In life too.

Early this morning, the stunning, perfectly fit men, sporting chic sunglasses, photogenic miniature dogs (typically crossbreeds between Yorkshires, Poodles, Bichons and other adorable throw pillows) and 2-seater vintage cars—Alfa spiders, MG’s, early 70’s Karmann Ghia’s—were out on 2-Mile Hollow beach. Most were lovingly toweling the sand off their Yorkoodles, or engaging in impromptu banter with other gorgeous men. This New Yorker cartoon-worthy scene on one of my favorite beaches always makes me gleeful. Don’t ask me why, maybe because it’s an apt reminder that we should all just play more in life.

Accustomed to being one of the rare women on the scene, I politely hello’d my way by, trotting towards the waterline to run on the edge of the beach.

There is a specific band of sand at the water’s edge that’s ideal for running—not too mushy and just firm enough. The jogger’s challenge is staying on this strip while avoiding the waves lapping at one’s shoes. It is a constant dance, away from the water towards the softer sand, which is at a slight incline, and back again. With today’s erratic waves, I negotiated an elegant zigzag, requiring dozens of nimble, real-time, ad-hoc adjustments.

Just as in life.

In such moments, no one can advise you. You alone must gauge where the edge of the wave will rise, how quickly to sprint sideways, or whether you can accelerate forward in time to miss the wave’s reach.

It occurred to me that we need to exercise this subtle combination of flash-prediction, intuition and dexterity, in so many domains (and in real time!): office politics, relationships, investments, even child-rearing challenges. What’s too much, too little, too fast, too slow, too soon or too late?

There are times, like today, when glancing at a seagull halved my concentration and I was suddenly, jarringly, ankle deep in cold water. I let out something of a damsel-in-distress yelp, which hopefully only the seagull heard, and bounced onto higher, drier ground. There was now water trapped in my socks, squishy and annoying and… I carried on. Definitely not so comfortable running with seawater in my shoes but, ultimately, manageable. I knew the water would evaporate as soon as I’d put the shoes in the sun, and they’d be dry by tomorrow, no biggie.

Life is full of split-second decisions. Instances where you just need to think without thinking, as Malcolm Gladwell puts it. Sometimes you make a decision that hits the nail on the head, sometimes you miss the mark. Welcome to the human race. In moments when you “take your eye off the ball,” there’s obviously a chance something could happen, and yes, something you cannot control and…So what? Who said you can’t run with wet socks?

Only you can make your decisions, call those shots, cauz’ no one will ever know better than you whether they are right or wrong. What matters is: you’ll know whether they are the right ones for you.

Except (!!) in the 6 months since I launched this blog I never once mentioned any apps so please indulge me, just this once, because it’s an app that so completely captures a universal need.

The application’s tagline goes “Lovin’ that tune? Shazam lets you discover, buy and share the song that is playing.”

For less than $2 I installed and promptly forgot I had Shazam. Until recently, when my son reminded me. We’d bounded off the couch to groove to a cool song accompanying the credits of a film we’d just watched and I said “this is such a great song, I wonder who sings it?” Without skipping a beat he exclaimed “Mommy! Shazam it!” to my perplexed expression he practically shouted “Shazam it! Shazam it!” and grabbed the iPhone (to hand, sadly) and pointed it towards the source of the music (in this case the TV). Within 2 seconds the name of the song and the band appeared on the screen, within 3 we were directed to an iTunes window allowing immediate purchase of the song. Done, dusted, loaded. The next morning I was running to it. And no, I’m not revealing what song.

Turns out Shazam can truly identify EVERYTHING, even early 1950’s Cuban music from an unheard of album (yes, I own such a thing), like magic. It unfailingly spits out the name of the song and artist.

Jogging happily to my newly downloaded song, I tried to pinpoint where my enthusiasm for this gizmo sprang from, and suddenly, it was clear as day: the joy of capturing a fleeting feeling or moment (in this case: a tune) and holding on to it, forever. Whatever the song evokes, you can reach out and grab it, without any restriction, permission or tedium. In nanoseconds, you can satisfy the primal “gimme some of that” urge, best embodied by babies swiping at an older child’s cotton candy or reaching, with every yearning ounce of strength and willpower for those juicy cherries or a shiny toy. If only we allowed ourselves to be more like that, with more things in life, more of the time! You want it? Shazam it! And you too can have it.

