We reach the depth of winter. The days and hours after the Christmas season and the minutes and seconds left to me before the work world begins again are sleepy, gray, driving me to an unaccustomed Saturday afternoon nap. The whipped up celebration of the New Year is finished and what is left is collective exhaustion. I recognize the beginning of our desire to hibernate.
We choose to live within a geography where the four seasons are firmly set; changing on alternate dates and with varying degrees of ferocity, but changing nonetheless and we forget that we must change with them. Entering quiet hiatus after riotous celebration is an art form.
We approach our local store, the large Wegmans which sits solidly along the length of Calkins Road with the huge Christmas wreath still hanging on bravely, braced up against snow flurries and steady wind. The parking lot is packed full and finding a good parking spot proves difficult. Everyone it seems, our neighbors, the mailman, the football fan, the single parent and the grave and elderly have the same purpose; loading up on staples, milk and bread, stopping briefly to look at all the holiday candy on sale and then walking away. The front sidewalks of the store are naked, bereft of trees, holiday wreathes and netted bags of scented pinecones. The damp sidewalk, puddled and wet, frozen and muddy seeps through my shoes and rims the black soles with gunk.
We get two carts and separate because he is interested in buying fruits and vegetables and I am looking for survival food for work. In a very few minutes, I realize I’m not prepared to be out; to be making decisions of any kind. I feel the accumulative effects of weeks of Christmas indulgence. The music in the store has changed; gone back to some unrecognizable theme. The lighting looks gray and filmy. After hundreds of hours of sparkle and gold and red and silver, the fluorescent lights hang heavily over me and the cereal aisle is discouraging. I roll past the shelf packed with laundry soap and notice that someone has discarded a bag of whole wheat bagels in between two containers at the far end. I experience a sudden nauseating image of bagels and soap and I head directly for a chair strategically placed between the frozen vegetables case and the front end of the paper products aisle. Placing my left arm on the handle of my cart to keep it from rolling away, I stretch out my legs and phone my husband.
“I’m in the chicken section”, he says in a rather sing song voice. “Where are you?” “I’m sitting in front of the frozen pizza case, to the left of the frozen vegetable section and to the right of the paper products aisle”. “That’s rather specific” he chuckles. “It’s part of my charm” I respond. “I know right where you are. Sit tight” he says happily.
I look around and think to myself that sitting tightly is exactly what I plan to do. I shift more deeply into the chair and watch other customers. Today is a big Buffalo Bills game and there are large numbers of people sporting the cheery hats, sweats and jerseys.
I check to see that my wallet is still in the cart. I close my eyes and consider a bizarre dream I had early in the morning involving me, my sister and baby niece. In the dream, we attempt to drive over the Canadian border on our way to Niagara on the Lake with a licensed and loaded gun in the Jeep. Somehow the woman driving ahead of us knows about it and lets the guard at the checkpoint know. The guard, a polite and attractive female, politely climbs into the front of the Jeep and gives us a careful lecture about how this is not allowed and didn’t we know better? She is wonderfully polite and carefully Canadian. I am flustered that I cannot make my sister understand that we are in trouble. I’m not sure why we are all in the back seat. Then, I wake up.
I open my eyes and watch an extremely old woman in a special driving cart making her way slowly down the paper products aisle toward me. She is hunched over and continually looks up at a tall, young man who is either a relative or a caregiver. She questions item after item as to price and he repeats the price, bending over so she can see his face and hear him. She tells the young man she can get better prices somewhere else.
I know I can’t possibly be as tired as she is. She is really old, appearing similar to photos from mid nineteenth century; perhaps a grainy daguerreotype? Despite prices and personal appearance, she seems spunky. She smiles as they make a wide berth around the area where I sit, maneuvering her cart carefully and they head in the direction of the checkout. I stand up and go to meet my husband who is speeding around the corner having apparently laid waste to the produce section. His cart brims with health. I look at my cart and decide I’m done for now.
I only have energy to write now. I am spent, irritated from worrying about what will happen on Monday when our district starts back up. There are so many unanswered questions about financial issues, test scores and report cards, displaced teachers and layoffs. I can’t manage to fully understand any of it. Everything bad happened mid year; a sort of bursting of waste from an entrenched bureaucracy. It is the worst time for a thousand reasons and one of those reasons is our geography and our climate. Cold and damp don’t aid quality rallying and fighting and exertion. It is supposed to be the time to hibernate, to take a long hiatus and to recover over cold winter days; and to teach well. But that luxury isn’t allotted us now. Not in Rochester. Not at this time. We bend to paralysis and set our caps against January winds.
690 Saint Paul 