Last week’s post — “Is There an Upside to Widowhood?” — got me going on this topic. As a new widow with no husband to complain about my bad habits and quirky tastes, I see that I am now free to think and do a lot of things I had set aside for years out of consideration for Jon.
For example, I can now:
• Hog the San Francisco Chronicle in the morning.
• Hog the flat screen TV in the evening.
• Hang up the Cold War poster of the Soviet worker triumphing over the scummy capitalist bankers. Jon hated that poster. It made him uneasy.
• Ditto the 150-year-old oil painting my great-grandmother did of a fox gazing at a rabbit. Jon, who donates to the SPCA and the Best Friends Animal Society, thought the fox was about to eat the rabbit. But knowing my great-grandmother (1846-1915) as I do for the devout Baptist lady she was, I see her painting as a north woods cover of Isaiah’s “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.”
• Make a thick vegetably soup for dinner, put it on the dinner table, eat it. Jon didn’t like soup. I do.
• Slip even further out of Jon’s comfort zone by tossing chunks of tofu into the soup. Or quinoa.
• Ditch our wedding china. It was one of the bride-and-groom compromises we made back in 1977, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I wanted the flowery French porcelain; Jon thought it too fussy. The Spode we settled on, with its narrow blue border, was considered a simple and elegant choice at the time. I say it’s severe, unfriendly, and not the way I want to treat my dinner guests. I’d offer it to the kids, but you can’t put it in the dishwasher.
• Move the grill to the corner of the deck, out of sight. With no husband to complain, I might even give it away. What is it about first-world men that needs to cook slabs of meat under the open sky over an open flame? Grills are messy, impossible to clean (my job) and, in drought-battered California, a fire hazard. Also, they smoke up the air for the downwind neighbors.
• Swear out loud — “What the f—!” — when ATT shuts down my TV, my landline and my WIFI. I hated it when Jon used the F-word, so for 50 years I avoided using it myself. But I see the world differently now that Jon is not in it: there’s actually a lot of crummy stuff out there, often requiring a well timed “f—!”
• Hug Jon’s night shirt and sob noisily into his pillow. It’s OK to do that because there’s nobody in the house to hear me, nobody to notice the wails, nobody to worry that maybe I’ve lost heart.
• Which, of course, I have.
Jon was patient with many of my quirks, including my collection of treasured old stuff. See “My Old Stuff — A Little Moldy, a Little Dusty, but Unlike Certain People, It’s Still With Me.” Also, “A Pillow Case of the Human Condition.”
While the poster is fascinating, it is a piece of propaganda that today represents tyranny and incredible suffering and death of tens of millions.
So true. Those Soviets were pretty brutal. There was a whole school of graphic art, supported by the government, that produced posters like these. I’m not sure how my poster fits into that group. As I mentioned, I didn’t acquire this poster because I liked it, but because of the era that it represented.
Your great grandmother was a wonderful artist and I didn’t look up Isaiah 11:6, but the picture reminded me of our ongoing struggle of one political party feeding off of the other. She probably just liked the sleek beautiful red coat of the fox and the cute innocent fate of the bunny. Very artistic.
She was a wonderful artist. I wish I knew more about when and where she painted that picture. It’s oil, so she must have gotten some training or experience somewhere. The actual painting is much nicer than my photo. The photo came out awfully blue.
Thanks for the humor in your situation which is so like mine. I can now play my violin without my violin-teacher husband getting ready to pounce with corrective advice.
Yes! That’s progress! 🙂
Your husband must have been a friend of Betty White.
I have a weakness to hang onto everything “ just in case.” Of course “just in case” seldom comes , as my husband notes.
I am finally able to let go of those little household things — nails, tupperware with missing lids, plastic plant containers — that seemed like they might be useful some day. I’m still holding on to the pretty things I’ve collected on my travels. But I am thinking of giving the outdated travel books the heave-ho.
Brava Barb. Love the worker’s poster cite and can just see Jon’s disquieting shrug. He was right, you know. to be uneasy. Onward and upward.
Yes. It is a scary poster. I bought it in Moscow totally ironically way back in 1964, when I was on a student group tour of the USSR from the University of Heidelberg, where I was studying. We were taken to a shop that sold Soviet memorabilia and propaganda, and I bought this one. The tour guide was a bit perplexed.
Really nice piece, Barbara!
Thank you!
So love this missive. Spot on. We husbands can be such pains in the neck. I mean f_ _k!
Jon was a truly wonderful pain in the neck. He’d do things like run down to the grocery store and go inside, ignoring my concerns about the covid risk — all because I’d mentioned I was out of non-fat milk.
Hmmm. Now I’m wondering who was doing the cussing the other day. One of Jon’s favorite reasons to swear was a glitsch in our ATT service. Was I channeling Jon?