A Meditation on Carolina Santos-Neves
First, a word about her name. I’ve called Carolina Santos-Neves “Santos” since we’re in our early-20s. It started naturally; I call many of my close guy friends by their last name and “Santos” came first in her typically hyphenated Brazilian last name. Santos is phonetically satisfying to say. It revs up with “Sannn” and descends with equal velocity in a satisfying percussive splash “Tos”. It’s, it’s, it’s just fun; it sounds like “Santa” (I know him! I know him!) and who would deny the joy in Santa? Conversely, Santos sounds masculine and tough like a grunt in the marines: Santos! Get your ass over here and get ready to ship out at 0800! that is hilariously at odds with Carolina’s sweet, gentle demeanour. Santos is — yes, we’re still talking about this — two syllables as opposed to Car-o-li-na’s four and frankly, I ain’t got all day here. I’m a guy who crosses the street at diagonals to shave seconds off my commute, ok? I know a handful of Carolinas, always pronounced in the more hee-haw way like the state, but I only know one Santos. She is sui generis.
Additionally, and not to harp on this point, but Santos, particularly when pronounced Saaan-tooooos like Principal Chalmers intoning Simp-soooooon, from a low to higher register, connotes a kind of comedic exasperation, which is an accurate way to describe my side of the buddy dynamic. You can almost imagine a kind of gun barrel zoom on Carolina’s whaddayagonnado face as credits start to roll.
Carolina and I first met at The Ratty, the nickname for the Sharpe Refectory, which is a name people don’t use any more for cafeteria, like icebox for a freezer or knickers for pants, unless you live in Tottenham. The Ratty referred to the quality of the food or the tidiness of the facility or both and anyway the name stuck. It was a place we’d gather for hours with our emerging social circles, debating ideas, sharing news and dishing hot campus gossip, pausing occasionally for refills on bowls of cereal, a hard-boiled egg and if we stayed long enough, an entirely new meal as lunch rolled into early dinner. Medieval clans had taverns, Enlightenment thinkers had coffee shops and we had our modest Ratty.
At one of these drawn out Ratty klatches, Carolina insinuated herself into a group discussion around the table. She seemed familiar yet worldly, conversant in cultural in-jokes like quotes from Wayne’s World, while dropping subtle references, without even a hint of pretense, about time spent in Russia or Mexico City. She’d dish out gentle ribbing and could take a brotherly swipe — clearly someone with sibling experience.
One of the first things you notice about Carolina is that she’s beautiful — smooth skin, a light rouge in her cheeks and inviting brown eyes. Her accent indicates, to the careful listener, that she’s not from around here and your inability to place it — vaguely South American, tinged with a light Continental inflection — invokes an aura of mystique around her girl-next-door presentation to the world. The result is a Kerri Russell in The Americans quality, in which Carolina’s cover would be regularly blown when she inadvertently breaks into Portuguese or conversational Spanish.
Carolina’s dad is a career diplomat for Brazil who held posts all over the world, including Mexico City, Moscow and London. He held the title of “Ambassador” but his nickname at Brown was “The Colonel” because of his severe bearing and none of us had any real context for how an ambassador should look though we had plenty of military references in pop culture to make our case.
Carolina takes more after her mom, Mary, especially her watchful kindness, her love of film and interest in cooking. Her mom has lived a life, as they say: she grew up in Ohio and worked at a movie theater at the student union in college, falling in love with Brazil when she screened “Black Orpheus”. Mary later went on to become a film editor for Kung Fu movies in Hong Kong in the seventies. She studied Portuguese and met “The Colonel” at a party in The Hamptons after he spied her from across the bar and threw olives to get her attention.
Carolina also has her mom’s sense of style, which finds elegance in vintage fabrics across an international assortment of colors accumulated from a life spent entertaining guests around the world. She’s never without gorgeous pendants and other accessories; compliments over her earrings have been ongoing for over 20 years. Sometimes Santos takes vintage accessorizing a bit too far, like the time she temporarily moved into our apartment hauling in hobbly wheeled luggage and clothes carried hobo-style in extra strength garbage bags. In this regard I am a natural born tea kettle calling the pot black given that it’s taken years of living with a woman to wean me off my habit of wearing down every last garment down to its last thread before replacing it.
