a mad woman on your novel, and not pondering funeral songs. I am, per usual, in the midst of chaos, but what else is new? Busy suits me, the alternative not a healthy one. Mostly I am consumed with work and this smorgasbord I am hosting for church folks. A friend is helping, but when we came up with the idea, we forgot the point of a smorgasbord is a LOT of food, which means a LOT of baking and curing and saucing. So, I write to you in between bread risings and cookie batches. Please forgive me if I sound confused—I likely am.

*

It is late here. Three loaves of Pulla cool on wire racks. The house smells of yeast and cardamom and I want to saw off an end, smear butter over the still-warm bread, but I think – what would Cathy do? You would walk-away; after all, you can walk away from Christmas cookies. You are a better woman than me, so I compromise: a small piece, no butter. Good enough for company, and still within my daily points.

Tomorrow will tempt me. But to be safe, I planned low-fat options (ta-da!), like cucumber rounds topped with salmon and a dab of wasabi-infused cream cheese. Tomorrow I will blow Weight Watchers, but that is what bonus points are for. Come Sunday, back to salad and veggies. By the way, I don’t think I would have returned to Weight Watchers without your public bravery, so thank you. Knowing you are battling similar temptations helps, a lot. And now the oven timer is dinging, I thought I was done baking…

*

It is early morning. The sun slants low over the treetops. Lea, my baby girl, practically a tween (when did that happen?!), sits beside me while I write to you (she says hi), watching robins pull worms and grubs from the grass. There are a hundred birds at least. A red-headed bird flies into their midst. The flock rises in a chattering cloud and flies to the safety of the pear tree. Lea runs upstairs for ‘the bird book’ and finds the woodpecker page. We deduce, based on size and shape, the intruder is a red-bellied wood-pecker. My aunt gave me that book when I was my daughter’s age. I feel the tug of family and history, of people I have loved in this life, and the morning turns bitter-sweet.

*

To sit, at last, to sit. The smorgasbord went well—the guests laughed and talked, their tongues looser from the beer and glogg. They left with full, happy bellies, the best I could hope for. My family has scattered to other corners of the house. I sip a small glass of white wine while I write. Peace. Yes.

Making this meal took more work than I ever imagined. Preparing these foods, many for the first time, I felt kinship with my grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, cousins. Kneading the Pulla dough, infusing the milk with cardamom, braiding the tubes into loaves, I imagined Mumu beside me, whispering the steps, guiding my hands. Brewing the glogg reminded me of my grandfather simmering the mixture of wine, port, and brandy in a soup pot in the week before Christmas. After he died, my mother continued the tradition, and now I make the ancestral potion. The sweet smell of glogg on the stovetop will always connect me to my mother and her father.

Food plays such an integral role in my memories. I love food, to make it, to eat it, to write about it. In one novel, my character Phoebe makes Pulla and remembers her mother, dead over a decade, and feels overwhelming grief. But as she massages the dough, sadness turns to the realization that everything she needs from her mother she has already received—a strength she can invoke anytime by the simple act of making bread, by remembering.

Preparing these ‘memory’ foods feels like small sacred acts, like resting flowers at gravesites. A way to honor my family and how they have shaped me and, in turn, passing memories to my children.

Anyway, enough of this sentimental mush. One more week before classes start, enough time to research snipers, Afghanistan geography, and hammer out Jeremiah’s story. Who is Jeremiah? You’ll find out soon enough, once I get down his bones. And I can’t wait to meet the characters you have cooked up this past year. So lucky, aren’t we, to love who we love, and to live as we do. For that I am grateful, just as I am grateful for your friendship. So take care, you. Hug your boys close, then tell them to hug you for me.

Love and peace, Linda