Dec 28, 2018
We had a quiet Christmas day, just the three of us, and in the late afternoon Joe and I went to Ring Park. A blue sky, and all the trees lit by the low winter sun.
There were few visitors; we were alone on the overlook. We leaned on the rail and looked down to where a clear white-sand-bottom stream runs into the tannic waters of Hogtown Creek. We listened to each other as we puzzled through what to do about a strong-willed teenager who is stuck on a dead end road, and an old woman, her brain damaged by years of alcohol, who is facing eviction.
Then we were quiet and just listened to the woods. A bird call. A family passing on the trail – children, parents, grandparents, leashed dogs. I thought I heard a man singing to his toddler, but when I looked through the trees I saw he was alone with his dog.
You can watch a creek for a long time. The water flows through shade and sunlight over dips and rises in the creekbed; reflections shiver and shimmer. We need an impressionist’s palette and brush to capture the movement and colors: gold, brick, ochre.
I was at Murder Creek in the Oconee National Forest, watching twigs and leaves float by, when my inner voice said, “gifts of the river,” and I knew I had to take in two children who had bounced from home to home in foster care. One stayed with me almost two years, and a few years later I had the granddaughter we’re now raising.
We left the overlook and walked off the trail down to the sandy bank, stood at the bottom of the oxbow loop. We dropped leaves in the water, to carry away our anxiety and anger. We watched them twist and turn in the current, float downstream, enter an eddy and float back up, lie still in a backwater, snag on the bank. I picked up a hickory twig with six leaves – anger, love, resentment, hope, fear, grief. I threw it in, though I knew that tangle of troubles would never make it downstream.
If we waited long enough the leaves freed themselves from bank and backwater, but we grew tired of waiting and poked them free. Our granddaughter is stuck: when and how do we intervene, when do we let her find her own way? Can we believe that she will leave the backwater and move on?
Nov 28, 2018
For about 8 weeks I was sick with bronchitis. I coughed and coughed and coughed, and had no energy or stamina. I was still working on my writing, which right now consists of book reviews churned out at a mad pace, in an effort to expand my almost non-existent writers’ network.
image:authorsguild.org
But after working each morning I dragged around, lay down between chores, and tried unsuccessfully not to whine and complain. Joe advised me that rather than say, “I just can’t manage to make dinner tonight,” I could simply say, “Will you do dinner?” And when I emerged from this truly annoying condition, I resolved to banish the word “exhausted” from my vocabulary.
image: the-lazy-trader.com
It’s been about a week since my energy returned. The first thing I wanted to do was rescue the garden. Huge amounts of spring rain followed by killing summer heat and mosquitoes had kept me away, and when finally the humidity and temperature dropped, the bronchitis hit. So everything was weedy and tangled. The wild hedge by the front walk was way over my head, and the giant bamboo was overhanging the path and slapping the roof of the pool screen.
Ever since our friend Ted gave me powerful long-handled pruning shears, I love pruning. I cut all the aspiring trees in the hedge down to chest level, and the next day cut back the bamboo. It all made a most satisfying pile by the curb, waiting to be hauled away. Alas, I can’t take a picture of it, since the yard waste truck has come and gone.
Joe’s daughter Leah was hosting her first Thanksgiving, and we were getting ready to drive to New Orleans on Tuesday when our granddaughter Amanda got sick and couldn’t go. She insisted that I should go anyway, that she’d be okay on her own. “I’m not fourteen!” she said indignantly. But I’m not leaving a 16-year-old by herself for five days, no matter how self-sufficient she thinks she is. So Joe went off and I stayed behind, both of us disappointed.
