Categories
Culture Living

Taking time

By Michael Moriarty

Dad’s words stung like a leather belt across my backside. “You know what you are?” he asked. “You’re quick, certain, and wrong!” 

It was more than half a century ago, and I was less than 10, but the sting still lingers.

I grew up in the crowded middle of seven children, where it seemed all of us were competing to get a word in edgewise, so how was I the only one who nicked that raw nerve with Dad, the nerve that screamed, “Only a fool would fail to take the time to get it right”? 

I tried to do better, but I still struck that nerve with enough regularity that when Dad began (“You know what you are?”), I cringed, because I knew what was coming next. Eventually—I think I was in my late teens—Dad’s harsh critique of my decision-making ability fell into disuse. Maybe I’d grown wiser, or maybe Dad had just grown tired of trying to correct me. Probably a little of both. 

It’s been nearly 30 years since Dad died, but I’ve continued to hear “quick, certain, and wrong,” not in his voice, but in my head. Almost every time things haven’t gone as planned, I have, without forgiveness, blamed my own impatience, my own poor judgment, my own damned foolishness.

* * *

My brothers and I were clearing out my parents’ house last summer, a few weeks after our mother died, and I volunteered to clear my parents’ bedroom. Dad’s dresser had sat largely untouched since 1996, so sliding open the top drawer was like cracking open a crypt to reveal a trove of treasures buried with the deceased for his use in the afterlife. 

I found the spring-top box where Dad had kept bus fare for his morning commute. I found the Swiss Army knife that was a virtual prosthetic for Dad: One minute he’d be using it to pop open a can of beer as we floated down the Shenandoah in a boat, while the next minute he’d use it to pry a hook from a trout’s mouth. I found tie clasps and cuff links that I’d seen Dad put on before Sunday Mass. I found the medals he’d earned in the service, years before he met my mom and started a family. I recognized—and left—those familiar treasures in the crypt of that top drawer.

Photo by Eze Amos.

The treasure that drew my attention was one that I didn’t recognize, though I immediately knew what it was. I was 8 years old when Dad returned home from Vietnam in 1969, sporting a battery-powered Seiko wristwatch, and here in Dad’s dresser was the wind-up Timex that came before the Seiko. It hadn’t ticked in more than half a century, and despite my winding, it produced not one tock. 

The wristband was indented where Dad had buckled it every morning. He’d been a barrel-chested, physically imposing man, so I was surprised to discover that the band fit my thin wrist exactly as it had his. 

I took the watch to Tuel Jewelers, where the jeweler’s eyes twinkled at the challenge of bringing the old Timex back to life. 

It was during the weeks that the jeweler worked to restore Dad’s wristwatch that I began to wonder if my father’s sensitivity to my quick decisions might have been grounded as much in his own experience as it was in my own actions. I thought of instances when time had been taken from him, about moments in Dad’s life when he’d been rushed to decisions he hadn’t wanted, to conclusions that ranged from unfair to cruel.

I thought first of Dad as a skinny 13-year-old, when his father—larger than life in my dad’s telling—died of a heart attack in 1938. When the Birmingham News reported the death, the story omitted Dad’s name from among the surviving family members. Maybe the reporter was in a hurry, but the slight left a scar that Dad carried for some 50 years until I uncovered the Mobile Advertiser story of the event that included his name. Still, the strongest man in Dad’s life was gone forever, reduced to an unattainable aspiration. I thought of Dad in 1943, a flight cadet in officer training, having enlisted immediately after his 18th birthday in the hopes of catching up with his older brothers, one commanding an air squadron in Burma and the other skippering a Navy ship. But, as Dad explained it to us later, leadership concluded they “hadn’t killed off as many pilots as anticipated,” so he was shipped to Saipan with the humble rank of Private, a laborer in an ammunition ordnance company responsible for loading bombs into B-29’s piloted by young men who’d earned their wings just a bit sooner. Glory, Dad found, went to other, slightly older men of his generation. 

