The Gathering Girls and Spring Plans

Last Friday five of us from The Gathering (who henceforth in this blog will be known as ‘The Gathering Girls’) went to our local garden and sculpture park. It was a rainy day with severe weather in the forecast but we’d had the outing planned, canceled and rescheduled already so we went anyway rather than reschedule yet again. Even with retired widows it’s hard to coordinate schedules with five people involved. There is plenty to do inside the buildings at the park. The butterflies were hatching and flying about in the tropical conservatory which was totally unexpected for me. I associate them with April when I usually go to see them as an annual pilgrimage to honor my husband’s birthday and our anniversary. We also nabbed the best table in the dining area, under a small, glass conservatory where we laughed and recuperated half way through viewing the Al Weiwei show we’d come to see. 

According to the booklet they handed out at the exhibit, Mr. Weiwei is one of the “most compelling and influential cultural figures in the world today.” He’s a Chinese artist and activist who has been arrested, held under house arrest and his art studio was torn down for speaking out against censorship and the political system. His porcelain work is flawless, but I can’t say I like many of his pieces. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s not the aesthetics as much as the underlying statement that he’s making that is the most important element. One piece, for example, consists of 1,000 porcelain crabs in a pile and The Guardian explains the work of art like this, “The word for crab, hie xie, is a homonym for harmonious, we are told, and much bandied about in Chinese government circles. There’s not much harmony here among the crustaceans. The word is also used a lot on the internet in China, as slang for censorship.” Okay, I got that at first glance. Easy-peasy.

The Gathering Girls all have a similar sense of humor; we laugh at the same throw-away lines and all of us add our own throw-away lines to conversations. Four of us are in our early to mid-seventies and one is eighty-something. We’re all widows but the oldest of us has a long-time significant other that she visits daily in a nursing home. She’s the only one who doesn’t live alone although she’d like to move out of her son’s house. He and his wife are against it. We’re still in the getting to know each other stage but two of the ladies seem to be bonding faster than the rest of us and that’s probably because they take the same exercise class at the senior hall. Three of the ladies are extremely spontaneous. For example, at coffee after the last Gathering (for people looking for friends) someone suggested we go to a movie on the spot and they would have if they had found one scheduled they hadn’t already seen. Me, I have to think about the dog and how long before he’ll need to go outside so being spontaneous is harder for me and for the elder in the group who meets her young grandson at the bus stop after school is out. The two ladies I’d love to bond with the most double-adore shopping and of all the activities women do in unison that’s one thing I’m not fond of…but I will do it to be sociable. Color me sad about that. 

Monday was RSVP day at the senior hall for all the activities that will take place in April and May. Have I whined enough about the process for you to get the idea that I hate the system of having to be at your computer exactly at 9:00 to send an email list of what I want to do? If you’re one minute late there’s a high probability of going on a waiting list, to see if enough people sign up to add another bus or class or someone cancels. There were twenty-seven events listed (not counting the daily drop-in stuff). I picked six to RSVP but I usually do twelve. I cut back to make room for my personal training sessions and classes at the YMCA. Yes, I’m serious about this being my Spring of Getting Physically Fit. I passed up some great day trips and off-Broadway type shows, too, but I snagged a reservation on one of the five buses going on a restaurant hop in my favorite get-a-way tourist town on Lake Michigan. So I was a happy camper.

But before I get to my April and May spring plans I have to get through March which just might kill me and make the dog an orphan or at the very least, a lonely Schnauzer. There are 25 weekdays in March and I have 29 things on my schedule. Because of my new YMCA sessions, I’m getting up 6:30 when I normally don’t roll out of bed before eight or nine. I’ve been falling asleep before Stephen Colbert does his monologue at 11:30 and that is something I truly regretted until I found clips of show online the next day. How did we ever live without the internet? ©

Al Weiwei's pile of crabs