Hmmm, so much for not waxing lyrical.

So how do you get past it?

Time to share a trick I learned from my wise friend Judy.

The first time I saw her do this was when she co-led a group of 22 people, in the context of a very unique leadership training. The formal trainers had, as they often did during this 4-week-training program, surrendered their “leader chairs” to us (the participants) and we had to work with that, lead in rotation and basically draw on our own leadership/facilitation skills, common sense, intuition and initiative.

At a particularly messy moment (that’s code for: the group has lost the plot, there is no clear sense of where the group exercise is headed, something might happen or things may careen and everyone will lose motivation and disengage completely), as Judy was tossed an idea of how we might proceed as a group, she suddenly put one hand over her eyes, elegantly raised the other for a little silence, and simply said “hold on a sec’ please, I’m just checking in with myself.”

Little did she know then, that these words would go down in our group’s lore forever.

We all waited for 5 pregnant seconds and then she smiled (beamed, in fact), stood up, and led us into an impromptu exercise that totally shifted the mood and restored everyone’s enthusiasm, instantaneously. Magic, really.

What she did, specifically, is irrelevant now.

What’s important is that Judy knew (as in: had a deep sense of self-trust) she had an answer, and certainly the resources to handle anything, even if she didn’t know WHAT it was exactly she was looking for. By “checking in with herself” Judy consulted her intuition, listened to her gut feel, and took a momentary break from her mind’s gotta-solve-this-problem-stranglehold. I should mention that Judy is a brilliant, highly cerebral thinker. At the same time, she is also incredibly wise and knows how to create a solution in the moment, as warranted. And now, she also knows that, in many situations, she can’t rely exclusively on her mind to do that.

You with me so far?

Good. Because this is the point of this post: when you find yourself in such a bind—sensing an almost physical pressure to choose, decide or make something happen now—do what Judy did: check in with yourself.

Here are tricks that work (for Judy, for me, for friends I’ve consulted with):

Hit an imaginary, mental pause button and make time stand still for a few seconds.

Close your eyes, or look at the sky, tune out any noise, distraction, other people. Now ask yourself one of these questions:

“What’s important here? What really matters?”

“What’s the most natural thing to do here?”

“If I wasn’t worried, what would I do, right now?”

Try also:

“Am I ok with this?”

“What’s my intent here?”

“What’s in it for me if I choose x?”

“How does this choice sit with me, here, in my belly.”

I am utterly convinced that all of us have the answers to practically everything that life throws at us; it’s just a matter of accessing them. Most often, this involves bypassing the supreme force exerted by our brain, dodging the mental dictates in order to consult the other sources of wisdom we carry inside us. And the cool thing is: those sources are always available, in every moment. If we simply remember to check in.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

In a salad bowl combine the following:

• 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
• 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt (aka “gros sel” in French)
• 2 tablespoons melted butter (5 seconds in the microwave if you live in Northern latitudes, 30 seconds on your window sill if you live in, say, Dubai!)

On a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil, evenly spread your assorted (raw, unsalted) nuts. Ideally 100g each of peeled peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, whole unpeeled almonds or 600g of any nut assortment you can get your hands on.

Toast the nuts in the oven for about 10 minutes, until they become golden brown. An amazing smell will fill your house.

Remove and toss the nuts directly into the bowl of seasonings to coat them thoroughly. An even more amazing smell will fill you house (and hair). Distribute into little bowls, serve warm, watch them disappear. Be prepared to field questions, refer your guests to this blog.

(Provide napkins, fingers get a tad buttery).

A crunchy, sweet, savory, aromatic, aesthetic snack that satisfies all the senses, with minimal effort and maximal impact. Everything in life should be that way

And yet, for the first time in a remarkably long time, I found myself in an out of character dare-I-don’t-I-say-anything-trepidation yesterday.

