Empanaditas
No doubt about it, the chicken empanaditas at $3.69 are going fast. They all but leap into my basket from their frozen home at Trader Joe's. It's 10 a.m., and technically my workday hasn't started, not that I have a workday. Though, if anyone wants to know, there's considerable neuromuscular activity already behind me. Yes, this shopping expedition is utterly gratuitous. We are bursting with food, Marlou and I. We only constitute two people. But you never know. The next pogrom may be just around the corner. Keep your freezer stocked, your passport ready, your bags packed. And live near the border.
I live near a suburban downtown. Which gives me the option, as Marlou leaves for work, to roll off in search of breakfast at our local bookstore café. The eggs arrive quickly and disappear just as fast. In fact, half way through eating them, I consider having some more. This is madness, of course. I am 61 years old, and a plate of eggs goes a long way. Actually, it goes halfway into next week, caloriewise, but who's counting? It's hard enough to get an accurate count of my emotions, which appear like Bigfoot...unpredictable, inaccurately reported and utterly compelling.
The current emotions have to do with help. Everyone at the café wants to assist me. I ask the waitress to remove the rain hat from my wheelchair backpack. I request a spoon for my double latté. The waitress shoves a chair out of the way to make room for me and my battery-laden vehicle. And, in fairness to me, and fairness is important this morning, I give her a smile. The same holds true for the woman at the cash register. And everyone at Trader Joe's. People help and I smile. Or I smile and people help. The chicken/egg problem in these transactions is also important. For with every exchange, no matter how tinged with Tiny Tim wheelchair pathos, I feel better. My spirit is renewed.
With Marlou in chemotherapy, her absence and physiological preoccupations create just enough emotional vacuum to point me toward dark places. It's my nature, my legacy, my thing. I can feel loved and cherished at 7:30 a.m. and by 8:15, with evidence mounting, there's a good case for my unworthiness and essentially unlovable nature. Worse, I am a failure. Everyone can see this. Certainly the pedestrians on the way to the café. I pass one of them, a young Japanese woman. She says hello. My wheelchair has been in high gear, suburban streets flying by, but now I stop and try to remember who this person is. We wait for the traffic light together, exchanging pleasantries about the weather and the train, and now it dawns on me. She is my neighbor. We live 20 feet from each other. And this being modern life in the high-tech suburbs, I don't know, or can't remember, her name. Whether or not she knows mine, her attention makes my heart open just a crack. In the time it takes to roll across El Camino, I inform her that she isn't walking to the train with just any old guy, but a card-carrying member of the suburban rail line's advisory committee. She seems impressed. I am too. Someone has talked to me.
This level of emotional neediness, which at age 61 seems both inexplicable and embarrassing, has sharpened these days. There seems no end to Marlou's chemotherapy. The latter being so ambiguous, that "therapy" is an ill chosen word. Marlou is going to be in chemotherapy indefinitely...and the Flying Dutchman was on a long cruise.
The thing runs in two-week cycles. In the first, the worst, Marlou is whipsawed by competing chemicals. The stuff is killing bad cells, along with any other cells it happens to run into...like an urban street gang maintaining law and order...and has, well, side effects. To counteract nausea, for example, Marlou gets at least five accompanying medications. Oral and intravenous, popping pills and popping veins, the stuff comes at her. Among the charmers, some sort of steroid. Marlou can tell me its name, but I see its shadow. For days after her fortnightly chemo blast, she speeds along, initially chatty and bursting with projects, not to mention not sleeping and edgy. This tails off into a sort of crash. Her energy collapses, fatigue takes over...until the next week when a milder chemo begins...followed by another bad week. For her, it must be a major fight. For me, it's a fight to remember that I'm not forgotten, that Marlou has other physiological fish to fry. Abandonment? Don't go there. Go to Trader Joe's.
