Stories

Summer is my least favorite season. I am a ghostly pale person, I sweat easily, and I do not garden successfully. I am allergic to chlorine and can’t spend days by the pool without breaking out in hives, and I am not generally given to hiking, camping, kayaking or doing any of those other things that involve being outside, sweating, and getting burned. I complain a lot about the heat, which may explain why I often find myself alone in my air conditioned house drinking iced tea and reading.

Today, though, today it was 80 degrees after an interminable and bitterly cold winter. Stepping outside tentatively in my cotton skirt and flip flops, I was overwhelmed by sense memories, good ones, the kind that made me sit down on the peeling porch steps and savor them. As the hair at the back of my neck coiled inexorably into ringlets, and the warm air extended its seductive fingers to touch parts of me that have not been unwrapped in public for five months, it seemed that maybe I didn’t hate summer any more.

I remembered all of the Only Summer things, the Farmer’s Market on Sunday morning, bags full of vegetable love in the form of tiny Patty Pan squash, gritty zucchini, scallions with shining white bulbs, garlic scapes, baby eggplants, tiny and fiery Hmong peppers, and the tomatoes, oh Lord the tomatoes in their juicy, flashy glory.

The wives were off to the local terme- a natural hot springs spa in the town of Spello – for soaking, facials, massages, etc. This was an excursion for the group known as “Umbrian Girls Go Wild” – a disparate, dissolute organization made up of various wives and non-wives, who get together at odd times during the year to do odd things.

Because the women needed to take a few cars, the eminent Don Michele di Sicilia and myself were left with only one car between us for the day. We offered to shop and cook dinner for our spouses after their soak, and this led to one of the longest afternoons of my life.

Everyone in the town of Trevi knows Don Michele. Everyone. So what would have been a brief stop in the coffee store in Borgo Trevi, became an hour of rumination, gesticulation, exaggeration and flirtation from the eminent Don Michele. I almost forgot to buy coffee.

Jonathan Grahm, the owner of Compartés Chocolatier in Brentwood, is just back from a whirlwind pre-Valentine's Day tour of Japan, where 100 Compartés pop-up shops opened for the holiday in Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Nagoya and Kobe. Grahm's face has been plastered on billboards, little old ladies in kimonos vied for his autograph, designers wanted his chocolates to coordinate with their products (underwear, for example) and fans showered him with gifts (such as a Mickey Mouse action figure).

He is, as they say, big in Japan.

After winning a chocolate competition in Tokyo that pitted him against dozens of European contenders and brought him outsized media attention, Grahm has eight permanent Tokyo stores and is about to open another in Shanghai. But the 28-year-old chocolatier aims to be the face of American chocolate in his hometown.

"I've been sort of under the radar" in L.A., says Grahm, who is puckish and inclined to wear button-down shirts with colorful bow ties. He has been Compartés' chocolate maker since he was 21. Four years ago, he bought the business from his family when they were about to give up on it and has since rebranded and expanded.

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When we were growing up like any kid in New England we loved baseball. The Red Sox were our focus and Ted Williams was our idol. In the middle of winter our parents excused my sister Tanya and I from school that year for a whole month to take us to Phoenix, Arizona to watch the Red Sox Spring training.

In the mid 60’s, you guessed it Ted Williams was the hitting coach. That first day at practice my sister and I showed up with our well-oiled leather mitts, hers on her left hand, mine on my right. We inched our way to the sidelines, near enough to hear Mr. Williams as he laid out his plan to the players for the day’s practice. First, he instructed them to do the mandatory pushups, jumping jacks, and an ungodly number of laps around the baseball diamond as he made notes on his clipboard.

As each player hit the ground to begin with the sit ups, the soft spoken coach turned and started talking to my sister and me. He liked the looks of our mitts, because he stared at them for several long seconds- “Do you play baseball a lot?” he said.

“We play everyday”, said my sister. “Do you want to play baseball today with the club?” We replied at same time, “are you kidding? YES!!!”