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March 15, 2025 15 mins
In Milkweed and Honey Cake: A Memoir in Ritual Moments, Wendy A. Horwitz shares essays about celebration, loss, change, and the best way to open a pomegranate.
Holidays delight – and disappoint. A couple marrying in the pandemic finds a surprise after a rainstorm, and a topsy-turvy search for a gravestone honors her ancestors. When a graduation is cancelled, Horwitz serves pomp and circumstance on the front porch, and through the shifting seasons of a life, amid the scramble of pet guinea pigs and birthday parties, her children add wonder and comedy to tradition.
Horwitz explores how ritual can exalt ordinary moments and frame the extraordinary - a blue heron, an old cupboard's scent, and the lingering feel of an engagement ring long gone prompt reflections laced with yearning and humor. Guiding us along a wooded path, to the kitchen table, in a messy garden, and under a tent reverberating with song, she traces the boundaries of ritual, considering what we do when ritual falls short, and how we might adapt to each other's practices. And when the wider world seems broken, new rituals provide hope.
Lyrical and funny, thought-provoking and deeply moving, Milkweed and Honey Cake is at once a meditation on our desire for meaning and the story of a woman's lifelong efforts to create it.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is Wendy Horowitz calling from my interview.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hi Wendy Horowitz, how are you doing? What is your
ritual today?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Ah? Well, I'm having a cup of tea, but I
wouldn't call it a ritual. It's just to get my
voice going. You first person i've spoken to this week.
Can I ask you how you pronounce your name? Arrow? Arrow? Okay?
And also would you rather nap be on speaker? What
do you prefer? I'm on speaking.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You're fine, You're absolutely fine. I want you to be
so comfortable because I mean that that's the whole idea
that I love about podcasting these days, is that it's
it's a texture and it adds it adds a texture
to the to the listening experience, which then just just
really opens up the imagination.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Okay, all right, well tell me when you want to
get started.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm ready to rock right now. Let's let's have a party.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
And what do you call your the people who tune
into your podcast? People call them guests, listeners, viewers. What
do you call them your people?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
You? I just call you you.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Not me, I mean, because I actually refer to your
listeners or you know, things like that. So I want
to follow your lead on that.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
You know, I'll tell you how I think like that,
And this, in all honesty, could really base things on
the subject we're gonna be talking about today. I only
believe that I'm speaking to one person at a time,
and that's the radio guy in me. We are trained
to speak to one person, so I don't think of
a group of people at all. It's one person.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, all right, Well that's hupful. And actually I can
hear in your voice you're a radio guy. Yeah, great voice.
Oh my goodness, I envy it. I do not like
listening to the recordings of myself.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I don't either.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I don't either, I to this day. I mean this.
I've been in radio for forty six years. I have
never liked my voice. I just had to. I had
to learn how to trust it.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
You have a radio voice. Sorry anyway, Well, you've.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Got a book called Milkweed and Honeycake. What I love
about this book is that it is bravely honest.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, I will tell you it's a memoir. And people
ask me sometimes is it all true? And I say,
I really prefer to avoid the faction, the mixture of
fiction and fact that if you are going to tell
stories about your life, they should be true. And I'm

(02:22):
not sure if it's brave. I mean, once it was
out in the world and I held the book in
my hands, the gorgeous cover created by my publisher, it
was very exciting, it was thrilling. But I feel like
everybody has a story to tell. I'm not particularly extraordinary,
and my sense is that people like telling stories and

(02:47):
listening to stories. Humans always have and mine is just
one more to tell, or rather thirty three or how
many chapters I have I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, is share your story or someone will write it
for you. And I was with Dion de Mucci yesterday
and we were talking about that because he's released a
brand new book about his musical life, and I said,
you have finally shared the story. Everything else has been
everybody else's words. And that's what I think I love
about this book, Windy, is the fact it is sharing
your story because nobody else needs to write it.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
This is part of what's going on here, which is
that it runs very deep era it is some of
the most important things in my life. So for example,
I share a lot of stories about my children and
people will ask me well, how do your kids feel
about that? And what they both said to me in

