I got this email from one of the women on the high school reunion committee.  Maybe you’ve seen it but I hadn’t and it struck a chord with me.  I sent her a response, which I’ve included below.

The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee
           
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in
a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the two cups of
coffee. 
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.
 He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. 
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The
pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.  
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes”.  
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, ” I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. 
The golf balls are the important things in life. Your God, your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions: things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car. the sand is everything else: the small stuff. 
“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
 Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean house and fix the disposal. 

Take care  of the golf balls first; the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.” 

This is a timely message for me, “Tally.”  I just got home from Spanish, and I now realize that Sundays at the coffee shop with “May,” my Spanish buddy, are more relevant than I thought.  I use relevant because I have no, known need for the knowledge.  I don’t even take the class where I met her anymore, and we have nothing else in common.  She is two decades older and we are worlds apart, yet once a week for the last two years we have made time to study together, and I’ve kind of wondered why.

May has a pacemaker, she is seriously overweight, and she is diabetic.  She is on all kinds of medication, which leave her nauseous and unable to sleep much of the time.  Last summer she had to leave Spanish and go straight to the hospital when her doctor called, saying her test results were so bad they were going to do emergency sugery that night to unblock an artery. 

This Thursday they are going to reset her pacemaker (I think that’s what she said) which involves stopping her heart.  She told me this as we were saying good-bye, like maybe it was good-bye forever. 

“I’m going to be so pissed if you’re not here next week,” I said, finding the idea incomprehensible.  She looked a little taken aback, even though we share the same sense of humor. 

“I don’t mean to be morbid,” she said, “but I had a premonition today about dying.  I’ve always wanted ……”  — I can’t remember the song she said –”played at my funeral, and they played it at church today.” Then she said the next passage he quoted was about dying.  We speculated about death and how she might communicate with me from the other side, sort of in jest and sort of not.

I’ve been up since 4:30.  My sister (the crazy one who is back from Germany) asked me to drive her to her colonoscopy.  ”Sure,” I said, “what time?”  “You’d need to be here by 6:15,” she insisted.  Who makes their appts that early?  Crazy people, that’s who.

Once we checked in she was either in the bathroom or trying to get outside for one last smoke.  They weren’t having it.  I cringed as her voice took on this very high pitched,  almost falsetto tone with the woman in charge.  My sister was balking at having her picture taken and snippy about filling out the form.  Clearly she has issues with those in a positition of authority.  It’s what happens when people have too many brains and not enough power.

She is living with my mother so that invovled returning to the torture chamber, I mean home, I grew up in, having their version of a conversation.  Still high from the IV, my sister was barely coherent.  My once chillingly ruthless mother now quacks like a duck, something she must trot out to amuse those lucky few who find themselves sitting in the tweed chair across from her on the same red couch I grew up with.  Somehow the couch wears its years better which I don’t understand, as she looks much younger than 82. 

She explains there’s a lake where I used to catch salamanders in the stream behind our house and that a new family of ducks lives there now.  She and my sister relive the night the basement flooded when my brother had to come over at 1 am in the pouring rain and dig a French drain all the way from the back door I used to sneak out of to the ravine where the lake is.  It’s a slightly different version than the one my brother told but my mother and sister can’t agree on anything and try to outdo each other with the telling.

I’m slightly curious about these new voices I hear, not just with my sister and my mother but my ex-mother-in-law, too.  I was cutting up vegetables to roast and she was attempting to gather together all her tax stuff.  If I hadn’t been standing there I wouldn’t have recognized her voice.  It was almost a full octave higher and she used it in kind of a teasing manner, talking to herself about the horrors of taxes. 

I find these old women fascinating.  Both use their voice in a more child-like manner, experimenting with sounds for their own amusement.  Each used to be so sparing when it came to their feelings.  But all prestense is gone now.  

Listening to my sister blather in the car on the way home, my mother quacking, and my ex-mother-in-law sing-songing makes me nervous.  Terra firma was never my role.

Two times in the last month I have danced in my dreams.  There I can do all my old tricks with ease.  Even a week later I remember exactly what it felt like, something I never appreciated at the time. 

I was always trying to conquer the next level and be as good as my teacher.  I never took the time to enjoy a piece.  Once it was choreographed and performed I rarely did it again, always working up something new and more difficult.   

It’s why I used to love going to my blues bar.  It felt good to move again, even though I wasn’t doing much in the way of true bellydance.  But I quit going last summer and I am stiff as a board now.  My arms ache from sanding the walls and using the roller.  I think the dreams are my body’s cry for help.  Plus, I think maybe all this painting has whetted my creativity. 

I use those creative juices to cook.  All I do now is paint and cook.  I listen to the cooking shows while I paint and record the ones that have dishes I want to make. I’ve even written down some of the Barefoot Contessa’s recipes and that anorexic woman, Robin.  I like her food choices.   

