There is a right way to cut a bell pepper.
I know that because Ann stopped me from doing it the wrong way. I was standing in her kitchen helping prepare dinner. When she saw me butcher the first pepper, she interceded to ensure I didn't repeat my performance on the next.
That was 35 years ago, plus or minus a year. I don't remember what dinner was going to be or who was going to be there. The number of people at Ann's table in those days was fluid. With four children of her own, a regular flow of their friends, Ann's friend David, and maybe her twin stepsons, dinner could be for two or 12. Ann just went with whatever it turned out to be, and if you happened to be there and it was dinnertime, you were invited.
There was gin and vodka before dinner, even if you were a year or two shy of legal, and wine with the meal. I learned about salad spinners and making taco shells. I learned you could eat salad after the entree. The thing was, if you really wanted to eat the salad first, that would have been OK, too. Ann's house was a place to be comfortable, even if you were 17 and lost.
Then, as a 19-year-old orphan, Ann's house became the closest thing there was to home and family, a place where it was OK to drop in unannounced because I felt as though I belonged there.
Those were the days of EST – Erhard Seminars Training – and best-sellers such as I'm OK, You're OK. After 1950s white conformity and a civil rights war, after the Summer of Love and violent protests, we got to the late 1970s thinking that we could be ourselves, and so could everyone else. Some, like Ann, discovered it was OK to say no, and others discovered it was OK to say yes. Differences didn't have to be relationship killers anymore, and few embraced that as wholeheartedly as Ann. If she had a motto, it might have been, "I think you're wrong, but that's OK!"
Years later, as we got reacquainted, we developed a tradition of a Tuesday night telephone call about whatever was on our minds and what we'd done to pass another week. I had been to California to visit and had been to one of her famous holiday parties, but missed the annual Christmas Eve meal: a newspaper-covered table heaped with just-steamed Dungeness crab, a loaf of sourdough, some garlic and melted butter. Plenty of wine.
And there I was at 40, divorced, living in a Clear Lake, Texas, apartment, and Ann did an extraordinary thing: She came to visit. We went dolphin watching on Galveston Bay, saw the butterflies in Houston and perused the art festival. We ate and drank and talked and talked and talked, which might not seem extraordinary to you, but it was the first time anyone had ever traveled just to visit me.
She did it again in 2004, when she flew to Springfield, Missouri, to attend my wedding. Of the 150 people there, Ann was one of the three who had come for me.
I don't know why she loves me; I have never done anything of note for her and there is no biological obligation. But it has been a near-lifelong gift to feel that she does.
Yesterday's news from the hospice wasn't promising, and it is unlikely I will be able to get there fast enough.
And I thought only onions were supposed to make you cry.
Ann died on Dec. 28, 2014 at age 74. Her obituary rightly pointed out that, "Her heart, table and home were always open."