Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Beach walking find

A few mornings ago, I volunteered at Kind Kitchen, which is dedicated to providing homemade kosher meals to anyone who needs help. We were preparing for the big Thanksgiving and Chanukah delivery that will be made next week. (This year Chanukah starts on Sunday night.) There were about ten older women and one older man helping out and, since it was a school break, there were two mothers with their children who were doing some of their required service hours. Coerced volunteerism. It works for everyone.

For about 45 minutes, I ladled corn-muffin mixture from a big bucket into a few hundred muffin cups in industrial-kitchen-sized muffin tins. Between myself and the woman opposite me, we prepared more than 500 muffins. Another group ladled cranberry sauce into small plastic containers, another group put horseradish into very small containers, and one group put pumpkin cake batter that the women who work there made into cake tins. When we each finished our jobs, we went to another part of the synagogue to continue onto the next assignment.

Most of the women were putting together Chanukah gift bags with a note containing the holiday prayers, a menorah, and a box of Chanukah candles.

I ended up in the kids’ section with the two mothers and their children. We put together about 200 gift bags for children that included a note of well-wishing, a Thanksgiving napkin, two dreidels, and one bag of gelt (chocolate coins). We wondered about the napkin and what its purpose was. The mother at my table was sure the note and the napkin would be dropped and ignored in the rush to the chocolate and dreidels. I mused over the fact that the napkin had a cute image of a smiling turkey, but yet we go ahead and eat the turkey at the meal. Are all Thanksgiving holiday paper products like that? The mother excitedly told me about a holiday centerpiece she makes: another happy turkey, this time surrounded by fall leaves. It does not sit right with me this idea of eating the entertainment. (I’m glad to report that the table where I had my holiday meal did not have such an insensitive display.)

In the past, I’ve volunteered at the Palm Beach County Food Bank. There, I generally helped put together bags of food so school-aged children would have food for the weekend’s six meals and two snacks: two small milk cartons; two small containers of cereal; two or three cans of food such as tuna, chicken, rice and beans, beef stew, chicken soup; two bags of dried food such as pasta, noodles, beans; dried fruit; a snack bar; and a face mask. The items filled half a plastic grocery bag that we intently pressed out the air, so we could fit six bags into a box. It is sobering to see how little space that weekend supply of food takes, especially when I consider how my home always had a full refrigerator and pantry for my daughters, and there was often eating out as well.

After that morning’s volunteering, I drove 45 minutes to a beach I like. The drive was through the commercial streets of West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, and then the residential streets of Palm Beach with its palatial homes behind high hedge walls. What you can see when a driveway is visible are generally mansions of cream-colored stone and manicured grounds.

There is no fairness in who has and who doesn’t have, I thought as I drove my Corolla surrounded by Mercedes after Mercedes. Between the walls and hedges of the estates and the two-lane road were parked the gardeners’ and service workers’ trucks. The stark difference is obscene. I wonder what those workers think about the difference.

I had felt good about my morning until I saw those homes, which in most cases are merely vacation homes.

Now that it is the season in Florida (no more sweltering heat and thick humidity), the beach was more crowded than it’s been since I first arrived in June. I sat on a towel and ate the snack that I bought at a nearby grocery store. Then I took a walk along the water, glad that I had worn shorts because the splash of the waves was so refreshing. After my walk I sat again for a little while. It is not comfortable to be aware of being grateful, envious, and angry at the same time.

After leaving the beach, I walked across the road to the parking lot and used the beach shower to wash off the sand from my feet and ankles. Still not ready to leave, I sat on a nearby bench, continuing to dry off my by-now dry feet. A few minutes later another beach-leaver approached the shower, which had three shower heads and one foot faucet. She was dressed and, like me, just looking to clean off her feet. I stopped her from soaking herself and showed her where the foot faucet was. We laughed for a moment. Connected. I was ready then to get back into my car and continue my day.

I love everything bagels. If there isn’t an everything bagel in the house, I will often sprinkle everything bagel spice mix onto a slice of buttered toast. Two key components of the spice mix are the stealth seeds, like beige sesame, and the brazen seeds, like pop-of-color poppy. If you’ve eaten an everything bagel, then you—or the person you’re talking to—have probably found a poppy seed lurking between your teeth. (A silver lining of the pandemic mask-wearing is that you can go a day with poppy seeds ensconced between your teeth and no one would even know.) So, it seems likely, doesn’t it, that a seed or two would fall, missing mouth, hand, plate, napkin—all the things that are designed to catch seeds—and drop onto clothing, chair, floor.

It is not the end of the world.

But it is if you are one of those people who notice these things, who care about them, who wonder what people would say about you if they were to come to your house and scrutinize your floor. And if you look quickly, those seeds might look like bugs. Yes, this is the end of the world.

I, though, am amongst the don’t notice/don’t care people. This could be because I generally don’t wear my glasses in the house and so I don’t even notice that I have caused seeds to drop, leaving a clear sign that “Laura has eaten here.” But probably it is because I am not rankled if something is out of place (which means not precisely placed where previously positioned).

