Retirement, Take Thirteen: Going Solo, Living a la Carte

How many times over the years have people told me they enjoy solitude? That they enjoy the peace and quiet that comes from being alone? Lots. But as a friend observed over lunch the other day when the subject came up, "But you actually mean it."

Yes, I do.

Somebody finally got it.

I like peace and quiet even though these days, with the windows finally closed, there is usually music or NPR playing in the background. (At least some of the music is from David Teie's "Music for Cats" with many sounds I can't hear but assume are there. Do my cats have a transcendent experience as those CDs play? Hard to tell, but my guess is they prefer that music to Eric Clapton's screaming guitar.) I read. I write. I play with the cats when we are all awake. I do a little housekeeping. I take a break and surf the Interweb, or maybe I do my nails if I feel like it. I finally have enough food in the house that I don't have to go out to buy, say, milk at the last minute. The larders are full enough.

I begin the day by sipping Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk in it. As the Interweb meme says, "First I drinks the coffee, and then I do the things." That about sums it up. I don't cook much, but recently I bought a twenty-inch gas stove to replace the thirty-plus year old failing one. So far I have used two burners and the oven. Most days I am content with oatmeal and quiche, a piece of fish, or beans and brown bread. I am not much of a consumer. I do pay attention to nutrition, but sustenance does not require a complicated menu to taste good. I am pretty much content will entry-level creature comforts.

I wear jeans or sweats and ragg socks. Sometimes I wear my contact lenses and some days I don't.

The point is I can choose. And all this feels sustaining: my new a la carte life.

I have enjoyed pieces of this kind of time here and there over the years, but such time, given all the other demands, was waaaaay back on the back burner, a slender slice of the pie chart of my happily-long-so-far life. (As Paul McCartney sings, "I go back so far/ I'm in front of me.")

In retirement I am finally able to be who I am, and I have an academic-ish way to begin to explain that identity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is based on Jungian psychology; according to this test, I am an INTJ: Introversion, Intuition, Thinking and Judgement. Mine is the rarest of the sixteen Myers-Briggs personality classifications with a mere 2% of the population and only .8% of women testing into it. INTJ is characterized as "The Architect" with the ability to inhabit the world of ideas, be comfortably at one remove, and content to work alone. (I never did see the point of team-building exercises. Never.) I like to let things percolate. Big picture and small picture both. Although we are quick-minded, we are not demonstrative; we are more hard-working than warm and fuzzy, and we tend to be fiercely independent and private. Other INTJ's per the Interweb (and I take this with a large lump of salt): Michele Obama, Hillary Clinton, Walter White (Heisenberg) on Breaking Bad. And Gandalf.

Well, maybe.

Still, I think there is some truth to this INTJ thing. How many times through grammar and high school was I told I needed to speak up in class? I like to think about things; being called on to say something NOW did not help me develop anything worth saying. Not surprisingly, once I go to college, I gravitated to writing classes that usually included weekly one-on-one conferences with the professor--my kind of learning at last. (And I still have the voices of those teachers--Don Murray and Tom Williams--in my head. THAT was teaching.) And from them I also learned the importance of the first rule of criticism: giving things--writing or whatever--a sympathetic reading.

Even if I did not have the words for it, I have known forever that I recharge in solitude. I need peace and quiet. I can do a stretch of bonhomie if you like, but  for me, it will be exhausting, not invigorating.

Extroverts, please take note. We don't all sit at the same table that you do. Your kosher is not my kosher. So to speak.

A recent piece in The Guardian, "Hey Parents-Leave Those Introverts Alone!" reviewed Susan Cain's latest book, Quiet Power: Growing Up in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Somewhere between a third and half of all people are introverts (of one stripe or another) Cain says, and in this book written with teenagers in mind, she identifies introversion as a "superpower". (However, if a superpower isn't recognized in a world of gabby extroverts, does it really exist?) But the most salient observation was in the comments, by one Lorraine Lewis, whoever she may be: "I am an introvert & there is a party going on in my head 24/4--& you're not invited."

Amen. At  the least there is always a lot of food for thought in my head.

And no, I am not Sybil. Or Rain Man. I am not on the autism spectrum. It's not that simple.

Let's not be dismissive here. Let's give me a sympathetic reading.

Granted, over the years my small house has become my refuge, one singularly party-free outside my head.

And I do go out and abroad to see the world. For example, I regularly--a couple times a week--have lunch with friends at Marr-Logg House, a restaurant. It's a routine that doesn't feel like a routine; usually we sit in the same booth. Marr-Logg isn't the restaurant version of Cheers, exactly, but it is a place where we are known. It's a breakfast-and-lunch place where we know the names of the servers, too, a place where they don't have to wear uniforms or name tags.. If one of us is missing, it gets noticed.

