50 years after college graduation
1965 After
graduation, I found a job in New York City. Nothing worth pursuing. I saw Jay,
we parted ways, we….
1966 got
married. He was already in the Army, and by September he was on his way to
Vietnam, with enough sense to get office work. I got another job while I lived
with my parents. We meet in Honolulu for a week – and his parents came too.
1967 Trip to
Japan to see Jay shortly after our 1st anniversary. In September,
Jay returns, I quit the job and start subbing in Jr High. Not so good with no
training! We share an interest in cooking, which becomes a passion.
1969, 1970,
1973, 1975 and 1979 – children arrive and bump the cooking passion to #2. We
move from apartment to apartment to house. I’m a happy housewife, mostly, and
gardener.
1977 We
become initiates of an Indian path which shapes and comforts me. I embrace
vegetarian eating and cooking with pleasure.
1978 As an
involved co-op member, I see what’s happening in the nascent natural food
products on the market, and Jay pushes me when I say I can do better (and at
lower cost). I develop a line of mixes
which we find a packer for, and a marketing direction. Manna Meals is born!
1981 The
business has reached a stage where we and our 2 sales people decide to become
partners in a natural food store in New Hampshire. We pack up, put the house on
the market, and (coincidentally) fulfill my longtime vision of living in a small
college town in New England, in sight of mountains. Foodstuffs in Keene NH is
the right place for us!
We are
excited to be there, doing that. The kids love the new freedom they have.
However, our inexperience leads to letting a partner overstock and overspend,
to the point where we had to buy him out. The other partner went, after a couple
years (and an egg throwing episode by his wife… but that’s not ‘about’ me).
I gradually
became more and more involved in running the business, and when we opened a 2nd
store, completely took on the management – after being bookkeeper, produce
manager, deli manager, grocery buyer, etc. Nice run up the ladder.
More years
like that: business growing and changing, a restaurant called Butternuts that
people still talk about, kids growing and changing. The words of our first
pediatrician, ‘Little children, little problems’ are proven true over and over.
1975, 1994,
1996, 1998 – I visit Israel, where my sister and her family live. First with 2
children, pregnant; then for the oldest son’s wedding; then for 1st
and 2nd grandchildren.
More of the
same, until 2010 when we retired. By this time, all of the kids were on their
own, populating the world with our grandchildren.
I returned
to cooking with a new sense of competence and freedom. I found a website where
some of my original recipes are posted (www.food52.com, as ‘susan g’). We took
short trips around New England, finding large and small museums with treasures
in towns with good restaurants. I read a lot in a very undisciplined way,
leaning and enjoying virtual travel through time and space. I take a variety of
courses, from the Great Courses company and on Coursera.
We live in
an even smaller town near Keene, in a house with beautiful trees that preclude
lawn or garden. At the price of recurring power outages, I love the sight of
the changing seasons through our windows and outside our doors.
My life has
not been one that has changed the world, but I know I have changed or improved
some people’s lives. We have become involved again in Judaism on the small
close scale of a Chavurah group. I am grateful for my ‘own’ in-house St Johnnie
who still has opinions and retains a perceptive view of what we read and hear,
and even if I don’t agree with him, he can provide the stimulus to open my
mind.
After 49
years of marriage, we are parents to 4, in-laws to 4 more, grandparents to 10,
and happy to have each other. Age has brought its intimations of a physical body yielding to stress. In the past
year I have had a mild stroke and Bell’s Palsy, as well as served as caregiver
to Jay during a year of cancer surgery and after his recent stroke. 50 years after our St John’s graduation, I am
grateful to the college for opening my mind, opening up worlds of ‘great’
thought in great books, and (I think) teaching me to listen with a critical
mind, and sort what is important from what is less so.
Written for a collection of personal essays, Class of 1965, St. John's College, Annapolis MD
Written for a collection of personal essays, Class of 1965, St. John's College, Annapolis MD