Perched on the edge of a bench, in bleachers overlooking a set of badminton courts, I gazed admiringly at my son who was beating what seemed like a good natured opponent. Other than the occasional “Great shot!” or “Way to go!” my progeny prefers we refrain from any distracting commentary whatsoever, nay, any live involvement in his badminton matches. Understandably. Instead I support him in loving silence, sourcing him confidence, ease, and all good things.

So yesterday, out in Villers-le-Bouillet (you really have to be Belgian, or francophone, to appreciate just how quaintly incongruous the name of this dorf sounds, it’s also a full 100km from Brussels) where we sat through a number of matches, I could not get over the relentless interference coming from said opponent’s mother, up in the bleachers, 5m away from me.

Utterly qualm-less, the woman was hollering instructions at her son, speaking at him after every exchange and dispensing all manner of weird advice while gesticulating to demonstrate. Now I have seen badminton coaches in action and she was not one of them. On the court, the sweet boy kept glancing up at mama between every point, as if on cue, wide eyes searching for guidance and ears perked for what she had to say. Kill the sound and you’d think the mother was remote-controlling the boy or using him like some freak avatar.

It was so distracting, so insulting and unfair to him, it was painful to behold. I have rarely seen someone demonstrate so little faith in their child, so publicly and so unabashedly. Whatever badminton potential the kid had, these shenanigans were destroying it.

Needless to say, within 15 minutes of this, I was silently beside myself. My son seemed unperturbed and was hitting deliberately gently as he’d gauged the other boy to be a less seasoned player. My husband, silent as per our way in these tournaments, shook his head at this, “should we tell him it’s patronizing and insulting to an opponent to not play full out just because you’re better?”

By now I was far too consumed with active seething at the controlling-mother to even begin to wrap my head around that thought track.

“She’s unbelievable! I mean: does she have any idea of how she’s ruining her son’s chances?! Not to mention pleasure? Or life?”

After 5 more minutes of this I stood up.

“I can’t take it anymore, I’m going over there to tell her.”

“Go for it.”

“But I can’t, it’s her mothering style, she’ll take it personally. You can’t tell people they’re bad parents. She won’t get it.”

At this point I’d sat and stood up, neurotic jack-in-the-box fashion, 4 times.

“Come on. You’re a coach, you can handle it. She needs to hear it from someone.”

Before I knew it I was there, standing right alongside her. She looked at me, a bit surprised, and I said, quietly and emphatically: “May I volunteer an observation? Here’s what I see: your son is more engaged with you, more tuned into what’s happening up here than he is on the game. His focus ought to be on the court, not on you.”

Not entirely surprisingly, she turned away like she hadn’t heard a word.

My mind still on fire, I left it at that and returned to the other end of the bench.

“Feel better?”

“She totally ignored me. Pretended I wasn’t there. It’s ok, I’m used to people not wanting to hear hard truths.”

I have no idea what the impact of my opinionated, potentially patronising intervention was or will be, if any (possibly just dinner conversation “a crazy, possessed woman verbally assaulted me today!”). I harbour the innocent hope that my words will someday decant into her heart. Better yet: that her son will find it in his to tell her to shut up and let him play and be his own person.

And that may never happen. Who knows?

Should I have kept my urges in check? Suppressed my indignation, remained silent, polite, minded my own business? No doubt, I must have sounded self-righteous, possibly scary. In coaching jargon: I made myself right and I made her wrong. And yet, for reasons I’m still not entirely clear on, I’m so glad I spoke up.

In their bras.

By moonlight.

For 42 kilometers.

You don’t have to imagine much longer, here’s a clip from last year’s event.

I had the great privilege of sitting next to a fabulous Danish woman (I am lucky: this happens to me a lot, meeting fabulous women) at an all gals’ dinner (to celebrate a friend’s divorce signing, but that’s another story), who told me about the Moonwalk which she and her sister are walking this June 19^th in Edinburgh.

With thousands of others, Henriette is collecting funds for breast cancer research. A breast cancer survivor herself, she lights up from the inside when telling me about the Moonwalk. I was so humbled and impressed, I couldn’t fall asleep that night. By 7am, I’d already harassed journalist friends to cover the Moonwalk, in some form.