Marr-Logg has a blackboard with the daily specials, but usually I have pretty much the same thing: a toasted BLT or a crunchy Caesar salad with the dressing on the side. Sometimes a fish Reuben. Things I usually don't make at home. Choose one as a side: potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw, or applesauce. It's that kind of place.

The servers know I want iced tea, even in the winter--one server says to another "An iced tea and a Sierra Mist just came in" as she brings the drinks and the laminated menus to our booth. In an age of high-tech, order-your-food-on-a-tablet-at-your-table, the servers use order slips and pens. The handwritten order also serves as the bill.

Over food my friends and I get caught up: the show at the local community theater. The new job, the old job. Cats. Purchases on eBay. The ride to Maine or New Jersey and back. Hiking up and down Adirondack mountains. Family. Friends. The election  Our book club.

Lunch at Marr-Logg is testimony to the importance of routine, to our all being dots in the social matrix. The servers seem to enjoy what they are doing, and if they have ever been in a bad mood, it has never shown.

At this point my car can probably drive itself there. The drive is three songs away from home.

I go to Marr-Logg for the food. I go there for the company.

I suppose a shrink might chalk all this introversion with lunch and such events (I will spare you the others) up to a number of things: Maybe introversion is genetic. Maybe it's nurture, not nature: after all, I spent the first eighteen years of my life as an English speaker, nominally Protestant, in a community that seemed to be primarily French-speaking, and that definitely was proudly pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic. I was a majority minority before phrase was coined, I suspect. Maybe I am an introvert because I wasn't an athlete or cheerleader, but that I think confuses cause and effect.

Different strokes. Different palates. So be it.

More than that, writing, for me, provides an important connection to the page, one of the best connections there is. As good as the best conversation. There is contact with the page that is unlike any other. This is something Tom Williams spoke with me about toward the end of my college career, and he was right. All those years ago. That I had not forgotten.

But in this retirement time-to-think mode, out of nowhere the other day I  remembered a Bible verse I was given in Sunday school by my teacher Miss Foss. It had to begin with S for Sandra:  "Salt is good, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how will you season it?" from the Revised Standard Version.

Such a statement of taste, of time and loss, and--to go all English major on you, dear reader-- a rhetorical question that invites ideas. Or so it seemed at first when I remembered it. But then I looked it up online. This Mark 9:50 verse is followed by an answer: "Have salt in yourself and be at peace with one another."

So.

The things I want to do order my life.

In the end, all we have are who we are and time and space--and the people we surround ourselves with. As I said, my a la carte life. Hot and cold, crispy and mushy. Sweet and sour, bitter and salty. Music and silence. Staying in, going out. Here and there. Home and away.

Nourishment comes in many forms.

Copyright 2016
Sandra Engel

Retirement, Take Seven: New Fiesta, a Quiche, and David Bowie

My earliest food habits when I was growing up in New England were very much of their time: meat and potatoes, and a roast for Sunday dinner; Boston baked beans and hot dogs on Saturday nights; Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs; grilled cheese sandwiches on Sunday nights. Meatloaf. Later on, my parents favored what nutritionist Gayelord Hauser called "nature foods," freshly juiced carrots or celery, B vitamins and fish oil capsules. (That juicer caused the lights in the kitchen to dim, I swear.) The candy drawer in the kitchen was filled with early versions of protein bars that were composed mostly of blackstrap molasses. But no matter the food, I insisted that I eat off the red plate (each of the set of plates was a different color).

As an adult I have been a picky--that is, selective and probably a little lazy--cook. And thus eater. My initial idea of cooking, learned at home, was adding an egg and water to a Duncan Hines spice cake mix. A tuna-out-of-the-can sandwich on toasted white bread. Campbell's tomato soup. Beans and hot dogs (I had learned well) with brown-bread-out-of-a-can (still a treat). Early on, on my own as an adult, I learned to make a quiche, a quick-enough one-dish meal if need be. Plus it could serve as breakfast, lunch or dinner. I snacked on apples and bananas. But as the years passed, later, after busy days at work, I often ate microwaved meals on a plastic tray out of a small cardboard box. Lunches at work tended to be cheeseburgers, maybe an occasional salad, but more likely a slice of pizza that was so greasy that I sopped up what grease I could with a napkin before I ate it. At least breakfast once in a while was healthy: plain yogurt and fruit, or oatmeal.

Since I retired, one of the most successful changes I have made is to my diet. I eat better. I cook more--which is to say I very likely cook less than other people, but I do cook. I put a slab of fish in the fry pan, boil or steam fresh veggies, and I make broccoli salad. Carrot and raisin salad. Spinach salad. Even what I think of as the retro three bean salad. My small crock pot  has become my friend. And last week I made a vegetable quiche.

