loss

A Scoop of Birthday Cake Ice Cream To Go

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , 2 Comments

I’ve been working on a blog post for days. DAYS, I tell you. Something hasn’t clicked though and all of those words, thousands of them, have gone to the digital trash heap in the cloud. (IYGIYGI)

Recently, I got into a … verbal altercation … with someone. This is unusual for me. I am not the kind of person who invests in that sort of drama. It shook me, if you want to know the truth. The woman, unfortunately for me, works at a store that I go to relatively frequently and now I’m debating whether I can return. I may be leaving the country and changing my name.

Technically, I was not at fault, as she started it. Nonetheless, I have gone over my own behavior (a post-mortem, you know) and I think I could have handled the situation more effectively. Blergh. There’s nothing to be done other than to determine whether I can bring myself to go back to that place again. Conflict sucks.

I’m at the coffee shop, working on a book. Up until today, it’s been going well, making me laugh, though this afternoon I spend most of my time reflecting back the light of a blank screen or pressing delete to erase badly constructed sentences. I sigh and look up to see a couple in line to get drinks. They’re turned toward each other, laughing, bits of their bodies touching in that way that couples sometimes have. It’s as though their whole beings are slightly magnetized so that if they’re close enough, their bodies automatically make contact – two fingers, their shoulders, even their hair. It’s so lovely to watch the dance of their connectedness.

The day itself is sharply melancholy in that way a day can be. It’s beautiful – warm with the crisp scent of spring and the bright light of a cloudless sky – but all of the things that make it beautiful are things that, in the coin flip of daily life, also create the perfect conditions for melancholia.

Groups of people gather, their chatter incessant, almost boisterous. A couple sits at the window, their hands clasped on the table. As they get up to leave, she takes his arm and snuggles into his shoulder before he slips his arm from her grasp and, instead, takes her hand, twining their fingers together. They walk out of the shop smiling at each other. 

Someone asks to take the extra chair from my table. I’m alone, of course, so it’s empty and available to them. I nod and they slip the chair into place at another table, one that already has six chairs stuffed around it. Now those people sit around the tiny table. It’s so small that their ring of chairs creates a moat of knees encircling the table. They too are loud with the found joy of their togetherness, sipping lattes, hot teas, espressos, and a loan Americano.

Enough of this mood. I head home and make my youngest a meatball sub for dinner. He’s delighted by my attempt to alter the energy of my day but I still haven’t accomplished that. Fine. I can do better. I text my daughter and offer her and her roomie free ice cream. I defy anyone to feel gloomy with handmade ice cream. 

They meet me at the ice cream shop. It’s called Treat, apropos for an ice cream shop. I get a scoop of salted caramel, though the lavender raspberry was a very close second. My guests get mint chocolate chip and a combo of creamy peach and lemon drop custard. It’s all great, honestly. Unfortunately, it is also unsuccessful at releasing me from this funk. Ridiculous. If even a scoop of ice cream enjoyed on a shady bench can’t brush the dour mist from my gaze then it might be smarter to just start again tomorrow. 

There’s no point in continuing to write comedy when the words flowing from my fingers lack even the wit of the grave.

Hoping that tomorrow brings me counsel and you delight.

Much love.

A Scoop of Birthday Cake Ice Cream To Go

Magnolia Petals

Deb Zuroski, , , , , Leave a comment

There’s a weird muddle of things in my head. I may have expected the month change to clear that muddle. Alas, it remains in place. Happily, though, the rain that washed away the last of March brought April in a glorious fluster, pranking us with a day of wind storms. I fully expected that my beautiful magnolia, which blooms for less than a week every year, would be bloom-less by Saturday’s end. Surprisingly, those soft white blossoms have held on. 

I know my neighbor is watching out his window (there’s no curtain so I actually do know this) to see if he can get out his petal-removal tools. Every year, magnolia petals cover my yard (and part of my neighbor’s) in a whitish brown blanket which he then inevitably leaf-blows onto my yard before the day reaches noon. (He brought out the leaf-blower yesterday though there were not yet any petals for him to blow. It matters not to him; he finds many reasons to wield that leaf blower. How he loves that thing.)

Leaf-blower’s wife is also quite elderly and terribly lovely, both in her heart and in her face. Today, she told me that her son’s been coming over every weekend lately to help out around the house. Isn’t that lovely? Okay, now to Paul Harvey this story. Her son is nearly 70. I forget, sometimes, just how old she is – 93 next month, she proudly tells me. What a gift that is. I would offer up significant tribute to have my mom alive and as healthy as my next door neighbor. I would, in fact, be delighted to visit Mom every weekend and help out around the house.

