My husband is experimenting to see how long Chinese food lasts in the refrigerator. It’s only been four days but I’ve decided to do my own experiment to see how infrequently I can open the fridge to avoid the stench of a deteriorating Chinese feast.
It’s amazing how many times a day I have to open the fridge even though I do my best not to.
Breakfast: I open for eggs that I poach and eat with dry toast. The bread comes from the freezer (a separate door). Hot ginger tea.
Lunch: I slip the spicy mayo out and add it to tuna, replace it stealthily. Room temperature water—from a room I purposefully leave the heat off for several hours. Pita chips.
Supper: salmon from the freezer. Rapid grab for Brussel sprouts and left-over cous cous. No return necessary for either. I top the fish with pantry staples—oil, pistachios. Room temperature red wine to ameliorate odoriferous distress.
I summon speed and stealth, wrap a scarf over my nose and mouth, hold my breath. Nevertheless…
In the cool darkness of the fridge, bean curd floats in an unnaturally shiny sauce, uneaten peppers fixed in the slough. Transparent snow peas saturated in a waxen pulse with lifeless clumps that may have once been shrimp, or paint chips floating in it. Bricks of rice. The plasticized miasma permeates asparagus and good Irish butter.
“Just needs a little duck sauce,” he insists.
By late evening I’m dreaming of dark chocolate that’s been unfairly incarcerated with the Chinese leavings. It should to be liberated before it accrues the odor.
I think of of that winter when the garbage froze under piles of ice and snow after several blizzards and didn’t thaw for a month, of the odor in a traditional Ainu tent, the rat’s nests under the carousel near the Eiffel Tower, the baked garbage and blood sacrifice in Katmandu.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pirate. I was told that girls couldn’t be pirates. I don’t agree with this rule but I had to abandon the dream because of my susceptibility to profound sea sickness.
My husband is no scientist. He does not preside over kitchen appliances—he barely notices them. I’m awake in the morning long before he is. Sanitation and rationality will triumph.

Once there was a little girl who looked around and decided that she was in no hurry to grow up.
But she did.
Then she got old—as some little girls do.
There were things she liked about being old and things she didn’t.
She didn’t like she had to get a tooth pulled and her hair was falling out. But she always liked hats and now was her chance…
She hated the foot doctor.
Mostly, she didn’t like the losses she’d had to face as she got older. She lost her parents and way too many friends. She lost her two favorite cousins. She didn’t like having to put her dogs “to sleep” after they’d been so patient and loyal to her. Loss was certainly the worst part of getting old. People disappeared, but the memories lingered. She assumed that was what people meant by being haunted. But being haunted wasn’t the worst thing if you let the bad parts drift off and kept the good memories. But you still had to live with loss.
She didn’t like where the world was going, but she didn’t want to be the cron who complains all the time.
She liked peanut butter and ice cream and all the good memories—even when they made her sad.
She wasn’t crazy about the fact that she’d forgotten many of the things she’d learned along the way, but she did like that those things were stowed away somewhere inside where they continued to influence her thoughts and decisions. She liked that she could trust her instincts. She liked that she didn’t feel she had to please anyone, that she could ask snoopy questions and people would attribute nosiness to her age and not be offended.
She was never offended when they didn’t answer, but she loved that they often did.
She liked water—but let’s not talk bathing suits.
She liked old trees, stars, and babies. She liked dogs. She didn’t like cats but there were certainly “cat people” that she liked very much.
She liked her faded orange shirt enough to mend a hole in the sleeve.

Living with loss wasn’t pleasant, but she was satisfied that she’d persevere; there were too many every-day wonders to appreciate.

Now, where did she leave her keys?

A Walk in the Park


The early summer heat brings everyone out. Central park is bustling. The
‘ice-cold-water-one-dollar” ladies have found shady spots to hawk their wares. Today I brought a dollar to tip the barista for an iced coffee I’ll buy with my phone on the way home, but I give it to the kid with a lemonade stand. He hands me a paper cup with bright yellow liquid, the color of toxic waste. There’s no ice and it’s cloyingly sweet. I discretely drop it in the trash where it will draw bees. I feel sorry for the folks on the bench next to it.
Some people say “hello,” or “how’r you doin’.” I respond and keep walking. The nerves in my neck and shoulder have been “pinched.” It feels more like knifed. My doctor is sympathetic but says it may last months. He’s emailed physical therapy instructions and a prescription for a painkiller that I will never take. I’ve alerted the neighborhood therapist and ordered an expensive pillow—from Amazon, not the loony pillow guy.
In the midst of runners, bicycle and scooter riders, a slower group advances. They make their way towards me, some with walking sticks. Aids push wheelchairs that contain the lame and limbless. I can’t grumble about the inconvenience of a
‘pinched’ nerve as I’m privileged to foresee restoration. We all smile at the proliferation of daffodils, yellow in a cheerful way that is not reminiscent of little boys hawking chemical malice.

On the way home, I purchase my ice coffee and add a tip electronically. It’s Mosque day, and people on the street are dressed in Friday best— women in brightly colored dress’ and matching head wraps, men in long shirts that are less colorful. Is this the end of Ramadan? The finale of grouchy day-workers? Or just another Friday in the long holiday?
In front of my building a neighbor, who is undoubtedly a good Christian woman, strolls leisurely. Even when she walks her dog, she is dressed elegantly. I mispronounce her name because sun and pain have zapped my brain. I’m definitely underdressed. We chat about teenage boys jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

On the street today I passed a mother and her small child. The mother was carrying several full bags, and a large bouquet of flowers. The child held the hem of her jacket with one hand. With the other he held the end of a string. The other end of the string dragged along behind him. How clever, I thought, a pet string. The boy jumped over each crack in the sidewalk. It was obvious that he’d attained lift-off only recently as his jumping was low and precarious. The string followed docilely.
I envied the possession of a pet string. It was certainly low maintenance and obedient as pets go.
My own children had dogs growing up. The dogs were congenial but required food, exercise, bathing, and medical care. I have friends who have cats, but I feel something sinister about the “domestication” of felines…I do not discuss cats.
I once knew someone whose girlfriend had a monkey. The monkey wasn’t pleasant to be around. Because the monkey had bitten several of her guests in the past, the girlfriend kept him in a cage when she had visitors. There was something disturbing about this woman as well as her pet…Perhaps a bit of her persona had slipped into her pet’s subconscious because they both both seemed unstable. I was happy to slip away from them. I never went back.
The only pet I was allowed as a child, was a turtle. Other kids in our apartment complex had turtles and we amused ourselves by racing them. That’s how desperate we were.
When I was the string-boy’s age, I had invisible friends who may or may not have been human-ish. I know some of them were very tiny and lived in my ear. I took them out to entertain me when I was bored and there were no turtles to race.
I was the sort of child that would have enjoyed a pet string. I see how it could be entertaining. Beside walking it, you could twirl it, jump it, pull things with it, make Cat’s Cradles…use it as whip, fishing line…you see where this is going.
I was a quiet child and liked simple tasks, cutting paper dolls, arranging doll furniture in block houses, composing rhymes. I did a fair amount of threading buttons on yarn or string while my mother sewed. How surprising that I never bonded with the string.