I am trying to explain (understand) how an academic nerd like me became a wife and made friends with food—well, not just food—with a new life as cook cleaner planner housewife homemaker. I had a few lessons to learn.

I was irresponsible at first. I didn’t feel like cooking dinner every night. I didn’t like cleaning up after dinner. My husband used to lie down after dinner and leave me with the dishes. I didn’t want to do dishes, I wanted be with him and talk. Monday morning came too soon.

I remember one Monday morning, early in my apprenticeship, my neighbour across the hall rang the doorbell, seeking coffee and conversation. She took one look at the stacks of dishes waiting to be washed and said “Wow, that must have been some party!”

I tried to tell her that we hadn’t had a party, not even a single guest, that the pile was mine and mine alone, because i didn’t like doing dishes. She was shocked. She didn’t offer to help and she didn’t stay for coffee.

It was noon by the time I finished and I had to think of something for dinner.

You’re going to tell me I was spoiled and lazy. You’re absolutely right. I’m only remembering it clearly now because I have been in lockdown for so long that I have become lazy again and self-indulgent.

Why am I telling you all this?

“We know what we are but know not what we may be.”

I wasn’t going through an emotional mental breakdown like Ophelia but I was going through a radical complete change of lifestyle.

Like now.

I was married 70 years ago today. I was widowed 20 years after we married. So no one remembers but me. That’s okay.

I have very warm memories and Bill still gets a laugh when I quote one of. his witticisms. I don’t give the source. His humour is on the nose, as they say, Do they still say that??

Well, I’m still.here. Right now I’ve been too busy with an event or obstacle to deal with every day. I am developing bad habits I never used to have—every day. My timetable is out of-sync—again.

I went straight from school to marriage. My wedding was just seventeen days after my convocation with a Master’s degree in English. (Major in twentieth-century poetry; Minor in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse.) I didn’t know how to boil eggs. I didn’t have a job. I went straight from studying to playing solitaire every afternoon waiting for my new husband to return from work OR (this is the hard part) learning how to plan and cook dinner, Every night. It was so inexorable.

I didn’t know what I was doing or how to do it. Well, I could read and I could follow directions—slowly. I had all the time in the world. I didn’t have deadlines or exams, though there was a test every night at dinnertime. But I had a very forgiving examiner. He even forgave me the night I served sardines on toast.for dinner. I wasn’t t pregnant—not for two years—I just couldn’t think of anything else.

I am awash with memory and I haven’t even gotten to the point of this trip.

I’ll come back.

Tomorrow