Of course, about 15 minutes after her chat with me, Mrs. and Mr. Leaf-blower got into a robust bickering argument that caused me to slink gracelessly into the house to avoid making eye contact with either of them. (Close proximity is one of the many delights of city neighborhoods.) Usually, their arguments are funny but today’s involved some questions that are not safe (i.e., do you think I’m stupid?). I did not want to stick around in case he actually answered her.

I’m a week into car-lessness, resulting in some delightful snafus, for example, when I ordered Chinese food for pick-up from a restaurant two miles away. A roundtrip walk of four miles is not the problem. A backpack filled with chicken lo mein is. I borrowed a car for food pick-up. 

As I walked this morning, I met another neighbor whose dog is Max. I am sorry to report that I have no knowledge of the neighbor’s name. He claimed, during our Max adulation session, that he spotted a kestrel sitting on our street sign. I cannot confirm the sighting, sadly. I can report, however, that Max licked my palm. Achievement unlocked.

Many, many students have come into the coffee shop today, some of them debating the merits of wearing orange. I’m assuming that they’re talking about protesting but I can’t tell if there is a walk-out underway or not. Last week’s swattings here were devastating. There’s been a lot of chatter since about what it’s like to sit in lock down for five or more hours. Trauma does not require gunfire so much as the fear or anticipation that it is coming. 

The kids are leaving now. I’m seated at my favorite spot, inside the coffee shop but right by the door. The big garage door is open to today’s promise of later warmth. The sky is the color of my mom’s eyes, though it holds less sorrow and fewer clouds.

One of the fun things about my current seat is the bouquet of scents that I get to experience. Let’s start with the knowledge that the coffee shop shares this street with a Sephora, a L’Occitane, a hot yoga studio, AND a gym. In addition, lots of people “sneak” their pizzas, burgers, and cinnamon rolls in here … lol. As if we don’t all smell the food, the musky sweat, the overindulgent flowery perfume. It’s a delight for the … scentses (sorry, sorry. I tried to stop my fingers from typing that but they insisted).

I’m procrastinating right now because I’ve written myself into a doorless and windowless room. I am completely stuck. While my subconscious is working on unsticking myself, I’ve been paying attention to the stories around me. 

Across the street, a new business is going in where the Piatt/Sotheby’s used to be. Contractors painted over the street art on the side of the building. I couldn’t even tell you how long the art was there. It was lovely, a single scrollwork word painted in a multitude of colors that wept like tears. I know street artists accept that their work is temporary but I felt a little like weeping, too, when I saw what the contractors had done.

A young woman comes to the coffee shop pretty regularly, as I would know, of course. She reads whenever she’s here and sometimes makes careful margin notes in tidy, blue-inked writing. What does she think of the books she’s reading? Her expression, particularly her eyebrows, is very fluid. She has a fun face to watch, though I’ll bet she doesn’t know it.

It’s Tuesday, so the pizza shop across the street is closed. I wonder if the shop owner knows how many disappointed customers pull firmly at the door and then try again, as if the door will magically open on the second tug. It never does, you know? It’s a little like pushing the elevator button a second time, as though a second push will cause the elevator to arrive faster.

Many artists work at the tables here. One in particular likes to sketch in pencil. We’ll call him Andrew (because that’s his name). He usually comes into the shop in the evening so I only see him occasionally. If I’m lucky, he’s seated where I can watch him and try to guess which customer(s) he’s sketching. (Sorry, Andrew; I swear I’ll never tell your latest muse that you’re drawing them.)

There’s an older man at the coffee shop today who comes in frequently to talk to young women. I think you know what I mean but if you don’t, I will make it clearer. This older man likes to have the attention of younger women directly focused on him. He’s not harmless, though I know it is tempting to use that language. Men who make women uncomfortable have ALREADY done harm. Such men make women think carefully about where they will go, what they will wear, whether they should leave. Nothing about that suggests harmless. 

I talked today to the mechanic who is repairing my car. He called me ‘honey.’ He doesn’t mean anything by it, does he? Except that he never calls his male customers ‘honey.’ I’d be completely fine with the mechanic, if he can’t simply call me by name, using the same pet name for me that he uses for his male customers. And vice versa. Of course, I didn’t correct him. The power dynamic isn’t equal because he’s got my car in his garage. That ‘harmless’ pet name is nothing and yet it’s also everything.

As I write these muddled thoughts, my big old pup is dreaming on her sofa (it’s really my sofa but … never mind). Sometimes, at night, she dreams so loudly in her kennel that I can hear her snuffling noises in my room on the next floor. She runs in her sleep, too, which, when she’s in her kennel, can be quite noisy, though it never seems to wake HER. This afternoon, she snored on my sunny deck, her belly pressed firmly against the warm wood. I believe there may have been rabbits or squirrels in her dream but who’s to say it wasn’t just a romp across the yard that got those feet moving.

