Sheridan Crumlish - A Memory

My friend Sheridan Crumlish died.

That was his real name. I asked him once if "Sheridan" was common when he was growing up. No, he told me. "Sheridan Crumlish" was a very difficult name to grow up with.

Here's my first memory of Sheridan Crumlish.

It is March 2002 and the U.S. has just started bombing Iraq. I madly Google the word "peace" and find the Peace Testimony of the Quakers, and this quote from George Fox:

"Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everybody."

From my yoga practice, I reply "Namaste," and decide to go to a Quaker service.

Sheridan was the first person I heard speak in Quaker Meeting.

The group is sitting in concentric circles of chairs and I'm facing the door. I'm watching a very tall old, old man walk down the long hallway towards the room with a cane. Meeting for worship has begun and the room has shifted to the deep still of common, silent prayer. Sheridan very slowly, carefully shuffles towards us. He is wearing hunter green wide wale corduroys, a white oxford shirt, and navy blazer. He has a bright pink sweater wrapped around his shoulders and a beret. And on his feet are a pair of hand-woven rattan slippers with red pom-poms. As he walks into the room, I can't keep my eyes off the pompoms.

He looks exactly like my grandfather, only unapologetically colorful.

He sits down in an open chair in the inner circle, and settles in for about 10 minutes. He is the first to speak:

"I read in the New York Times this morning that despite U.S. bombing, the fisherman of the Tigris and Euphrates are still fishing this week, exactly as they have done for a thousand years. And somehow this gave me a great deal of comfort."

And somehow that gave me a lot of comfort, and hooked me on Sheridan and Quaker meeting.

Our friendship grew in between bursts of doting attention, and his fiery alcoholism. There was a birthday dinner party for him in his NYC brownstone; a visit to his summer home in Québec for a long Memorial Day weekend; and a winter of Sunday morning phone calls: "Sheridan, I'm going to Meeting and driving by your house. Do you want a ride?"

There were also afternoons in his home with groceries and lunch, and lots of stories about the women, but mostly men, he'd known over the years. He cheered me on even while he dismissed my romantic interests: "Sister - You're pretty, but no Palm Beach. Don't waste your time on the high flyer." I remember one day I was "Brigitte the Irish Chambermaid" while I was in his kitchen making tea for everyone. He was complex and alive, and sometimes just happily rude.

I liked trying to practice my French with him. He spoke four languages and at Northwestern University had tutored, and been engaged to, Nan Robertson, the wonderful New York Times reporter. He had also served as an diplomatic administrator in Europe after World War II. But he told me I had to stop: my accent is terrible and it made him cranky. He was also fussy about the words I used. He would mimic a particularly casual usage and make me stop and rephrase. "Say what you mean," was his abiding command.

He couldn't get to the Met or enjoy NYC the way he'd planned when he bought his brownstone and started renovating it, but one could always find him in his downstairs study on a Saturday afternoon listening to the opera on the radio and reading the New York Times. He spent the winters in NYC making plans for the houses he was renovating in Québec and always had pictures handy.

His interior design style was wabi-sabi, a term I swear I learned from him, but he swore he'd never heard of. Everything in his homes, it seemed, had received some repair and in the Zen aesthetic of wabi-sabi, the care you take to repair something adds to its value and beauty. The porcelain jewelry case that belonged to his mother had been broken and repaired once by her, again by him. It sat prominently in the entrance to his brownstone.

One memorable exception to that was "The Million Dollar Couch" on the second floor of his farmhouse - an enormous couch he'd bought at a design showcase on Long Island- in turquoise velvet. He told me the price. It didn't cost quite a million since he bought the floor model. A crane had to lift it through the picture window to get it into the room and it sat next to his easel and a wide view of neighboring mountains.

It occurs to me that my friendship with Sheridan laid some precious mortar after the end of my marriage. And surely Ashtanga, the Alternatives to Violence Project and blogging are more of that.

From Sheridan I developed a love for old kitchen utensils. His toaster was an Art Deco open-coiled monster from the 1930's that had no On-Off switch - it had to be unplugged to let the coils cool.

Here's his most romantic recipe. He taught it to me in that old farmhouse in Québec, calling directions from his chair in the living room while I executed. It was a lovely gift, and one day I hope to cook it as intended.

"Paris 1948" Take 2 Tablespoons of butter and melt over a low heat. Stir in 1 Tablespoon flour and cook the roux. Add about a teaspoon of curry powder, some tarragon leaves to taste. Then stir in some frozen shrimp that have been melted and dried thoroughly. Pour the curried shrimp over rice, or linguini, or angel hair pasta.

I grew up in an antiseptic Betty Crocker household, as did my mother, and Sheridan was the first cook I knew who left his cheeses out on the farmhouse kitchen table, happily ignoring the line of little ants streaming over the tabletop. Cheese really does taste better at room temperature. And mustard? Buy it dry and mix it as you need it. For a salad dressing - dissolve the salt into the vinegar before mixing in the oil, and make small amounts, you don't need a vat of the stuff. For Sheridan I also learned to mix a martini.

When I last spoke with him in January, a few weeks before he passed, I asked whether he should be returning to Québec in the winter. I didn't need to remind him that I'd pulled him out of his bed one winter in NYC, wet, shivering, naked and on the verge of pneumonia. He was cranky and said he'd be fine. I told him I loved him and was glad he was carrying a new cell phone.

I heard today that he returned to Québec to die - further medical tests when he got home showed that his prostate cancer had completely metastasized into his bones and he could not find a way to get warm. He had apparently been in quite a bit of pain.

His best friend, Richard, adopted his fat dirty cat and says that she actually cleans up nicely in the Québec countryside. We laughed about that today.

And the cemetery near his home granted his desire that a large round boulder be placed on his grave as the only marker, although I understand it split in two when they moved it onto the site. There is no name on it.