Carolina is the classic middle child between two brothers. Miguel, the oldest, has a soft, handsome face that recalls a blue-pilled Keanu Reeves as a compliance officer. Her younger brother, Gabe, is shorter and built like a slab of concrete, as solidly wide as he is tall. He played hockey, trained in grappling and now channels his aggression into complex commercial litigation. They share a fondness for each other and an ability to put anyone at ease, a skill no doubt honed over many years in the presence of distinguished guests. They’re well-read, mannered and share a kind of charming clumsiness in performing overt displays of affection.
Among many ways in which Carolina has made me proud, her decision to go to culinary school looms large. Very soon after graduating from college, Carolina and I began hosting potluck dinner parties at Carolina’s parents’ apartment — borrowed fancy — a more sophisticated step up from the keg parties I threw in high school when my parents weren’t home. Carolina would reserve the hot entrees for herself and it became readily apparent that she had an instinct for cooking. I tried to help as best I could but it quickly became clear that my talents were best placed at curating the guest list, getting the drinks and generally serving as the emcee. When Carolina’s mom tired of having wine drunk young 20-somethings at her apartment late on a Sunday, we began hosting the dinners at restaurants for a negotiated prix-fixe. We made letterhead — The Sunday Night Supper Club — a logo and official-sounding press releases that we distributed to restaurant GMs hoping to score a good deal.
Carolina was writing for a food blog at that time and after two years of telling her “kid, you got talent”, she summoned the courage to go to the Natural Gourmet Institute. Shortly after graduating, she teamed up with two friends to open the restaurant Comodo, which quickly became a hit serving elevated pan-Latin comfort food and we kvelled at seeing “Santos” living out her dream.
Santos and I have traveled all over the world together: London, Lisbon, Rio, Tokyo, Seattle, Portland, Miami, Austin, hikes all over NY. We’ve collected a lot of travel miles together because she’s an easy travel companion who loves adventures, culinary and otherwise. She loves to dance and is never more in her element than when she’s jumping up and down to a banger from the ’90s or an Afro-Brazilian beat.
Indeed Carolina has often felt like a younger sister. I mean that as a compliment, because ladies always want to be seen as younger, am I right ladies? She’s been a sister, a confidante during the most formative period in my adult life. I love Carolina and what many have failed to understand about our relationship and its insistently platonic character over the years, is that the relationship operates as its own third space into which we’ve invested so much energy and honesty over 20 years. In many ways, it is bigger than the sum of both of our combined affection for each other. Functionally, we could pass as a couple at weddings, dinner parties, to hotel front desks without having to deal with the expense or emotional calculus of an actual relationship. There are still several couples who assumed we’re dating and it was just easier to go along with it than to disabuse them.
Carolina and I share the mixed blessing of only being able to see the best in people, of capturing most people we meet in soft focus. It’s a great way to build a large community of friends and it historically has tripped us up romantically.
As I grew up and eventually met the woman who I knew would be my wife, I wanted Carolina to meet her right away. They met within the first month of our courtship and it’s been so intensely gratifying to see that these two women who mean so much to me see what I see in the other.
Carolina’s superpower is that her fundamental decency serves as a magnet for good people. This makes sense as the chef’s role is to create the table around which the community gathers. It’s a quiet power. She is a summoner; she can call the community together in which the community can take collective action.
Indeed, there is a beautiful motherly instinct alive in Carolina. You see it with how she dotes on her niece and how she takes care of her kitchen staff at work, constantly putting their needs before hers, whether it’s covering an extra shift on her day off, offering money out of her own pocket or holding space for those down on their luck.
Carolina makes everyone feel good simply by being around her. She is an active listener and can make you laugh for no reason. Likewise there have been moments where I would just start laughing spontaneously in front of her and she would join in. It’s not mere mimicry, it’s trust; it’s connection.
May she enter this next year embracing the lessons learned from the last, awake to the opportunities ahead and fully aware how much her community admires everything about her. Santos, te amo com todo meu coração.
