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What Am I Doing Here?

I had come back to the United States to settle some family matters. Consciously or not, I booked my flight around the same time as my fiftieth high school reunion.

At first, I kept busy catching up with family—who met me with such concerned statements as “How do you do it? I could never be as strong as you!”

Is anyone as strong as they are perceived to be? How do we go on just as life so unfairly does? We move forward with a deep-rooted sense of standing still.                        

A year goes by, then two. Memories are framed around the smiling faces in family photos. Crying becomes the voice of despair that repairs my heart since my husband of 32 years passed away unexpectedly. They call it the silent killer: an aortic aneurysm.

Now I am back in my hometown for a high school reunion. My contact lenses cloud my vision as I try to read name tags displaying photos of who we were in our senior year.

I overhear gossip: “Did you see Ann? She divorced her husband, and he’s here! What about Gary? His Facebook profile said he got married in 2022 when he’s been married for 36 years. Must’ve been his first time creating a profile on Facebook.”

Giggles bring back memories of insouciant teenagers: skipping classes, making out behind the schoolyard, smoking cigarettes in bathroom stalls. Where has life taken us over all these years?

Me, to France, happily married with two grown children. It was Christmas. Our son was graduating college. Our daughter got a full-time job. We were celebrating. We had made it. Now it was our time.

“How will we fill this empty nest?” I bombarded my husband with questions as he calmly reminded me not to worry. We had just returned from a vacation in Florida. Hot sun and long walks on the beach. Warm evenings around the fire pit. Trying to learn pickleball just for the fun of it.

Back home in France, the frozen snowbanks sparkle in the winter sun. “Out we go, time for a walk. No couch potatoes here despite the crisp air.” He bundles up, grumbling about the winter weather.

Now, almost three years later, back here in my hometown. Musicians warm up with some ‘70s music. Speakers blare out the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” What do I want? My husband back here with me. Since I can’t get that, I choose to join my former classmates on the dance floor with the desire to feel alive.

Time escapes me. Suddenly the sound of tables being cleared and a feeling of exhaustion interrupt my rhythmic movements. Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” is a farewell ode to memories of youth, love without fear, and holding hands with the one you love.

The answer to my relentless question, What am I doing here? suddenly became apparent. I came here in search of myself, the woman who got lost somewhere as she progressed from teenager to young adult, then wife and mother. Now, widow.

Here, on my own, I’m inebriated with a sense of freedom, even while fighting to fill a bottomless pit of loneliness.

Jam, photograph by Maureen Bridget Rabotin

 
Jam

Another year gone by. Despite the despair, Christmas comes this year, as always. Muffins are cooking in the oven. Croissants from the bakery are in a wicker basket waiting for everyone to get up and join me for breakfast. I pull out four jars of jam, placing them next to the unsalted butter on the breakfast table.

The blueberry and strawberry are homemade. The citrus marmalade and the pineapple champagne are from a luxury boutique in Paris.

If he were here, he’d make the usual comment about there being too many choices for the fresh croissants. He liked apricot jam. I didn’t. I like choices. Some days, I want blueberry; other days, seedless raspberry. At times I crave such culinary creations as granny apple with cinnamon, or fig with bourbon, vanilla, and chopped walnuts.

I sip coffee on the couch, watching the sun's rays melt the winter frost. Today, my kids and grandkids are here. Their father, their grandfather, my husband, is not here. Three years ago, he gave me the worst Christmas gift imaginable: an aortic aneurysm. He died in his sleep. The first year, I was able to stifle the grief by concentrating on the required paperwork that provided purpose in my untethered world. Like Band-Aids covering the hole in my heart, lawyers kept me busy, sealing the grief away, giving me a sense of control when all about me seemed to be falling apart.

Giggles from waking grandkids shift my thoughts from my solitude to enjoying the chatter and noise in what has become a very empty nest.

Now that I am retired, my morning ritual is to celebrate my celibate mornings by lingering over two cups of tea, then choosing what to eat: toast? homemade muffins? Croissants? With which jam? I don’t buy apricot jam anymore.

Beach Footsteps, photograph by Maureen Bridget Rabotin

 
Meeting the Neighbors

As I settled in, I went through my checklist: Luggage unpacked. Groceries put away. Mail sorted: bills to be paid, junk mail piled high, ready for the recycling bin.

Somehow the ten-hour flight seemed longer this time. A feeling of jet lag started spreading through my body, creeping up my legs. That sensation of blood no longer circulating. The wish to lie down and elevate my legs was appealing, yet through the kitchen window, I could see it would soon be twilight. “OK, you’ve done what you can. Now go enjoy a bike ride before the sun sets,” I mumble, dragging my feet towards the garage.

