The First Post

I made my WordPress account in April of 2013, and on this absurdly sunny NYC February day, I finally have words to fill it. I’ve been a “writer” since I was 5 1/2 years old and started documenting my mental workings in a tiny blue and white diary with a baby seal on the cover. I was possibly the worst 5-year-old speller of anybody in my class. There are many entries from my early days that I still cannot decode, and thus my innermost thoughts may remain an eternal mystery…lost within the pages of that little journal and its extraordinary distaste for the use of vowels.

One of the lines I managed to translate into human speak was a complaint about a girl in my 1st grade class named Cecily (“Cese” in Sara speak). She had stolen my shoe and thrown it in the garbage that day at school. I can imagine that if the same situation were to re-occur today, that I would revisit that baffling frustration, and retreat to the comforts of my words. Journal and pencil then, computer on my living room floor today. 21 years of time has passed and I’ve managed to hold onto this single consistent practice.

I’ve been mulling over the way to start my first post for way too long now. I asked my mother what she thought I needed in order to feel motivated, to bring me out of the S.A.D. from this endless winter, and she answered:

“Well you just need to have a really good meal first”

That’s usually there it starts. My mother was always a cook, we always had interesting things on the kitchen table. Spaetzle with paprika (squeezed through a ricer), chicken with tangy curry sauce, salmon topped with whitefish puree and splashed with Riesling wine. Pear tarts with crisp tart shells and almond paste. Can you smell it?

As a rule, I start planning my dinners at around 9:30 in the morning. I text my girlfriend in a giddy frenzy, throwing out rapid fire options, generally before she has even gotten out of bed for the day.

“Can you at least let me have breakfast first?”

These whimsical culinary dreams are the antidote to a less-than-fulfilling professional life. They are my freedom, my beautiful escape. My eyes glaze over the piercing glare of the computer screen, the shuffle of papers to file, and see the blue dinner plates beside the stove. What would it be tonight? What should I play with? White wine, or red? Prosecco??