Apart from discovering the challenges of becoming a Saint, I'm going bananas! My mother's apartment is like...Grand Central Station! People coming and going constantly, each wanting something. This evening I had just finished making a wonderfully healthy multi-vegetable salad when my sister walked in with an enormous apple cake. She's barely recuperated from a serious illness and having found new strength and vigor, is awakening to her passion for baking. At the moment she's experimenting with low-fat cakes, given fat was the cause of her illness, and now she needs our taste buds to critique her master piece. Then my brother walked in, "I need the measurements for the kitchen shelf I'm making for you;" and a moment later a tenant knocked on the door, "My outdoor buzzer isn't working, could you call an electrician?" interrupted by "Hurry, turn on the t.v. 'Master Chef' is starting." In this family we're either a food addict, a chef or a baker and the Food Network programs are an essential part of the day, hours on end, no matter what else is going on.
The level of noise and commotion people are used to here overwhelms me. So I hide in the living room while life continues in the kitchen. Nothing like the life I lived in Sonoma County where you could hear the leaves in the garden move! Frustration, patience, challenge me daily. I've put on some pounds, have several new gray hairs, and wait each night for the return of sanity, when the t.v. is off, Mom's in bed and I can sit on the coach, reminiscing, recalling a time that once was, and envisioning a future that I intend, where one day I'll be able to say enthusiastically, "I love my New York life!" Right now, I'm hard pressed to imagine what that would look like!