Bill Moriarty holds Michael’s infant daughter. Photo documentation by Eze Amos.

I thought about the 1950s, after Dad left the service, married, and tried to make a go of it with his own business. Dad designed and created figurines that he sold at shops and local events, until piracy of his best products (as well as a third child on the way) compelled him to exchange that dream for a steady government paycheck. As responsibilities took precedence over dreams, Dad boxed up the last of his figurines and stashed them under a bed in the nursery, where I discovered them last summer, caked in dust. 

I thought about the Friday after Thanksgiving, 1964. My parents were in the dining room that Dad had only recently finished building onto the back of our house. My mom was holding in her arms my three-week-old sister when Dad spied water streaming through the kitchen light fixture. He dashed upstairs and found me, along with my diapered little brother, turning the bathroom into a water park. Dad quickly lifted me and “put” me down on the slippery floor outside the bathroom, where I slammed into the wall—and snapped my femur. I don’t remember that it hurt, only that when Dad tried to stand me up, my leg kept sliding to the side like a puppet’s. 

A few days in traction, followed by a few weeks’ recuperation in that new dining room, and I was as good as new. My mom told me later that Dad had felt terrible, but I don’t remember that he ever told me he was sorry for having been, well, quick, certain, and wrong. 

I thought about that years later when it occurred to me that in 1938 Dad had not only lost a father he admired, but he’d also lost the chance to slowly learn and accept that fathers sometimes make mistakes with their sons (and vice versa); that sometimes disagreement and fault do not preclude, but instead engender, respect and even admiration.

Like most people, Dad was complex, sometimes even self-contradictory, and that’s what often made pleasing him difficult. He could tell a joke with impeccable timing. He was committed to making to-do lists and getting things done—on time. He had no patience for dithering. When it came to me, my quickness in winning races at our local swim club earned his admiration, but quick answers on more sensitive matters such as race or politics earned his admonition. 

As I grew older, I made plenty of mistakes—undoubtedly many of the “quick, certain, and wrong” variety. I’ve thought about one more than all the others. My sister, the one who’d been a mere three weeks old when I suffered my broken leg, had singled me out as her “hero” since we were little. Three weeks into the second semester of her junior year in college, she made a surprise visit home. Something was troubling Molly, so on the day she was to return to school, I spent the afternoon with her. Two weeks later my mother called and said “something terrible has happened to Molly,” and I realized that her hero had been quick (to dismiss the warning signs of her depression), certain (that she would grow out of whatever was bothering her), and unforgivably wrong. 

It is said that the older we get, the less we know. And so it was that on that day in February 1985, I aged decades. As horrible as the loss was for my sister’s hero, though, I knew even then that it was worse for her daddy. The loss upended Dad’s world, robbed him of precious time with his only daughter, and left him (if we had this much in common) with all the time in the world to consider the unanswerable questions that a suicide bequeaths its survivors. Life, it seemed, had pushed and shoved Dad again, this time with unspeakable cruelty.

Retirement a few months after Molly’s death brought Dad relief from the “need it an hour ago” routine that characterized his 25-year career at the Pentagon, and he finally had time for the travel with my mom that the two of them had denied themselves during their child-rearing years; both relished the timeless promise brought by four grandchildren. 

Author Michael Moriarty wears the watch the once belonged to his father.
Photo by Eze Amos.

Life, though, would be quick, certain, and wrong with Dad one last time. A few months after his 70th birthday, Dad contracted a virus that did its damage in a furious hurry: In the space of just days, what seemed a mere cold progressed to a terrific fever and then a seizure, which left Dad in what the doctors coldly characterized as a “permanent vegetative state.” Brain dead. 

Hoping for a miracle, I was, a few days later, standing next to Dad’s bed in the ICU, holding his hand, when the nearby radio began to play Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2, one of the most beautiful pieces of music you could ever hear—and undoubtedly one that Dad, whose own father had taken him to concerts and instilled in him a deep appreciation of classical music, had enjoyed many times. For the first time since Dad had gone under, his eyes moved (behind closed lids) and his grip on my hand tightened. I think that what was left of his brain that night still appreciated Rachmaninov, though heaven only knows if he was aware of whose hand he gripped as he listened.