Which brings me back to the chicken empanaditas. As I lunge for them, an elderly woman leans over the freezer display. They look good, she says. My lunge has proven unsuccessful, the packages just out of reach. I ask her to help, and as always happens, she is delighted. I know what it's like to feel useless and ineffective. When in your late 80s and not working, not raising children and not raising hell, it must be easy to feel unnecessary. The old woman asks if she can reach something else. No, I tell her. One of the Trader Joe's staff is heading for the checkout stands, and yelling over my shoulder, I ask him what's good in red wines these days. He doesn't hear, but yelling is just the thing for this old woman. She visibly brightens at the stronger decibels. The best wine, she says, is the Charles Shaw, perennially two dollars a bottle. I thank her profusely, assure her that this advice is excellent, and roll off to Dairy.
On the way, someone says hello. I say hello. What the hell, people say hello all the time, which is really nice. Even nicer, she reappears between the cheese and hummus to thank me for my drash, a.k.a. sermon, at Rosh Hashanah four months ago. It now occurs to me that this is why I go shopping, why I need to get out in the mornings, some mornings more than others. And that I return, yes, caffeinated, but also renewed. I thank this woman, and heading for the checkout, bump into the elderly woman who handed me the empanaditas.
The latter stare up at me from the plastic shopping basket on my lap, still frozen and pulsing with package colors that are not only primary, but include those of the Mexican flag. The old woman is brandishing a bottle, waving it at me. She wants me to have it, this Charles Shaw Merlot. Please, she says, you'll love it. Thanks...you're so kind...not to mention, effective and useful...and excuse me while I run, in a wheeled, battery-powered sort of way...around the corner, where I stash her favorite wine among dish soap and plastic dog bones.
Gotta run. Sometimes it's a good feeling to be in a hurry, feel that one has things to do, that time matters. Just last night, all of us were nervously checking our watches at the monthly meeting of the Caltrain Advisory Committee. Volunteering is splendid, but time-efficient volunteering is better, and after the meeting there's only one 7:18 train southbound, isn't there? But being a public forum, damned if a member of the public didn't rise at an inopportune moment and begin to speak. Speak and speak, while 7:18 draws nearer. He was speaking about a man who was something of a fixture at Caltrain meetings. The man had recently died.
Even in death, that is, someone else's, I was drumming my fingers on the wheelchair armrest. I was thinking 7:18. I was thinking hurry. But the man wanted to talk...he enjoyed talking...and something needed to be said about the dead man. He was a train supporter, the deceased. Others knew him, had known him for years, and he deserved credit for existing. I turned on my wheelchair, glanced at my watch one final time, and resolved to slip out as soon as the words stopped. They didn't. The deceased was a Chinese-American guy with a ponytail who I'd talked to just months before on the cold, windy rail platform.
As for his death, the circumstances were natural. The rail advocate, we learned, had been dead a few days when police discovered his body, around New Year's. The welfare people said his affairs were not in good order. His living companion appeared to be mentally disabled. Did anyone who knew this man want to help? Help get his affairs in order, tie up the loose ends of his life?
I was still drumming my fingers. These meetings are not touchy-feely sessions, are they? We discuss matters of transit, titanium rails, catenary lines and the advantages of four-tracking.
I remembered how it was in December on the windswept platform, trying to talk to the soon-to-be-deceased rail guy. The experience was not unlike talking to any technical person, any nerd or boffin type. I wanted to know what could be done about the Gilroy line, all rough track and bouncing cars. He wanted to talk Union Pacific insider gossip, all rail neglect and bound-for-bankruptcy mismanagement. I noticed that his teeth were bad. His hairline had receded too much for a ponytail. He lacked the smooth, steady attentiveness of someone used to, and confident in, communicating.
A marginal person, somehow. A person on the margins. Hardly one of the winners. A loser, perhaps, but losing at what? On the margins of what?
Time to remember that I am the one on the margins. A loser...absolutely...but a learner. I missed the 7:18, fortunately. When people are speaking of the dead, certainly the recent dead, one does not roll out the door. Especially when the role you are given...by your wife, the old lady at Trader Joe's, the café waitress...may not be clear. Its dimensions will emerge over time.
For now, having a role is what matters, having a piece of the action. In a life that has included lots of physical immobility, action is important. And loneliness and isolation make being part of the action precious. As for the empanaditas, Marlou and I will eat them when the time is right. We do have time. We don't know how much, but neither did the ponytailed transit advocate or Joe Cohen who advertises Trader Joe's on the radio or the bus driver who picked me up after I'd missed the 7:18 train. No, no, he gestured, as I tried to pay the bus fare. He strapped my wheelchair into place, made sure he knew my stop near the Safeway. And off we went.