Here’s what I concocted for breakfast.  I usually use red pepper but I am trying to stick with local ingredients.  I make this when I camp, saving half of my steak and a baked potato from the night before.  I wrap the potatoes in tin foil and throw them in the coals but these were from the oven. 

Pru’s Steak ‘n Hash

½ cooked steak

1 cooked baked potato

½ fennel bulb

½ large sweet onion

5 crimini mushrooms

2 cloves garlic

bunch of parsley

salt and pepper

Chop the onion and fennel the same size as you want the steak bits.  Heat a cast-iron pan and add olive oil.  Sauté the onion and fennel.  Chop  the mushrooms and potatoes to match.  Turn the onion and fennel and when the onions look soft push both to the side, making room for the mushrooms and potatoes.  If you run out of room, lay the rounded mushroom pieces up against the side of the pan.  Season with salt and pepper.  I skip the salt and use Penzey’s Florida seasoned pepper and their bouquet garni.  Dice small the garlic and parsley.  Smash the cloves to get the peel off and the juices released.  Right before the potatoes and mushrooms look ready, add the steak.  Then flip those three and add the garlic and parsley. 

What makes this work is to have enough oil in the pan and to let the potatoes get almost brown before you turn them.  I save half of this and next time have it for dinner.  I deglaze all those yummy bits with some boiling water, which heats up the potatoes faster.  I love New York steak but am trying to cut costs.  This is a great way to get three meals out of a large fillet.

I just read your comments and it made me so happy.  Because when I wrote about her I wasn’t.  I felt like something was missing.  This is what makes Xanga so precious to me, that I can get feedback from the likes of you guys, and I can practice trying to convey what I think I see. 

I still feel like I left some things out about the type of woman I think she is and what was involved in the look we exchanged.  Probably because I’m not real clear about it myself.  All I know is that from the minute I walked in the door of the church, and this is one huge church where they have the Greek Festival every year, I was aware of her.  And I suspect she was aware of me. 

Maybe she watches people like I do.  Maybe she gets people like I do.  I’m not sure what’s happening with me, but my radar is getting stronger.  I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or if it’s even reliable.  It’s why I wanted to stand up at the end of the room and just survey the couples at those long tables.  I didn’t even have to hear what they were saying; I could get a feeling about who they were and what kind of marriage they had.

It’s like the first time I saw Derek standing outside my front door.  I saw exactly who he turned out to be.  Not the guy I sat next to at the party.  Not the guy I talked to on the phone every day or the guy I sat next to at church.  No, I saw the dark side of him, the controlling side of him. 

I used to remember back to that day and wonder why on earth I thought he was like that.  I thought I must have imagined it.  And then he hit my dog.  But I digress.

Anyway, about the woman.  I keep wanting to think of a name for her, in case I ever use her as a character.  I’m not too hip on Greek names so I don’t know if Adriean is okay.  It suits her, though.  It seems classy like she was.  And precise.  And clean. 

But there was an earthiness to her.  Like I bet she has an amazing garden.  I could see her having an herb garden outside her kitchen.  But she probably wears special garden gloves and has her tools all neatly collected in a brightly colored bucket in the garage. 

She was probably the only other woman wearing a sweatshirt.  I mislead you with the cruise clothes.  But her’s was winter white with an obnoxious gold and red label.  Beautiful material and matching pants but, again, something you’d wear on a large boat.  Unless you didn’t want to don the bib, and you were looking for something attractive you could throw in the wash.

Not to go off on a tangent but it’s like the other night at the grocery store.  I needed cash and I wanted cookies so I went into a Safeway I never frequent.  I was standing in front of the cookies, and I so rarely buy them that I was perplexed.  I even put my glasses on.  A guy approaches and I look up.  I am always on the lookout.  It’s more of a glance, though, because I am on a mission and am late for this play I’m going to.  But I quickly do a double-take because this guy is tall.  He’s got a great hat on.  He looks smart and has cool glasses and when he sees me do a double-take his eyes don’t leave mine. He slows slightly and when he’s right in front of the cookies I was going to choose I take my eyes off his, and I look down to check his ring finger.  He seems taken, even though I don’t see a ring.  I missed my chance to say anything, and he’s too far down the isle but it was the most meaningful exchange I’ve had with a guy in a very long time.  For the very reason I’m writing about Adrienne.  I’m not sure how to spell her name.

The reason I doubt myself is that I sat across from a guy I’ll call Bob.  He and his wife who I never even really noticed until I was halfway through my whole crab, the wife that is, turned out to be hilarious.  Her I got but boy did I call him wrong.  He was bald, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans and probably tennis shoes and just looked boring.  He was unattractive and never spoke a word until my brother started talking about his friend whose wife shells all the crab for him and their two boys. 

Pretty soon Bob starts talking and he’s a riot.  He’s droll, and his timing is perfect.  Then we move onto his achilles tendon operation, since my brother had his wrist in a brace because he broke it so he and Bob swapped rehab stories.  Turns out Bob is really into his body which I never in a million years would have guessed.  So here is a guy I totally didn’t read right.  I guess I have selective insight.