About four weeks later, Dad lay in a hospital bed in that dining room that he’d built some 30 years earlier, and again I was standing next to him, stroking his limp, withered arm, when he left this world to the strains of “Solveig’s Song,” one of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt suites, which I had queued up on his stereo moments earlier. I don’t know if his battered mind and departing spirit detected either the music or the touch of my hand, but I’d like to think he took with him warm memories of both.

A photo of Bill Moriarty on Saipan, wearing the watch that would one day belong to his son. Photo documentation by Eze Amos.

Just before I was to pick up Dad’s watch from Tuel, one of my brothers uncovered from my parents’ things a wrinkled old photograph that I’d never seen before: It was my dad, 18 years old and rail-thin, standing hands on hips, squinting into the midday sun on Saipan, 1943. The photo is grainy, but on his left wrist is, unmistakably, the wind-up Timex. 

I have a smart watch and a couple battery-powered watches that keep perfect time, but now I like to wear Dad’s old wind-up. It is beautiful, probably almost 90 years old. Sometimes it runs a little slow, other times a little fast. It is, in other words, like both fathers and sons: loved but also flawed, imperfect. Every morning when I take a minute to wind that watch, I remind myself to be a little more patient, a little less certain and, honestly, a little more forgiving. And when I place the watch on my wrist and buckle its cracked wristband, exactly as my dad used to do, I think of Solveig’s lament to Peer Gynt: “And if you wait above, we’ll meet there again, my friend.”

Michael Moriarty lives in Charlottesville and retired in 2023, following a career as a legal editor and project manager. He has been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, SwimSwam, and Medium.

Categories
Arts Culture

Get closer

Mixed-media artist Brielle DuFlon’s work speaks of comfort in bold ways. Imagine putting on your favorite sweater, wrapping up in a fuzzy blanket, or donning a lacy garment. DuFlon takes those emotional aesthetics to a textile reality in her show, “huddle,” at New City Arts.

Using repurposed and reclaimed materials, DuFlon’s dramatic pieces are a playful tug of war between exciting and calming that confronts the viewer with vulnerability and honesty. She describes them as “physically deep works, that the audience looks into, rather than at.”

DuFlon has been showing her work publicly since 2011, and “huddle” is her first solo exhibition in four years. Creating these pieces, she says, taught her about trusting herself with unusual materials. And timed with our societal need for closeness and empathy, DuFlon says she could not have predicted how relevant the theme of her show would be when she began working on it in the spring of 2019.

‘Legacy: heirloom’

Brielle DuFlon: “This piece, a jacket made completely of plastic produce mesh packaging, is one of three ‘legacy’ pieces in ‘huddle’ that speak to what we leave behind, as individuals and as a species. The concept of an heirloom garment is widely known, but in this case the piece is handed down to the next generation because it cannot biodegrade. ‘Legacy:Heirloom’ is a coming together of my passion for environmentalism and my flirtation with garment making (and yes—it actually fits me!).”

Categories
Living

Blue Moon pop-ups feed the community

Although Blue Moon Diner is closed during construction of 600 West Main, the six-story mixed-use building going up behind the restaurant, that hasn’t stopped owner Laura Galgano from serving her customers.

“I am a social being, and quite simply, [I] want to know what folks are up to, how their lives are and what new and fun things they’ve gotten to try,” Galgano says. It’s a reason why, in August and September, she and a few other Blue Moon staffers hosted Blue Moon pop-up brunches in Snowing In Space Coffee’s Space Lab at 705 W. Main St., serving a limited menu of biscuits and sausage gravy, pancakes and a variation on a grits bowl.