I live near a suburban downtown. Which gives me the option, as Marlou leaves for work, to roll off in search of breakfast at our local bookstore café. The eggs arrive quickly and disappear just as fast. In fact, half way through eating them, I consider having some more. This is madness, of course. I am 61 years old, and a plate of eggs goes a long way. Actually, it goes halfway into next week, caloriewise, but who's counting? It's hard enough to get an accurate count of my emotions, which appear like Bigfoot...unpredictable, inaccurately reported and utterly compelling.
The current emotions have to do with help. Everyone at the café wants to assist me. I ask the waitress to remove the rain hat from my wheelchair backpack. I request a spoon for my double latté. The waitress shoves a chair out of the way to make room for me and my battery-laden vehicle. And, in fairness to me, and fairness is important this morning, I give her a smile. The same holds true for the woman at the cash register. And everyone at Trader Joe's. People help and I smile. Or I smile and people help. The chicken/egg problem in these transactions is also important. For with every exchange, no matter how tinged with Tiny Tim wheelchair pathos, I feel better. My spirit is renewed.
With Marlou in chemotherapy, her absence and physiological preoccupations create just enough emotional vacuum to point me toward dark places. It's my nature, my legacy, my thing. I can feel loved and cherished at 7:30 a.m. and by 8:15, with evidence mounting, there's a good case for my unworthiness and essentially unlovable nature. Worse, I am a failure. Everyone can see this. Certainly the pedestrians on the way to the café. I pass one of them, a young Japanese woman. She says hello. My wheelchair has been in high gear, suburban streets flying by, but now I stop and try to remember who this person is. We wait for the traffic light together, exchanging pleasantries about the weather and the train, and now it dawns on me. She is my neighbor. We live 20 feet from each other. And this being modern life in the high-tech suburbs, I don't know, or can't remember, her name. Whether or not she knows mine, her attention makes my heart open just a crack. In the time it takes to roll across El Camino, I inform her that she isn't walking to the train with just any old guy, but a card-carrying member of the suburban rail line's advisory committee. She seems impressed. I am too. Someone has talked to me.
This level of emotional neediness, which at age 61 seems both inexplicable and embarrassing, has sharpened these days. There seems no end to Marlou's chemotherapy. The latter being so ambiguous, that "therapy" is an ill chosen word. Marlou is going to be in chemotherapy indefinitely...and the Flying Dutchman was on a long cruise.
The thing runs in two-week cycles. In the first, the worst, Marlou is whipsawed by competing chemicals. The stuff is killing bad cells, along with any other cells it happens to run into...like an urban street gang maintaining law and order...and has, well, side effects. To counteract nausea, for example, Marlou gets at least five accompanying medications. Oral and intravenous, popping pills and popping veins, the stuff comes at her. Among the charmers, some sort of steroid. Marlou can tell me its name, but I see its shadow. For days after her fortnightly chemo blast, she speeds along, initially chatty and bursting with projects, not to mention not sleeping and edgy. This tails off into a sort of crash. Her energy collapses, fatigue takes over...until the next week when a milder chemo begins...followed by another bad week. For her, it must be a major fight. For me, it's a fight to remember that I'm not forgotten, that Marlou has other physiological fish to fry. Abandonment? Don't go there. Go to Trader Joe's.
Which brings me back to the chicken empanaditas. As I lunge for them, an elderly woman leans over the freezer display. They look good, she says. My lunge has proven unsuccessful, the packages just out of reach. I ask her to help, and as always happens, she is delighted. I know what it's like to feel useless and ineffective. When in your late 80s and not working, not raising children and not raising hell, it must be easy to feel unnecessary. The old woman asks if she can reach something else. No, I tell her. One of the Trader Joe's staff is heading for the checkout stands, and yelling over my shoulder, I ask him what's good in red wines these days. He doesn't hear, but yelling is just the thing for this old woman. She visibly brightens at the stronger decibels. The best wine, she says, is the Charles Shaw, perennially two dollars a bottle. I thank her profusely, assure her that this advice is excellent, and roll off to Dairy.