I occasionally descended into feeling sorry for myself, but I invited myself to Chris and Michelle’s for Thanksgiving dinner with a small group of good friends and Michelle’s smiling 96-year-old mother, whose failing memory has not destroyed her lively wit. The rest of the time I stayed busy with books and writing, looking into book publicists, listening to music while I crocheted hats.
image:skinnerinc.com
Thanksgiving day was chilly by Florida standards, but Black Friday was mild. After some time doing book things, I fed the birds their mealy worms, and sat in the sun cleaning up the big pots where I grow greens in the winter. The soil was still rich and black; the weeds were easy to pull. The weediest pot, filled with a gorgeous clump of wood sorrel, turned out to be the home of many large rust and black ants. Fortunately they didn’t bite. I didn’t want to kill them, and didn’t think of looking on the internet for a solution, so I put the pot in my cart and rolled it over to the woods, where I dumped it among the ferns.
image:fmcprosolutions.com
It took about an hour to weed all the pots. Now I had fifteen pots just begging for plants, so I went to Garden Gate nursery. To my surprise, there was only one other customer. To my delight, the nursery had just received new stock. They had lots of arugula, mustard, and chard, my three favorites, and teeny seedlings of a lettuce I’ve never seen before.
images: arugula, mustard johnnyseeds.com chard bonnieplants.com
I bought 25 baby plants, plus three small red geraniums covered with buds, to replace the thoroughly dead old geraniums by the front door. I couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. Let others stand in endless lines to spend way too much money for huge amounts of stuff on Black Friday. click I’m happy to spend my own Green Friday browsing alone through flowers and greens.
May 9, 2018
Last spring I decided I wanted a bird feeder in the backyard. I spent a happy hour with the knowledgeable and helpful staff of Wild Birds Unlimited, where the variety of feeders and food is almost… Unlimited.
Just as I finished my list, Joe happened to call. When he learned what it would cost, he balked, and said we should talk it over. I was quite downcast on the drive home, until I remembered that my 70th birthday was approaching in July. Joe agreed it would be a good birthday present, and told me to send him my list: auger pole, a curved double hanger, an antimicrobial tube feeder, a dinner bell, and a bag of seed. Now I had five months to look forward to feeding the birds. Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.- David Hume
David Hume image:slate.com
I spent a lot of those five months in North Carolina, taking care of my sister Luli, who was dying. At the end she was in UNC hospice, a beautiful place in Pittsboro, with a bird feeder outside every guestroom. Though she was beyond comfort, the birds were a comfort to me. And when I was at home the birds and the bird feeder became an obsession.
Hospice called just before 7am on August 16. As soon as I saw the phone number I knew Luli was gone. Then came the dazed time. I weeded and pruned in the garden, sadly bedraggled after two months of spring drought and five months of neglect. I floated around in the pool, singing and crying. And I watched the birds. I sat on the deck with my binoculars, using the Cornell website for identification: tufted titmouse, cardinal, brown thrasher, Carolina wren, Carolina chickadee. 
images: titmouse wilddelight.com thrasher pinterest wren animalspot.net
I haunted the Wild Birds store, and bought meal worms, a squirrel baffle, a bird bath, and suet seed cakes. Spending was out of control, so I put myself on a weekly allowance for books, birds, clothes, plants, and all other gifts to myself. The allowance has reduced both my spending and my money-guilt, and it has expanded my bird feeding array – two poles now, two dinner bells and a tube feeder, a humming bird feeder, and a jury-rigged bird bath.
I am still trying to solve the problem of the bird bath. First I had a shallow plastic bowl resting in a ring on the pole. No birds came. A drip or spray will attract birds, but the whole array is far from running water and electricity. I found a floating plastic lily pad with a solar pump, but it quickly squirted all the water out of the bowl. I bought a deep metal dog dish, but birds don’t like deep water, so I bought rocks to put in the bottom and anchor the pump in the middle. When the sun is bright, the water shoots high, and I have to refill the bath every morning. And sometimes the pump comes loose and floats to the side, squirting all the water out in half an hour.
Cleaning the bath every week is an elaborate process. I keep it high to deter leaping cats, so I have to climb up on my kitchen stepladder to take it down. What with rocks and water, it is very heavy. The rocks go into a bucket with a dilute bleach solution, and then I rinse them over and over with the hose.
I keep coming up with new ideas. The birds have now discovered the water – maybe if I return to the simple plastic bird bath they will come even without the spray. I’m appalled by how much time I spend thinking about this.
Birds love worms. While meal worms are $12.95 for 500 at Wild Birds, you can buy 1000 for about the same price on the internet. I have a standing order for 1000 a month. I keep them in a container in the back of the refrigerator. Every morning I put a few into the dinner bells.