Much love.

Magnolia Petals

Are They Empty, Those Promises?

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It’s such a day here. Full of that unfulfilled promise of better days to come. We all know that promise won’t be kept but it doesn’t stop us from believing, just for today.

One of the Apple Store guards is across the street right now. He’s standing in the doorway of the salon, eating an apple fritter from the bakery. Don’t ask me how I know it is an apple fritter. I just know. OKAY?

I’m not sure why he chose to stand in the salon doorway, other than it’s out of the way of the pedestrian traffic but still allows him to watch all the people passing by. He should have brought one of those collapsible seats because there is a lot of traffic today, a lot to see.

My favorite of the sights is people meeting unexpectedly. That just happened a few minutes ago. A young man was seated at the tables outside, in front of the big garage door, when another man called out and ran across the street to him. Such a smile he was wearing. I couldn’t see the seated man’s face but he must have smiled too because, if anything, the man crossing the street smiled wider. This is why I say there’s a promise in the day – unexpected joy.

A woman just walked into the coffee shop. She did not get a drink. Instead, she sat at one of the small circle tables and opened her bag. It’s full of books from the store next door. She peeked inside, like she hadn’t just bought those books, like she couldn’t wait to unwrap the present in front of her. (Isn’t that what books are?)

I’ve been joking with one of the new baristas – there are always new baristas because it’s a difficult, thankless job – about gathering a group of women to discuss the weather with Mother Nature. I figure we outnumber her so we can probably take her, right? (Yes, I’m aware that I sound like those men who totally think they could fight a wolf and win.)

Anyway, so today, when I saw her, she said that our threats must have been successful because TODAY. See. She thought about our discussion. We are indeed each a part of another’s mosaic. 

A big group just came out of Pamela’s Diner. One of the women is wearing a winter coat, hood up. Meanwhile, a young woman passing that group is in a half shirt, you know, the underboob kind. (I would totally have worn those shirts 35 years ago.) If I had to decide the temperature by looking out the window, I’m not sure what I’d do … layers?

A young man just walked by me to take a prime seat by the window as it was vacated. This is important so just hear me out … there is a lot of scent description in books – cooking smells, nature, you name it. I write those descriptions too but I don’t usually pay attention to the smells around me when I’m sitting in the coffee shop. (Okay, except for yesterday, when my son joined me after his shift at the diner. He totally smelled like pancakes, a thing he didn’t particularly appreciate when I told him.)

Just now, however, as that young man took that perfect seat, the strongest scent of Axe wafted behind him. And then a girl sat down with him. She’s cute. She makes him smile. He has dimples when he smiles. I hope she notices those dimples, notices that he likes her. I hope she doesn’t mind the Axe cologne. (She doesn’t seem to.) He’s wearing a bright white shirt with delightful multi-colored dots across it, like the very beginnings of a pointillism painting (or perhaps the shirt one wore while creating the actual artwork).

At another perfect seat by the garage door, a woman sits with someone who seems to be her son. She’s listening intently as he talks. He’s a surprisingly still talker, his arms mostly in his lap or resting on the table. There’s an iced coffee in front of him that he’s barely sipped. As I watch, I realize that tableau could be me with one of my kids. What a gift it is to watch a child reach adulthood, to learn a person – perhaps myself – through their many phases. 

Much love.

Are They Empty, Those Promises?

Who Is Your Home?

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It’s windy today. Leaf sparrows skim along the ground, more quickly than their bird selves, and then take to the skies with less elegance, directionless, in fact. They rustle without risk, drawing the attention of my neighbor’s cat. He has killer instincts without the mental acuity to recognize bird from leaf. It’s a pleasure, truthfully, to watch him expend his boundless energy on something that is already dead.

My next door neighbor – the 90-something man – is a little mad at me but he can’t yell at me because I’m helping him with something. As such, when I was talking with him yesterday morning, he told me (very loudly) how angry he is with … ahem, SOMEONE ELSE (me, he means me) because they don’t rake their leaves.

I was so delighted by this interaction that I have been telling people about it since yesterday. I’m not going to start raking my leaves either. This spring, my BIL will be helping me transform my yard into a pollinator garden. Perhaps that will please my neighbor (it absolutely will not). 

There will be a walking path in the new garden so he can bring his wheelbarrow through my yard – which is almost exactly the size of a postage stamp. He is, in fact, pleased about the path, which might also encourage the mail carrier to stop stepping on my flowers (it absolutely will not). 

It’s Friday evening and I am dumfungled. Every word I write is the most words I’ve ever written for a single story. Every additional minute I live is the longest I’ve ever lived. Each of my heartbeats adds to the longest stretch of heartbeats …. You know where this is taking us, right?. Some weeks feel like a combination of achievements and hurdles. I suppose it’s yin and yang but right now it feels more like being shot and poisoned.

