I suppose I am now officially a "woman of a certain age" (said in a meaningful voice with one eyebrow raised). A and I planned our honeymoon to be back home in Austria by then. My two grown kids and their spouses have been secretive about some future but imminent occasion whereupon we will celebrate Mother's Day, my birthday and two of theirs all together (which I always love), but yesterday we had peace and quiet at home. In the late morning, pumped full of coffee against encroaching jetlag, A and I headed out to Hofer and Interspar, our two standard shopping destinations, for much-needed groceries.
I love food shopping with A. Food shopping used to be time for myself, the much-appreciated regular escape from the four walls of the home in which my former husband and I raised our missionary kids. P, though an avid recipient of the end results of my efforts to feed a family of four, generally showed little interest in the process of getting it onto the table. But now I really enjoy sharing this experience with a fellow foodie, and (added benefit!) A does all the heavy carrying back up to our 3rd-floor flat. A had had no time between getting home from the USA and my birthday to shop for me, and at Interspar we found a pressure cooker at half price. I'd left my old one with P when we divorced, so voila! the gift question solved!
We've just spent a month in the USA where we grew accustomed to the checkers bagging everything for us, chatting cheerily as they did so. Now it's back to a sort of All-Stars' Conflict between the checker and the customer. The object of the competition seems to be for the checker to scan everything as quickly as she possibly can (one rarely encounters a male checker). If necessary she will throw it through (A swears he has seen them levitate objects!), in order to be able to tot up the total obscenely quickly and sit there bored, tapping fake fingernails, as the poor customer scrambles to a) get everything into the shopping cart without breaking whatever survived the checker's treatment, and b) pay with either debit card or cash, acutely aware of the queue of customers impatiently flexing their fingers and awaiting their own turn to compete. (One cannot pay by check in Austria.)
The first time I went through checkout with A at Hofer, he sagged against the shelf at the back of the store afterward, passed a hand over his face and shakily enquired, "What the hell just happened there?! This is the first time I've ever been punished for shopping!" In England, a land where they seem to have heard of the words "customer service", A had developed a system for his shopping, separating toiletries from foodstuffs, heavy from bruiseable items in the trolley, and placing them carefully back into their positions at checkout. This is, of course, patently impossible at Hofer and indeed, since the advent of scanners, almost anywhere else in Austria. But will the checkers use their down time to help you get your groceries into the cart, let alone bag them for you? Heavens, no, that's not their job. Here, one brings one's own bags and moves with the hopelessly tumbled cart of partially crushed checked groceries to a shelf at the back of the store to fill them. If you forget your bags, you may purchase new ones from the store at 5 to 10 cents a shot for recycled plastic, a couple of Euro for cloth bags.
After this reminder of "yes, we are back home", we carted the bags back up to the flat and stored our goods. Following another rejuvenating cup of Joe, we put on the Dave Mathews Band and A set about preparing the kitchen whilst I carved up the whole chicken (much cheaper that way!) we'd purchased. We have a companionable work ethic in the kitchen. Sometimes we chop and chunk together, while one of us gets it cooked. Sometimes we divide the labor with "you do the salad and veg, and I'll do the main course". Sometimes one of us does it all while the other washes up. But there is never the "this is your job, not mine, and if I do your job you have somehow failed me" vibe I always got from P. A's attitude is similar to many of his generation and (former) earning level in the UK: this is part of life, we both have to live, and so we both do whatever it takes to enable that. I find this very refreshing and relaxing. Things always get done, and there is no score being kept.
A's efforts resulted in a fabulous Indian meal of coconut chicken curry over spicy Basmati rice and fried aubergine (eggplant) with lemon. A very highly flavored combination which stimulates all the senses: eyes, nose, tastebuds. I needed regular gulps of my beer (the only drink we've found which really fits Indian food. Aside from a Lassi, of course) to get relief from sensory overload, but then always happily went back for more! Glutted, we moved to the couch and digested whilst facebooking (me) and reading (A).
I read -- and "liked"-- every single one of the birthday greetings I received on facebook (at last count about 85). About a year ago, I went through and unfriended all the people I didn't actually know, who had somehow slipped through. If I read your name and didn't know who you were, you got unfriended, even if I would remember you should you stand before me and speak to me. The problem with having been relatively high-profile, a "public person" for about 10 years in several countries is that many people feel they know me-- since I always speak from my own life and experience-- without my knowing them. I'm in a new season now, and many of those relationships have no more mutual context.
But those people to whom I actually do relate through facebook --and there are many-- are precious to me. I can't call most people I "talk" to, since we live in different time zones and phone charges here are hideous. There's always skype and SkypeOut, but the time factor remains. Many of my younger friends won't answer an email to save their lives, and if required to manually write and post an actual letter on paper, would possibly spontaneously combust. There is no point in complaining about that. If I want to maintain contact with them, I must to some degree enter their world. So I facebook and skype and text. I have so far successfully avoided a smartphone, but it's only a matter of time and economy. Eventually they will be unavoidable-- though that doesn't mean I have to have it turned on 24/7! *End of digression.*
At any rate, I had a lovely birthday with my favorite person, and this year promises to be full of new things. Some will be welcome, and some will be painful, but it will not be boring. I was unexpectedly encouraged by something a friend re-posted on facebook. Doug Addison is a rather theatrical prophetic type (he is, after all, a Californian) and, though I don't follow him, several things he has written lately have been right on the money regarding my current state in life. This is the link (entry dated May 15, 2012), in case anyone is interested: http://blog.dougaddison.com/
It was mid-May when I discovered that a portion of my current circumstances is, quite literally, capable of killing me, and I finally concluded that a certain change I had been dreading must come.
More in another post...
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