The song concerns a man’s meeting up with a woman in whom he had a deep interest, but who does not return it and, he now realizes, never did. “(He was) trying hard to recreate what had yet to be created …  she had a place in his life. He never made her think twice.”

There it was: unrequited love.  At the time, I was still hoping that it only happened in grade school, with people you didn’t really know, who you just had a crush on, and that adults didn’t have to suffer such indignities. At least they must know how to deal with it. Later I would discover that suffer adults did, but most of the time they didn’t talk about it.

Watching the video today, I am struck by several things. The musicianship–it’s not always easy to find songs that will hold their listenability for 30 years. And also Michael McDonald’s long hair — these days I remember the 70′s  long hair style on men only when I see it on film; I forget about it when I’m not looking at old pictures and it always merits a double take. More than anything, the people of the age come across as free, innocent even, people who had not yet dealt with all that has happened in the last 30 years which roughly comprises my adulthood — not to have seen the way the post-WWII life that we assumed would last for hundreds of years was slipping away in just a couple of decades.  Across the years, today the hope is still transparent and real through the song. I liste and reflect that the song is correct about hope and its endurance. Indeed, “he can still believe there’s a place in her life. Somewhere someday, she will return.”

Like King Arthur she will return. And “what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.” I think Paul Simon wrote something along the same lines about the same time. To be able to say that at all is a kind of innocence when it’s compared with modern lyrics, which Pia was complaining about this morning –songs of lies by liars -about violence by violent people, often — and this makes me think “What a fool believes” is still a very sweet song. Even if she didn’t ever love him, even if she never will return. Because, as I’ve been telling my own children, in the end, love belongs to the lover. It’s him that experiences it, not her, anyway. And tragedy is part of life, you can’t escape. So singing about it and making it into a beautiful song that is remembered long after the event, perhaps is enough, I would say, to make the experience worthwhile. Though, since I didn’t experience it and write the song, I can’t be sure.

So you’ve been wondering where to get some Mexican food in Denton. You don’t want to visit one of the ubiquitous taco casas? You say you want to sit down in a chic environment and have someone bring you something you can feel some serious anticipation about? You want honest, fresh authentic ingredients cooked with care and perhaps even passion? Look no further than South Denton, where a new restaurant called Mi Taza has been constructed with a chic bistro setting. And the price? Cheaper than Don Jose’s or South of the Border for sure.

This is a place where you can get fajitas in more or less the usual style–choose a plate of tacos, enchiladas, burritos tostadas or quesadillas if you want to play it safe–but the real stars of the menu show here are the  Latin and South American food items,the cachapa, the soups and the arepas. Let me sing the song of the arepas! This cross between a gordita and a corn muffin, stuffed with chicken, beef or gouda cheese, is delicioso without a precedent. You have to try the arepas to understand. I wake up nights and think about them.

The cachapa, a corn meal pancake folded around shredded beef and cheese, is as flavorful and succulent as anything I’ve ever had at a 50$ a plate restaurant, Mexican or otherwise.  The soups are truly superior and again range from the pedestrian — tortilla soup — to the exotic — sopa de apio, made from the casava root and I promise, a very very tasty bowl of comfort food it is. You can get fine coffee, granitas, agua frescas and flan and sopapillas as well. Truly this is a restaurant where the adventurous can sit down and break (corn) bread with the more meat and potatoes types (potatoes, by the way, come from the Andes of South America).  I encourage you to make the trip down Teasley lane, pull off into the Kroger parking lot, and look on the southeast side for the Mi Taza coffee mug sign.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll be glad you did.

Mi Taza Latin Cafe and Restaurant

5017 Teasley Lane Denton TX 76210 (940) 591-9999

Tuesday to Friday 11-2:30 and 5-9

Saturday 11-9           Sunday 9-2

4 cups sugar

12.5 oz evaporated milk

1 cup butter

7 oz. marshmallows

12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips (one regular-sized bag)

1 tsp. vanilla

In a large pot, melt the butter with the evaporated milk. Add the sugar. Bring to a medium/medium high heat. While stirring constantly, boil the mixture. Get a bowl of ice water, and after the mixture has begun to thicken (about 10 minutes, maybe), drizzle some into the water to test it. When it is ready, the fudge will form a ball in the water that can be squeezed softly with your fingers. The boiling fudge in the pot will have a “quilted” texture:

This is close to "quilted"

Once the fudge has reached this stage, take it off the heat and add the marshmallows and chocolate chip. Mix quickly and thoroughly; keep mixing for a few minutes after it looks melted and homogenized.

Pour into a large  (13×11 or so, it doesn’t really matter) pan or several small pans/dishes, preferably lined with aluminum foil. Let it sit out until it cools and is firm. You can easily package it in wax paper for distribution to friends and family!

This may take a few batches of trial-and-error before you get the texture right. You have to take it off the heat at the right time or it may be mushy or grainy. Either way, it will taste really good though!