My flight from Paris arrived earlier in the day. It is the time of year when the calendar shifts from summer to autumn, and we set our clocks back one hour. The impending cold weather reminded me that it is time to hibernate in Florida.

I am used to long, lingering twilights in France. Sitting at outdoor cafes until late in the evening. Watching the setting sun slip away slowly, turning to dusk, diminishing the sunlight, obscuring the clouds. Night has not yet fallen. It is neither fully light nor fully dark. Tomorrow will come when it is ready.

Here in Florida, the full flush of the sun is blotted out by a furious artist’s paintbrush. Splashes of pink and blue quickly disperse, and the sky smothers you in its dusky shroud before you know it. Tomorrow is scheduled to be on time, as planned by Mother Nature.

To seize the last hour before sunset, I jump on my bike and ride up a path that crosses marshland, where herons and ibises wallow in the swampy water, enjoying their evening meal. Letting go of the handlebar with one hand and adjusting my sunglasses, I swish away mosquitoes. Palm trees and hanging branches of eucalyptus line the narrow, rickety boardwalk.

As I turn off the path and head toward the Sandhill Crane Canal, I suddenly slam on my brakes. The spilled contents from a broken plastic bag are scattered across the bike path: prescription medicine bottles, a few dollar bills, potatoes and oranges. I look around to make sure I’m not being caught on some modern version of Candid Camera.

Holding my bike steady between my legs, I bend over and see the patient’s contact information on the prescription meds. That’s my invitation to put everything back in the bag and head home to call the owner.

“Hi, may I speak to Bill Haring? I think I found something of his on the canal bike path.”

“Oh, Bill, there’s a lady on the phone. I think she found your bag. Come, talk to her.”

I hear shuffling feet, and then “Hello, this is Bill.”

“I’m Maureen, a neighbor. I was riding my bike and…”

He cuts me off. “My bag. It fell off the back of my bike about an hour ago. I looked everywhere. It’s got everything I need for my trip to New York tomorrow. Can I come and get it?”

I give him my address. Within ten minutes, the doorbell rings. I open the door to a couple I guess to be in their early seventies. He’s fit for his age, with traces of a once athletic build, and wearing a wide smile of relief. She has a tight-lipped half-smile. A Lycra leotard stretches over her midriff and well-rounded hips.

“You can’t imagine how relieved I am,” Bill says. “I went to the supermarket, picked up my meds, got some money from the ATM, and tied the bag onto the back of my bike. Really! How can I thank you?”

He turns toward his wife: “Melanie has been beside herself, telling me how stupid I can be. We would love to take you and your husband out to dinner.”

“I’m a widow,” I reply with a shaky voice.

“Sorry,” they whisper hastily in unison.

We agree to have dinner at a local restaurant the following Wednesday. Then Bill takes the bag of material I’d rescued from the bike path, Melanie takes his arm, and the two of them head back to their car parked in my driveway. Bill walks with a spring in his step; Melanie turns back to give me the long-suffering look of a wife who needs to pick up pieces left behind by her forgetful husband.

As I close the front door, my heart crimps. With difficulty I catch my breath as a sense of relief surges through me.

I had said it out loud — to strangers. I said it for the first time: I am a widow.

It’s all right. You’ll be OK—just keep pedaling.
 

Beautiful Dreamer

The Life of Stephen Collins Foster

By Ellen Hunter Ulken

  This year we celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of a great American composer. Born on July 4, 1826, Stephen Foster came to life on the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. His “Oh! Susanna” became the banner song of forty-niners during the California gold rush. “Old Kentucky Home” and “Old Folks at Home” are still the state songs of Kentucky and Florida. “Camptown Races” and “Beautiful Dreamer” are sung today, more than a century and a half after they were written. But troublesome lyrics in some of his songs risk diminishing his legacy. In Foster’s day, blackface minstrel shows were the popular entertainment, and songwriters who didn’t write for this medium would have had difficulty introducing their music to the world. The lyrics in Foster’s minstrel music, while indefensible, comprised only a small portion of his work. And decades ago, the Center for American Music revised Foster’s lyrics to omit offensive language. It's hard to overstate the influence Foster had on American music as one of its first popular composers. Composer-lyricist Irving Berlin and composer-pianist George Gershwin both took inspiration from his songs. The tunes are timeless and the lyrics often speak to enduring and universal truths. It would be a shame if Foster, who wrote the defining music of his time, were deprived of his rightful place in history. For this aging, vagabond author, Foster’s songs take me home to Suwannee River country in North Florida, where ancient, moss-clad oaks and palmetto scrub line the riverbanks a few miles from my grandparents’ homesteads. This book, “Beautiful Dreamer,” is my tribute to him. Available from Amazon, Bookshop.org, or from your independent bookstore.

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