seared salmon with throw-together salad

Last evening, we three gathered around our dining room table for dinner. For the past ten days, we hadn’t been there. We had been around the table of Danny’s brother and his wonderful family in Breckenridge, or in New Mexico feasting on wide blue skies and tamales prepared by men with attentive hands, or in a car driving north out of Abiquiu, a bag of chips and a cold soda in the car on a road trip. (Lu didn’t get the soda.) We had been adventuring.

There aren’t many words I can find for how extraordinary that time has been in our lives. We fell madly in love with Santa Fe. If there were a body of water there, we might be moving soon. Instead, we soaked in the warm sun and the powerful energy of the place and breathed. I was teaching a writing retreat with one of my food-writing heroes, Ms. Molly O’Neill. To say that I was honored and moved is putting it mildly. That I was changed by the experience is unalterably true. It will take me awhile to find words.

Meanwhile, I’ll be in San Francisco this weekend, another experience to share later.

So this dinner was the first we had together at our table in nearly two weeks, the last one until Sunday evening. Danny and I were grateful to be there with Lucy.

Seared salmon. A throw-together salad of the vegetables in the refrigerator: fennel, Savoy cabbage, and asparagus. A watermelon-heirloom tomato salad, hopelessly out of season, but in the kitchen after we had to shoot it for a summer issue of a website. Lucy ate her watermelon with no concern for the season.

We were together.