Book Clubs, Gatherings and Politics

After my husband died I lost my concentration for reading and it still isn’t firing on all its cylinders. Back then I belonged to a book club, dropped out and they kept my place open for a while before I told them to give it to someone on the waiting list. This week the senior hall started a brand new book club and they asked me to return. I guess they kept my name on the waiting list all this time and since there were finally twelve names on the list it was deemed time to start a second group. Our county library system has what they call ‘Book Clubs in a Bag’---so named because they pack twelve books per bag for clubs to check out, which is why the memberships are limited. The first meeting was this week and of the eleven other members in the new group I knew three by name---a mother/daughter comb from the Movie and Lunch Club and a lady from The Gatherings that I’ve been hoping to get to know better. I felt like I was out of my element, though, because most of the women could name off favorite books and authors so quickly. Me? I read a book and promptly forget most of them. There are three former teachers in the group who did a lot of across-the-table talking and I’ll bet they’ll bond with one another. Birds of a feather. 

We got our first book on Thursday. Maybe you’ve read the Friendship Bread by Darien Gee? The author has a website with over 250 recipes for Amish friendship bread and I’m having a hard time resisting making a batch of starter. But we’re having a heat wave here in Michigan, not a good time for baking. The storyline has been described like a chain letter, with the starter bread being passed along instead of a letter. (The starter recipe makes four batches and you’re supposed to bake one and pass the other three on to friends and each of them will do the same with their starter bag of dough.) I’m half way through the book and so far the author has introduced over fifty characters which is challenging my ability to keep track, and so far the book isn’t ‘grabbing’ me. If you read it, do you have an observation that I can “borrow” to make me look smart at the next book club meeting?

Also this week I went to another Gathering at the senior hall, a group for people looking for friends. We played a game where we had to write down two sentences---one true, one false. Then the facilitator read our sentences out loud and the group had to guess which sentences were which. I wrote down, “I play the piano in a jazz trio” and “I plowed snow for 17 years.” No one guessed my correct sentence which was the one about plowing snow. We learned that one woman has a glass eye from having untreated Pink Eye as a kid. Another woman had an accident pulling into a police station and she damaged four police cars before coming to a stop---no one guessed that story was true either. These games are fun!

Afterward five of us went for coffee down the block; the first time that’s happened. It was a little harder to talk without our facilitator in tow but the ladies were nice. We discussed knitting and sewing circles and other common interests like writing family histories. We made a date to do lunch after the next Gathering. Could a budding friendship/s be in the making? It’s too soon to tell but sometimes I have a panicked feeling about getting involved one-on-one with other people. I had that feeling when one of the ladies passed a paper around for us to exchange contact information. I know, I KNOW, I’ve been bellyaching about needing to make friends ever since Don died, so why the cold feet all of a sudden? If you have an explanation, clue me in. 

Glutton for punishment that I am, I had the entire Republican Convention playing in the background of my life from morning to bedtime---all four days and the after hours rehashes. And all I’m going to say about that hot mess is that Trump thinks he’s running for God. “I and I alone can fix this,” he said about everything from stopping ISIS around the world to stopping lone wolves from killing cops to fixing my neighbor’s broken garage disposal. Okay, he didn’t promise to fix the garage disposal, but it was implied when he boasted, "I will fix EVERYTHING and I will fix it fast!" The Cult of Personality has taken over the Republican Party and its nominee is a sociopath from Gotham City's dark under belly. ©

Making Friends - Mission Possible?

Have you heard the acronym, FOMO? It stands for ‘fear of missing out’ and it’s usually sparked by reading social media like Facebook postings and if you’re not careful to check yourself that spark can turn into a raging fire. Since becoming a widow, I’ve had FOMO more often than I care to admit, mostly on holidays like Father’s Day when friends and family share photos of their get-togethers. Those glowing faces smiling for the camera seem to say the whole world is with someone special while I’m sitting in front of a computer screen with a cup of coffee for company. 

Envy isn’t a nice quality to have and I wouldn’t characterize my FOMO as envy. Hold on, you're probably saying, envy is the root cause of FOMO! Okay, that's a good point. But there is envy as in I-hate-you-for-what-you’ve-got and there’s envy as in I’m-sad-that-part-of-life-truly-has-passed-me-by. I’m in the latter camp. Never having had children and grandchildren makes me different than most women and that significantly impacts the stereotypical assumptions of what I should be/could be doing at my age. At my Movie and Lunch Club and my Red Hat Society meeting last week, for example, most of the chatter was about running around to events involving families and boasting about the accomplishments of grandchildren. What could I add to those conversations---the fact that my dog had oral surgery to the tune of $527.14? Nope, nothing I do dovetails with “my grandson is going to Stanford in the fall.” I interject the appropriate platitudes like “his parents must be so proud” yada, yada, yada and while I have gotten to know these ladies and their life styles well they probably couldn’t pick me out of a police lineup. 

Woo is me. I’m in a funky mood. I go days without hearing the sound of human voices except on TV. In the summers I only have to go a week in between hugs---one of the perks of hiring my nephew’s lawn care service---but in the winters, hugs are few and far between. I think about moving to a place where higher numbers of retired people are plopped down in one place. (My neighbors are all young, working families and rarely home.) And as tempting as that sometimes sounds, I fear I’d get neighbors like one of my blogger friends whose neighbors frequently drop in unannounced and stay for several hours. I would hate, HATE that! My husband used to have a neighbor who did that. Don would come home, go directly into the bathroom and by the time he finished peeing the doorbell would ring. He got frustrated by the infringement on his time and would complain to me, but he would never go to the door and say, “This isn’t a good time.” Maybe that’s why he always had more friends than me. Just sayin’.

Monday was a busy day. The dog had an appointment at the doggie foo-foo beauty parlor which meant I had no choice but to take him on a long walk ahead of time. Well, I had a choice but he and/or the groomer would have paid a price if I skipped it. While Levi was getting beautified I went to the bank, the vitamin store and to another Gathering at the senior hall. The search for friends was back on again!

The Gatherings are billed as events for people who are looking for friends. It was the third Gathering in their pilot program and I’ve discovered I love get-to-know-each-other games. This month’s game involved taking squares of toilet paper off a roll, enough “to get the job done” but the facilitator wouldn’t clarify which "job" she was talking about. The lowest number of squares taken was four, the highest number was eleven. Then we were asked to tell the group as many things about ourselves as the number of squares we took. No one person dominated the conversation, no one was ignored. It was interesting, enlightening and many fascinating details and common threads were revealed.

One lady made a comment that she has lots of acquaintances but few friends. Where have I heard that before? Oh ya, inside my head. Another woman built on that statement by saying you can’t turn acquaintances into friends unless you share yourself. (Do you think she got that from Oprah?) If only it was that easy. If it was I’d print out some of my blog posts, hand them out at the next Gathering and say, “Here’s a study guide to getting to know me.” I’m kidding, of course…but it’s not a leap in logic to say that total strangers do know me far better than people I actually interact with in person. Like someone with the stomach flu, I vomit my every thought all over this blog, but sitting with a group of others? Well, let's just say I often feel like a fly on the wall pretending I'm Superman when in actuality I'm an unassuming, mild mannered Clark Kent type sitting at the table. ©