Silver linings
Some people are just naturally nice neighbors-generous, gregarious, compassionate-more than happy to lend a hand or a cup of sugar. You know them because they had a ladder longer than yours when the cat got stuck up the tree or when they threw what they knew would be a noisy party, dropped a casual invitation into your mailbox.
Most of us walk around town robed in a sort of latent niceness. We’re friendly and polite, to be sure, but we’re so preoccupied with all our calendar jottings that coming to know our neighbors never makes the to-do list. Instead, we know them as shadows moving behind fences or glimpsed faces driving past.
Then, one day, a life-jolt thunders through the community and-bingo! Like Brigadoon, a village arises in our midst. Out of the horror of disaster, friendships are forged among strangers who once lived among us. People who might otherwise have never even said “hi” suddenly find the greatest pleasure in each other’s company.
That was the way it was for my husband and me when our neighborhood burned in the 1993 Topanga fire. Never-known neighbors became friends, best friends, in large part because they experienced the same gut-twisting emotion, the shock and sorrow of the loss, but also because only they, out of all the kind people who offered comfort, understood how incredibly grateful we were for all we had. It sounds so Pollyanna even as I write it, but gratitude was the purest sentiment of all the complicated moods that swung between hope and despair in the early days of recovery.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I was struck by a bit of synchronicity. First, I ran into an old friend from New Orleans. In the long months since the flood, she’s sprouted a few silver threads in her hair and her clothes are the shapeless, wrinkle-free “throw something on” kind of covering I remember buying when appearance was the last thing I remembered to think about. Her pale blue eyes have the haunted overly bright gleam that hints of tears too near the surface, but she laughs easily, perhaps more lightly than she did before fetid water slopped up her front steps. When the levees broke, Nancy and her husband, Glenn, owned a showcase, family heirloom home on the lake. It washed away, along with the neighborhood. But just a few months before the flood, they had bought a run-down brownstone in a just-OK section of the French Quarter for Nancy’s fledging publishing firm. Today, the building is home and she giggles when she says this, but, “It’s the most interesting place I ever lived with the nicest neighbors we ever had!”
Jazz musicians and chefs, do-good doctors and famous artists. They’re the people who stayed when the Quarter was an island. With only each other for food, shelter and safety, they are close as family today-and they’re the reason she stays.
I also got an email with a link to a widely-distributed story recounted on NPR’s “All Things Considered” called “The Tortoise and the Hippo.” The tale comes from Kenya where a baby hippo was swept down river, away from its mother, during the 2004 tsunami. Storm surge finally dropped it onto the back of century-old tortoise plodding across the coastal sands of the Red Sea. Imagine how traumatized the 650-pound baby must have been! The two animals bonded immediately. Now rescued and living in a wildlife preserve, “They swim, eat and sleep together,” the ecologist in charge of the park said. “The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother.” They are inseparable.
Psychologists often caution about post-traumatic stress syndrome and millions are spent on therapy. They seldom mention post-traumatic bonding, the silver lining in the dark clouds of disaster.
For more on the story of the strange Kenyan bedfellows, go to www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4754996.
Turtle Brownies
Makes 16 to 20
I thought we should honor the loving tortoise with something as sweet as his story. Summer days can be meltingly hot, so try this rich, chocolate brownie that freezes well and makes enough to share with your neighbors.
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
3/ 4 cup flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/ 2 tsp. salt
3/ 4 cup sugar
1/ 3 cup corn syrup
1/ 3 cup cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1/ 2 lb. chopped pecans
2 ounces semi-sheet chocolate
1. Butter and flour 9″ pan.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Melt chocolate and butter together. Cool to lukewarm and stir in sugar, vanilla and eggs. In another bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Fold into the chocolate, stirring until just mixed. Spread in the pan.
4. Bake 30 – 35 minutes, until just cooked through. Cool in pan.
5. In a heavy saucepan, bring sugar and corn syrup to a boil. Stir in 2 – 3 T water and a pinch of salt, beating until sugar dissolves and the caramel forms a thick, golden stream as it drops from the spoon. Remove from heat and stir in cream and vanilla. Quickly add pecans and spread over the brownie. Cool in pan.
6. Melt the semi-sweet chocolate in a microwave and drizzle over the top of the caramel. Chill overnight before cutting.