My mother-in law’s cooking motto was, “If you’re out of it—improvise!” I had always assumed that she meant a minor ingredient, until I became the mother of an infant son, who vocally encouraged family get-togethers at two o’clock every morning. Then “out of it” described every cabinet in my kitchen. So, when my husband, Warren called from the office and said, “My former professor is  coming for dinner. Don’t worry, I’ll pick up a meal on the way home.” I was okay with that. Then, he added, “ All you have to do is to make martinis. He is a martini connoisseur, and likes them straight up.”  

I had never made a martini in my life, but I remembered there was a bottle of gin somewhere in the hall closet. I also remembered that we had no vermouth or olives.  I unwrapped the one fancy martini glass we had received as a wedding gift and chilled it. Then I poured the bottle of gin into a pitcher filled with ice, and greeted our guest at the door with a cold, naked gin “martini.” After his third one, he proclaimed, “These are are the best martinis I have ever tasted.” After that, every time we saw him he’d say, “This woman really knows how to make martinis. To improvise means to produce or create something from whatever is available.

When my son, Josh joined a Comedy Improv group in college, he explained, “Improvisation is like building a house without the blue prints. You have to have walls, floors  and a roof, but sometimes you can’t get all of the pieces.”  I guess it’s like cooking without a recipe. In life, all of us improvise one time or another.

One of my favorite true stories involved a speech writer. One of his clients was the CEO of a large corporation. After writing speeches  for this man for a year, the speech writer asked for a salary raise.The CEO’s response was,”I’m not giving you a raise.  All you do is write my speeches. I could do that myself if I had the time.” A few weeks later, the CEO stood on a stage in a big auditorium prepared to address his employees. The speech was in a leather binder on the lectern. He opened the binder and saw a sheet of paper whereupon was written, “I quit! You are on your own.”

Jason Isbell, of the 400 Unit Band said it best, “It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you, and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.”

Maybe trying counts a bit.  When Josh was 4-years-old, we took a trip to Florida to visit my in-laws. Their house was near a water-filled moat. Josh wanted to go fishing, but Grandpa Chuck didn’t own a fishing pole, so he improvised. with a string tied to a broom handle. Also, there weren’t any worms available, so Grandpa stuck a piece of salami on a safety pin and hung it from the line. Little Josh stood by the moat with his line dangling in the water.  He caught no fish. However, two ducks really enjoyed that salami.

Several famous  lines in movies were improvised by the actors themselves. One of my favorites came from Dustin Hoffman in a scene from MIDNIGHT COWBOY, that was being filmed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He yelled at a car that tried to cut him off in the middle of a scene, “I’m walking here!”  The line stayed in the movie and became a classic.

George Gershwin had it right when he said,”Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.”

Esther Blumenfeld