On the way, someone says hello. I say hello. What the hell, people say hello all the time, which is really nice. Even nicer, she reappears between the cheese and hummus to thank me for my drash, a.k.a. sermon, at Rosh Hashanah four months ago. It now occurs to me that this is why I go shopping, why I need to get out in the mornings, some mornings more than others. And that I return, yes, caffeinated, but also renewed. I thank this woman, and heading for the checkout, bump into the elderly woman who handed me the empanaditas.
The latter stare up at me from the plastic shopping basket on my lap, still frozen and pulsing with package colors that are not only primary, but include those of the Mexican flag. The old woman is brandishing a bottle, waving it at me. She wants me to have it, this Charles Shaw Merlot. Please, she says, you'll love it. Thanks...you're so kind...not to mention, effective and useful...and excuse me while I run, in a wheeled, battery-powered sort of way...around the corner, where I stash her favorite wine among dish soap and plastic dog bones.
Gotta run. Sometimes it's a good feeling to be in a hurry, feel that one has things to do, that time matters. Just last night, all of us were nervously checking our watches at the monthly meeting of the Caltrain Advisory Committee. Volunteering is splendid, but time-efficient volunteering is better, and after the meeting there's only one 7:18 train southbound, isn't there? But being a public forum, damned if a member of the public didn't rise at an inopportune moment and begin to speak. Speak and speak, while 7:18 draws nearer. He was speaking about a man who was something of a fixture at Caltrain meetings. The man had recently died.
Even in death, that is, someone else's, I was drumming my fingers on the wheelchair armrest. I was thinking 7:18. I was thinking hurry. But the man wanted to talk...he enjoyed talking...and something needed to be said about the dead man. He was a train supporter, the deceased. Others knew him, had known him for years, and he deserved credit for existing. I turned on my wheelchair, glanced at my watch one final time, and resolved to slip out as soon as the words stopped. They didn't. The deceased was a Chinese-American guy with a ponytail who I'd talked to just months before on the cold, windy rail platform.
As for his death, the circumstances were natural. The rail advocate, we learned, had been dead a few days when police discovered his body, around New Year's. The welfare people said his affairs were not in good order. His living companion appeared to be mentally disabled. Did anyone who knew this man want to help? Help get his affairs in order, tie up the loose ends of his life?
I was still drumming my fingers. These meetings are not touchy-feely sessions, are they? We discuss matters of transit, titanium rails, catenary lines and the advantages of four-tracking.
I remembered how it was in December on the windswept platform, trying to talk to the soon-to-be-deceased rail guy. The experience was not unlike talking to any technical person, any nerd or boffin type. I wanted to know what could be done about the Gilroy line, all rough track and bouncing cars. He wanted to talk Union Pacific insider gossip, all rail neglect and bound-for-bankruptcy mismanagement. I noticed that his teeth were bad. His hairline had receded too much for a ponytail. He lacked the smooth, steady attentiveness of someone used to, and confident in, communicating.
A marginal person, somehow. A person on the margins. Hardly one of the winners. A loser, perhaps, but losing at what? On the margins of what?
Time to remember that I am the one on the margins. A loser...absolutely...but a learner. I missed the 7:18, fortunately. When people are speaking of the dead, certainly the recent dead, one does not roll out the door. Especially when the role you are given...by your wife, the old lady at Trader Joe's, the café waitress...may not be clear. Its dimensions will emerge over time.
For now, having a role is what matters, having a piece of the action. In a life that has included lots of physical immobility, action is important. And loneliness and isolation make being part of the action precious. As for the empanaditas, Marlou and I will eat them when the time is right. We do have time. We don't know how much, but neither did the ponytailed transit advocate or Joe Cohen who advertises Trader Joe's on the radio or the bus driver who picked me up after I'd missed the 7:18 train. No, no, he gestured, as I tried to pay the bus fare. He strapped my wheelchair into place, made sure he knew my stop near the Safeway. And off we went.
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