Ever the trooper, she did just fine.  We celebrated the grown-up developments in our childrens’ lives and swore at the too-young-to-be-facing-this direction her life has taken.

I chose to keep the food simple and ready to eat the minute they arrived in order to make the most of her limited energy reserves.  Using the eggplant and tomatoes from our weekly CSA box, I made a quiche (remember those?) that could be served at room temperature and some vinaigrette to dress a green salad.  Good bread from a local bakery rounded out the meal.

Talking over the menu with M.J. beforehand I suggested a chocolate cake but he thought that seemed like a “supper” cake not a lunch cake.  I think chocolate cake is pretty much appropriate for any meal—including breakfast—but I continued to look through recipes and settled on a favorite gingerbread from Christmas Gifts from the Kitchen by Northern California-based cookbook author Georgeanne Brennan.

The cake features three types of ginger—powdered, fresh and crystalized–and is made with apple juice, sunflower oil and no eggs so it could be used for a vegan meal as well. It has a wonderful flavor with a modern zing from the fresh and crystalized ginger.  For Saturday I decided to make some homemade applesauce to accompany the cake.  So good together.

Here’s the gingerbread recipe in case you too want to celebrate life in all its complexity with a lunch cake.

Triple-Ginger Gingerbread

Makes 2 Gingerbreads

1 cup apple juice or water, heated

1/2 cup dark molasses

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons chopped crystallized giner

1 tablespoon peeled and grated fresh ginger

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup sunflower oil

Confectioners’ (icing) sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease two 8 by 2 inch round cake pans.  (I only have 9 inch and they turn out just fine—cook for the same amount of time.) In a bowl, whisk together the apple juice, molasses, vinegar, crystallized ginger, and fresh ginger.  In a large bowl, sift together the flour, brown sugar, ground ginger, baking soda, and salt.  Make a well in the center of the flour mixture.  Pour in the oil and the molasses mixture and combine with a rubber spatula just until blended.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans and smooth the tops.  Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes.  Let cool completely in the pans on wire racks.  Turn out the gingerbreads onto the racks and sift confectioners’ sugar over the top.

On the prowl for new reading material last night, I dropped by a local church hall to hear Rebecca Miller (author, filmaker, wife of Daniel Day Lewis) read from her new novel “Jacob’s Folly.”  Miller was articulate and the book seems intriguing, but as she spoke I was as distracted as her protagonist housefly.  You see, I was playing hooky from my monthly book club.

Long before Oprah started her famous book club, I converted to communal reading.  First in our grad school years with a number of other student wives and now, for the past 25 years, with a wide range of women who attend my local church congregation, I’ve been part of a monthly book club. The way our club works is that individual members choose books—usually something they’ve recently read and can recommend–and our fearless leader Ann draws up a schedule.  Sometimes the books are classics; most often they are new literary fiction with a smattering of non-fiction to keep us all on our toes. We meet once a month in each other’s homes. Discussion ensues, dessert follows.

Writing about the origin and current state of book clubs for Slate magazine, author Nathan Heller says, “the modern domestic book group comes most directly from a push for women’s intellectual autonomy.”

Certainly, my book clubs have functioned as ways to stimulate my brain in fallow periods—early dead-end jobs, demanding baby and toddler-rearing years—but they also gave me some marvelous traveling companions as my children and I grew up.  I don’t remember every book club book I’ve ever read, but I’ve loved the women who nudged me to explore new literary worlds.

So last night as I listened to Miller describe how her housefly makes it from 18th century Paris to modern-day Long Island, I made a decision.  Even if I was late, I owed it to my fellow book clubbers to show up. As soon as Miller finished answering questions (yes, she sees some parallels between her actor husband’s immersion techniques and her own writing discipline), I  sped down the hill and joined the book club ladies in time for one last discussion question concerning Bella Pollen’s “The Summer of the Bear.” I indulged in a piece of Cindy’s almond cake and thanked Sheri for taking me to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides with her book pick.  And silently, I thanked the rest of these smart, funny women for doing more than helping me attain “intellectual autonomy” over the years.  They’ve also led me to places I never would have gone on my own.

All I ever wanted since I arrived here on Earth were the things that turned out to be within reach, the same things I needed as a baby—to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full. –

On Wednesday I spent the afternoon with my friend Athanasia, keeping her company as her life winds down.  She’s been battling cancer for several years now but her doctors have told her that the fight is over and it’s time to get as comfortable as she can and see the people she loves.

In her toasty warm apartment, we talked about her past adventures, my future plans, and our shared friends.  We sipped some Sprite and when the pain got too bad, Athanasia took some medication. When her eyelids got heavy, I offered to read to her.

I read a few chapters from “Forgotten Country,” a contemporary novel by Catherine Chung about a Korean immigrant family and their father’s struggle with cancer.

I hadn’t planned on reading that particular novel to Athanasia when I arrived. My Kindle held several other options that might have been more obvious choices–scriptures, poetry, inspirational memoirs–but sometimes you just plunge in and hope someone is guiding your choices. As it turned out, we were both captivated by the narrative of the daughters’ childhood immigrant experience and the father’s diagnosis.

Like the father’s cancer, Athanasia’s cancer is now showing up in her liver and lungs.  Like the Korean family, Athanasia was an immigrant, too.

She  came from Greece as a young woman and  worked at various jobs, finally becoming a skilled caregiver for other patients at the end of their lives.

I knew from previous conversations that Athanasia had been adopted, that she had been divorced and had no children, that her life had not been particularly easy.

“How have you made peace with life’s challenges?” I asked.

“I’m by nature a happy person,” she said with a shrug. ” It helps.  And despite everything, I’ve been very blessed.”

She says she wants our church congregation to sing “There Is Sunshine in My Soul” at her funeral. Perfect.

Athanasia told me once that her name means immortality in Greek.  For now I’ll savor the broad grin and generous hugs that I’ll remember forever.

May 18, 2012  Today we celebrated the life of Athanasia Bezaiti in a memorial service filled with tributes and song, including a rousing congregational rendition of There Is Sunshine In My Soul.

***

“Life’s so short. It’s over in about an hour and a half,” the writer Anne Lamott said in a recent interview at GoodReads.  Lamott is out promoting her new memoir “Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son,”  which is a boon to all of us fans.   Read more of her giddy wisdom here and here and here. Her tweets are also fun to follow@ANNELAMOTT.

We parked outside the cemetery gates and took off in the storm, zigzagging up the hill as we commenced our weekly therapy session. But before we reached the top we turned back, soaked to the skin and worried about slipping and falling.

We were almost back to the entrance gate when Rosie interrupted my saga of house-selling bad luck and pointed at a glowing light that moved from one low black tombstone to another.

“What’s going on over there?” she said. “Must be leprechaun lanterns or, better yet, pots of gold!”

Of course, it didn’t take long to see that the light from a vehicle parked near the entrance was reflecting off the wet headstones, “moving” as we moved towards our cars.

Here’s a shot of the tombstones an hour later after the sun was up.

And here’s a glimpse of a blurry pot of gold as seen through my rainy windows.

So, at the risk of spreading a little blarney here, I wanted to note that this morning’s extra magical cemetery walk confirmed that pots o’ gold aren’t always found at the end of a rainbow.  Sometimes they show up in the cold, wet, mud-spattered dark—but you’ll never see them if you aren’t out in it also.