How Did I Get So Lucky?

Saying goodbye to The Wednesday Chef

Last week I took this photo of the magical June light in the park next to Hugo’s school the evening of his first band concert when I was feeling all verklemmt about time passing and only realized today as I was looking for a photo for this newsletter that I had the very representation of what I’m trying to say down below right here in this photograph of a literal fork in the road.

I said goodbye to my food blog at the end of April. I’d stopped writing there for quite a while already, but I’d never made it official and properly closed that chapter. The last recipe post was one that I wrote in November 2021, about a dessert I’d made months earlier. My heart hadn’t been in it for a long time, and I figured it was obvious to everyone, but I couldn’t figure out how to tie things up neatly and bring them to a close. I was busy with my other work, writing books and translating screenplays, and then, when the pandemic torpedoed all my paying jobs, focusing on getting the kids through that interminable and frightening time.

One day in April, a year and a half after that last post, I realized the time had come. It just suddenly felt right. So I wrote a goodbye post and looked for a fitting photograph. In some ways, it was like just gently closing the door on a basement filled with boxes of beloved things like old love letters and favorite baby books and cheap wine glasses for parties. Several days later, as I started reading through the lovely comments, I felt my heart seize up. Did I do the right thing? Blogging changed my life; in many ways, for a while, blogging was my life. It gave my life structure and meaning, it was the framework around which I operated. Could I really walk away from it, just like that?

Of course, I am not really walking away entirely. Here I am at Substack and the writing continues and I’m still cooking and I’m still telling you about it and we’re still connected. Just differently. But that’s the thing about closing chapters. Even when it’s plainly the right time and the right thing to do, there is a twinge as it comes to an end.

I’m writing to you right now from my balcony. It’s a gorgeous June evening (is 6:00 pm evening?) and the church bells are ringing a few blocks over and I can hear a bunch of kids chatting down on the street as the wind breezes through the trees and Bruno is at his grandmother’s house for a sleepover and Hugo, who turns 11 in a few days, is celebrating his birthday early with three friends who will be spending the night and right now the four of them are at the playground with a soccer ball and I’m making Wiener Schnitzel for everyone for dinner tonight (I have to test the recipe for the cookbook and so am killing two birds with one stone) and once they’re ensconced on the sofa watching “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which is Hugo’s favorite movie, Max and I will read the room and disappear to watch the last season of “Never Have I Ever” and tomorrow morning there will be pancakes for breakfast.

My best friend, who, incidentally, I wouldn’t have met if I hadn’t started writing my blog, a fact that sometimes fills me with astonishment and terror, because how did I get so lucky and what if what if what if, told me today that 11 is the child’s golden year and the minute she said it, I knew exactly what she meant. I used to gaze at my beautiful baby boy and mourn the day when he would no longer be so small and deliciously squishy, his heft an anchor in my arms. And now I look at him in all his growing glory and am so glad to be a witness to everything about him as he grows. His legs are getting longer by the day. His face is changing, too. He is wise and gentle and quiet and beautiful and the other day at a party he came over and stood in front of me and let me stroke his back secretly and it was glorious.

My best friend’s oldest son just turned 18 and will be leaving home for university soon. It is wonderful and it is gutting. A chapter in their life is coming to an end and even though it is a chapter that must close, and is closing well, I might add, it is bittersweet, full of grief and anticipation. Hold them tight, she tells me. It goes so fast. How did it go by so fast?

The Wednesday Chef is staying up, because while I will no longer be updating it, I can’t imagine it ever not being there. For one thing, what would I do without the recipes for Apple Butter and Miso Claypot Chicken and Hearts of Palm Salad and Coconut Banana Bread and Curried Chicken Salad and Apple Squash Puree and Corn Fritters and Aloo Tikki? But furthermore, where else could I go to read back through the snippets of my old life, the birth of my children, leaving New York, the joy and struggles of life in Berlin? Sometimes I read old entries and think they’re cringey and terrible, sometimes I read old entries and wonder if someone else wrote them because I like them so much, and sometimes I read old entries and get to relive memories I thought I’d lost and it is so satisfying and wonderful and in those moments especially I feel overwhelmed with gratitude. How did I get so lucky? What if I’d never started it? What if what if what if?

The boys will be home soon and the veal cutlets still need to be pounded and breaded, so I need to go now, but I’ll be back again soon, I promise. Apologies for the few weeks of quiet, I was elbow-deep in recipes and cookbook despair, but that moment has passed and I am feeling capable again. One chapter has closed, but the one I’m in now is good and right. And that is all anyone can ask for.