The worms gross out Joe and Amanda, a welcome bonus. For the worms’ weekly feeding (they get a piece of carrot and 8 hours at room temperature) Amanda insists I move them from the kitchen counter to a shelf in the atrium. I have chased her out of the kitchen with the worm-box.
Even in bulk the meal worms aren’t cheap, and the cost comes out of my allowance. I’ve just learned about earthworm farms, used to create rich compost. I’m trying to find out whether I can replace meal worms with earthworms for the bird feeders. It would be another gross project which I would enjoy discussing with Joe and Amanda.
The birds kept me company until November, when I suppose they all went to Miami and points south to escape our unusual cold.
image:123RF.com
This last strange, fierce winter not only drove away the birds, it froze almost everything to the ground. The garden beds were bleak and brown. I pruned all the deadwood, reducing the shrubs to small stumps.
I survived Thanksgiving without Luli, and Christmas without Luli. I didn’t struggle to write. I only wrote three blog posts, and never looked at my novel. I held on to the idea, like a life raft, that the first year of loss would be the hardest.
The birds returned in March, and I returned to the deck with my binoculars. I am delighted when a new type of bird visits the feeder, and am beginning to understand bird watchers in the wild, with their life lists.
I first saw doves pecking around the grass under the feeders. Then they discovered the worms in the dinner bell, hopped inside, and stayed until all they had gobbled them all up; the wrens and cardinals were out of luck.
Cardinals zip across the yard in pairs, and often the male feeds the female. They are nesting in the bamboo and in the scraggly woods. Yesterday a female fledging flew to the feeder and ate some worms, followed closely by an adult male who perched above her, watching. As they flew off an adult female joined them and the three entered the woods together.
fledgling cardinal image:terra4incognita.wordpress
Last week the first blue jay came, repeatedly. It flew in from the clump of wild growth, visited all three feeders and the birdbath, flew off to the bamboo. It returned to all the feeders and flew off to a tree across the yard. It came back once more, flew to the fence, and then went about its business.
Along with the birds, my garden has returned. The frozen bushes I had cut back began growing again. The beauty berry and princess plant covered themselves with leaves, and the lantana began to bloom. One of my favorites, whose name I have forgotten, blooms in summer with a small red flower. It stayed dead while everything else came to life, but the other day four leaves appeared at the bottom. In Luli's Garden, that I planted in September in her memory, the gingers poked out of the ground.
My writing roared back to life. In less than two months I’ve written 30 pages and plotted out many new scenes in the novel I thought I would never finish. I had to force myself to take a break from it to write this.
From this hard year of mourning I’m learning patience and faith. The birds, the flowers, the writing will come when they come. I can’t hurry them. And though a world without Luli sometimes feels unbearable, I know grief will subside in due time.
Luli's Garden
Dec 28, 2017
My sister Luli died in August and I’m beginning to come out of the fog. Someone told me that in Jewish tradition a mourner has no obligations for a whole year; friends and family simply take over and care for her. For about a month I stumbled around, losing things, forgetting, unable to process information. I couldn’t read. I certainly couldn’t write. In between bumbled tasks and necessary conversations I lay on the deck watching birds at my new feeder.
I spent hours cleaning up my garden, neglected during the months of Luli’s illness. I threw myself into brute labor, digging up a whole new bed, cutting back the bamboo. I planted a memorial garden, with Luli’s doorstep goddess gazing benignly from one end. Sweaty and filthy, I jumped into the pool and cried.
Though in most things I was inept, cooking became solace. My self- and Luli-absorption meant Joe and Amanda had to put up with a lot, but they were treated to new dishes, and many desserts.
All this activity couldn’t protect me from the sudden flashbacks to her terrible last five months. She was miserable: in pain, sometimes delusional, helpless, angry. I went up to North Carolina five times to take care of her. At the very end we had hospice, and they were wonderful, but even they couldn’t overcome the fact that dying is no fun at all.
The experience has led me to the book How We Die, with its reader-friendly account of how each organ system responds to senescence, leading to death. For some reason it was a great comfort to learn that a miserable death is common – we weren’t singled out for the horror.