There’s a poem – I Saw Emmett Till This Week at the Grocery Store – that I think about often. I won’t interpret it for you here. Like all poems, it is best that you read it for yourself, take from it what speaks most clearly to you. I’ll say only that it shouts to me in a melancholic whisper that hurts every time I read it. As it should.

Poems are strange that way. Every day I read poems that speak to the particular moment I’m experiencing. Is it just the right poem finding me at the moment it’s most needed or is it me taking what I need from those words? Who knows? If you don’t like poetry, may I suggest that you aren’t reading the right poetry? There are so many types. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the only good poetry is dead poetry. Please. Shakespeare was great and all but have you ever read In Praise of My Bed?

As the snow falls here in Pittsburgh today (don’t get me started. I’m very bitter), novel revisions are underway – yes, I removed my agency from that sentence but I am, in fact, the one doing the revising. At this stage of the writing process, though, I feel as though my characters are in charge of telling their story. The novel – written from the butler’s perspective – is called The Butler Loves the Governess. It’s set in the very early 1800s and includes some rather delightful love letters. 

Anyway, I’m only the conduit. The butler is always trying to take charge of the story telling. Our arguments have been … interesting. For example:

The butler: I need to prove my love for the governess.

Me: Hmm. And what do you have in mind? 

The butler: I’m going to hold up the mail coach that she’s riding in.

Me: ….

The butler: I’ll need a pistol

Me: What?

The butler:  And a mask.

Me: Eamon, this is not a rewrite of The Three Musketeers

The butler: What kind of story is that? Do they get pistols?

Me: Well, actually, I think they use swords

The butler: SWORDS! Yes, swords. That’s a great suggestion. Much better than pistols.

Me: [drops head to desk, sobs]

Mostly, it’s been a delight, even if none of you ever get to read it. Of course, I fully intend to keep asking agents to consider it. I’m water on a stone, you know. Eventually, I will wear them down. 

I’ve been listening to a lot of new-to-me music this week: Oh Wonder, Josie Man, Madison Olds, 5SOS. I think my current favorite song is “Tattoos Together” by Lauv. I’ve only listened to this song like a million times this week. I think it encapsulates that teenage feeling of temporary but eternal love, how frantic and deep that emotion seems at 17 or 18.

Eamon’s calling to me again. I think he wants to “discuss” how he’s going to pine for the governess in this latest scene – it’s a new chapter that I’m adding near the end of the book at someone’s request. He doesn’t know this yet but he’s going to write a bunch of letters that he won’t be able to mail because REASONS. These new letters are going to be full of piney, angsty grief. It’s going to be delicious. Got to go do that right now!

Much love.

Who Is Your Home?

Mosaic

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 5 Comments

Today, I was talking to one of the baristas at the coffee shop and we agreed that we were not in … er, top form, let’s say … in our 20s. He can’t understand why anyone was even friends with him. I’m not sure why I’m still alive. We did stupid things in our youth. Some of us are still doing stupid things in our middle age. Ahem. 

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about viridianmasquerade’s thoughts: 

What are the experiences, who are the people that make up my mosaic? I still sometimes sing a version of The Christmas Song that a friend and I wrote to celebrate McDonalds, particularly their chicken nuggets. We were 17 and I had a terrible, no-good, very bad job there (that often provided free food at the end of the night). Every Christmas, when Bing Crosby starts singing The Christmas Song on my playlist, I think about sitting at the lunch table with her and another friend as we wrote our new lyrics. ”Happy Christmas to all and please stop back again.”

Did you know that tuna – in water, of course – is my preferred bulk-up protein? When I was a bodybuilder many years ago, Joe, from a dirty little place called Joe’s Gym (still operating in my hometown), taught me the calf exercises I still use and encouraged me to eat tuna after every workout. 

When I was 21, two friends and I traveled to Cancun and nearly got ransomed or sex-trafficked or possibly murdered by two young men we met there. There is a certain (popular) song that I can’t hear without thinking of that trip and the drive deep into the heart of the jungle on a single-lane dirt road while the radio blared top 40 songs. 

My favorite banana bread recipe came from a woman I met after grad school. It was her grandmother’s recipe. My friend, and colleague at the design firm, wrote it out for me late one weekend afternoon while we sat in a local restaurant and ate grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches followed by a shared slice of caramel apple pie a la mode. I haven’t seen that woman in 30 years but the recipe is still great. 

I turn on lights – or use the flashlight on my phone – as I walk through my house because my father made me afraid of the dark when I was a single-digit child. He’d hide in dark places throughout the house and jump out at me. He’s been gone for 14 years (and I moved out 35 years ago) but I still turn on lights wherever I am.

