Farewell to Beverly

These are some memories of my good friend Beverly Rathcke, who died in her home on Jan. 5, 2011 at the age of 65.  I almost included in the last sentence "after a brief struggle with cancer", but she didn't struggle.  She seemed to quickly accept the diagnosis and prognosis of her doctors and bravely moved on. 
I read this eulogy at her life celebration on Feb. 19 in the University of Michigan's Rackham Auditorium. 

Honestly I can't remember my first meeting with Beverly. It was probably at the bio station for new student orientation the fall of 1994. I unfortunately never took a class with her over the next two years that I was a student at Michigan. My friendship with Beverly began after my brief enrollment , when I clung to the town of Ann Arbor for another couple of years. I was on the professor house-sitting circuit and I learned from one of my house-sitting agents that Beverly Rathcke would be traveling soon and needed someone to look after her house, cats, and plants. I was the perfectly candidate: an under employed pet-lover, rootless yet responsible.

As most of you I'm sure know, getting to know Beverly's house is, in some way, getting to know Beverly; it is an extension of her personality; the physical manifestation of her professional interests, her passions, her metaphysical dabblings, and her journeys and adventures. That first night in her house I didn't snoop but one can't help but notice the eclectic furniture – the inconspicuous TV (had it ever been turned on?) – artifacts from distant exotic lands – a jungle of plants – a basement full of rustic and often rusty treasures - Indian spiritual texts and icons - botany books, architecture books, bird books, art books and, of course, in her dining room, the physical center as well as the heart and soul of the house – the cook books.

The first night of my house-sitting gig at Beverly's proceeded as any other: check the check list left by the owner, feed the animals, check plant moisture levels, make myself comfortable but not too comfortable, eat what was mine or that which could be replaced from the fridge and/or pantry, turn in for a first night sleep in a strange place. It was a summer month and the night was muggy and hot so I went to sleep in my skivies alone. Despite the strange place, I fell asleep quickly and deeply.

But that wasn't to last long. Within two hours, as I slept blissfully and ignorantly, a thunder storm had rolled in.

We typically think of thunder and lightning to be two separate events, albeit bound by a cause-effect relationship. However, when lightning strikes a tree right outside of the bedroom that you are sleeping in, the single event is a calamity of simultaneous light and sound. A sound heard with the entire body. That's what woke me the first night I ever slept at Beverly's house.

I say that the thunder woke me, but it wasn't all of me that was awake; it was the part of me that responds to primal fear, the fear of the loud, the sudden, the unexpected, the dark and the strange. Here I was torn from slumber in a house I didn't know, a strange room with unruly plants and strange exotic objects visible only by lightning flash.

I didn't know where I was or who I was or what exactly had woke me. The power was out, I was nearly naked and feeling extremely vulnerable. I could feel the strain of my facial muscles as they contorted my features into a terrible mask; I was snarling and I think I may have growled as I coward in the corner of the bedroom. A photo taken of me during those moments would have surely fit in the pages of Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

I was the animal.

It took several minutes before my rational mind took over, I wrapped myself in a blanket and went and got some candles.

Beverly came home looking refreshed from her adventure. She seemed pleased that the cats and plants were alive. She asked how everything went – I said fine. She said that she had a spare bedroom if I'd like to be her housemate.

I said that sounded good.

This was the start of my friendship with Beverly.

And I lived with Beverly in that house for much of the next two years.

And these are the times of my best memories of Beverly – mostly cooking for or with friends. Drawn out summer dinners outside on her picnic table. Often Indian food, the cooking of which Beverly introduced me to, but sometimes Mediterranean cooking was in order. Whatever we had for meal, there was always plenty of wine, conversation, and laughter.

When I eventually moved west I knew Beverly and I would stay in touch and we did. We emailed, I was a recipient of her annual letter, and I made pilgrimages to Ann Arbor during my usual summer visits to the Midwest. These visits were essentially a continuation of when I lived with her – food and friends.

Beverly would also visit me during her numerous trips to CA. Many memorable stories from these visits come to mind but my favorite involves, of course, food.

*******

Beverly had really wanted to go to Che Panisse on her visit and asked if I could try to get reservations.

Of course, I could not.

So we trawled our way around Oakland looking for a place to scavenge. I was supposed to be the tour guide and I felt the pressure of providing Beverly the culinary experience that I imagined she wanted during a short visit to the SF Bay Area – although Beverly was always easy going about these kinds of things. Up for any adventure.

So I decided to take her to Ben and Nick's.

Like Che Panisse, Ben and Nick's was a local fixture that was treasured by its inhabitants. Unlike Alice Water's venerable institution, to work at Ben and Nick's one had to be rude, tattooed, and able to operate a deep-frier.

I'm not sure what inspired me to take Beverly there. Perhaps I thought that if I couldn't provide her with a peak culinary experience... I should take her to a trough.

Anyway, we made our way across the sticky floor to the prime seating at the bar. I say prime because that is often the only place where an employee will take notice of you and maybe ask what you want. We sat down on the green pleather bar stools, surveyed the beer selection and made our beverage decisions. It was a weekend evening and the place was pretty full of the usual eclectic crowd – a mixture of students, professionals, drunks, sports fans, hippies and punks, avant garde families with heir children, and overtly eligible singles. Beverly and I were attempting to hold a conversation we could hear when suddenly the place went quiet except for a low rumble and the clatter of glassware. We were in the midst of a 4+ magnitude earthquake, compliments of the Hayward fault – a true California experience. Beverly was thrilled.

