Oklahoma Dreaming: I Miss Fish
by Donna Schoenkopf
Fish. I miss fish. I CRAVE fish. There are no fish in the supermarkets here, except for a TON of breaded catfish, and some frozen shrimp and codfish. Actually, there are frozen breaded fish in the refrigerated section. You know ... the Mrs. Paul’s stuff you bake in your oven, which kinda defeats the principle of healthy eating. There is not a nice piece of halibut or salmon or anything else remotely like that in my neck of the woods. No smoked anything, like whitefish, either. (I have only found it in New York or on Fairfax Avenue in L.A. Mmmmmmm. A little whitefish on a bagel with cream cheese. Maybe a slice of tomato and some capers strewn gracefully on top. Yeah. I miss that.)
I miss fresh produce. The cucumbers here are rubbery. The oranges either hard and old or with soon-to-be-rotten soft spots. The packaged cole slaw has already turned into sauerkraut in the bag. Asparagus? There it stands, looking perky. Take it home and cook it and you chew on woody stalks, as my dinner guests found out once. The peaches are bruised beyond edibility. The avocados are the size of golf balls and just as hard. Brussels sprouts? Forget it. The lemons are exorbitantly expensive and tiny. The tomatoes are nice, though, as are potatoes and lettuce and packaged mushrooms. And I did eat the best watermelon of my life, grown in Oklahoma, bought at the store, last summer.
I miss Trader Joe’s market. I miss their exotic jars of tapenade and organic hummus. I miss their rows of pretty and delicious and healthy sandwiches made with artisan breads. I miss their organic produce and meat and interesting foreign beers. I miss their wasabi mayonnaise. I miss their weird candies and gum from the Amazonian rainforest. I miss their organic nuts mixed with cranberries and chocolate chips and every other curious thing. I miss their masses of beautiful flowers. I miss the reggae music over the intercom. I miss the aloha shirts on the checkers who are hip and cool and friendly in a real way. I miss the weird and wonderful cereals and chips. I miss their gigantic avocados. And their fish. I miss their fish.
I miss the Los Angeles Harbor. I miss sitting at Ports O’Call Restaurant’s patio at 5:00 on a warm Friday afternoon, with a Bombay Sapphire martini, on the rocks, three olives, waving to the cruise ship moving without sound, drunk and happy passengers waving back. The ship’s so large it’s the equivalent of a ten story building. And how DOES it move so SILENTLY? It’s like a ghost ship.
I miss the fish market at the Harbor. You can buy a HUGE platter (think school cafeteria tray) full of perfectly seasoned (a bit of hotness, lemony, nice and salty) and perfectly grilled seafood. Choose your fish at the fishmarket and take it to the grill and watch it being cooked. Sit at a long table on an enormous covered patio, with a merry crowd of Latinos and mariachi bands and beer and seagulls.
I miss San Pedro. Old and historic. Fresh air, steep San Francisco hills, old Victorian houses, a really ugly main street, a perfect mix of unusual ethnicities like Croatian and Filipino. I miss how everything grows there. I miss Joe and Larry and April, my neighbors. I miss the sweet, moist, cool breeze that blew through my windows every single afternoon, cooling the house.
I miss the bridge across the Harbor, lighted at night with blue solar lights. I sang Christmas carols to Grandson Jimmy, driving through the night across it, late one Christmas Eve. When we approached San Pedro that night, it was as though we were looking at a black velvet painting with points of light up to the sky. It was the houses on the hillsides.
I miss the Thousand Oaks library, with its two-story mural of storybook characters in the Children’s Area. I watched it being painted every day for weeks by a solitary artist on a scaffolding. The library has modern swooping architecture, huge windows looking out to the forest and creek. Yeah. Great library.
I miss the Conejo Valley Democratic Club and their feisty demonstrations on the main street corner of town. We carried signs protesting the war in Iraq or in support of the United Farmworkers or stopping nuclear bomb testing. Kids, retired folks, moms, college students. We were smart and funny and angry and a force to be reckoned with in that Republican town.
I miss Terri Grando, my political mentor. I was thirty years her junior, her protege. We were pals. She taught me everything I know about conventions and delegates and fundraising and being president of the club. I miss her laugh.
I miss Topanga Canyon, with artists and hippies and odd and beautiful homes tucked down dirt lanes and views to everywhere and walking trails over California hills. I miss the Inn of the Seventh Ray, in an oak forest, with curving pathways up and down levels of dining areas and vegetarian, organic food.
I miss Jim and Carole and Judy and Bill, my grown-up friends. Forty years of friendship. Dinner, with lots of great talk, parties at Christmas with window-decorating and Carole’s son Benton always putting up the Don’t Worry, Be Happy sign in the window—the last thing my son Jesse ever wrote. Thoughtfulness and rescuing and laughter and tears and sisterhood with Carole and Judy, my compadres. Jim and Bill, the husbands of my dear friends, smart, sweet, kind and generous. Kids and pets and friends and lives intertwined for all our adult lives. I miss them.
I miss my teacher friends. Our lunches in the cafeteria, loud political arguments with Dave and Scott, laughter and gossip with my girls in Lourdes’ or Esmeralda’s room, where coffee was always waiting before school. Ingrid, Karin, and Ulrike and Shirley and David. Beautiful Letty, noble Patricia, the Office Folk. Twenty years of stories and lives together.
I miss being a teacher, with its power and its glory, and its humbling. We all need humbling, you know. When you haven’t had a perfect day with your students, it is good to remember that NOBODY is perfect and to just get back on the horse and try again.
I miss my students. Their sweetness and sorrow. Their LIFE force.
I miss my children. I miss my children. I miss my children.
I have no words for that.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
I left San Diego a couple years ago. The problem there is that the places I enjoyed were already gone by the time I decided to move. Where I am now I have to drive a long way to see anything different, but I don’t miss the congestion at all.
2008-11-29 by Gary RichardWow. Great piece, mom!
2008-12-01 by John SchoenkopfI miss the East coast and all that I left there. I feel your pain
2008-12-07 by barbara SteinbergDear Donna,
I am starting a petition to get a trader joe’s in OK. Please see my facebook group page: Petition to get trader joe’s in oklahoma” to spread the word.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/posted.php?id=50295301452&success;
You are getting better and better at this writing thing Donna. I guess it is true that the more one does something, the better one gets at it.
2008-11-28 by JoAnne SangerKeep up the good work.
Your friend who has missed you since one time up at Arrowhead.
xxoo