I have never been much of a material girl. If I have a choice, I will choose to spend my money on experiences (such as travel) rather than on things (such as dishes, or even expensive food), but I am coming to understand that healthy food, if funds allow, is worth the expense. I am certainly not one to value presentation, presentation on a plate anyway, but I have to admit it is nice to have meals at home on other than a trough. Of course I speak metaphorically here; I have never had a trough. (My inherited Wedgwood and the silver tea service remain safely stored and unused.) But I have my limits. As long as I don't feel deprived, I'm okay. I am not out to impress anybody at this point--and certainly no one will be impressed by my limited culinary skills.

Over the last fifteen or so years, I have finally bought grown up dishes to replace my ancient Corningware; once I bought Fiestaware, I stopped eating on old maybe-good-for-a-student dishes. For those of you who do not know (and for most of my life I did not know), Fiestaware is the only American-made dinnerware company left. The bold, solid color dishes do catch your eye, and they are the right kind of hefty. Classy, the dishes are both comfortable--that is, informal enough--and substantial. The colors: marigold, poppy, sapphire, sage, lemongrass, plum, shamrock, cobalt blue, ivory, and many more. (Check out www.homerlaughlin.com  in Newell, West Virginia.) Initially, not knowing better, I bought over half a dozen dinner plates of various colors, each of them ten and a half inches across, and which were just too big for everyday use and which are now in a box in the garage. I also have a few nine-inch luncheon plates, but mostly what I eat out of are the Fiesta rimmed soup bowls, nine inches across. The bowl part of the dish helps anchor the food--the salmon and the spinach, for instance.

But the two rimmed soup bowls that I have used for years have hairline cracks, and they are both in the now-discontinued apricot color--a pale pink-orange--that I have to admit I do not really find, well, compelling. So recently it was time to replace them, and, in a circling back to my golden days of yesteryear, I ordered two rimmed soup bowls: bright scarlet and poppy colors, even though my very favorite color, if I had to choose, is juniper, a snazzy dark teal, a color out of Fiesta production for years. The scarlet is just that, and the poppy is a bright orange-red. If a rimmed soup bowl can be cheerful, these certainly are.

These two everyday-use kinds of dishes will complement what I have already accumulated, which is far more than I need: a dozen or so Fiestaware  mugs of various kinds and colors; four glasses; and four sets of silverware that look increasingly mismatched and worn.  I have a loaf pan, a casserole dish, and a pie pan--although I did not use that last when I made the quiche. Rather, I bought a crust already made and in an aluminum pan. With eggs much more expensive then they were when I first made quiches, plus spinach, mushrooms, a little cheese, and onions, the quiche tasted much like I remembered it tasting, and later the leftover were certainly as rubbery as I remembered as well. Oh-- and I have a small red tea pot and a larger sapphire blue one and a few completely impractical disc pitchers that were impulse buys. (Why in the world did I buy an orange disc pitcher? What could it serve as other than as a dust catcher?)

Much of this has been purchased in the Fiesta outlet store in Newell, West Virginia. A small flaw on the outside of a ceramic mug is not a problem to me. (Note to Homer Laughlin, though: you could develop a whole new market if you took some of those seconds, contracted out to starving artist jewelry makers, and then sold the results: vivid jewelry. But perhaps doing so is not as business-savvy, or as much as a tax write-off, as selling as many of the seconds to people like me is.)

Other people collect and use Fiesta. I only use. But I do understand the passion of the collectors. A while back, someone added me to the I LOVE FIESTA Facebook group, and the other people there are enthusiastic and informed the way any kind of fans or devotees are:  cat people, Beatle people, vintage train people, Star Wars people, Deadheads. The object of their passion is different, but the nature of their passion is not. Every once in a while someone posts before and after photos of a collapsed display shelf (even my rimmed soup bowl weighs two pounds), but for the most part, the online exchanges are about good buys, place settings, and questions about the tasteful and eye-pleasing collectors' market. Ebay? Kohl's? Dillard's? Estate auctions? Some items ordered online arrived in smithereens. Some members seem to aim for complete sets of all (or maybe as many as possible) of everything that Homer Laughlin makes--or has ever made since 1936.

I am not a collector. For me, the plum canister without its lid is a pen and pencil holder. (If I didn't have the canister, I might well use a coffee can. Well, maybe not, but you get my drift.)

If I have a choice--and I am fortunate that I do, at least at this point--I am going to choose what I like, even if I chose modestly. I did not order a collection of rimmed soup bowls, after all, but two that will be of daily use. And I am certain the way I am about few other things that this purchase does not augur more Fiesta. There will be no Fiesta-binge on my part. Even if I did have room for more dishes, I am ever the student of literature, and I appreciate the Victorian William Morris' idea:  "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know how to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

And as you know, since these days I am partial to old rockers, so let me put this in more contemporary terms. I think David Bowie was onto something when he said ageing is "an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been."

I lived most of my life without red plates and with what might generously be called uneven (and at some points genuinely unhealthy) eating habits.

And so I bought two reddish plates. I cook some. I eat well.

And here I am.



Copyright Sandra A Engel, 2016