At the first pop-up on August 19, just a week after the deadly August 12 white supremacist rally, Galgano realized how much she missed her regulars. That day, there was “lots of hugging, and ‘Where were you?,’ ‘So glad you’re safe,’ etc.,” says Galgano. “Blue Moon has always been more than just a diner, and using the pop-ups as a way to check in with each other, and keep that notion of community at the fore, is very important to us.”

During one of the September pop-ups, Galgano saw four orders of pancakes for two people, and she stuck her head out of the kitchen to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake. But when she did, she saw two Charlottesville Derby Dames, Blue Moon regulars who’d come in to load up on the beloved diner staple after a training workout. “One of the skaters was housesitting for two other skaters, and planned to leave them each their own serving of pancakes to enjoy on their return,” says Galgano.

It’s been a treat for the Snowing In Space folks, too. “We are huge fans of Blue Moon Diner ourselves,” says the coffee spot’s manager Julia Minnerly, “and being able to offer such a community favorite was a big hit.”

Galgano says that more Blue Moon pop-up brunches will happen soon; the details haven’t been hammered out quite yet, but she hopes to have one every other month or so.

“I like that we’re just down the street, in the same neighborhood, and partnering with a newer business,” Galgano says. “These kinds of collaborations help to continue the sense of community that Blue Moon so values: We all succeed together.”

Lunch spot haven

On Wednesday, September 20, The Haven hosted its first weekly home-cooked lunch for members of the Charlottesville community, serving a meal that included a cheese plate or spinach salad, meatloaf or vegetarian lentil loaf, roasted herb potatoes, broccoli with lemon-butter sauce, homemade peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.

About 26 people showed up for the inaugural meal, says Diana Boeke, The Haven’s director of community engagement, who notes they can accommodate up to 40 people for each lunch. Home cooks and regular shelter guests, who prepared and served the meals to customers, “were very excited and making sure they made everyone feel at home,” Boeke says, noting that for many attendees, it was their first time in the day shelter. “The big round tables that seat up to eight mean that you’ll meet new people, so even people that came alone became part of the community there.”

The menu will change each week (the September 27 lunch included salad, chili, cornbread and a strawberries and cream dessert), and Boeke says The Haven hopes to find a few other home cooks—perhaps people from other countries who could share specialty dishes—to help with the public lunches. The kitchen managers already plan and prepare breakfasts for more than 60 people, 365 days a year.

The home-cooked lunches are served from noon to 1:30pm every Wednesday and give members of the Charlottesville community, including guests of the day shelter (who are not asked to pay the $10 donation for the meal), the chance to get to know one another.

Do the Cheffle

Frank Paris III, who closed his downtown ramen and donut shop Miso Sweet in August, is now executive chef at Heirloom, the rooftop restaurant and bar at the Graduate Charlottesville hotel at 1309 W. Main St. on the UVA Corner. He’s currently working on a new menu.

C-VILLE’s At the Table columnist C. Simon Davidson reports on his Charlottesville 29 blog that after a yearlong stint cooking at the Michelin-starred Inn at Little Washington, chef Jose de Brito is back in town as chef de cuisine of Fleurie, located at 108 Third St. NE, and consultant to the Downtown Mall’s Petit Pois. The former Alley Light head chef and former chef-owner of Ciboulette, which inhabited a space in the Main Street Market building years ago, told Davidson he’s ready to cook French food again, which he says is his specialty.

Categories
Living

Introducing paffles to Charlottesville

Kathryn Matthews has been obsessed with American breakfast since she was a child, growing up in Grimsby, a small fishing town on the northeast coast of England. Her grandparents would sometimes take her on vacation to Florida, where they’d eat waffles and fluffy American pancakes, which are quite different from the unleavened, more crêpe-like English pancakes. Sometimes, they’d pour batter onto a griddle or into a waffle iron and make the treats themselves.

Matthews has brought her love of sweet American breakfast to 214 W. Water St. with the opening of Iron Paffles and Coffee. She started working as a chef at 16 before studying hospitality and beverage management at university, and has been making paffles—puff pastry baked on a waffle iron—on her own for a while now, though she can’t exactly take credit for inventing the paffle (a quick Google search a few years back showed her as much).

