Category Archives: In the Company of Women

A safe place to share joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, triumph and disappointment.

Posture

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Welcome to January, happy new year?

I’ve long ago given up on making/breaking resolutions, so if you’d like to tell me about yours have at it.  Perhaps one that’s worked, or was personally kind, or didn’t cause you undue stress…I thought so.  Instead I’ve chosen a word for the upcoming year.  It’s been part of Susannah Conway’s December daily reflections recap on Instagram.  I’ve participated over the last three years and found a lovely online group of people in return. Some of the prompts repeat year after year and many of those I find my answers also repeat. Such as:

A wish:   To live my life the way I want my story told.

Thank you for:   This day and everything in it:

  • Every walk and every sit
  • Every compliment and every slight
  • Every blessing and every lesson
  • Every binge and every fast
  • Every prayer and every curse
  • Every laugh and every cry
  • Every minute of every day that is #lifeonstowelane with #lovemytotinonna

And my word for 2022:

My word, you may have figured out is posture. It’s an interesting word, in the iceberg illustration of there being so much more below the surface than you can see, not the theater critic calling an opening night performance interesting. There are three definitions that resonate with me:

Physical, the most obvious and most important for healthy aging.  Yeah yeah aging.  I’m going kickin and screaming but I’m going. I don’t want to be a lovely bent lily as Jeanette used to say.  So my yoga classes will help and bringing my awareness to pulling my damn shoulders back will too.  I might need one of those slouching alarms.  Do not send me one.

Political, what a whirl wind we remain in.  I want my mind open, my attitude open, to other people and to social conditions.  I come from fighting for women, I can’t imagine I’ll ever stop doing that but divisiveness and blame are not my thing so I’ll be using my now famous: I don’t know what I don’t know frame of mind much more in 2022. Maya said it best, when we know better we do better. We all need to expand our mindset.

Psychological, HG Wells realized, “I don’t always rise to the new posture of things.” Obviously my retirement after this first year is still a new posture of things for me. In so many ways I have risen to new rhythms (I despise the word routine) I have purged more than half of my contacts in this year’s ritual, I have said no as a full sentence and I’m sure there’s more but those are the big three.  Hopefully I’ll continue to create a new posture of things.

Have I been posturing all my life? Probably. Mostly in terms of being a woman (car hag) in an industry that isn’t especially welcoming to us, especially the old broads that still carry the 70’s slogans, maybe not quite as severe as “kill the patriarchy” but you get my point.

My posturing now will surely be softer, kinder to those who remain, the ones I poke every January to make sure all is well.  The ones I want closer to me now that there are so many less insignificant distractions. The ones who got away, I want those back. 

So let us begin, together, in our own personal ways to make 2022 different, better, safer for ourselves and our people.  Shoulders back…  

Speed Scratch Cooking for One

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I’ve been talking about writing this book for years, Speed Scratch Cooking for One, thinking I wanted to stop people living on their own from eating cold cereal for dinner.  What I’ve come to realize is that I want to honor all the women who’ve lived on their own and taught me many of these concepts, they would call them tricks and wink.

I’ve got hundreds of stories from these women, “my Aunt’, my beloved Jeanette, and yes Rere with all our stuff made a wonderful and enduring food impact. I’ve learned from many other women, not just my own, and really those are also stories worth telling. Many of these stories are sprinkled throughout Ordinary Legacy and I’ll link them along the way.  They have made me what I am today and I love them more and more as I get older and see what they’ve seen.

They loved food, they loved cooking (or they didn’t) and they refused to eat cold cereal for dinner. That said, they had many fabulous ideas for cold cereal sans the milk. Many of them lived on their own for decades and had endless “tricks” up their sleeves, or in their apron pockets.

I admit many of them were old school, or just plain old but that in no way makes them less relevant.  They didn’t have many of the modern conveniences we are blessed with, or is it a blessing?  These recipes and techniques very likely came from necessity, stretching a dollar, scarcity, dire circumstances, or boredom. They were then brought about with imagination, curiosity or sometimes abundance. Maybe some combination of all those things.  Who hasn’t received an abundance of zucchini from a neighbor or your own garden? That now becomes sliced, diced, shredded eaten on its own as a side dish, salad or pasta ingredient, rollatini, or lasagna. Perhaps pickled, frozen or baked into something like bread, cake, muffins, or frittata some of it returned to the giver or those who have less.  If you’re a single person at the farmer’s market chances are you’ve come home with more than you need, why not use these same options that same Sunday afternoon to create meals and choices for the week or freezer using simple prep possibilities. The Sunday scaries didn’t exist for these women and you might find they also disappear from your life.

A perfect example: Where they would cook a chicken, we have the luxury of picking up a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket but the concept of “for one” would look the same.

