Slice of Life #1

            Technically, this is yesterday’s slice of life, not today’s. Today I did go outside the apartment. Yesterday I did not. I haven’t stayed indoors all day in many years. It was not a good day.

            Outside it was cold and breezy. My husband, who’s somewhat disabled since a fall on the ice over a year ago, was willing to go outside, but also willing to be talked out of it. I didn’t push for the walk.

            So I spent the day online. Visiting Facebook, seeing who had commented or shared my links, commenting on other’s posts, feeling like I was part of conversation moving slowly and erratically through virtuality. Watching a video of Leonard Nimoy talking about his relationship to Yiddish (I didn’t know he was Jewish!) and thinking about my dead mother, who would have enjoyed this article immensely. Becoming a FB friend with a woman who, it turns out, I may have known slightly 30 years ago. Discovering a small-world connection between my daughter and a woman I knew years ago, through a mutual acquaintance. Reading my e-mail and discovering I’d lost notes from a meeting, so missed some actions I maybe should have taken – and feeling bad about that. Learning that an early second-wave feminist I’ve met once has ovarian cancer.

            Offline, I finished reading “Freedom in the Family,” by Patricia Stephens Due and Tananarive Due, for my book group. Checking online (yes, back onto the Internet), I learned that Patrician Due (Tananarive’s mother) died three years ago, and her husband, John D. Due Jr., wrote a piece for CNN last fall about restorative justice. 

            Finally, I cooked up a Moroccan chickpea stew from a New York Times recipe, and it was truly delicious. That alone made the day worthwhile, and not as claustrophobic as it felt while I lived through it.