Once Kathyrn Matthews, who grew up in England, got a taste of American-style breakfast, she set out to capture those flavors by creating a puff pastry-waffle hybrid known as the paffle. Photo by Tom McGovern
Once Kathyrn Matthews, who grew up in England, got a taste of American-style breakfast, she set out to capture those flavors by creating a puff pastry-waffle hybrid known as the paffle. Photo by Tom McGovern

Savory breakfast nuts might want to try the Iron Glory, a paffle topped with local bacon, sausage and cheese omelet topped with sriracha mayonnaise, and those with a sweet tooth might go for the Rise ’N’ Iron, a blueberry paffle covered with cream and local hickory syrup.

For lunch (or perhaps dinner) Matthews and executive chef Dan Giovanetti will cook up paffles such as the Iron Master (southern-fried local organic chicken breast, mac ’n’ cheese and local spring mix) and the Iron Bean (black bean, sweet potato and quinoa patty and finished with smoked salsa). Craving something sweet? Try the Hail Iron—orange cheesecake paffle topped with local strawberry sauce and flaked almonds—or the Peanut BAE, a gluten-free paffle with vegan chocolate ganache and peanut butter whip. The paffles can be made with a special vegan and gluten-free batter for an extra $1.50. Even with the extra charge, nothing costs more than $9, and can be devoured on-site or made to go in a special cardboard paffle carrier that allows for maximum nommage and minimal mess.

Iron will be open Monday through Thursday from 8am to 4pm, Friday from 8am to 8pm and Saturday from 10am to 8pm; breakfast will be served until 11 each day, but the Cini-Bacon paffle, made with maple cinnamon cream, candied pecans and bacon, will be on the menu all day.

Tom Tom nom-noms

It’s Tom Tom time, and you know what that means, food fans: nearly a whole week of food trucks, beer tents, cocktail competitions and celebrations of Charlottesville’s farm-to-table culture.

Throughout the week, restaurants such as The Bebedero, Citizen Burger Bar, Heirloom, Rapture, Oakhart Social, Tavern & Grocery and others will appeal to locavore palates with pre-fixe menus that emphasize local ingredients and artisan food producers.

A dozen mixologists will vie for Tom Tom’s top mixologist title with custom festival cocktails made from locally sourced ingredients and served all week at participating restaurants. A panel of judges will consider the creativity, presentation, originality and taste of the submitted cocktails and name their favorite. But don’t worry, the voice of the people will be considered as well—a popular vote will be held to determine the crowd’s favorite boozy beverage (vote online at tomtomfest.com/craftcocktail). Here’s just a taste of what’s to come: Alley Light’s Micah LeMon will make a Sunday Sermon, made with John J. Bowman Virginia Bourbon, housemade vermouth (local sassafras, wormwood and King Family Chardonnay), Amer Picon and Kubler Absinthe.

At the City Market Iron Chef Competition at 10am on Saturday, chefs will have 30 minutes to tour the market, purchase ingredients and cook a 100 percent locally sourced brunch dish in the hopes of wowing the three judges.

Who will be named this year’s Iron Chef Competition champion at the Tom Tom Founders Festival? Photo by Tom McGovern
Who will be named this year’s Iron Chef Competition champion at the Tom Tom Founders Festival? Photo by Tom McGovern

Find out who’ll be named Charlottesville’s top red hot chili prepper during the Downtown Chili Showdown at the Main Street Arena on Saturday from 11:30am to 3pm. Restaurants, community groups and individuals will compete for people’s choice and judges awards.

And last but not least, local food trucks will rally around Lee Park for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday block parties. Get your fill of good eats from Bavarian Chef, Got Dumplings, Blue Ridge Pizza Co., Mouth Wide Open, Wonderment, Carpe Donut, DanJo’s KettleKorn and others.