Rotisserie chicken speed scratch style;

Carve one breast off, cool and freeze whole in a freezer bag. Chop the other breast into chunks for salad, soup or omelet later in the week.

Wings and carcass onto a sheet pan and into the oven for browning, then into a pot of water with salt, pepper, parsley, and any leftover non starchy veg in the fridge for stock. Strain out the solids, store in the fridge for soups or pour into ice cube trays for single use in sautés, or flavoring pasta water.

Eat the two thighs for dinner immediately, never met an elder who didn’t do this, sometimes not even waiting until dinner. No side dish required, just a piece of good bread for the “juice” aka chicken fat. And a tiny (jelly jar) glass of wine.

If you’ve no desire to do all these steps, or just a few, honestly the damn chicken is so tiny you alone could devour the whole thing in one sitting. I can attest.

I’ve no intention of teaching anyone how to cook but I feel compelled to share some of these tasty bits. Whether you use them or not is completely up to you. Whether or not I gather them together in one place and call it a book remains to be seen but we shall see. No promises = no pressure.

See you in April.

…then there was the time…

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If you sit long enough with a family elder inevitably you will begin to hear “and then there was the time…” something. Some story you may have heard before but listen closely for newly remembered details and ask questions.  Especially the nagging questions.

I had lunch recently with my mother before taking her to her doctor’s appointment.  She’s a fan of MacDonald’s hamburgers and always seems to get talkative when we eat them together.  Just the two of us, no Toti so she’s fully present.

She began by saying, and then there was the time I stayed at Aunt Nettie’s during the summer when she lived on 42nd St (and 3rd Avenue) across from the Church of the Immaculate Conception. She was on the second floor.  We were three in the bed and every night they would light the statue and it would shine in the window and we could see it from the bed. (When recounting this to my sister she immediately confirmed it would freak – her – out.)

The Church is still there but they are all long out of the city.  She went on to say that Aunt Lucy lived on 1st Avenue so they would make tomato and egg sandwiches and have a picnic in the park. “I made myself a tomato and egg sandwich the other day but it wasn’t the same” “I get that, I prefer potato and egg”, to which she stated you’re just like “Your Aunt”.

I knew which Aunt she meant, she never called her by name, she was always “Your Aunt”. Taking the mention, I can’t help myself, I say, speaking of My Aunt is that how I got to go and stay with her in Astoria when I was a kid?  Was it a thing?

I was asking because as much as it’s one of the highlights of my childhood I never understood how it came about.  I figured it was because I was a pain in the ass but she said no. It’s because she never had kids so first it was me (my mother) then it was you. I might have mentioned my sister has a theory…

I have very vivid and fond memories of one of the “sleepovers” but in talking with my mother I didn’t even remember the other one. The timeline seemed odd, the one I remember was in 1965 the other was in 1967.  Ahhh my sister said, “the year everything changed” (you can be pretty sure you’re never going to see a post on that)…is the one my mother remembers most vividly. Interesting on so many levels.

There is insight in the timing but there was more insight in the rest of the conversation. In the end it confirmed the contention that existed between my mother and I and my mother and “My Aunt”.  “She had to take charge, nobody could do anything without asking her (did anyone ever try, no I did not ask that question…) she always knew best, she wanted everyone to be like her, do things her way.”  Oh boy, I’ve lived in that space.  In some ways I still live in that space and ironically my mother won’t make a decision without “asking Sandi first”.

Per my mother she was a pain in the ass, you might have noticed I recognized earlier that I too was a pain in the ass.  But she was important to me, I remember later in her life listening to her lament about being old and not belonging, of not being able to do the things that were so important to her once, like cooking her own meals. Something as seemingly small as a gallon of olive oil being thrown away when she moved from her beloved apartment strickened her. All the while she talked the tears ran down her face.  I remember thinking that no one should have to cry when they get old.

I’m never going to be a mother’s daughter, I think we’ve established that many years ago, and there’s a very good chance that I might turn into “My Aunt” with a kinder edge perhaps.  In this past month of ah-ha moments I’m noticing many of her endearing traits coming out in me. Movement is important, cooking for oneself and enjoying what you eat is important, dancing (even just around your living room), truthfulness with a touch of restraint and empathy (she might have missed that part) is important and living life to the fullest you’re capable is important.  This she did in spite of her regrets and her highhandedness. She’s been gone well over a decade but I have her picture at my desk and discuss things with her often.  There are times I think she’ll answer me and a tiny bit of fear crawls up my neck but that’s ok, I’ve also had that effect on people and in the end the goodness always comes through.

I’m looking forward to more of those ….and then there was the time…moments.

Have a good week and look for the ordinary moments, it’s where legacy lives.

