46

I got a 4-month job in southern France and I prepared to leave for the summer. As I explained to the elderly members of Quaker Meeting that I would be gone for a while, one sweet old thing – she was called Aunt Mary -- asked me whether I had prepared meals for my family and frozen them. I stared at her, my mouth agaping – “bouche bée”, as they say in French – and then replied, No, never thought of it.

Such a yawning gap between our two experiences appeared. I’m sure Aunt Mary never thought about getting a job in France, just as surely as I’d never thought to prepare and freeze meals in advance. I had a lot of things on my mind those days: the need for adventure, restoring my spirit, a claim to French life, and the challenge of getting a job. My family’s meals were not one of them. Was I being selfish and self-centered? Was I abandoning my teen-age kids to cope for themselves? Could I rely on my husband to endorse this effort? The answer was Yes. Yes. Yes. Was I going to cook and freeze meals for them? No.

Now I know this admission sounds condescending on my part. But in that moment of staring into Aunt Mary’s sky-blue eyes and admiring the handiwork of the braids around her head, I can honestly say I wasn’t. Yes, within five seconds I became condescending, though not with a smirk to her kind face. For five seconds I contemplated the expectations that were placed on women.

In Aunt Mary’s case, it was regular home-cooked meals. In my case, it was an interesting life, something fascinating that could hold the attention at a cocktail party. Not that I went to many cocktail parties. I didn’t have enough interesting escapades to be invited to many cocktail parties. Nonetheless, the pressure was on. I had to prove myself to redeem myself.

At 46 it’s way overdue to put the babies in daycare. It’s too late to resuscitate a career. It’s too early to retire and travel. It’s limbo, as in the edge of Hell, for those who haven’t defined themselves. I looked at Aunt Mary’s gnarly capable hands and knew she was not a woman in limbo. If she got the meal on the table, she could do anything she wanted.

I gave Aunt Mary’s suggestion some serious thought and decided what would be most appreciated would be a four-month supply of oatmeal raisin cookies. I baked 32 dozen cookies, divided them into 16 plastic bags, labeled them “for the week of (fill in the date),” and stacked them in the freezer. My husband and three kids ate them all before the end of May.