On Caraway Seeds and Pamela Adlon
Just some thoughts I've been thinking. And a story that once healed my heart.
There’s a loaf of bread at the house I’m dogsitting at—a seeded sourdough rye made with corn meal. It’s from a small bakery just outside of Los Angeles. No preservatives, a family tradition: this bread is humble but proud of itself. I mean, I guess as humble and proud as an inanimate object can be. The slices are oblong and oversized like the ones she used to get. Just looking at it brings a taste to my mind and very nearly on the tip of my tongue, an echo of a memory darting across nerve endings, coalescing in a nostalgic mind. I want to laugh at myself for typing that last sentence. I am so fucking corny, y’all.
I cut a slice in half and make some toast; a shade of warm golden brown so perfect appears on either side. A-ha! A victory, a sign to move forward. I slater it with butter, the sort that comes in a tub and is so enjoyably spreadable as it quickly melts and pools in the various air bubbled crannies. I take a crunchy bite and instantly think of my grandmother. Oh, Bette Ann Markley. The taste of caraway and rye, warmed with melted butter (so much butter), belongs to her. Belongs to slow weekend mornings, reading the newspaper (or the latest dELiA*s catalog) over cups of coffee (light and sweet) and various bread products—kaiser rolls, egg bagels, toasts of pumpernickel and rye—and butter, as the grandfather clock in the hallway ticked on.
There’s a clock in the house here that ticks, too. You don’t really realize a clock is ticking until it’s silent. Then you realize how infrequently you hear a clock tick or tock anymore—we all read the time from our computers or forever-on-silent phones. And now that I’m hearing a clock tick tocking, I feel a dueling sense of calming nostalgia and dread. There’s something charming about the ticking of a clock. But at the same time, time ticks on whether you hear it passing or not. And time is a limited resource with an unknown expiration date. And time changes things and your perspective on them all of the time. It’s been over 5 years since my grandmother left us. And in that time I’ve realized—in ways that make me feel both grateful and a hint of too-late regret—just how much of an impact she had on my life. How much the quiet consistency of her love for me kept me afloat even when I felt so, so lost. So far from the shore, proverbially speaking.
This got me thinking of Pamela Adlon, someone whose feature directorial debut—a comedy called “Babes” starring the incandescently charming Michelle Buteau and Ilana Glazer—just premiered at SXSW. Reviews are good! I am not surprised! Pamela Adlon is a singular sort of person, in talent and character. I have met her twice now: once to interview her and the other actors on her wonderful show Better Things, and another time when I was crying in the bathroom at work.
Let me explain.
It was January 2019—were we ever so young?—and my grandmother’s funeral was happening the next day. I was in California working an event, her body was on its way to Connecticut from Charleston, South Carolina. It was the Television Critics Association winter press tour (a showcase for TV critics of the networks’ new shows and stars), and I—a freelance cultural critic and television journalist—was typing away on my laptop when a calendar notification popped up: “Gram Toe Nail Appointment Gram.” I’d made it 3 months prior when I was taking her to her foot doctor (my grandmother had diabetes and had to be careful about her toes). I’d spent part of October and November of 2018 in South Carolina taking care of her during one of the darkest periods of my life.
The timing of the alert—combined with the sheer vulnerable panic that comes from experiencing unexpected grief in the middle of a press conference for some television show I can’t remember, surrounded by journalists and publicists and network executives and, yes, the occasional famous person—sent me into an emotional tailspin. I quietly excised myself from the ballroom and ran into the bathroom. Alone, I started to sob. My god, I missed my grandmother so much. It felt like such a betrayal of her memory to not be able to go to her funeral and pay my respects, maybe sing a little Barbra Streisand for her.
The sort of eye contact you make with a stranger when you’re caught crying in semi-public is singular, isn’t it? Trying to dab my eyes with cool water to remove the puff, I looked up in the mirror and made direct eye contact with Pamela Adlon as she was striding into the bathroom, publicist in tow, in a way that I can only describe as comically overdone. Like, Ministry of Silly Walks, level—Pamela and her publicist were clearly sharing a goofy moment of levity together before the real work of the day would begin. And here I was, ruining it by crying in the bathroom they both thought was completely empty. Both of our eyes grew wide—mine in panic, hers in concern.
“Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong?” she immediately asked me, genuine care and interest in her voice. Me, the apparently professional entertainment journalist, panicked and tried to downplay the tears that were now coming harder since being caught. I was so ashamed. “Oh gosh, no, it’s okay. I’m just having a moment.”
Pamela put her hands on my arms and looked at me as if to say bullshit in the kindest of terms. “You sure?” she offered. I was not.
“Oh yeah, no, it’s just that my grandmother’s funeral is tomorrow in Connecticut and I had an appointment reminder pop up on my calendar that I made for her when she was still alive and I have to be here to work and like, she raised me, and I—” the words choked up in my throat. I could feel my face reddening. There was so much loaded history behind every tear. And now the bathroom was being flooded by even more strangers as the press conference I’d just left in the ballroom had finished.