In keeping with its name, the Moonwalk starts at midnight. To prepare for the 42km march, Henriette has been walking through Brussels streets and parks for an average 4 hours a day since December. Last Sunday, for the first time, she walked a full 30km, her daughter biking enthusiastically alongside. At her current pace, given the days left to go and the training program she downloaded “and more or less followed,” Henriette reckons she’ll get in at just under 7 hours.

If you’ve ever had breast cancer, known anyone who has, or lost someone to breast cancer you might want to have a look—or a walk (and/or pledge money, of course!). And even if you haven’t, for God’s sake, look anyway!

I cook a lot. Generally with the phone on my ear but sometimes with my mind (mindfully, even, as in the Kabat-Zinn way), but mostly with my heart and hunch. I tend to know by now, pretty intuitively, what ingredients work well together and which ones will insult each other. And measuring out exact amounts is not for me anymore. I’m into throwing together big time, particularly when it comes to marinades. Here’s one that’s a winner with my kids and their friends (it’s their enthusiasm this evening that had me write this up!).

• 2 generous glugs soya sauce
• 2 generous tablespoons honey
• 1 average glug mirin rice vinegar (alternative: juice of 1 lemon)
• 2 crushed or finely chopped garlic cloves
• 2 tiny, man-killing Thai chilies—green or red—finely chopped (and hands thoroughly washed, right after you chop, lest you unwittingly graze a nose, eyes and possibly other anatomical parts. Ignore this warning at your peril). Alternatives to fresh chili: 2 generous squirts of wasabi, tubes of which can be kept in the fridge forever like toothpaste (just as handy), or a teaspoon of harissa paste.
• 1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped, no real need to peel
• 1 bunch fresh coriander, coarsely chopped
• 4-6 stems scallions finely sliced

With a fork, blend all this together thoroughly in a flat baking dish and toss in thick slabs of salmon, tuna or swordfish. Turn them over several times to coat them fully and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours, the longer the better. Throw the fish on the BBQ or on a thick, cast-iron skillet (even better with ridges) and cook as little as possible.

The fish will be moist, spicy, tangy, slightly sweet and guaranteed to zing your mouth in different ways. Equally yummy served cold. In both cases you can jazz it up with a side of mango salsa: mash up 1 very ripe mango with a finely sliced and peeled cucumber + 1 finely chopped red chili, and chopped red onion (half), salt and juice of 1 lime.

It may sound sophisticated but it truly is dead easy. And it will taste sophisticated.

I celebrated my last birthday surrounded by loving husband, kids, parents and nephews, showered with gifts and my favorite foods and champagne. I also fielded emails, text messages, phone calls from roughly 70 people spread across 15 countries. As if that weren’t enough I also received 4 truly breathtaking bouquets, including one from the flower shop down the block that delivered them all (happens to be my favorite in Brussels, they kinda’ got that something was happening for me that day!).

The last delivery, from my best friend, boasted 42 roses (the secret is out of the bag) which, in keeping with our friendship, seemed to hold out forever. It was a full week before I decided to pluck out the wilted roses to salvage the perky ones.

This takes time, but the alternative—waiting an extra 3 days until the entire lot was ready to trash—didn’t feel like an option. Not the kind of thing I do.

I heaved the huge, intoxicating bunch out of the vase, snipped the string and gently took it all apart in the sink. I cast aside the roses that were clearly done for, isolated the still impeccable ones and trimmed the offensive petals off those that were somewhere in between. I pulled off dry leaves, rinsed and refilled the vase. With red, orange and pink petals cascading across my countertop and feet, a metaphor began to percolate. I’d like to say, from my heart up to my head. It went something like this:

(bear with me here.)