All the wooden spoons my mom used to punish us are long gone. She even broke one of them on my back when I was still shorter than she was but as mouthy as someone twice her size. I remember her advice every time I use one: don’t let wooden spoons soak in water. Wash them by hand with a damp cloth. Even now, that’s the way I wash my wooden spoons, though I’ve never hit a child with one. 

Much of the music I listen is from someone’s recommendation: Affordable Floors, Steely Dan, Sufjan Stevens, Orville Peck, Creepy Nuts. Those songs and those people all included in my story because of a casual suggestion that they probably don’t even remember.

So many people make up that mosaic … it’s mostly dark colors, deep blues and chocolate browns, colors of sorrow and grief; but there are a few bits of lightness to add some beauty to the whole miraculous mess. Also, it’s important to note that it isn’t finished yet, not for a good while. At least, so I hope.

Much love.

Mosaic

Clean Plates And Other Crimes

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 1 Comment

My not-my-Aunt Ginny was doing pretty well this week, on my first visit of 2023 (I started the year with Covid but finally am safe to visit with her). She didn’t know me during my visit but also (a little bit) she did, which made for some of our more unusual conversations. I showed her a recent picture of me with my eldest son. She was surprised by how adult he is and asked if the woman in the picture is his wife. Friends, this is the picture I shared:

Later, she asked me what my mom thought of another picture. My mom would have loved it, so of course I answered that way, pretending for a bittersweet moment that Mom lived to know my children and my sister’s children, that she was alive to share a meal with me and to be recalcitrant about something I wanted her to do. 

Sharing a meal … that’s what I miss most. Not even her cooking, really. I miss the act of sitting together, talking about everything and nothing, eating food that someone else cooked for us. She used to love to go to a little tea shop in Erie. We didn’t even get tea. We’d get sandwiches and she’d have coffee. And we’d just spend a little time in each other’s company. 

For her, it was a major indulgence, an act of defiance against something though I never knew what. Possibly, probably, my father.  He was very controlling. She was afraid of him and most everything, really. Once I was old enough to see a future that wasn’t under my father’s control, I would tell her that I would treat her to lunch when I visited but she became ill while I was still in graduate school. We ended up having very little time for tea shop sandwiches.

Not-my-Aunt Ginny prefers companionship while she eats. When I arrived a little after noon, I found that she had not yet received her lunch tray. It was delivered about 10 minutes after I got there and something in not-my-Aunt G’s world converted that tray to a meal I had ordered for myself. From her perspective, we were in a restaurant and that meal became dinner out. It took some convincing but I finally got her to believe that the tray was for her. 

While she’s eating, I always make up an excuse for why I can’t share her food but she can be pretty persistent. Sometimes I tell her that I don’t like the type of food she’s having. Sometimes I tell her that I just ate and am not hungry. Not-my-Aunt G doesn’t care to hear those excuses. She hates food waste, not surprising since she lived through WWII. 

It would drive her crazy that we aren’t members of the clean plate club. Sure, the origins are understandable and waste is a horrible thing. However, I think it’s important to recognize, to acknowledge, that eating the crust of my bread did not, in fact, make my hair curly. If I could, I would tell my Grandma Myrtle (who died when I was 17), that I finally figured out it was a lie, bold-faced, in fact.

It is also accurate to note that starving children do not want my leftovers. They would, in reality, benefit from compassionate food policies that value human life over profit but I’m pretty confident, having eaten it myself, that they would not enjoy that last half-scoop of tuna casserole with peas and carrots.

Be kind to someone today, possibly even yourself.

Much love.

Clean Plates And Other Crimes

Outgrown

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It was Christmas eve and slightly below zero. Add in the wind chill and it was about -25F. I was on my way to my son’s house to pick him up. I’d offered to drive him to and from work because of the temperature. He usually walks; but as any northerner knows, temps this low can injure or kill a person easily. 

There were people waiting at the traffic light beside the Aldi grocery store as I pulled up to the intersection. I watched, thinking how cold they must be. The wind gusts were so strong that the people swayed a bit as they waited for the light to change. 

One of the women took off her scarf. As I watched, she wrapped it around another woman, tucking, then unwrapping and re-wrapping until she was satisfied that the other woman would be warm as they waited. 

I couldn’t see much of them, bundled as they were against the cold. Were they friends, siblings, lovers, mother and daughter? It doesn’t matter. The love was clear in that woman’s behavior. It wasn’t her sacrifice. It was the careful way she wrapped, then re-wrapped the other woman in the scarf. 

