Thanks to all the well wishers!

I had a very relaxing and low-key birthday, which is perfect in my book. I was able to cook us a simple dinner (fondue on Saturday night, and then Spaghetti Carbonara on Sunday), to go to mass on a beautiful and sunny day, to play with Amalia (who gave me the best birthday present of all - a lovely painting she did and delivered by jumping on me when she decided that I needed to haul my lazy bones out of bed, exclaiming, "Happy Birthday, Babbo!"

I don't feel any older than I did before; the days of expecting a sudden and radical change on my birthday are gone. I think of those "milestone" birthdays, when one gets more stuff to do: driving, voting, etc., and 32 is not one of them. Since this blog will remain in the Internet seemingly forever, 35 will not mean that I get to be President (if you people do elect me, don't say you weren't warned), so this is going to be the pattern for some time.

I like the number 32. It has a good ring to it. Better than 31, which sounds terrible. 31 flavors, nearly all of them indigestible. No thanks. After Baskin Robbins changed the marshmellows in Rocky Road, I have stayed away. They used to be fascinating: like little sweetened pencil erasers. Now that they resemble actual marshmellows, forget it. I can get better Rocky Road elsewhere, although it has not been my favorite flavor for years.

Of course when one is over the age of about 10, the day after one's birthday quickly returns to the realm of the normal, which is fine.

Chinese New Years, on the other hand, seems to drag on longer and longer each year. I am all in favor of these sort of celebrations, but Chinatown is right next to North Beach, and the parking has been intolerable for a month because of this, so I am glad to see it come to a close as well. Now I can go back to allowing a half an hour to get to mass, which is preferable than having to allow an hour.

My birthday always reminds me that Lent is around the corner, and I actually look forward to Lent. I like the reflection, the Penance, the more sober liturgy, etc.

Of course our local weather is on its own calendar. As we prepare for Lent, our weather screams "spring!" We have had mid-60's temperatures, cool breezes, the first of the spring flowers. The other day I went down a street that is still basking in fall foliage, with crocuses and California poppies already popping up. I can think of no other place on Earth where one goes from autumn to spring, with some overlap even. I remember back at Holy Cross Parish in Santa Cruz we had a girl in the choir from the midwest. She said, "I just can't get into the feeling of Lent here. At home all is covered in snow and here the flowers are in full bloom."

Even in high school the first blooms of February seemed vaguely strange. It always seemed that summer vacation should be just around the corner, but of course it wasn't (although now time passes much faster than in those days). The spectacular flowers that always got to me were the pink magnolia trees (we called them tulip trees, but I was set straight by a gardening fanatic who told me that tulip trees were something else, and that these were a variety of magnolia trees). In high school I did a plein-air painting of the tree accross the street. It is gathering dust in my parents' garage. It really is a pretty horrible painting, but it triggers a lot of memories for me whenever I see it.

I still want to get outside and paint when February comes around. By the time summer is here, I am more than happy to be in the cool shade of the studio, but now I want to take my folding easel outside and capture what cannot be captured in toto, rather in little glimpses. While I normally think of my biggest influences as Matisse and Diebenkorn, February makes me want to paint in thick, expressive Van Gogh goo. I don't paint that way very well, since it goes against everything that I have worked for in painting (namely, that Van Gogh never really painted. It was all drawing. Great drawing, but not really painting). But I get this itch in February and want to embrace cloissonisme and the whole bag of tricks.

A similar thing happens when we start getting our summer fog. Once in awhile a shaft of light breaks through and hits the Bay and I cannot help but think of Rembrandt. I admire Rembrandt, but his vision is not mine (and I really cannot say that I am the better for that). However, in three months I will be thinking of chiaroscuro drama and will probably do another series of monotypes that will never be shown to anyone but a few close artist friends, just as an amusement.

Foodwise, winter is a trick. Root vegetables and oven-roasted meat tend to dominate. By late March I will be thoroughly sick of citrus fruit. I will start to fantasize about ripe dry-farmed tomatoes and grilled linguica and gazpacho, but those things will have to wait.

Spring is the hardest season, because we think that we should have great produce, but for the most part it is embryonic. Until the green garlic of April, we have to do with the pungeant, bitter leftovers from the last harvest. Onions are not much better. At least the fava beans are young and tender, and the pea shoots are fantastic.

Anyway, I have promised to post the nocino recipe, which I will do when I get back home (tomorrow evening). It is hard to think about nocino when it is still in bottles, not really ready for consumption. The temptation is there to sample, but it will not be right. That will have to wait until Easter, at the very earliest. Nocino is a fall flavor, and it is strange to think about it when the bulbs are poking up out of the ground.

Contrary to what outsiders think, we do have seasons in California. They just vary by microclimate and are always more subtle than elsewhere. I enjoy these subtleties more each year. Nothing makes me want to scream "thank you" to God more than the way He works in the seasons. I think that a big part of enjoying the season is to embrace the specific discomforts in each one.

I used to long for the cool weather in the summer and the heat in the winter, but now I find that bitter, damp cold in December is as much of a gift as warm summer nights. Likewise, the 100+ degree days in summer are a great reminder of our own limitations. One cannot ignore the limitations of the physical body when it is very cold or very hot. Nothing speaks so well for the importance of something than its absence (I think of this when I see an angry atheist punk rocker screaming for something he deep down knows he is missing, but cannot quite bring himself to embrace).

Without fasting, feasting is meaningless. Without the bite of the cold, the joys of warm days lose their luster.