My 15-year old brother had been pestering me to make fudge with him. We had done this once over the summer, when a flight of boredom and sugar craving had led to the following work of art:

This was our result in July.

This week, we were not so lucky.

So we start putting things in a pot. We begin to melt butter, add evaporated milk. Whisk it around for a bit. We decide to add the sugar, then the marshmallows. It becomes very fluffy…not the thick but fluid mixture that we are supposed to boil until it gets a “quilted texture.”

We have made a mistake.

We aren’t quite sure what, but we pull it off the heat and go consult an expert (The Editor, whose recipe book provided the directions we were working with). “You are supposed to boil it until ready, then take it off the heat and add the marshmallows and chocolate.”

Oh.

So we go back downstairs and look at the mess. We realize that any more heating is going to turn it into a solid block of mess. We quickly brainstorm if there is a way to rescue it into some other dish. Aha! Rice Krispie Treats have butter and marshmallows, right? We’re pretty close, we’ll just make that! We only had cornflakes, though, so we decided to make stuff for wreaths.

It didn’t….quite work.

First step: add food coloring to the marshmallow/butter/sugar/milk goop

Add cornflakes. Oh boy...that does not look tasty at all. Better add more food coloring. I am not even going to say what that looks like...

Ta-da! We made...alien candy. It tasted like candied corn flakes. Kinda like if you mixed mushy fudge and cereal. It was edible, but left something (significant) to be desired.

Perhaps, then, there is not a black-and-white friend’s zone, like a “stopping lane only” on a street. Because, quite honestly, there isn’t just two options: friends or not friends. There isn’t even a spectrum, where you can be closer to one or the other. Indeed, different people of different ages and experiences would classify the expectations of “a relationship” in different ways.  The truth is that there are many, many facets of a friendship or a romantic relationship, and for each of these there are different levels of connection, intensity, and intimacy. People can have a strong emotional attachment – they have few secrets, they rely and depend on each other. They can have a strong sense of interpersonal identity – they recognize the singularity of their relationship with each other. Two people can have a physical attachment, which can be involved but frivolous or subtle but deep. The flirtatious banter between two people is not necessarily superior to the quiet understanding between two others. And finally, the ultimate expectations of two people can vary from relationship to relationship and – here is where the heartbreak occurs – from individual to individual.

So what does this mean about “the friend’s zone,” or lack thereof? It means that you cannot measure the importance of your relationship with somebody else by whether or not you are tagged as dating on Facebook. It means that even if there is no understanding now, that does not mean there is no future. It means that people can be confused and unsure. Perhaps they feel very comfortable around you – they can talk at will, they can share many of their deep feelings – but still feeling something is missing before moving forward. There are many gauges of the relationship between two people. There is not just one path, with friends at one end and more-than-friends at the other. There are dozens of paths, each with their own significance. And sometimes, perhaps, we need to accept that we may have something good and important with somebody without being at the end of all those paths. There are so many benefits to knowing and spending time with another person. They widen our eyes, they make us think. Sometimes they make us laugh or help us out. They may share our hobbies or habits, they may widen our social circle, they may make us better people. We have to accept that we will not end up with everyone we meet. We may only end up with one. But that doesn’t mean to close doors to those deemed “unacceptable” quickly, nor does it mean that knowing someone, who may not be “the one,” has no value. You may find your “one” where you weren’t looking, and when you do, you may be prepared because of the depth of engagement you grew through interactions with others before them.

Skype is a downloadable program you can use to make free video phonecalls using your computer

I have finally found a way to take Spanish lessons here in Denton. But  the lessons I am taking do not originate here, my teacher is in Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula, not far from Cancun.

The lessons are conducted one on one using a videoconferencing program, Skype. Right now I am learning how to use the preterit and imperfect past tense cases. I already knew some of the forms, but didn’t understand exactly what they meant, when they were used and what the patterns were for the irregular forms (I still don’t know all the forms, but I am working on it.) This week, my homework assignment is to write a theme (tema) about Christmas past and present.  There’s no question that this has been a really exciting experience for me. I am practicing my spoken and written Spanish with a native-speaking Spanish teacher at last, for the first time since Jr. High School — roughly 30 years ago.

Now it just has to sink in….

You would think that I would be reeling on a month-long high (I got the news on November 15). I did sprint through campus, nearly flying into my academic advisor as I dropped the phone I had just called four people on. I scared the living daylights out of my poor dad who, getting a call at 5am from a daughter too busy jumping and yelling to say, explain what was going on, thought some crisis had just occurred. And I am excited. A lot of days I wake up, and just as the laundry list of worries and fears starts to rev its engine. I suddenly realize, again “…I’m going to medical school. Heh. Cool.” It’s hard to get your mind around something you have been single-mindedly working toward for the past several years; the object and goal for which almost any other priority hit the chopping block. It comes with a rush of happiness, vindication, and pride. It’s awful, but honestly, when I opened that email, and saw those words…this is pretty much what it felt like.

I'm on my way.