Her actions reminded me in that deja vu way of a winter night many years ago. I was at a stupid party off-campus at the rugby player’s fraternity. The party was continuing but I had an early shift at the country club. As I got ready to leave, he took my scarf from my hands and wrapped it around me just like that woman on the sidewalk. 

He was, for sure, more than a little tipsy and I was as sober as ever. That’s the thing about non-drinkers – we’re always sober and thus often remember things that reside in a fog for others. How would 20-year-old me feel if she knew that thirty years later a woman on a street corner on a cold winter day would bring back that wisp of memory of a pretty boy from so long ago? 

The leaf-birds were all blown from the trees by last week’s heavy winds. Now the branches are empty of those last brown leaves that clustered like sparrows in small groupings on our neighborhood trees. It’s a stark, rather lonely reminder that we are still in the early days of winter. The dark of January and bitterness of February await. 

The coffee shop is warm, though, and bright. Pedestrians are back, striped Sephora bags swing from their forearms, coffee cups are clasped in their hands. Fred the dachshund hasn’t passed by yet. He usually walks his owner every day but the cold temps or perhaps a trip for the holidays have absented him from the sidewalk outside the shop. 

A man walks by holding three cups in his hands. He’s with three young women – his daughters? – who are weighed down with bags from Cheeks and Lululemon and Apricot Lane. He looks tired but I hope he’s also delighted to be included in this shopping trip. This snapshot of his life – as I’ve crafted it, of course – reminds me of this quote: 

We can drink hot tea and talk about
the future, how hard it is to be outgrown.

From Mother Talks Back to the Monster by Carrie Shipers

As I wait in line for my iced black tea (medium in a for-here cup), a woman rushes up to the lady in front of me and they hug. I don’t know what they say to each other. It’s mostly in Italian but the sentiment is clear through their smiles, if not their constant touches. They are glad to see each other. I wonder why we wait until the holidays to come together?

Along with all the holiday visitors in the coffee shop, there are many familiar faces. One that is missing today, we’ll call him Andrew (because that’s his name), comes in most days to draw. He sits in near stillness, often leaning back in his chair, his drawing hand holding a pencil, moving over a pad. Who has he sketched in his time here? Does he make up stories for his subjects like I do? 

Last time I saw him, I was here late and he had fallen asleep, his head tipped back against the brick wall. It was closing time and the manager asked me, as I was leaving, if Andrew had awakened yet. “No,” I said and we exchanged a smile. Sometimes the third place is better than home, even when your eyes are drooping. 

The coffee shop traffic has not stopped today. Right now, there’s a family ordering drinks and laughing with the barista. The man has an arm around the woman. Their child, a teenager, is smiling too as they search through the coffee cup beside the register. It’s always full of free stickers that vary by the season. My computer is currently festooned with small Dancer, Rudolph and Ho-Ho-Ho stickers, courtesy of that coffee cup. 

The floor is cold where I’m sitting. My table is near the person-door, where the floor is brick and there’s the barest hint of a breeze from under the big garage door that will remain closed until next spring. It’s always warmer in the back but also more isolating. I like the activity by the register. Usually, I pop my earbuds in and listen to music (right now it’s an oldie, Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) while I write. If I get stuck I can look up and be entertained by the activity around me. 

Today, that activity includes a child squealing two tables away. He’s thrilled with something, though I can’t see what it is. There’s another group blocking my view of the table, though I can see the little boy’s blond head and a bit of his smile. 

A woman stands beside him. She’s thrown her arms out in a theatrical jazz hands gesture, making everyone at the table laugh. That’s what she intended so she smiles, delighted with her success. It’s a heady thing, making people laugh. 

As I walk back to my seat from the bathrooms, I notice a man playing chess on his computer. The man at the next table has a background picture of a stunningly beautiful woman. He has a window open. It’s positioned on the screen so it doesn’t block her face. I hope, and in the story I tell myself, it isn’t a coincidence. 

Don McLean’s “Vincent” is playing now. That seems a suitable song for ending the day, don’t you think? 

Much love.

Outgrown

Forgotten

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Deb and not-her-Aunt G

On Wednesday, I spent the evening with my not-my-Aunt G in the skilled nursing facility. It’s her permanent address now. The cognitive decline she masked so well in her home of 40+ years is painfully visible. Sometimes she knows that she’s confused. She has the cruel moments of clarity that remind me what I am losing but more often she is almost a stranger or perhaps, I am to her. 

She was sitting on her bed, her preferred seat, and I was teasing her by sitting in her wheelchair, using my feet to steer myself around the room. She was laughing and called me her ridiculous boyfriend. Not-my-Aunt G rarely recognizes me these days but the boyfriend label was a bit of a surprise, I have to say. I asked her if she knew who I was. 