Our life, when you think about it, is a huge bouquet of roses. As we mature we get to choose which ones we keep and which ones we are through with. To honor the elements we want to safeguard, we have to clear out the encumbering weight that no longer serves. Yeah, those dead roses certainly brought color and fun to our life while they lasted and…..we have a responsibility, to ourselves, to differentiate between possibilities and wilted would-be’s, and know how to let the latter go. And no else can say, really, what’s still good, what works, what doesn’t, except us. This intimate selection needs to be artful, gentle, thoughtful (i.e. remove brownish petals and it will look fab). At times it can also be obvious, immediate, thought-free (yup, that here is a dead flower). Either way, no one can do this but us.

By 7am, feeling incredibly serene, I swept a bucketful of rose waste into the trash and reached for a slimmer, different, far less modern vase, a quirky 1950’s number found in a flea market 15 years ago.

I now had a radically new bouquet. Less roses, for sure, but all of them elegant, stunningly healthy and breathing tall, with renewed presence.

From time immemorial the crossover between culinary delights and sexual frisson has inspired writers, poets, painters, chefs, television shows. Now, just as I’d recovered from (and begun to feel sufficiently jaded about) Nigella Lawson, whose approach to cooking once left me at a loss for words (she is a genre in her own right, summoning equal parts fascination and horror) here comes the next sexual revolution in cooking for TV audiences.

Enter The Delicious Miss Dahl (yes, granddaughter of writer Roald but also former plus-size model and cookbook author) who suddenly makes Nigella’s domestic antics seem downright nunnish. Sophie Dahl’s mood-cooking show, which premiered last week on BBC2 throws yet another cuisine conundrum at you.

Again: uncategorizable.

Here at least, no horror (save for the staggering amounts of sugar in that peanut-butter fudge–first 500g then another 200g confectioners’ for good measure) just unabashed sensuality. And those words coming at you fast and furious: voluptuous, I am obsessed with it, like walking into a bordello, smashing into it, the seduction of it and (my favorite) you know how you want it.

I watched, hypnotized, as she squished and fondled the buffala, popped spears of roasted sweet potato into her mouth, repeated the expression self-indulgent selfish pleasures about—oh—25 times! It was a full 10 minutes into the show before I even registered that my husband was watching too and that, surprise surprise, he was as transfixed as I was (though adorably claiming “I was not!” when I teased him about this later).

The fact that delicious Sophie wields a knife in a way that would make most cooks cringe is irrelevant as her come-hither blue eyes and double-entendres easily make up for any cooking transgression. Except transgression is, ahem, the entire point.

——–

P.S. Did I mention the suggestive close-ups of meringues and other foods rising in the oven, in accelerated-motion, with the music’s volume surging in synch?

In this no-holds barred depiction of the events of July 16^th & 17^th 1942 in Paris, director Roselyne Bosch pulls her audience into the lives of Jewish families, violently rounded up by French militia forces, doing their utmost to help the Nazis.

Émile Hennequin, then director of the Paris police, ordered that “the operations must be effected with the maximum speed, without pointless speaking and without comment, the arrested can take only a blanket, a sweater, a pair of shoes and two shirts with them.” Starting 4am on July 16^th, 13 152 Jews were ripped out of their homes (and retirement centers and even hospital beds)—among which 5802 women and 4051 children—and thrown into the infamous Vélodrome d’Hiver (an indoor cycling stadium) under unbearably unsanitary conditions, to await deportation. Twenty of those individuals somehow survived the horrific fate that awaited them.

Like most people (or maybe not) I was fully aware of this dark chapter in French history, studied it in school, read about it, etc. Yet the graphic scenes in this jolting film will mark me forever. What so many French citizens did during the German occupation, and on that hot July night in 1942 in particular, is impossible to understand, let alone justify or forgive. A courageous minority did defy the Nazis, taking a risk by hiding Jews wherever they could. Over half a century later, these Jewish survivors provided testimonials that helped flesh out this movie.

La Rafle is an important reminder. It is about the pain, the horror, the terror and the trauma that French Jews underwent. As shocking and extreme as the film is, the reality of what happened 68 years ago was undoubtedly a hundred times worse, utterly defying imagination.

No one should ever forget this.

Me, I went through an entire pack of Kleenexes, stuffing one after every saturated one into my empty coke cup, until well after the credits rolled.