 

Complacency

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It is so easy to forget where you came from in the day to day ordinariness of life, you forget.  But not this week, no not this week.  And believe it or not I’m not talking about the inauguration, exactly…  I’m talking about young people who don’t know what they don’t know and how that could possibly have happened.  Complacency.

When well intended becomes an excuse I have to question just how much well intention is going on and who is allowing it.  An email that came across my laptop this week rocketed me to parts unknown.  A separate Instagram post did the same but that will need a whole another post.  Both of them sent by 30 somethings, both of them reeked of naiveté and a lack of historical reference. You remember historical reference don’t you?

When a woman separates people who are in the same position by gender, having interacted with the man first then letting the others know that she thinks, “This info might be of value to you ladies also” so she’s passing it along I damn near fainted.  “You Ladies”???The eerie feeling that comes over you when you know you’ve seen this before is jarring and infuriating. This from a woman who never wasn’t allowed to wear pants to work. Pants to work, yeah that.  It’s a real juncture for me because it was in my lifetime.

I am so grateful that I had the presence of mind to direct my rant away from her and check to see if I was overreacting.  Am I being an asshole or did this just happen? It happened. Thank you to the two souls that heard me out and let my rant go on until it couldn’t any longer.

Long story short I cooled off enough by the NEXT day to have a kind conversation with her and explain that what she did, no matter how well intended, counteracted everything that old women like me had ever fought for. Seems funny now to be having a conversation about wearing pants to work… I hope she could hear me, I hope she understands, I hope she’s reading all about the Women’s March on Washington.

The one good thing that may come out of a Trump presidency is a resurgence of women uniting in all things female.  I am disappointed that I didn’t go to the march and I can’t explain why I didn’t go as I’ve been an advocate for women my whole life.  Perhaps I underestimated the power we still have.  I’ll figure that out at some point.  But I will be in full participation of the 10 Actions/100 Days follow up. Every 10 days we will take action on an issue we care about.

“The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.”  Gloria Steinem

In whatever way you can, I hope that you will revisit an historical timeline of women.  What we have today hasn’t always been, what we have tomorrow may be diminished or lost entirely, adopt a beginner’s mind assume you don’t know what you don’t know and seek historical reference. Ask someone about their experience it may surprise you.

The Women’s March was unprecedented in its size, its peaceful intent and execution, it is yet to be seen if it accomplishes what will be necessary for women to maintain and boost their status in this country, particularly during this term of office. To those of you who marched I applaud you and thank you for your magnificent representation of us all.  That said, I am cautiously optimistic for the first time in more years than I even realized.

Enjoy some of the pictures of the march courtesy of News and Guts, Dan Rather’s newest venture in reporting.

Threads

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I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning – Jonathan Sofran Foer

This week was a little like sitting on the step of Aunt Nettie’s sewing room.  The step because it wasn’t so much a room as a tiny former foyer.   She sat at her sewing machine looking out onto Woodside Avenue where any number of older Italian women needed to be kept “an eye on”, Gramma Marco, Mary Sinise, Mrs. Spadafrank, you get the picture.  It’s not lost on me that I now sit at my laptop looking out onto Stowe Lane where any number of older women need to be kept “an eye on” also.  Such is the chore of a real neighborhood.

As she worked mending this or that or making a dress for so and so or altering a jacket for someone else my job was to pick up the many threads she snipped and dropped.  There is a golden rule of life that says don’t ever pull the loose thread on your…whatever, fill in the blank, shirt, scarf, skirt.  This did not apply to her (or my Aunt Millie), she could pull a thread and unravel any number of inches that needed to be snipped and resewn or any collar that didn’t lay exactly straight.  These were the squiggly crimped threads that embedded themselves around the loops of the rug and under and over and made it impossible to vacuum but really she was keeping me busy and out of her hair.

Once all done with the threads (that never happened) I could play in the button box. There was every kind of button you could imagine mostly cut off of garments that were so thread bare they had to go in the rag bag. There were some cards of buttons for brand new garments and there were buttons by the dozen in small cellophane bags. There were embroidery snips, tailor’s chalk and thimbles and safety pins all the tools required to take something apart and to put something back together.  I learned much in that room just by watching.

That was this week, unraveling the scarf of my silence, picking up the threads, salvaging a collar, unlooping the squiggly long threads that had gotten somehow crimped around long forgotten memories.  Taking many childhood somethings apart and putting them back together with an adult’s understanding. Using new buttons and snaps to tailor my ordinary photos into stories.

It was sometimes painstaking work, sometimes dreamy spellbinding work, all of it creative work which I’m looking forward to continuing throughout the year.  The path for this generous gift was provided by robin sandomirsky & alisha sommer  through Liberated Lines – Amplify. They have my gratitude.