She looked at me with those dark, deep-set, green eyes and said again, “You’re my boyfriend.” There’s a lot to unpack with that statement, right? How do I even respond? Do I, as current thinking suggests, just meet her where she is and play along? On Wednesday, that was hard to do. Usually, it isn’t a problem because I maintain my identity. It’s just our location that changes – we’re on Parade Street, we’re working at a deli, we’re in her house.  

This time it was different. She was lost somewhere in the past. I told her my name. She didn’t recognize it. I mentioned some other people she knows but they too were not familiar. She was afraid, telling me that we were in a “bad neighborhood.” She knew she was safe with me but she kept asking me not to leave her, to please take her home, as though I were about to abandon her in a place where she wasn’t safe. She was trying not to cry, standing at the entrance to her room, waving at me. I had to go. The doors to the wings of the SNF were already closed for the night. Her night nurse promised to check in on her regularly. Would that even help?

Her experiences melded with mine as I drove home – a long dark drive on a mostly empty highway – to a cacophony of voices and sounds in my head. How many times have I left someone in a place they didn’t want to be? How many more will I experience? And what will happen when it’s my turn? Do people avoid visiting nursing homes because they fear the elderly or because they fear their own mortality, their own lonely futures?

Next time I see her, not-my-Aunt G will not remember the details of this latest visit. That’s probably a kindness. It would be better, of course, if her strongest memories were more joyful, if those memories influenced her current experiences. That doesn’t seem to be how it works. Instead, she talks about her mom as though we’re both teenagers and her mom is struggling to stretch their income to feed everyone. 

It’s hard to shake these thoughts. It’s the worst time of year: cold, darker. There’s pressure to feel or pretend a joy that is probably antithetical for many of us. After every visit, I listen to my noisy thoughts as I drive – the sounds of the elderly crying out for a help that no one can provide, the fear in my not-my-aunt’s voice, the dismissal of caring but criminally overworked caregivers. The sounds of my husband, my mother-in-law, my mom, my grandmothers blend like car noises on a busy street. 

What’s the answer? If only I knew. I visit not-my-Aunt G selfishly because it gives me comfort to see her, even though she is nearly lost to me. It is a melancholy choice. It’s so easy to remember people the way they were. Actually participating in their current lives definitely offers unexpected gifts but spending any time among the forgotten elderly will change you in ways you can’t choose and probably wouldn’t. 

On my next visit, I’ll take a half dozen Christmas cookies and since I make a huge selection of cookies throughout December, I suspect that I’ll get to continue giving her new varieties all month. I’ll wear my holiday socks and tell her stories that I’ve already told her. Perhaps I’ll play a different role next visit. I don’t much like being her boyfriend but maybe we can work together at that deli, making turkey sandwiches.

Wishing you good health and good friends this holiday season.

Much love.

Forgotten

School(ing)

Deb Zuroski, , , , 2 Comments

It’s a strange day at the coffee shop. Saturdays are always busy in a walking community but today is a mean day, a liar, promising summer’s warmth through its brilliant blue sky but delivering a chill breeze that has many people shivering. 

A husband scolded his sundress-wearing wife for not bringing a jacket. She laughed, soothing a baby in a stroller, and told him that she’d forgotten it. (Yeah, man, she’s already got a lot going on; don’t be mean.) A young man took his sweatshirt off and gave it to a girl, helping her adjust the collar so she looked just SO in it. Then, he walked with her, a little smile on his face. It was surprisingly sweet on this mean day.

A woman approached an older, graying man and asked him if he was who she thought. He bowed. It was rather charming. He was, in fact, who she thought. I didn’t recognize him but I probably wouldn’t recognize Chris Hemsworth if he sat down across from me. This gentleman was not, by the way, tall enough to be a Hemsworth, in case you think I’m hinting something. He seems Pittsburgh-famous, which would still be meaningless to me. I once attended a dinner party with a famous retired Steeler (it was Franco Harris) and had no idea. 

An absolutely beautiful, tall (6’4″ maybe) Asian man walked by a bit ago wearing a full-length black trench coat. He returned a little later and hovered outside the coffee shop, looking like a member of a boy band. It made me laugh. I just finished reading an ARC about a pop star who goes incognito, as if that’s actually a thing. It seemed like our mysterious trench coat man was waiting for someone because he stood, phone in hand, watching the pedestrian traffic. I have no idea what happened to him because I was working and stopped watching him. Perhaps his security team showed up and whisked him away. 

The leaves are swirling on the sidewalk, occasionally taking flight or falling from the trees that line this street. I will have to shake the small yellow leaves from my jacket when I eventually stand. They linger, sticking to the soft, dark blue cotton, a rather lovely contrast, a temporary fall brooch.