Luli pops into my mind constantly. An article in the New Yorker on mythical beasts would have been just her cup of tea. Sexual harassment? We would have talked for hours. When Bill Clinton said, ‘I did not have sex with that woman,’ she sent me this postcard. I particularly like the nun on the left.
My first (and last) cruise to the Bahamas would have consumed at least three phone calls. The Taste of the Bahamas walking tour was worthy of at least an hour, with all the different dishes, and the guide who clogged interesting historical information with lectures about super foods and magic cures.
Luli fills my kitchen. She was a professional cook, and assisted Richard Sax on Classic Home Desserts. It’s crusted with flour, stained with butter, and crammed full of recipes she sent me by email or postcard. She was my private cooking coach, always available with advice by phone. When I stir a bit of butter into the pan drippings to make a satiny gravy, add a spoonful of the pasta water to the fresh tomato sauce, rub the roast all over with salt, I always think of Luli, who taught me these tricks.
I seem to be channeling her. When I’m not cooking I think about menus and imagine recipes. I have long friendly conversations with strangers. For a while every item of outlandish news produced an idea for a cartoon, but though I share her creative imagination, I entirely lack her graphic talent.
We buried Luli's ashes in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. It was a glorious October day, blue sky, and the trees in full color. Her little hole in the ground is under a huge English walnut tree. Nearby is a pond and a tall marble monument to Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Down the way is Harriet Jacobs, the escaped slave who wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl. So Luli is in good company – Eddy would deny she's dead, and Jacobs was ungovernable.
Nineteen of us – all family – stood in a circle around the hole, with the urn that Ben found at a garage sale looking like nothing so much as a giant nipple. (Michael had a terrible time with TSA bringing the sealed urn from Raleigh-Durham to Boston.)
We shared memories, and sang. When we finished singing, we each took a flower from the bucket of flowers Clairie had brought, laid them in a ring around the hole, and threw handfuls of dirt onto that ridiculous urn at the bottom. We went on to a sumptuous lunch at Casa Portugal – Luli would have loved it – and then back to Esther's for pastries, tea and coffee.
The gathering was comforting and moving. I'm so glad to have my family, and that Luli's ashes are in that beautiful place, with my brother Dickie’s nearby. What stays with me is that bright ring of flowers – daisies, roses, snapdragons, mums – on the ground around her little grave.
Clairie took charge of arranging Luli’s grave marker. We wanted one of her cartoons, but Mt Auburn said no human figures, without even seeing her naked, cavorting woman. We settled for one of her cats, and the following verse:
The worst thing about being in your coffin
Is that you’re unable to eat as often.
I knew Luli would have liked people to laugh as they passed her grave.
Now I have her picture on the cookbook shelf over the counter where I work, above the KitchenAid mixer I inherited. It’s not a surprise anymore each time I see it and remember she is dead and gone. I am purely and simply missing Luli.
Nov 18, 2017
I’m waiting to check out at Publix. The headline on People magazine – Taking Down a Hollywood Predator – is surrounded by head shots of young actresses. Just below People is the Time Magazine Commemorative Edition. Hugh Hefner, in his burgundy bathrobe, leans forward with a tight smile.
image:bio.com
From Hollywood it’s spreading like slime– politicians, government officials, business leaders, academics. Women are shining a light on sexual harassment, and the nasty young and old men are deer in the headlights. Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly – we barely hear about them any more – the stories are coming so fast and furious, tumbling over each other.
image:instructionsoninstructing.wordpress.com
I don’t know anything about the reality of Hollywood – I see them as a group of shined-up women and men, sometimes gifted actors, sometimes merely glossy. The casting couch – it was a casual joke. I think I both assumed it was true and didn’t believe it about any particular woman. I believed Hollywood was a land of casual sex and multiple marriages, where an actor’s sexual image was a costume designed by agents and studios, unrelated to his or her real life. Virgin, slut, stud (always heterosexual) – what did the market need this year?
images:theindependent.com, pinterest. playgirldlist.com
I do know about the reality I’ve lived, as a privileged white woman, prep school girl, hippie, lawyer, growing up in the middle of the sexual “revolution”and the second wave of feminism. I once taught feminist jurisprudence, and in 1989 wrote a long lecture on law and sex, focusing on rape and sexual harassment, then a new legal concept, though certainly not a new problem. After seventy years, I’m still puzzling over gender relations. I have wrestled with this essay, trying to pin down what I think. The whole subject makes me wonder.
