When I make Gumbo, my mother is alive again and standing right next to me with a wooden spoon, stirring in the shrimp and watching until it turns pink.  More than simply a delicious dish,  it is a potful of everything that was wonderful about her.  Celebratory, warm, nourishing, complicated and rich with Southern mystique, Gumbo is easy to love and impossible to forget.

To a pot of Gumbo simmering on the stove, simply add a great loaf of bread and some good friends and you have a party.  Growing up, we had Gumbo every Christmas Eve.  This past New Year’s Eve, we served it to our good friends, some new and some lifelong,  and on that beautiful night,  if I closed my eyes,  my mom was there enjoying every moment along with us.  Mom’s recipe remains a gift I will treasure for life, which I happily share with you.

CREOLE SEAFOOD GUMBO

1/4 cup bacon drippings
1/4 cup flour

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups okra, fresh or frozen, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 cups onion, chopped
1 cup bell pepper, chopped
2 cups celery, chopped
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
5 cups fish stock or water
3 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup parsley, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 dashes Tabasco Sauce
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 pound cooked Dungeness Crabmeat
1 pound shelled, deveined shrimp
18 raw Eastern oysters, plus their liquor

In a heavy pan, brown the flour in bacon drippings until golden brown. (This is called a roux and is the basis of Creole cooking.)

In a separate pan, cook the okra in 2 tablespoons of oil until quite dry, stirring constantly. Set aside.

To the roux, add each of the chopped vegetables, tomato sauce, fish stock or water, and the cooked okra, stirring after each addition. Add the spices. Cook for at least 2 hours (the longer the better), stirring occasionally. 10 minutes before serving, add the seafood. Since the crab is already cooked it is only necessary to heat it through. The shrimp is done when it is pink and begins to curl, and oysters are done when the edges begin to curl. Serve in bowls, top with a large scoop of rice, garnish with fresh parsley and pass the Tabasco. Serves 6.

Throughout my entire career, I was able to escape the drudgery of jury duty, because I was convinced that what I did for a living, advertising, took precedence over serving.  My meetings were way too important, my assignments too pressing, and I was always able to get a fancy letter from a CEO or other VIP to excuse me.

Now that I am not working, I have no such excuses. Believe me, I racked my brain looking for them.  So I found myself for the first time, somewhat timidly, making my way to the Superior Court of Santa Barbara very early Tuesday morning to report for duty.

It did not start well.

First off, patience has never been one of my strengths, and I had even less of it than usual that first day.  After a small scuffle with the “Juror’s Parking” parking attendant, I ran the several blocks to the Superior Court, arriving late to a standing room only auditorium of potential jurors who were getting instructions for the day.  Over two hundred of us spent the next two hours standing in line, checking in, standing in line again, getting a badge, waiting in uncomfortable chairs, then standing in line again to go up the stairs through security into the courtroom.

In the courtroom were no less than five armed bailiffs.  The air was formal and tense.  Four defendants and each of their attorneys sat and watched us walk in and take our places, one by one.  As they stared at us, they reminded me of when my colleagues and I would hold casting auditions for commercials, and we would sit back and whisper among ourselves as we took measure of the actors and decide who would get the part.  I did not draw one comfortable breath the entire time I was in that airless courtroom. It was a trial concerning one murder and one severe beating, and would have required our attendance for 6 to 8 weeks, so ultimately most of us, including me, were excused and asked to report to another courtroom after lunch.

The afternoon went slightly better.  After waiting for nearly two hours, we were once again asked to get in line and walk (please no jay walking!) across the street to another courtroom where they began interrogating us in depth to be jurors.  Fortunately there was no security screening and only one defendant, but still, waiting to be called felt like a combination of waiting to get a mammogram and waiting to be assigned a seat on an oversold airplane.

The rest of the day was spent listening to the stories of the potential jurors who were being questioned by the judge and attorneys.  Some were poor, some were very wealthy. One guy seemed ill, and I think one may have been drunk.  Most were thoughtful, earnest and conscientious people just trying to do the right thing.  I was touched by how, like me, no one really wanted to spend the next several days in court as they, too, had lives and families and things they needed to do.  Yet they did as they were told, spoke from the heart about what they believed, and allowed themselves to be seated or dismissed, as the judge decreed.

It was humbling.

The afternoon spilled into the next day, and I appeared again after a restless sleep, wanting to be called, wanting not to be called, and wanting it all to be over.  I was finally called, answered everything to the best of my limited abilities, and was thanked and dismissed.

