Crabby, crabby, crabby: A meandering essay about the arrival of the season's first soft shell crabs (and a few other things, too)

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

-T.S. Eliot - "The Waste Land"
I. The Burial of the Dead

It was raining gently when I drove home from Milwaukee Saturday evening. After I went to bed, it must have stormed because the ground outside was wet when I awoke on Sunday. Stepping outside, I discovered one of the largest flowering crabs in the neighborhood had been felled by the storm.

When winter has become a heavy weight upon our chests, numbing our senses and hindering our movement, isolating us from one another and leaching joy from our souls, we long for harbingers of spring: bright sunshine, red robins, tulips and daffodils thrusting themselves out of the earth and revealing vivid colors. We forget that spring also brings rainstorms, tornado season, and, of course, construction season.

While, for me, April is the cruelest month – the month my father died – May is not far behind. These are the months that have become cluttered with deaths, with birthdays and holidays no longer celebrated. I try to keep busy and stay active, but I can't always avoid the feelings, evade the memories, squelch the yearning. It helps when the weather is nice – sunny, mild, and unthreatening. And it certainly helps when something prompts a happy memory, a memory not shrouded in gloom.

Sunday afternoon when I drove to Metcalfe's Sentry in Hilldale, the fringes of the sky's domed pate were ashy white. The rest was covered by a grey felt hat of clouds, its hue reminiscent of the dull-colored clots of lint that collect in my clothes dryer. As I walked through the first set of automatic sliding doors, I was weary, cranky, grumpy. Then, I saw the sign on the second set of doors, I stopped walking, and stared. When I resumed moving, there was a spring in my step and a big smile on my face.

"Soft shell crabs $4.98" were the magic words. They not only taste delicious, they evoke fond memories. The mere sight of them lifts my spirits. They're a palliative to help me move toward Memorial Day – the end of spring and beginning of summer on my calendar.

A live soft shell crab (photographed at Harvest Restaurant in April 2007)

When the names of the months start dropping the letter “r,” fresh soft shell crabs begin to make their all-too brief and often erratic appearances on restaurant menus and in seafood stores. An ardent soft shell crab fan, I’ve been known to fly off to the east coast or drive down to Chicago to savor this seasonal crustacean delicacy.

I strode past Metcalfe's gorgeous displays of fruits and vegetables in all their noisy, primary-colored glory and headed directly to the seafood display. The soft shells on display had already been dressed (the eyes, gills and undercarriage removed), but the man in the white coat behind the counter assured me they'd been delivered live.

I had other plans for dinner, so I asked the man in the white coat if he expected more deliveries this week. Yes, he did, but as is always the case, he couldn't be sure when or how many he would receive. Weather always plays a role in determining availability. "I'll be back," I told him.

When I returned home, the sun was beginning to emerge and the sky was turning blue. I remembered that I had a series of photographs about soft shell crabs, taken last year when I wrote an article about them for the Wisconsin State Journal that was published a year and a day earlier. My photographs were taken not to illustrate the story, but to document the process of preparing and photographing them.

Justin Carlisle, then the executive chef at Harvest Restaurant (who has now departed to join Shinji Muramoto), was in charge of preparation. Freelance photographer Andy Manis was in charge of photographing them. I hovered on the perimeter with my small point and shoot digital camera, taking visual notes that I would later use when I wrote my story. What follows are a few of the photographs I took at Harvest on a sunny afternoon in late April 2007:

Photographer Andy Manis photographs chef Justin Carlisle preparing a soft shell crab in the kitchen of Harvest Restaurant

Chef Justin Carlisle pan fried the soft shells and served them atop braised ramp greens and a rhubarb and raspberry gelée, then topped them with a sunchoke emulsion and toasted pistachios.

Photographer Andy Manis taking a close-up photograph of a soft shell crab dish

Another look at photographer Andy Manis taking a close-up shot of the soft shell crab dish

It's late. The sun will be up in a few hours. I need to catch some sleep. Himself is undoubtedly already asleep. He has an important meeting on Monday. I, too, have important things to do, but nothing will make me forget that were my father still alive, we would have been celebrating his birthday on Monday. I won’t be eating soft shell crabs today to assuage the pain: I think I've done that by staying up late to write this post.

When I awake I probably won't be as cranky and crabby as I have been for the past few days. That should please Himself – but probably not as much as the fact that I've started writing again. When it comes to convincing me to write and blog, Himself remains the Great Motivator – even if he won't eat soft shell crabs.