The last time I saw my grandmother was the day she ended up in the hospital for what ended up being her final weeks. She only returned home for hospice care shortly before her death. Tending to my grandmother and her needs had been a way for me to save myself after a dark period of suicidal ideation almost took me out. I’d lost everything in my life in Los Angeles a few months prior. I had no jobs, no friends, no sense of myself or my purpose. It all felt so hopeless. I felt so pointless and alone. And though heading back to see my family came with its own set of complex feelings and issues, I knew I wouldn’t kill myself while my grandmother slowly died.
Pamela Adlon didn’t know all of that. Thankfully, I didn’t overshare that much in the minutes we spent together in that bathroom. By this point, Pamela was hugging me as the stream of journalists I knew and respected—some even being my friends—entered the bathroom and stared, very confused and concerned as to why Pamela Adlon was comforting a snot-nosed and clearly very unprofessional Alicia by the Langham Hotel in Pasadena’s fancy restroom hand towels. Two or three friends had a sense of what was up and stood by me, concerned.
“Hold on one second, I’ll be right back.” Pamela said as she left the bathroom. Her publicist took me aside and whispered in my ear.
“So Pamela would like to pay for your flight home to go to your grandmother’s funeral,” she said, my eyes becoming faucets again as my Professional Journalist Lady Mind panicked at the ethics I would be breaking by accepting such a gift, particularly while surrounded by some of the best in the business in the women’s restroom who I knew wouldn’t. It was overwhelming. It felt like too much. It was so kind and so genuine. It was a gesture so full of love I didn’t know how to properly react or process it at the time. So, naturally, I cried some more.
“I just want you to know I blew off the president of FX for this,” Pamela announced as she returned to the bathroom, a tray of tequila shots and limes in hand.
“Oh my god,” I remember saying, horrified that she might have upset someone so important for stupid, watery-eyed ol’ me.
“We’re going to do a toast to your grandmother,” she said, passing out the shots to myself, her publicist, and the two or three friends that stuck around to comfort me. “What’s her name?” She asked.
“Bette. Bette Ann Markley,” I must have managed to say, because suddenly, here was Pamela Adlon raising her shot of tequila in the air saying, “to Bette Anne, a remarkable woman to have raised such a remarkable young woman. L’Chaim! Cheers!”
And then suddenly we were all cheers-ing and doing tequila shots and saying L’Chaim in the bathroom with Pamela Adlon in honor of my beloved grandmother who would’ve hated such a show and me being so publicly emotional about her. Pamela hugged me and asked me if I was alright. I said thank you and hugged her harder than I probably should have hugged a perfect stranger. But she had been so warm, so kind. I didn’t know how to tell her how meaningful what she’d just done had been to me. How much it touched my heart down to my core. How much it restored my faith in the inherent goodness of people. She asked me if I had her publicist’s information. I said I did and thanked her profusely—for her kindness and generosity of spirit and all else, but I probably just said the words “thank you so much” a lot.
We so often do this with people, don’t we? Not say the things we feel in the moments we feel them. There’s too much vulnerability in it, too much fear of rejection or shame. None of us ever want to feel like too much for people, if we even have people with whom we feel safe enough to share.
Anyway, there are some people who remind you of the beauty and goodness in all that we humans are. Pamela Adlon and my grandmother are two of those people for me. And whenever I think about either of them, I smile from a well of joy that lives deep inside my heart. The core of me gets activated, and I don’t care if that’s corny or not. It’s true.
As I mentioned in my last post (I can’t believe I’m posting here again so soon after that one, to be frank), I’ve been feeling some difficulties and blockages around my writing—both paid work at not. In the days since, I’ve felt the incremental movement that comes from the detritus clogging up the gears slowly breaking down and falling asunder. I’ve accepted a little bit more vulnerability into my life. I’m not letting the fears so shackle me, even if I am still not as far along on this fuuuuuucking book proposal as I would like to be. Or as financially secure. Or a myriad of other things better left to my diary.
I also hurt my lower back (because I’ve been sitting so much for writing/work and moving tons of heavy home shit improperly because my hip, thigh, and ass muscles have basically atrophied since I stopped consistently doing barre classes), which has forced me to recalibrate my priorities and focus on my physicality. (Strength training and stretching are important, kids!) It also means sitting fucking hurts so I’m only doing it sparingly/when I am being paid. (And also right now as an exercise in consistency.) And, unfortunately, I am not being paid to write this book proposal yet but I am being paid to walk and play with dogs so I’ve put my focus towards that and my interpersonal connections and letting that be enough for now. This too is a phase that will help inform the next. Nourishing my body and soul through practice.
Rye bread feels particularly nourishing, in several regards. There’s something about the savory, almost sour flavor that caraway seeds bring to anything. Add to that the chewy tartness of a good sourdough, and the sense memory of love and familiarity and safety the taste inspires? One could maybe see why it was that I needed to eat that slice of bread. Gluten be damned. My mind and body have changed so much in these intervening years. I wonder what else is changed, what else it is that I can let in that I will respond to differently than before. I wish I could ask my grandmother about it. Maybe I will in my dreams.
I’m dipping my toe into the scarier parts of life. I’m allowing for a slow creep of more intimate vulnerabilities and upending old narratives and expectations. I’m committing to things and people—myself and others—in ways that have long felt too dangerous, too precarious. Too not for me. I didn’t feel worthy.
But sometimes you just have to take a bite anyway.