Trail's End Week 15 2021

I told Hilary last week that I was so frustrated that I cannot find a grocery store I like here. I have now tried three different grocery stores and none of them are right. She asked what I meant by that ~ I replied, "None of them have everything I want". "Is that possibly a metaphor, Mom?" she queried.

When we lived in Palo Alto I frequented a local, family-owned grocery store that always had what I wanted. When the pandemic hit and I wasn't going to the store anymore, I got my groceries delivered by a small local delivery service. They didn't have everything I wanted but that was to be expected in a pandemic (or so the thinking goes). Now that I can go to the store each week, I was hoping to find one similar to my favorite one in Palo Alto. No such luck. I haven't tried them all yet but I am getting close to running out of options that are a reasonable distance away. It turns out I might just have to make do with what I can find out here.

This focus on the perfect grocery store has coincided so perfectly with a sudden need to find some friends in my new community. We seem to be in this very interstitial place in the pandemic. We are still in a pandemic but many of us are now fully vaccinated. Are things opening up or are they not? Masks are still mandated here so walking down the street in my neighborhood no one can tell if I am smiling at them, and because we now have learned to keep some distance from each other, I can't tell anything about them without my glasses on. (Yes, those glasses that fog up every time I put on my mask.) The library isn't open yet so I can't join the public book groups or knitting circles. I decided to try out the Del Ray citizens group that meets monthly but they are still meeting on zoom. What is the new girl in town to do?

I finally found a new doctor for Thomas and myself, a chore I have been putting off for months. She asked me about exercise. I told her Pilates two days per week and walking two days per week. I said I wanted to walk everyday but I didn't have any friends yet (and before you think it, of course I know I can walk to a podcast!). She pointed to Thomas and she said "you can walk with him". I noticed she wasn't wearing a ring so maybe she doesn't know that spending 24 hours per day almost every day throughout a pandemic sometimes necessitates a walk with someone else. So today I donned the headphones and walked with Terry Gross and her guest.

All this is to say...now that the dust is settling ~ on the move(s), on the pandemic, on the completely new life ~ I am feeling it. It is what I talked about in a previous post. As life begins to get back to normal and we begin to feel the possibilities ahead, we will experience the grief and panic the pandemic rained down upon us. I am feeling the itch to find a community. I am feeling the loss of what I had in California, particularly because my good-byes were so shrouded in pandemic restrictions. I am understanding why people my age do not want to move. I spent so many years tending to those great friendships I have, and I have fewer of those (years) to cultivate the new ones. So I better get going.

I used to make my grocery list by having each aisle in my mind. I would always stop at the fish counter and look at what was fresh. I had favorite checkers who would chat with me as they scanned my groceries. Now I'm wandering the grocery store with a mask on and glasses off feeling bereft as I walk through aisles that are organized in a very different way. Lucky for me that the latest brain research shows that one of the factors preventing against dementia is having new and complex problem-solving experiences. Surely adjusting to missing meal ingredients and learning to picture new grocery aisles in my mind should fit the bill. Not to mention the experience of making new friends at 66 years old.

We hung our prints in our new home this week-end. This is in the entry to remind everyone where I left my heart.

The Dogwood tree in our yard ~ I had never seen a Dogwood tree before!