What to do when these two types live together? The answer may be that the living arrangements won’t last long. An alternative might include compromise: there would be a slight looking away by one coupled with a more intense concern about droppage from the other.

The way it is working out in my living arrangement (where I currently live with my mother as my first-stop in my retirement journey) is that the other day a dustbuster was casually brandished by my mother after I finished my breakfast bagel. Someone mentioned the phrase “passive aggressive” recently. I thought that it suited, but I also thought that we cannot be defeated by an errant poppy seed.

I don’t know what she was thinking about as she vacuumed up seeds from her new beige floor and the chairs on which I have sat at breakfast time.

I do know what I was thinking: it was anger that she was picking up after me, that she couldn’t speak to me. It is frustrating living with someone with whom I can’t really speak.

After my outburst, where I expressed my frustration and feelings in not the most elegant manner possible, and after my swim, and after she returned from her three-hour supermarket shopping trip, I tried to engage her in an “I” conversation. I told her how I feel. I thought it might clear the air now and into the future. She told me “You are wrong. You are not thinking right.”

I hadn’t realized until that moment that to have a successful “I conversation,” the other person needs to understand that we are stepping back from accusations.

At that moment, I realized she is right. I am expecting her to be someone who she is not and, perhaps, I expected her to change. I am wrong. She does not need to change; she will not change. I need to adjust, aware that this is temporary and that she is getting close to 90.

I am reminded of a friend who lives with her mother-in-law, in addition to her husband, thankfully. The first piece of advice she gave me when I moved in with my mother was to be patient. Patience, I have learned, is like an everything bagel. It is not just one thing. It is how you react to each situation. It is how you don’t react in others. It is how you act toward the other. It is how you reason with yourself. It is how you enjoy the experience as a whole. It is a lot harder than I thought.  

Lake Worth Beach

The other night, the 55+ community where I live with my mother (I will not get used to saying that) held its first neighborhood picnic since before the pandemic began. The timing coincides with the trickling arrival of the snowbirds. Those retreating from Canada, Europe, and South America are taking longer to make it than those stuck traveling south on I95. It seems that the social scene is heating up as the temperature here plummets to 76.

Once we determined that there was something strange about the sauerkraut (turns out that celery seed was accidentally dumped in and it was cooked with pork, which completely cancelled out the bragging about how considerate the organizers were having bought Hebrew National hotdogs because they were kosher), that we liked the hotdogs (I had asked about a vegan option when I first found out about the picnic, but had gotten a look of incomprehension, so I compromised my diet to be a community member and get my mother to attend), and that the potato salad had all the right ingredients (again, not vegan—besides non-vegan mayo, I would like to know: Why are hard-boiled eggs in potato salad?). We also found the cake slices were really hunks that were far too big to even make a dent in them with a delicate nibble, but the brownies were tasty and in small bite-sized portions.  

Food talk aside, there were some insights given by the two still-married women at our table of five women. We were to learn why their husbands did not accompany them to the grand event. Now, I will add a huge caveat here that, surprisingly, about half of the fifty or so people who attended were men, and that one, of course, was manning (word choice, indeed) the grill. So, these insights are limited to these two women, their men, and the understanding nods from the three women at the table. I, of course, did open up this little can of insights by asking why their husbands weren’t in attendance. As a friend told me recently, be a big mouth and engage with people. It is her fault that I asked personal questions, but it did lead us to talking about more than the food.

One woman (both she and her husband still work in physical jobs) explained that after a hard day at work, her husband lives the stereotype: drinking beer and sitting on the balcony. He does break with tradition by making his dinner before going to bed. She is one of those life-of-the-party type people, who even livens up the pool when she goes after work. She has learned that just because he has gotten dull and disappointing, she does not have to keep him company in his disengagement. Learning that not everything needs to be done together is surely a sign of a mature marriage, and probably at least one too-often frustrated partner.

The other woman got philosophical and cast her insights wide to include older retired men in general, not just her hubby. She noted that men need their group to stay social—and when they don’t have it, they fall into depression. They can be active and engage with the world, but only when the guys they’ve been playing ball and cards and hanging out with for years are around. Once they disperse to different retirement communities, or move to be near their children, or move because of health issues, or even bid the long adieu, they lose their way and sink into their recliners. They’re unable to be on their own, unable to find new best buds, not wanting to interact, becoming solitary men sinking into depression. Their wives, then, need to leave them behind for excursions out so that they, too, don’t get weighed down by loss and change.

Perhaps those insights apply to us all, at all stages of life: independence, even within a relationship, is strength; it is not a threat or a weakening. The people in our lives are supplementary, they should be enhancers. We, each of us, is the main act and we need to proceed through life with that understanding. Otherwise, we may be missing out on good food, seeing the night sky with planets clearly illuminated, and hearing people say how great it was to see you.