I’ve only encountered sexual harassment second-hand, unless I count the urologist who asked me out after hearing about my sex life.
image:healthcare.utah.edu
At the legal aid retreat, the men had a poker game and asked the (female) secretaries to parade in front of them in a wet T-shirt contest. We women lawyers were furious when we heard about it. The men just laughed.
image:hispotion.com
Many years later, a young graduate student confided in me. She had stayed after the office Christmas party to help clean up, but fled when our boss, I’ll call him Peter, came into the kitchen naked. Apparently Peter believed the mere sight of his penis was sufficient seduction. It was too bizarre, and I might not have believed her had another woman, a professor, not told me a similar story. I reported it to the head of the organization. He was appalled, and called Peter on the carpet.
I’m proud that a few months later, when Peter told me someone had reported him – I don’t know if he was confiding in me as a friendly feminist or suspected I was the snitch – I told him. We were not so friendly after that. Perhaps the episode was noted in his personnel file, but it certainly didn’t stop his upward momentum; he rose to the top of the organization. I wonder if he’s shaking in his boots. I wonder why I don’t out him.
I don’t wonder why I myself was never harassed. Harassment involves unwelcome sexual advances. When I was young, they were rarely unwelcome; indeed, I was often the one advancing. I dressed to entice, and rarely refused an offer. Men’s desire made me feel powerful; I almost had notches on my headboard. (Whether I was fooling myself about what I was seeking is a different inquiry, and complicated.)
Don’t fish off the company pier is a fine rule, but sometimes the only people you meet are swimming in the company pond. A former colleague points out that I ignored the rule. He is now my husband, and an excellent fish indeed, But I never felt sexually pressured by co-workers.
image:canadianflyinfishing.com
I think this is due to my personality. For years I thought of myself as kind and tactful, guided by my mother’s saying: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Looking back, knowing myself much better, I realize that was a delusion. You could call me blunt, or you could call me a bitch. More than one man told me I was intimidating. I imagine they called me a ball-buster behind my back. I would have hated that then, but it amuses me now.
Do women who are harassed bring it on themselves, perhaps with their attire? I’ve heard this from men and women. The mixed messages begin when we are so young. Look pretty. Look sexy, but not too sexy. Newscasters are told to wear skirts so the audience can see their legs under the table. Katie Couric changed her appearance, trading pants for skirts and pumps for stilettos, when Diane Sawyer was slotted opposite her on a rival network.
At the law school, fall was recruiting season, and suddenly the halls were filled with carefully groomed young people in suits. But the women had seen the lawyers on TV – skirts to mid-thigh, cleavage peeking out from the neckline, stiletto heels – and dressed accordingly. We older women fretted, but the TV lawyers were more influential than we.
image:express.co.uk
Men still run things in business, entertainment, government, academia. The message? You must dress to attract us. We want to see your breasts and thighs, but if you show them, you can’t complain when we are overcome by our powerful male libido.
If I display it, does that give you license to touch it? To comment on it? Certainly not the former; I don’t know about the latter. But I think we all know that regardless of what we wear – knit sheath or boxy business suit, tight jeans or khaki coveralls, steel-toed workboots or stilettos -some men will see our mere female presence as an invitation.
It all makes me wonder. What does it signify that it is so common? If it’s how it’s always been, do we now hold men accountable for their behavior? Yes, we do; sexual harassment has been recognized as discrimination by the law for over thirty years, first by the EEOC, and then by the Supreme Court. Why do women wait so long to come forward? Oh please. Whose job was in jeopardy? Who feels shame about these episodes? Who gets blamed if she lets herself be pressured into a sexual relationship?
