A Christmas Pudding

My memory is faulty and selective, but I know that we must have talked after moving in and prior to Christmas 1986. We used to leave notes – officious ones, Newby claims – in the front porch mail basket when dealing with apartment matters, but it’s not clear to me when or of what we may have spoken when we did meet. Surely we had invited her to the housewarming party Sue and I had, and for which we painted the checkerboard pattern on the front linoleum – I know we must have gotten permission to do that – and which has been kept up more or less successfully by subsequent tenants, and filled the claw-foot tub with ice and beer (Miller, I recall, as Sue was from Wisconsin...). Thinking back, arguably the best party I’ve ever co-hosted and attended, but it’s true I don’t remember Newby being there. I think I’d met Marcy by then, whose account of it, on the Downtown Mall, isn’t flattering to me so I’ll skip over it here. I was alone in the apartment for the holidays, feeling blue, though my parents were due in after the New Year for week’s visit from California. On Christmas Eve, I heard a noise at the front door. When I went to investigate, there was a home-baked Christmas Pudding w/ hard sauce sitting on the sill, in a small crock that has served as sugar bowl ever since. It’s a squat, ugly thing, sort of like a pug (sorry, Elke), but all the more endearing for it, again like a pug. At any rate, not the Sealyham of pottery, and for that reason I imagine Newby was only too glad to have an opportunity to pass it on. But I think of her every time I put sugar in my coffee, coffee which is home-roasted and ground, thanks again to Newby. (I’ve temporarily changed continents to roast Mexican Fair Trade beans from Chiapas, Newby – thanks again for the birthday gift of Sweet Maria’s, to whom I have been faithful ever since. But Ethiopian sidamo will, in honor or your childhood crush,

will ever be my favorite.)