A Walk in the Woods

Friday I pulled up at a red light and when I glanced over at the truck waiting next to me, the 40-something driver winked at me! I smiled, thinking at first that I knew him. I didn’t but he brighten my day and he knew it. If more guys understood the power of winking at a woman, they’d practice in front of a mirror until they've perfected the flirty art form. Growing up, my older brother had a friend who winked at me every time I saw him and I got so tongued around him, I couldn’t talk. He was a Native American---we called them Indians in those days---and it didn’t help that he was movie-star handsome with high cheek bones, beautiful baby-smooth skin and dark, dancing eyes. The one and only time he tried to kiss me our dog bite his ankle. Between the dog and my brother threatening to fingerprint any boy who came to the house to pick me up for a date, it’s a wonder I went on any at all.

I was on the way to meet my Movie and Lunch Club when I encountered the winker. Can you believe it, as the eighteen of us sat chit-chatting in the theater lobby, another 40-something flirty guy approached us and started asking questions! He was a people person but he was also the promotions director of the theater chain. He asked if he could take our picture and tell our story in an industry publication. We complied and he left us with a promise to send our senior center a copy of the photo and some free passes. 

The movie we saw was a comedy-adventure, A Walk in the Woods with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. It’s a true story about a celebrated but out-of-shape travel writer and a long-lost friend/recovering alcoholic who attempted to hike the 2,100 miles-long Appalachian Trail. The minute the opening credits rolled saying the movie was based on a book by Bill Bryson I remembered reading it. Bill had come back to America to retire after living aboard for several decades and when asked why he wanted to take this rugged trip at his age he said, “I’m tired of life being about ailments and funerals. I want to push myself.” He made the decision to go after sticking his foot in his mouth at a funeral where a widow thanked him for coming and he told her it was his pleasure to be there. Oops! The widow’s facial expressions in the film and the classic nature of the screw-up made it a great laugh line. We widows have all been there, done that with people saying things that were better left unsaid.

The movie has lots of things to laugh about and two dialogue exchanges stuck in my mind long enough to get home and look them up: 1) Nolte’s character Steven said: “You know what I look for in a female these days? A heartbeat and a full set of limbs.” Bryson answered back, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Steven. Most people lower their standards as they age. You’ve raised yours.” The second line I liked came after Bryson was telling Steven about the rock formations and Steven wanted to know how he knew all that stuff. Bryson replied, “There are these things called books, it’s like television for smart people.” This movie is the closest I’ll ever get to the Appalachian Trail and there were some great panoramic views. It isn’t meant to be an advocacy film for wilderness conservation, but it is all the same. The fragile nature and beauty of the Trail was hard to ignore even with two strong actors on the screen. 

After the movie we had lunch at a place I go often enough to have a rewards card. Bingo! My card was full and my chicken quesadilla was on the house. What a wonderful day I was having….until I drove away from the restaurant and something made me think of the very last words I said to my husband. Maybe it was a song on the radio, maybe the restaurant itself triggered the thought since it was one of my husband’s favorites. Maybe it was survivor’s guilt for having such a good time. Whatever it was that brought the melancholy moment that threatened to take the joy of the day away, I fought back. My eyes got moist but no tears materialized. I experienced that jaw-tightening thing that happens to widows when you know you can’t allow yourself to wade back into the darkness. I hate when that happens. A fleeting, bad memory should never haunt a good day.

When I got home I grabbed the dog and we went for a walk on the White Pines Trail. It might not be as pretty or as challenging as the Appalachian Trail but I like the fact that instead of bears we encountered milk cows. And I liked the fact that I spent the walk trying to remember all the men I've encountered in my life who were winkers. ©

 "They say the Appalachian Trail is like life. You don't know what's going to come next 

but you give it your best shot." 

Bill Bryon

The Way We Were and Other Widow Worries

jigsaw puzzle

I’ve always loved the 1973 movie, The Way We Were, with Robert Redford playing Hubbell and Barbara Streisand playing Katie. If you haven’t seen it you must be living under a rock. It’s a classic and comedian Gilda Radner once summed up the plot like this: "It's about a Jewish woman with a big nose and her blonde boyfriend, who move to Hollywood, and it's during the blacklist and it puts a strain on their relationship." That’s all true as far as it goes but it’s the strong contrast between the Katie and Hubbell’s personalities that makes the movie memorable---at least for me. She was a vocal woman with strong anti-war opinions, a political activist who took life and current events super seriously. Hubbell was a carefree guy with no particular leanings in the political arena. I can’t remember if it was Katie or Hubbell himself who described him as a guy who had everything in life came easy for him, but it fit. His good looks and athletic ability took him places without much effort. Of course, their love affair and short marriage was ill-fated and the movie ended with what has been described as the “most romantic love scene of all times.” I wouldn’t say that---ever---but I guess the idea of a chance meeting with an old flame who looks at you like the ‘good one’ that got away has a lot of appeal to some women.

I like the movie because I always thought Don and Hubbell had some qualities in common. Some things in life came easy for Don---he was a good looking people-magnet with a silver tongue for story telling---and I thought of myself as a Katie type who got too intense sometimes. Before I met Don I had lost a couple of boyfriends because I had aspirations that didn’t include staying home and keeping a supply of a clean socks and hot meals available 24/7 for her man. And maybe it was the gods of twisted humor that, in the end, turned me into a married woman who spent the last 12 years of Don’s life staying at home and keeping a supply of clean socks and hot meals available and turned him into someone who had to struggle just to get one word ‘sentences’ out of his aphasiac brain.

One of the advantages of growing old is you actually get to see the ending of things like an x-boyfriend who eventually came out of the closet long after our relationship ended. When I think about the pain of that break up compared to the pain it would have caused if I had married the guy and found out 20 years later that he’d been hiding a secret all that time---well, I dodged a huge bullet didn’t I. Another guy I could have married turned his wife into a sports widow on the weekends and short-order cook for his buddies and I would have hated that life-style. Nope, I don’t have any regrets about the ones that got away. If I saw either of those guys today I wouldn’t look at them longingly like Hubbell did with Katie and wish I had chosen a different path. I doubt they would look at me that way either. If given enough time, life works out the way it should or at least in a way that finally makes sense.

Now that I’m wearing my widow’s garb I’ve entered a new phase of life. I’m too old to make mistakes and miss-steps because I don’t have enough time left on earth to make corrections. Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time, right now, keeping a long range plan in sight so I can keep the daily stuff moving in that direction. Too often I find myself drifting without accomplishing more than getting dressed by noon and day-dreaming and plotting my course. The future seems like a giant jigsaw puzzle and I’m still working on finding the edge pieces. 

Have I ever confessed that I like putting jigsaw puzzles together, the harder the better? I've never liked telling people that because it sounds like something only old people do, but I've loved them since I was a kid and work 3-4 puzzles a year. I have a puzzle with pictures on both the front and the back of the pieces, a round puzzle and puzzles with geometric patterns. I have other puzzles with repetitive images that are really difficult. (Visualize hundreds of yellow pencils lined up side by side---that’s the picture on my favorite puzzle.) I could do one of these difficult puzzles in two days. Don would roll by in his wheelchair from time to time and look at me with admiration. He was impressed. I haven’t done one since he died. If widowhood has taught me anything about myself it’s that his admiration was a prime motivator in my life. I always thought I was my own motivator and I truly was before we met all those years ago but somehow I must have transferred that chore to him; I fed off his admiration, breathed it in like air and I miss that. Now I’m struggling to motive my own self again. This was the way we were. Now I am writing the sequel: the way I am. ©