Scholar Catherine McKinnon, with many brave victims and their feminist lawyers, changed the legal environment in the eighties. The harassment and abuse continued. “When you’re a star you can grab em by the pussy,” said candidate Trump. Now a bunch of women, who were raised in and worked in a world where that was true, are saying en masse, No, you can’t. This part’s not for sale. My sexuality isn’t part of my job description.
image:aclu.org
The powers that be in media, entertainment, politics, legislatures, are scrambling to distance themselves from this tawdry culture. Shocked, they are shocked. They compete to see who can deplore most forcefully, and the particular men who have been called out are being punished severely.
What I really wonder is, will it last? Is this a brief storm, or an earthquake which will change the topography? Social change, a movement – it surges forward, falls back, subsides, gathers strength, surges again. Do we gain ground?
The New York Times, once famously patriarchal, now has a gender editor, Jessica Bennett. She explores how we got here and queries whether this is a permanent change. Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, told her “There comes a tipping point when the ‘frame’ changes. One day, segregated water fountains seemed ‘normal’…It’s just how things were. Then they’re illegal, and a few years later you say, ‘Wow, how did we ever see that as O.K.?’” click
image:arts.gov
I’ve lived seventy years in a world ruled by men, with rules of behavior enforced by men and women. My fifteen-year-old granddaughter has learned all these rules. She tells me what you must do to get and keep a boyfriend, and tells me who is a slut. Like all young people, she thinks her generation invented sex, and says, “Things are different now, Grandma.”
I worry that the frame will not change, that each new generation of women will be harmed by it, and not find the courage to resist until they reach middle age. Diana Nyad wrote an op-ed column recounting the trauma of her high school swimming coach’s continuous molestation: “And therein lies the call for our speaking up. We need to construct an accurate archive of these abuses. And we need to prepare coming generations to speak up in the moment, rather than be coerced into years of mute helplessness.” click
image:theextraordinary.org
Have we come a long way, Baby? And will we keep moving forward?
Sep 8, 2017
To my readers: This is my first post since January. Family troubles, including two serious illnesses and my sister's death, turned off all my writing except my diary for a while. I believe I'm back in business now.
Tuesday night I told Amanda I’d go to Walmart first thing Wednesday to prepare for Irma, the monster hurricane that might be heading our way. I told her not to tell Joe, since I was sure he would scoff. She didn’t tell Joe, simply asked me in his presence, “Did you tell Grandpa about Walmart?”
Joe didn’t scoff, exactly, just claimed that we weren’t going to lose power because we never have since the lines were buried underground. I pointed out that in 2004 power went out all over town despite the buried lines. (Gainesville doesn’t get the full force because we’re halfway between the Gulf and the Atlantic,60 miles from each of them. But this is a monster hurricane, extremely large, extremely fierce.)
image: weather.com
Though I’ve lived in Florida 43 years I’ve never prepared for a hurricane before. When I lived near the coast, in Jacksonville, I was a young single mother, and I would dither and fret as hurricanes threatened: I don’t know how to put up plywood, don’t have tape, what do I do, what do I do? As I look back I realize how very young I was, and how far I’ve come.
Five hurricanes hit Florida in the summer of 2004. Number two, Frances, was a mere tropical storm by the time it reached Gainesville, but some people lost power for two weeks. We only lost power for 45 minutes. We were in bed when our neighbor’s huge laurel oak, hollow inside, slammed down onto our roof, right over our heads. It took nine months to replace the roof and repair all the damage.
image:mldavisinsurance.com
Irma is coming at a particularly unfortunate time for the Muumuu Mamas. This weekend was going to be our annual beach expedition, eight of us together for three nights, with no responsibility for anyone but ourselves, all of us lovers of food, conversation, dancing, long walks on the beach, and each other. My sister Luli died just three weeks ago, and I needed comfort from those seven mamas, so when our beach weekend blew away, I was gloomy. But then the women came up with an alternate date in November, and Julie found us a house, so I’m feeling more cheerful. click
relaxing at the beach 2013
Just after 6:00 on Wednesday morning I headed to the nearby Walmart with a short list: water, tuna, soup, crackers, baked beans, pineapple, ravioli and smoked oysters (both favorites of Amanda). The parking lot was only a third full. The shelves were even emptier.
image:financialmoneytips.com
Going down the canned goods aisles was an interesting lesson in what people won’t eat, and what I’m willing to eat if desperate. All the tuna was gone, but there were plenty of water-packed scallops, clams, and oysters. Two cans of herring, two of smoked oysters – I took them all. The only baked beans left were vegetarian or ‘touch of maple.’ I took two of the latter, though now I’m having second thoughts.
