"I am constantly choosing the contents of my mind, since no one else can make this choice for me."
From Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald. G. Jampolsky
* * *
When Vincent Mancuso and I got together 27 years ago in New York on December 1, 1990, a friend predicted, “He will bring so much beauty to your life and the lives of your daughters.”
As an artist who studied portraiture in the Classical Realist style and would render landscape and seascape Earth Portraits exhibited in galleries in the Northeast and South, Vince has graced our home with treasured family portraits that are NFS (not for sale).
Vince’s artist’s eye has allowed us to savor our travel adventures for many years after – in photo albums and videos we created. Compiling works of art and poetry into a book to celebrate 20 years of a shared creative life added to our delight.
As a former owner of a fabric, wallcovering and flooring shop, Vince showed a flair for décor we’ve tapped in furnishing an 1860s farmhouse in New York and a Florida island garden apartment and city condo. Plus, he is handy – fixing anything from a plaster cast of a smiling chef to a bike (that he taught me to ride at age 52) to a kitchen faucet.
As if this weren’t enough to warrant my notice, Vince loves to cook. Drum roll, please. I stepped into the role of sous chef after 20 years of preparing meals for children's appetites and thereafter savored his gourmet fare. Early on, my two teenage daughters spent hours cooking with Vince, cranking out homemade pasta. Each June, they handed him cards wishing a happy day to their “Father figure.”
Fast forward to 2017: I see Vince surpassed his record in Thanksgiving and post-Thanksgiving culinary feats. In addition to a roast turkey, sausage stuffing, gravy, maple-balsamic Brussels sprout and sweet potato casserole plus an apple-cranberry crumb pie, he prepared and froze:
• Turkey Tetrazzinni casserole
• Turkey Divan casserole
• Stuffing-Crust Turkey Pot Pie
• Turkey Soup (four quarts)
My freezer overfloweth, as does my cup of thanks. After 11 years as partners and 16 as a married couple, I know kind fortune, especially in a world marred by selfishness, deception and cruelty.
Sixteenth Century writer Marcel de Montaigne said, “If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship more than love.” I hadn’t considered the two to be mutually exclusive, but having friendship as a starting and end point strikes me as a good thing in bringing forth love. As predicted, I see the man has graced my life with so much beauty.
The following is part of a poem I wrote for Vince on his birthday in 1990, one of many occasions to be mindful of “what is good” in life:
For Vincenzo’s 40-something Birthday
… And here we are now,
on a white farmhouse porch,
eating melon
at the cutting edge of sweet.
Smelling mowed lawns and
tall grass,
as a princess rabbit of no wrath
rattles her airy cage,
as house swallows catcall
to unsuspecting jays.
Here we are now,
counting our blessings,
as horses take to the pasture,
heads bowed to graze.
Our bodies silky
with an afternoon swim.
With silence as fine
as sand on the beach.
We are free to laugh,
free to speak, and
still with time to praise
the geese trumpeting sunset
above a pond in sunset’s blaze.
As memories come and go,
Not bad for a 40-something page.
* * *
Writer Joshua Rothman threatened to cloud my view in the recent New Yorker article, The Case for Not Being Born, about anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar. Though when questioned in surveys, people say life is good, Rothmans writes, “Benatar believes that they are mistaken. ‘The quality of human life is, contrary to what many people think, actually quite appalling,' he (Benatar) writes, in The Human Predicament."'
This philosopher grieves for people who concur with his vision. “They have an accurate view of reality, and they’re paying the price for it.”
No doubt suffering is part of life and at times overwhelming. But, Benatar deems us trapped in life because death is even worse. He didn't offer any data on that.
I will continue to choose the contents of my mind as this December unfolds, and I will revisit the book, Love is Letting Go of Fear, which was a gift from Vince in 1990. I'll also continue to side with Dr. Seuss in his view of life: “If you hadn’t been born, you might be a wasn’t. A wasn’t has no fun at all, no he doesn’t.” From what I've seen, that's true.
by Reggie Morrisey
Chef on Sill, Hudson Valley Cottage