If I want to see my friend Scott, there are three ways to do it. I can go to the Round House Bakery while he is baking bread; I can go to the Round House Cafe on Friday night and order pizza, or I can go to the Farmer’s Market on Sunday where he is usually setting up his wood-friend pizza often.

Scott works every day of the week, and when he is baking,  he’s teaching Tai Chi, cooking in the cafe, or tending to the grounds at his Pompanuck Farm, all of which he runs with his wife Lisa. Once in awhile, we try and get together for dinner, but he usually falls asleep on his couch at hime before dinner time.

Sometimes, he goes to sleep if we do meet.

I can’t begrudge Scott his fatigue or inaccessibility, he works all of the time, running a family restaurant or cafe is  grueling, eternal, and sometimes thankless work. Scott is passionate about the food he serves, and there are no short cuts in the cafe, or in his life.

Scott and me too, I think, suffer from the male habit of rarely leaving room in our lives for friendship. I talked about this a lot with my friend Paul Moshimer, he told me we had great things ahead of us in our friendship, and then he took his own life. I am still trying to understand it.

I do worry about Scott, but I am not his mother or wife. His face is a smiling face, full of smile wrinkles. But lately, it is a tired smiling face, and today I think I captured the duality in his eyes, genial and open, but nearly exhausted.

He loves what he does, and is determined to make his cafe work, he has been through seven levels of Hell to get this far, and he won’t quit until he makes it or goes down in a blaze of glory.

Scott’s birthday was last week, and I’ve been trying to give him his present ever since, I’m hoping for Tuesday or Wednesday.

When we do see each other – sometimes he pops into the farmhouse to say hello for a few minutes en route somewhere – it is always a pleasure. I feel very connected to Scott, we trust one another and are honest with each other. I have very few friends, my own fault,  I was not able to do it for much of my life. This is a keeper,I think.

I like this photo of Scott, I believe the best portraits are of people you love.