All the soups were Campbell's. Cases and cases of cheese soup, and cream of mushroom, and a fair amount of broth. That was it, except for three four-packs of chicken noodle – I took one – and a few cans of Slow Kettle Style portobello mushroom-and-madeira bisque, and andouille sausage jambalaya with chicken and ham. How nasty do you suppose they’ll be? No ravioli, and I turned up my nose at the spaghetti-o’s. I got saltines and peanut butter crackers – the only peanut butter available was flavored, or swirled with jelly, and I just couldn’t.
Am I too fussy? images: target.com, reddit.com
Little snack packs of nutella for Amanda. Canned pineapple and canned corn – the only canned produce I can stomach. A jar of peanuts, a box of raisins, instant oatmeal. I asked a woman stocking the chips shelves where the bottled water was. She said there was none left at Walmart but they had pallets at the Publix at Hunter’s Crossing, which opened at 7.
I arrived at Publix at ten to seven. They had opened early; people were already leaving, with carts loaded with water. This was the on-their-way-to-work crowd. I took two 24-packs of pint bottles, though I hate buying plastic bottled water. But inside, in the water aisle, a man was just unloading pallets of gallon jugs. The Official Recommendation is a gallon per person per day for three days, so I took 8 gallons and returned one of the 24-packs.
Publix’ shelves were more generous than Walmart’s. I bought lots of tuna, four cans of Progresso soups, ravioli. In the ethnic aisle I considered a can of beans that contained blood sausage,chorizo and ham, but thought better of it. I love blood sausage, but in a can? I don't think so.
image: cubanfoodmarket.com
People who only bought water were in the ‘ten items or fewer” check-out lines. (I love that Publix’ sign-makers know the difference between less and fewer). Everyone else was in the regular lines, twenty or more people in each line, the lines stretching way down the aisles. I took an instant dislike to the man in front of me, and reached all sorts of unsupported conclusions about him. He muttered gloomily that there’s a thin line between humanity and chaos, and people shouldn’t panic. I was sure that in an emergency situation he would try to take charge, bossing everyone around, with no skills nor information.
There was no sign of either panic or chaos. Instead people were cheerful, saying how many families they were buying for, what happened to them in previous storms, claiming expertise because they’d lived in South Florida for years and were used to it. Somebody pointed out that after it was over we could always donate the water jugs to some other emergency down the road. There was a pleasant sense of community, and it cheered me up to be doing this, brought me out of the very inward state I’ve been in since Luli died.
At home I stored my supplies, and told the family we don’t TOUCH them unless the power goes out. For extra security I hid the oysters and nutella behind other cans. We can celebrate the end of hurricane season with a most peculiar feast, and donate the water bottles to the HOME Van.
I felt a proud sense of accomplishment as I looked at my tidy stash. And last night Joe, who has been following every detail of the forecasts, and analyzing how they are produced, said that he took back his mocking, and thought I had done an excellent job. It’s only Thursday, but Amanda's school has already cancelled Monday’s classes. Nothing is supposed to happen in Florida till Saturday morning, and north Florida doesn’t expect trouble till Sunday afternoon. The roads north will be godawful jammed, the gas stations are running out, the sky is gray. We’re waiting for Irma, who may not visit us. I hope she veers way east to the middle of the ocean, but if she hits us, I will eat weird soups, and enjoy NOT saying ‘I told you so.’
UPDATE: I’m posting this Friday morning. Gainesville is now smack in the center of the cone of uncertainty, and so am I, with a small nervous knot centered somewhere between my throat and my belly, and possible tension covering head to toe. My sense of humor may evacuate. I fret about all the possible horrors for everyone else, but for us I just focus my hopes on: Please no more trees on the roof.