Later, as we drove around the East Bay, Beverly suggested we drive by Che Panisse. She thought she should at least see the shrine of the American food revolution. So I navigated the car toward Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto neighborhood.

“There it is”, I said pointing at the restaurant's oddly beautiful wood facade.

Beverly looked and then noticed a minor miracle happening in our midst: A car that was parallel parked directly in front of the restaurant was pulling out. This was a weekend night in Berkeley!

So, with Beverly's urging, I swooped the car, front first, into the treasured vacancy.

We got out and looked at the menu display outside. Perhaps, Beverly thought, we could get into the cafe, which occupies the upstairs above the main restaurant, since it doesn't require reservations months in advance. We went inside, jealously peaked at the diners enjoying the first courses of the pre fixe menu in the main restaurant, and proceeded upstairs. The cafe was packed and the host told us the wait might carry us into breakfast. After a short period of tortuous indecision, we reluctantly headed back down the stairs toward the exit to leave.

As we passed once more the maitre d' for the main restaurant at the bottom of the stairs, the same divine force that caused that car to give us its parking space was at work again – this time in the form of a man, dissatisfied with the dining environment of the main restaurant. He had envisioned a quiet romantic dinner for him and his love, not this raucous and festive orgy of consumption, where people talked and laughed while they ecstatically enjoyed the best food of their lives. He regretted that they would have to leave.

Beverly looked on in astonishment and, without consulting me, nearly shouted to the maitre d' “We'll take it!” followed by her little laugh, as if she were kidding.

Ten minutes later we were seated.

******

But don't think that Beverly's and my friendship just revolved around eating food at various places in the United States; it also included eating food in Mexico.

For the summer of 2007 I wanted to spend my summer break doing something “sciencey”. I knew Beverly was planning to go to Yucatan to seek out new populations of mangrove for her pollination studies. I asked if she could use a field hand and she readily said “Yes”!

I made my way from California to Ann Arbor and we were off. We boarded our flight from Detroit and got seated. This was my first trip with Beverly and although I consider myself one who, like Beverly, is driven to travel, I immediately noticed a difference between our comfort level with flying. As Beverly pulled out a book to read on the flight and made herself a pillow that she planned on napping against during take-off, I was my usual mess of jittery limbs, sweaty palms, nervous trite conversation, and compulsive staring out the window as if I were in control of the plane. Beverly looked at me like I was crazy as I admitted my fear with flying.

She couldn't relate.

“Look I love flying. For me the adventure starts when I get on the plane”, she told me.

I recounted a terrifying flight from Bocas del Toro to Panama City a few summers earlier, but Beverly remained unimpressed; she had had some bumpy flights but embraced the technology that allowed her to see the world.

I couldn't argue with that as just a few hours later, to my temporary relief, we landed in Cancun.

Over the next few days we made our way south along the coast, visiting various sites that she knew had mangrove. It soon became clear that many of these sites either were not suitable for her studies or the populations were not yet flowering.

So what were two endlessly inquisitive scientists to do? We naturally shifted our focus to archeology, geology, and anthropology.

We visited Mayan ruins and swam in cenotes, breaking to eat Caribbean cuisine while attempting to discover the best tequila for margaritas.

It was a fun trip but I was distracted by a new relationship that had started a few weeks before leaving CA – this was with Tatiana who is now my wife. The emails and occasional phone calls between me and my new love may have annoyed Beverly but she didn't much show it.

One stunning email from Tatiana did leave her at a loss for words; Beverly was the first person to learn that I was going to be a father.

I found it hard to read what she was thinking as I recounted the information in the email. All she could say was

“Well it seems like your life is going to change”. Then she quickly changed the subject “What should we do for dinner tonight”?

And when I left Beverly in Mexico a week early to fly to Russia to meet those who would become my new in laws, I did question: how would our friendship stand once I had a child and became a family man? Especially given Beverly's professed lack of interest and ability with children.

This past November, when Beverly became our first visitor in our new house in Ohio, I knew the answer. My now 2.5 year old daughter Nadia, remembering Beverly from a visit to our house in CA. reached out to take Beverly's hand. Then she looked up at me and said

“She's like grandma”. Over the three day visit the two of them would be nearly inseparable (at least if it was up to Nadia). It seemed that Beverly's and my relationship had become more like family.

***

My last meal with Beverly was on a Monday, the day before she would have her meeting with her doctors to learn of her prognosis. I had just learned that day that she had cancer. I came to her house after dark and knocked. As I waited outside on her lovely porch I wondered what I should say and what I should not say. I was anxious about how the visit would feel.

But then Beverly opened the door and laughed as she said how good it was to see me. I came in to a big hug and she asked: “Should we cook dinner together?”

Of course we should.

We went to the kitchen – not the tiny square of space that we cooked in together when I lived there, with half of the guests trying to be socially available yet somehow out of the way of the cookers – this was the Big Kitchen. The one Beverly had been so happy with these past few years.

And so we cooked. She asked if I could rice the potatoes. I told her I had never done that.

One more lesson from Beverly's kitchen.

The meal was mediocre. The riced potatoes accompanied some briefly boiled frozen peas and some broiled fish fillets that had obviously spent too long in her freezer. The olive oil, garlic, and lemon just couldn't resurrect the tough flesh. We sat down in our usual places across from each other at the dinning room table and made a toast with our glasses of water.

Yes the food was mediocre - but then it was never really about the food.