Stir
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To Megan Metcalf, for that luminous mind of yours and oversized heart, for seeing me, for lifting me up, for letting us claim you as family, for suggesting I start Sweet Amandine, and introducing me to Katrina; for the wooden bird from Prague you saved in secret for years because you had a feeling there would be two, and for presenting it to our Freddie when she came along. I’m so grateful for you, friend.
My cousin Katie Wannen knows what’s what. She enriched this story with her insights on illness and recovery, and my life with her intelligence and grace. Thank you to my great-aunt Eileen Farkas, my grandfather Robert Fechtor, and Jill Brock for always asking about my writing, for being so smart and so good, and for their faith in me. I wrote many of these pages with my grandmother Louise Fechtor, of blessed memory, in mind. I hope she shines in them.
Yeseny Alvarez isn’t family, but she might as well be. For your energy and smarts, for delighting my daughters, for loving them as if they were your own, and playing no small role making them the wonderful creatures they are; for teaching me by example how to be the parent I want to be, thank you. I would still be on chapter one, Yeseny, if it weren’t for you.
Thank you to my sisters- and brothers-in-law, Jonathan Schleifer, Katie Connolly, Yitzchak Schleifer, Talya Benoff, and Atara Schleifer for their support and love throughout my recovery and the writing of this book. Special thanks to Katie for her insight and encouragement at the earliest stages of this project. And to Leslie Rosenberg, for being a kindred spirit.
To Sarah and Steve Schleifer, thank you for Eli, and for you, for welcoming me into your family from day one and showing me the kind of love parents usually reserve for their own flesh and blood. Thank you, Sarah, for teaching me more than you know about family and love. Thank you, Steve, for taking an interest in my work, and for our many important conversations throughout the creation of this book. I love the way you think.
I am grateful to my brother and sisters, Caleb Fechtor, Kasey Fechtor, and Anna Fechtor, for their discerning eyes, their excellent taste, and for inspiring me with their own writing, baking, and art. Your support means the world to me. Thank you, Caleb, for your patience with me when this book and new motherhood kept me from making it across the river as often as I would have liked; to Kasey, for hours upon hours of hanging out with your nieces so that I could sit and write; and to Anna, for three weeks of tremendous help with the girls as I found my way back to this project after Freddie was born.
My parents taught me that I could be anything, which was convenient when, at age thirty-one, I decided to try to write a book.
To my mother, Laurie Mazur: Thank you for understanding me completely, for your careful eye and intelligent notes that helped me tame and tighten this narrative, and for dropping everything time and again to fly in and save the day.
Thank you to my father, Stephen Fechtor, for knowing exactly how to be and what to say, and to my stepmother, Amy Thompson, for showing me how it’s done.
To my daughters, Mia and Freddie: Thank you for being you.
And to Eli: Thank you for your love. We’re just getting started.
About the Author
Jessica Fechtor writes the popular food blog Sweet Amandine. She is a PhD candidate in Jewish literature at Harvard University and lives with her husband and daughters in San Francisco.
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