You need a lot of nerve to paint a house pink. Perhaps, if we lived on Bermuda, where homes are painted every colour of the rainbow, or on Santorini where a dusty rose can hold its own against the fierce fucsias and nectarines of its sunsets, I may consider a pink home. It would be like living in our very own petit four!
It’s hard to say the word, “macaron” without sounding like a total ponce. You either grunt the “R” and sound all Franco-phony, or stick with the English pronunciation, which sucks the sugar out of it, really. I tend to attempt the French version, only I say it at a whisper, “five macaron, please,” and just pray that the person behind the till is Polish.
I don’t know much about Lucille Ball, but I’m pretty sure she and my grandmother would have gotten on famously. Throw my Mum into the mix and dinner just turned into a dance party. “I’m not funny,” Ball used to say. “What I am is brave.” It’s true; some of the funniest women I know are also the bravest, sharpest, and most resilient. “Let’s cross to the sunny side of the street,” my mum suggested to Yiayia as they walked out of Sloan Kettering after her last round of radiation. “Haven’t I been charred enough for one day?” She was bold, she was blunt, she was funny. And the two of them together were a comedy act for the ages. That’s what we need. People who make us laugh ’till we fart, and don’t even notice, because they’re laughing so hard with us.
It took Jason and I weeks to pick the right white for our walls. We settled on Cotton Balls by Benjamin Moore, partly because of the name, but mostly because we were seeing white stars. Eight-years later, and with so much high wattage colour collected, white still seems to be the right choice. It looks fresh, (minus the odd crayon scribble) bright and warm. That doesn’t stop me from imagining walls in sherbert colours, though. A candyfloss living room is unlikely. But thinking about it is fun.
“Home might be a house in the country. Or an apartment in the city. Or even a shoe,” writes Carson Ellis in her beautifully illustrated solo debut, Home. There are clean homes, messy homes, wigwams, palaces, boats and lairs. When I ask the children which home in the book they would most like to live in, Antimo predictably leafs his way to the pirate ship. Iole points to an exotic palace, in Jordan, perhaps. Jason chooses a tiny stone hut perched on a cliff high above the mountains in a place that looks like Burma. Me, I chose the home of a Norse god –– a palace complete with quirky turrets, a giant poppy, Ash trees and a wild goat (that stands on a turret).
It takes guts to go grey. Well, for women it does. On a man, it’s distinguished –– on a woman, it’s drab. But silver stars like Carmen Dell’Orefice, Linda Rodin and Kiki Smith prove otherwise. And what about Joni Mitchell’s stick straight, silver angel-hair? Or that perfect crop of white on top of Judi Dench’s sharp, boyish face? Or the soft curls that sit like whispy clouds over Queen Elizabeth? Gutsy women, indeed. In a piece for the New York Times, journalist, Leah Rozen wrote about her reasons for going grey: “IF MY GOING GRAY is in any way a political statement, it’s a passive but shimmeringly visible protest against the cult of youth. We can’t all be young forever and — news flash! — some of us don’t want to be. Hey, my silvery locks signal to one and all, I’m getting older and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Deal with it.”
“For the price of one indie-rock dress, I can buy ten sweatshop-rock dresses, but part of maturing is realizing I don’t want to be a glutton for rayon,” muses Sarah Lazarovic in her charmingly illustrated new book. “‘Quality not quantity,’ ‘MileEnd not Made in Bangladesh,’ yada, yada –– stab me with a high minded sewing needle.” A Bunch Of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy is a memoir told though Lazarovic’s shopping history, from the coveted scrunchie socks of her childhood in Boca Raton to the year she decides to boycott buying clothes all together. Instead, she paints the clothes she covets. In 2012, she repeats the exercise. In the spirit of Micheal Pollan, Lazarovic goes on to coin the phrase, “Buy clothes. Not too many. Mostly quality.” It’s a sweet, funny, thought-provoking book that brought to mind two people: My grandmother, who in her air hostess years, spent her earnings cultivating a tiny, but highly curated wardrobe of Chanel and Givenchy instead of wasting her money on tonnes of tat, and my friend Stephanie, who in our teens saved up her allowance to buy silk ruffled blouses from Joseph while we all snapped up Topshop by the shed load. These days, I don’t often shop, but when I do, it’s the pieces that are unusual, magic, whimsical –– and yes, the ones that are made to last –– that excite me most.
In all the years of knowing Mama Jaan, it’s funny to me that I don’t know her real name. The matriarch of dear family friends, Mama Jaan (“Jaan” is an endearment that Iranians add to names of loved ones) is the only name I have ever known for her. Every year at Christmas time, she would leave her home in Basel and make the journey to Rougemont where both our families had a home. It was there that I first came across her creams, made by hand in her kitchen and given to each of us as a Christmas gift. With a recipe passed down to her by her mother, Mama Jaan –– full of grace and elegance –– has used this cream all her life. Now, her daughter, Delara and grandaughter, Natalia are making and selling day and night creams under the name, Nadebala. Small-batch beauty is de rigeur, so the timing could not be more perfect. Plus, a product that is sustainable, contains only unprocessed ingredients that has been passed down over generations and was made with thought and effort in a kitchen rather a factory, makes us more inclined to use it. And if you’re still not sure, please look at Mama Jaan’s beautiful, glowing octogenarian face.
When it pours with rain, the only sensible thing to do, in my view, is to go for a swim. If I’m going to get wet, I may as well get drenched. But I realized today, as I bobbed around the shallow end with the old birds at the JCC singing along to The Crystals, “Then he kissed me,” that I’m in dia need of a new cozzie. My suit, (worn through pregnancy) as pretty as it is, bags around the middle and hardly holds up the tatas (or what’s left of them). Of course, the replacement I have in mind is more chic beach sojourn than downtown community centre, but I’m sure the girls will get a kick out of it. Now, to find a cap that compliments the cozzie. Did someone say lime green frill?
Mrs. B was more than a Greek teacher –– she was a loyal, loving, biriba playing safe harbour to whom my brother and I clung to when times were tough. She taught us to read, write and speak Greek. Plus, anything we know about them gods on Olympus, we learned from her. Her role evolved from once-weekly Greek teacher to live-in nanny, and she worked and travelled with our family on-and-off for more than ten-years. My best memories of Mrs. B take place at Voula’s open air cinemas where we ate roasted pumpkin seeds and watched films under the stars. She also took us to Luna Parks for candy floss and wild rides that children probably shouldn’t be on. We’d pile into her little Renault –– my brother and I, and two or three of our cousins –– and she’d take us on outings to the movies, to the beach or for lunch and a swim at the Astir Palace. She loved us and chided us like we were own, and had no qualms about yanking me out of a room by my earlobe when I was being naughty. She covered our scrapes in Mercurochrome and kisses, pinched our bottoms and sang old Greek folk songs to us. There was a lot of silliness and laughter. She is well into her 80s now, and lives in a small apartment in Pefki. On her mantle she has a few icons and crocheted doilies, and a picture of Alex and I.
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