There’s a melancholy isolation to sitting here. Occasionally, I see someone I know. We nod, say a few words of greeting before I return to my computer and they go about their journey. I am, though, also invisible. Groups of people meet like the tide rolling in to meet the sandy beach and break apart again just like the tide drawing back. There’s a rhythm to all things, isn’t there? I suspect that the ocean does not see the individual fish, either. 

If we are each, truly, invisible, what is the lesson? To be less invisible? I don’t think so. I think the lesson may be that we need not worry over — or more importantly be changed by — the thoughts and opinions of others. If, after all, we are invisible, then our actions matter to no one but our individual selves. Perhaps, on the next mean day, I’ll give that a try.

Much love.

School(ing)

Autumnal Breeze

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 1 Comment

Is it the shock of the first actually chilly day that has people looking a little disheveled this morning? There’s a young man (he’s my age – that’s still young, right?) walking down the sidewalk away from the diner that’s across the street. He’s in a suit but his shirt tail is peeking out under the back of his jacket. He’s lumbering rather than looping, a tired walk, heavy and a little sad. A very light drizzle, barely a mizzle, has started. It makes him clutch his take-out boxes closer, even though they’re tied into the plastic bag he carries in one hand. 

In contrast, a young woman walks by the coffee shop – the big garage door is open to the fall breeze – but she does not seem to notice her coffee-shop audience. She’s delighting in today’s temperature. How can I tell? It’s a combination of things, I think. She’s wearing a textured brown sweater striped with rusty orange and a deep fall-leaf red. It looks new and I’d bet she’s been watching the weather forecast, awaiting the day she gets to make the big reveal. Honestly, who wouldn’t? That sweater is FIRE. Her lipstick matches the red stripe and it looks goooood. She knows it, too. She’s walking tall – a wide-open stride, her doc martens hitting the pavement with that sound that doc martens make. 

I know this sound well. I’m not wearing my docs today but only because I refuse to give in to the siren call of autumn days. It’s too gray today to celebrate the crisp air and decaying-leaf smell that signals the end of another season. The fall decorations are up across the street at the bakery, big colorful leaves and pumpkins but I remain committed to summer, my only concession to the weather is my jeans.

Musical interlude: Van Morrison, “Someone Like You”

The clouds have broken, encouraging more pedestrian traffic. It’s causing a hypothesis to spring to mind on this autumn day, as another woman strides past. She is wearing a pretty long-sleeved peasant blouse and tossing her shampoo-commercial hair. I want to walk with that amount of confidence on a gray September day. 

The danger of testing a hypothesis is the data cherry-picking that occurs. Case in point, the man walking by in a nice flannel. He’s dressed perfectly fine, not remarkably but hardly disheveled. Instead, I focus on the man walking across the street. He’s wearing vibrant blue knee-high soccer socks, matching soccer shorts, shower shoes – the slip-on kind that guys seem to favor – and a long-sleeved blue shirt that, tonally, is drastically different from the socks and shorts. 

Musical interlude:  Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

We could – if we were objectifying people, which we are NOT doing because it’s wrong – discuss the very affectionate fit of the jeans on the man who just entered the diner. Those are some nice jeans. They’re doing a great job. I’d like to give those jeans a gold star. 

I regularly see a big, bearded man who rides a rental scooter on one of the busiest roads in our community. He fully rides down the middle of the street gesturing angrily at the cars, actively daring drivers to cross him, test him. He wants trouble but he’s angry, not enjoying the challenge that he throws out.

Musical interlude: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Red Right Hand”

Here, though, the scooter riders are almost joyful. The sun is out at the moment and shining brightly on the opposite side of the street. They fly past, those scooter-riders, their hair streaming behind them, their clothes brilliant in the light, their smiles big, wide. The last time I had a smile like that I was riding a bike downhill, my speedometer approaching 40mph. I still think about how that felt, the tingle of terror at the speed, the weightless, effortlessness of it. They’re probably cold but nobody thinks of that when they’re flying and the sun is shining and just for a moment they’re powerful and free from responsibility.

Musical interlude: Yard Act w/Elton John, “100% Endurance”

Perhaps there is something in the air today. A man far too old for me (lol) called me beautiful when he tried to hold the door for me this afternoon. I laughed which probably wasn’t the proper response but I did thank him so there’s that at least. Then, as I was walking home from a diner in Bloomfield where I met my eldest for lunch, a man in a dump truck was … um, politely admiring, which was nice, I guess. I did check when I got home and yes, I am fully dressed and not flashing anything. Must, indeed, be something in the air today or maybe my jeans should also get a gold star? 

Musical interlude: Daniel Nunnelee, “Pick and Choose” 

Go outside, even if just for a minute today, and breathe it in. There’s something in the air.

Much love.

Autumnal Breeze