(03:42):
their own way. They're now in their twenties. Most of
their stories in this book take place earlier than that.
Is that they said, Mom, that's your story to tell.
We'll tell our own version at some point. That's not
direct quote, but that's essentially the nature of the conversation.
So telling my version is something that I hope will

(04:07):
resonate with other people. So, for example, I tell a
very simple story opening the book, early in the book,
about watching my son bored yellow skilus for the first time.
And that's a very simple act, but it's very profound.
We watch the children in our lives take flight, and

(04:29):
the question I ask, is is there a ritual for that?
We need these everyday rituals and things also for the
extraordinary times in our lives, the really momentous occasions as well,
to mark them, to mark the time, to remind us
who we are, and also to give meaning to life.

(04:50):
That is really what these stories are about. Arrow. It's
really about saying, how do we mark our daily, sometimes
seemingly trivial lives with meaning and when we face the extraordinary.
I tell stories, for example, about loss, and about the pandemic,

(05:13):
and about catastrophic thick, catastrophic events. How do we frame that?
How do we render meaning from the challenges in our
lives and celebrate the best with food? You notice the
title has honeycakes in it, with food with humor. There

(05:34):
is definitely humor in all this, and with community and
friends and family, and so that, to me is the
story that we all can tell. Mine happens to focus
on these ritual moments. The subtitle is a memoir in

(05:54):
ritual moments, not of ritual moments, but in that we are.
We are immersed in these little moments in our lives,
and it's really wonderful to be able to stop and
light a candle, make a cake, reach out to a friend,
notice on a walk in the woods, a spiderweb glinting

(06:15):
with morning dew, And even something as simple as crossing
a bridge for me can become a ritual for loss
and celebration if I may. That's not to say that
I'm just this amazingly ritualized person who is so immersed

(06:36):
in the moment and noticing everything. It is a memoir,
so there are mishaps, there are mistakes. My imagination fails me,
as it does all of us at times. But I
think aspiring to a life full of meaning and celebration
and did I say food, yes, with friends and family

(06:56):
is really really important.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Please don't move. We've got more coming up next. Hey,
thanks for coming back to my conversation with Wendy Horwitz.
So I've been a daily writer since July of nineteen
ninety four, and my ritual is to make sure that
that pen hits that page every single day. So do
we need to redefine what a ritual is when I
just basically call it, Well, this is my daily habit,
this is my daily discipline, this is you know, because

(07:19):
I mean you You've opened up my eyes with understanding
what a ritual is, and it teaches me that there's
even rituals that my mother did that affect me today.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
So about the writing I distinguish in my book, and
when I talk about this between a salutary a helpful,
healthy habit like putting pen to paper every day, like exercising.
I distinguish those great habits from ritual in the following way.

(07:52):
And even those can become ritual, but I distinguish it
from ritual in the following way, ritual to me has
a resonance. It might have roots or history, although it
doesn't need to, but it has to somehow render larger meaning.
And so when people say, well, I take a walk
every day, isn't that a ritual? I suppose it could

(08:13):
be at times, but otherwise we have then everything is ritual,
which means what does that mean? So I think we
can debate this, and I think it's a really interesting discussion,
but I have essentially, yes, redefined it by saying, when
there is that moment when, for example, I found myself

(08:35):
crossing a bridge from Pennsylvania where I live, into New
Jersey at the week after nine to eleven, and seeing
the skyline of New York, I realized that crossing that
bridge would now become a pilgrimage. And it became so
over time, and I would always look south, and so

(08:57):
it's not that crossing every bridge in my life is,
but that became so. So I think there is a
distinction between the good habits like writing, walking, eating well
and ritual and our daily mundane events and when there
is a resonant meaning to it. But again that's open

