With All Due Respect

As long as I can stay in bed in the morning as long as I wish, and as long as I can go to bed at night as early as I wish, I am content. It’s when people, younger than me but not by much, question my behavior that I get cranky. With all due respect, who are they to question what I do? Or what’s best for me? I didn’t know for myself until recently.

Since I retired 10 years ago, I’ve had the good fortune of becoming a board member of my building co-op and my local Democratic Club. My time as a member of both boards has turned out to be productive and rewarding, and has led to the development of several close friendships. Then, too, I’ve discovered that I love to write, an exercise that has taken me time to enjoy doing and has kept me in a memoir writing class for over six years.

But now that’s not what I’m being questioned about. Since Richard died a year ago, I get asked—by many—how I am doing, especially what I do with my time at home, in between volunteering and writing. When I tell them, I get a weird look…like when I tell them how much time I spend in bed, which has become one of my greatest pleasures.  After a night’s sleep of 9-10 hours, I stay in bed to have breakfast, play Words with Friends, make daily phone calls, check my emails, and pay some bills. By then, it’s around 10:00am, and I’m ready to start my day. By 5:00pm, I’m back home from whatever I’ve gone out to do, make some dinner, and bring it to bed while I watch MSNOW, check more emails, pay some bills, and do some writing. There I stay, except for the occasional evening meetings, until the next morning. In effect, my bed has become my desk, where I do most of my work. I figure if Edith Wharton and Winston Churchill did it, so can I.

Another recent habit of mine that brings a derogatory look is my use of Facebook, another recent pleasure of mine. What’s on Facebook worth watching, I get asked? Well, for one thing, Facebook makes me smile.

I watch excerpts from some of my favorite old movies and TV shows, like….

Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell in the Broadway Melody of 1940;

Doris Day and Gene Nelson in the lullaby of Broadway in 1951;

Woody Allen’s first public appearance on the Steve Allen Show in 1963; and

Dick Cavett interviewing Groucho Marx in 1969.

They take me back to what I grew up with and enjoy remembering.

Also, I use Facebook as a vehicle for the stories that I write for class. That, however, usually brings a more approving look.

When it comes to my daily meals, the quizzical look comes back. I prefer 4-5 small meals a day, rather than three large ones, and usually have them in bed, while reading, writing, watching the news, Antiques Roadshow, PBS, or another Netflix episode. No behavioral expert will recommend multi-doing like this, but it works for me.

I also prefer early dinners, as early as 4:30 or 5:00, and the simpler the better. Tuna salads, frittatas, pasta primavera, chicken wings or salmon steaks, with a small green salad on the side. Yogurt with honey, or apple with peanut butter, for dessert. I don’t get hungry later in the evening, probably because I go to bed so early, which is another reason I get questioning looks. When I say earlier, I mean 8:00 or 8:30; maybe 7:30 if I’ve been on the go all afternoon. I don’t necessarily fall asleep right away; sometimes it’s comforting just to close my eyes for an hour or so and reflect on the day. Most often, I’m asleep by 9:00.

How can you stay in bed so long? Or sleep so long? I keep being asked, as recently as yesterday. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether I’m being criticized or envied. But my answer is always the same. “I don’t mean to sound simple—or superior—but I’ve learned to listen to my body instead of trying to change it. It tells me what to do. I never really listened until I lived alone, and I’ve never lived alone until now.”

With all due respect.