The Ba(t)ch

On reviewing my last two blogs entries, two things trouble me. The first is that a self-professed third-generation carpet designer (whom I naturally do not know) was kind enough to leave a comment drawing my attention to the fact that carpets are not designed by committee, but rather by l'artist, a lone mind in the thrall of a vision. This, I admit, was news, and though I'm thankful for the insight, I now wonder how many other people have found this blog through random google searches, how many fourth generation hat makers, second generation lutiers, hereditary sous-chefs or seminal sommeliers now know all there is to know about Benjamin and the twisted workings of the mind of his father?

The second thing that troubles me is that in Bye Bye Benny, nowhere did I mention that it was also Bye Bye Wifey. In retrospect, it is not clear to me why not: did I overlook this fact? If so, it may mark the beginning of the long plunge into Spousal Blurring: life lived ever more vicariously through the antics of the child, identity slowly obscured by the shadow of an Agenda, Presence fragmented into timetables. Troubling.

What is more troubling is how naturally I slip back into Bachelor Mode: my first stop on the way home was the beer store, where I picked up a 24 pack of hand-crafted Michigan porter. It's been that and beans and rice for the last four days, Clarence White style guitar in the evenings, dirty socks on the radiators and dawn bedtimes. A batch of whole-wheat, half-sugar chocolate cookies eases the tedium of my solitude.

I do think of my wife. I think of her each time I eat a cookie. I think of how she would be horrified at my attempt to mix healthy and decadent eating, how she would throw her hands up, sputter, and in the shrill tones of fish-mongress begin to enumerate the viable vehicles for germ-bearing wheat, the artisinal loafs and the cultured johnny cakes and the various sorts of English puddings, and at the end of this Homeric incantation, when she had finally run out of breath, how she would point out, in quiet conclusion, that nowhere on this universal, cross-cultural, trans-temporal list would I find the Cookie. I think, too, of how quickly those cookies would disappear were she here, and I smile, and thank God for the small pleasures of marriage.