(09:18):
to debate, and I welcome that debate.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Well, see your book is a conversation starter, because it
definitely does. It creates those moments where you could be
sitting around a circle with friends and you bring up
a subject such as stop polishing the silver, holding on
to the objects that you have, let it go.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah. Yeah, so you are referring to chapter one polishing
the silver, which I say this in the book, and
most people look at me askance when I give in
person talks. I'm one of the only people I know
who likes to polish silver because it has become a
ritual that reminds me of my ancestors, particularly the women,

(09:53):
and making the table more beautiful at holidays and special events,
and I think it makes that be beauty, renders things
more meaningful. Now that said, not everybody needs to literally
polish silver. Most of my friends when they see what
I do for holidays, they want to lie down and
take a nap, as I sometimes do. But it might

(10:17):
not be that. It might be using a special teacup
from a great aunt. It might be just noticing that
putting a small bouquet of flowers on the table adds
to the event, makes it worthwhile. You could have pizza
and invite ever be open over and have a six pack,

(10:37):
But maybe you put a bouquet of flowers on the
table for that holiday and it becomes ritualized because you
put that little extra effort and make it more beautiful.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
So do you think that joy comes from wonder?

Speaker 1 (10:53):
That's really interesting. I think that wonder and awe are
part of the ritual life, that there were moments where
in the distance, in our peripheral vision we glimmer something.
So yes, joy, but I want to couple that with
something and it comes somewhat from my background. I am Jewish,
and we tend to couple joy with an awareness also

(11:20):
of the potential for sorrow. It's not like you're walking
around ready to burst into tears. But there's a complexity
and a fullness to life that makes joy fuller. There's
an appreciation, so it's not just sort of happy, joyful
all the time, but a realization of the preciousness of life,

(11:41):
of the fragility of life, and that renders that joy,
yes through awe, as you said, all the more elevated
because of that awareness of the vulnerability that we all have.
So I would say I see it as a more
complex emotion. Even humor comes into those moments. So I

(12:05):
love the idea of a kind of multifaceted emotion which
I think humans have, which we don't have words for
all the time. So that's how I would say joy,
yes from awe, but with a awareness in the backdrop
of the fragility of it all and of the privilege

(12:26):
that many of us have to experience it without threat,
without impinging impedements on our freedoms. So I would add
kind of that in the thriftial vision, I would.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Say I'm a major league people watcher. I call myself
a silent wolf in that that I watch everything that's
going on around me, and in watching people of homelessness,
I don't see them with the physical act of trying
to survive. And yet when you turn around and you
look at everybody else, they're all fighting to survive. It's
almost like life has become their ritual. They've got to
protect that ritual.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Well, I think that there is a distinction between surviving
and living a full life. Surviving is having a roof
over your head, eating enough food, making a reasonable living,
having healthcare. To me, the full life is when we

(13:19):
add these additional very human things, And so that kind
of fighting I feel like there's a lot of energy
that goes into that that I'm not sure that all
of that is necessary. You need the basics, and you
need to have what you need for yourself and your
family and people you care about. But going beyond that,

(13:43):
I emphasize this sense that we have to pull meaning
from life that otherwise it is just a grind. Otherwise
we're just water and bone, you know, We're just water
and bone. And I think we're much much more than that.
So I would say I don't use the word thrive
because I'm not sure what people mean by that. I

(14:05):
have to say ironically, but I do think that the
fullness of life requires more than just fighting to survive.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Not just your book, but your website is absolutely amazing.
Where can they go to find out more about this?

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Oh? Well, thank you? I have to credit my web designer. Okay,
so my website is wendyhorwitzauthor dot com. And I have
to spell my last name people like to misspell it.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
So my name is w E N d Y Wendy
Horowitz ho r Witz, author dot com. And everything's there
how to get the book my in person and taped
events and podcasts like this and a bit more about
me my bio and background as well, and some really

(14:55):
nice pictures that other people did. I didn't do them,
so I love to share the credit.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Well, I love where your heart is, and you've got
to come back to this show more than just one time.
My god, I just love to hear you speak.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well. Thank you. It really has been my pleasure and
frankly an honor to be on this show. I really
appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
You'd be brilliant today.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Okay, okay, thanks take care
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