I flew out of the courtroom into the brilliant sunshine and felt oddly exhilarated.  I realized it was the first time since I left work that I really was required to spend a few days being responsible, and it felt good. It felt good to be part of something that mattered to the freedoms I so carelessly enjoy, and it felt good to have been part of a community again.

This week, I have been thinking about the tragedy in Tucson, and the ordinary people who did such extraordinary things; a husband who threw himself over his wife to save her from being shot, an intern who tended to the congresswoman’s wounds in a way that surely saved her life, the little old lady (even littler and older than I) who stripped a magazine away from the shooter and prevented even more shots being fired.

What would I have done had I been outside that supermarket that morning?  I honestly can’t say.  I doubt if I would have done anything heroic.  But I could not have hidden behind my job and say that I couldn’t help because I have a meeting to get to or a script to write. I hope I would have had the presence of mind to do whatever was right.    And I hope I would have found the strength within me to do so.

I understand now, like never before, that jury duty is a simple, basic, common duty I have as an American, and I feel honored to have been called to serve.  I respect and celebrate those who sat next to me throughout those uncomfortable hours,  who, one by one, did what was required of them for the state to select 12 jurors.

Maybe next time I will have the distinct honor of being seated.

OK.  There is a 300 pound gorilla in the room, or rather in the blog, and it is me.  Yes, dear reader, there is something important that I haven’t been forthcoming about.

I got married.

I didn’t mention it sooner because it didn’t feel appropriate to announce my marriage in a blog.  I know, Prince Charles announced Kate and Will’s engagement on Twitter, but I am clearly not as hip as Prince Charles.  Still, now that the dust has settled, I have been finding it hard to write about life after advertising in a heartfelt way, and not mention that life after advertising can include something as life changing and magical as getting married.

So there.  It’s out.  After a mere 11 years of courtship, my love and I rashly decided Christmas Eve was the perfect time to formalize what we want our future to be.  We told his three sons fifteen minutes before the ceremony (the two in Park City were immediately enlisted as our Best Men; we texted the oldest son overseas, as it was the middle of the night there!), and called our families with the good news just after the Mayor of Park City pronounced us husband and wife.

We didn’t, and don’t want to make a big fuss about the wedding.  We have both been married before, and there is another big wedding in the family next summer that deserves all of our attention.  But as you are my readers, and I want to speak to you from the heart, it felt right finally to let you know about the change in my relationship status, as they say on Facebook.

Now, getting married is not something I expected when I left New York for Park City, although obviously it is something we have discussed for  a long time.  But after paring away the busy day to day life I had, taking time to stop and think and feel, realizing what really matters and what just takes up time in the day, I came to the super clear realization that all that matters in life is love.  Kindness, caring, and love.  And that is what I have found.

I do understand the peculiarity of two gray haired people with a couple of lifetimes behind them, joining hands and vowing to start a new life together.  It is an odd picture, to be sure.  But there is something about the picture that is gently reassuring to me, having taken so long to come to this point, knowing that we are both walking into it with eyes open wide, and bringing to it pretty darn realistic expectations of what marriage is and isn’t.

And I do feel the future never looked so bright.

Yes, I do.

Maybe it is the New Year. Maybe it is because the walking pneumonia that has worn me down over the past eight months is finally on the run. Or maybe because I have too much time on my hands. But I am starting to hear a teeny, tiny voice in my ear. It’s saying, “Wouldn’t you want to work again??”

I pull the covers up over my head. I tell the voice to go away. After all I have it made. My time is my own. I can work out whenever I want to. I am finally starting my novel. I actually finish crossword puzzles. Why ruin all that?

The truth, the naked ugly truth, is that I miss work.

I miss the charge.  I miss the challenge.  I miss wrestling with the creative problem and I miss uncovering a creative solution.  I miss seeing how beautiful art direction takes the solution and makes it fresh and real.   And I miss seeing it all come to life.

A friend of mine just gave me a journal engraved with the words, THE FUTURE’S BRIGHT. Even as 2010 is being boxed up and put away, as the snow outside sparkles under an impossibly blue sky, and as I pack up to head to Santa Barbara for the next several weeks, I feel the power of something strong and good lighting my way.

I don’t know if that means working again, or finding something completely new to give a deeper meaning to my life.  I only know there is something out there calling to me.

And I have never been one not to answer.