Let me explain. B for work related reasons never felt he had time to "take a lunch". He was working. That meant real work. He worked with men of a certain age though, who were used to the whole leisurely lunch regime. The whole daily, out to lunch at a fine restaurant thing. It made him crazy. He just wanted to shove something down, in his own words, and get back to doing what he had to do.
Before I got engaged/married, I'd worked in offices where you had to take a "lunch hour" but I wasn't going to restaurants. I was never a huge lunch eater. I was a pb&j girl. Or when I worked in the city, I'd get a salad and eat by myself in Union Square just to get out of the office. I didn't really have friends at work because it was a bizarre place, so lunch wasn't a social thing. At least for me, it wasn't.
When I went to work with B, it was in retail. In retail, you don't know when someone is coming in. There is no lunch hour. You graze. You eat when you have a minute. Guaranteed, the second you put anything in your mouth, someone walks in anyway. You learn to eat fast. On the go.
I also have a mindset where the day is for doing. Maybe living in unpredictable-short-window-of-good-outdoor-weather-NJ has done this to me, my general inherent demeanor of impatience, and personal priority list also accounts for this. I'm just not taking time out of the day to be a lady who lunches. I do not want to sit somewhere eating, in the middle of the day. It also feels....heavy to me. I know that's backwards because in other countries they eat their big meal of the day at lunch and eat heavy at dinner but I don't know. I don't want to eat MEALS during the day.
Not that I have to explain this. These thoughts about lunches just stem from the entirely craptastic weather we've had here almost all of July, when it was supposed to be Summer of Tara. When I would typically be at the town pool for as many hours as possible, and I felt trapped in my house due to heavy clouds, stifling humidity and near torrential rain for weeks on end. Any day the sun has peeked through I've pretty much dropped everything to be at the pool. I mean literally. If that means, left kitchen cabinets open, blueberries open on the counter, and mail strewn about like someone ransacked our house, then so be it.
My friend sent her kid to sleepaway camp with mine for the second session. I imagined three weeks filled with pool days while her other kid was at day camp. However, she lined up a ton of lunches. She asked me if she could take me to lunch for my birthday. I was like, no, thanks, love ya, but I don't want to go lunching anywhere, I just want to casually hang at the pool. I'll graze some food throughout the day and I'm all good.
It got me thinking though, B and I always talk about the lunches and how we're probably the only people who aren't into lunching. My friend says she lunches in the summer because she teaches and can't ever do it during the school year. It's her way of catching up. I think for B and I, if we were to be psychoanalyzed or something, there's something confining about an organized lunch that we don't like.
Now that I'm sitting here ruminating on it, this is what I'm coming up with. Even if it's a friend and we really like the person. I don't know why, but walking with someone and catching up or sitting at the pool with them is so much more appealing to me than making a lunch date. I can't imagine being busy, stopping what I'm doing to go somewhere for lunch, then having to go back to what I was doing. For him, it's probably more about work and all the things he's not getting done. For me, that's probably true also. At least during winter months, when I'm doing work, I don't want to have to be pinned down to a time to eat when I'm probably not even hungry.
We don't do a family meal, of which I don't even really understand the concept. Well, I do understand why people do it. People don't want to be the whole short order cook thing. And eating together is a nice Leave it Beaver moment if you can do it. There are only three of us, so it's not like I'm doing six different meals or whatever. It's not even like I'm the responsible for everyone's food. We may eat all together, and we do sometimes. More like E and I, because we like to or have to eat early and we watch General Hospital. I just don't know what I want to eat until it's around dinnertime. E eats like five things. I can't imagine just choosing something for all three of us and being like- well, this is what we're eating, whether you want it or not, because I made it. I make and freeze things individually for E. I buy pre-made or frozen sides. He can put his own meal together from what's there. I have my own things to choose from. B doesn't like to eat as early as we do though, nor should he be forced to do so. He has his own foods he likes that E and I don't. So we're all eating, sometimes together, sometimes not, just also not the same things. Again- not wanting to be pinned down to something.
I also don't want to make lunch plans to go to a restaurant with you at one o'clock on a Tuesday because it feels like a huge commitment to just sit there. I guess when I'm walking and talking or sitting at the pool, I'm multitasking. I'm either getting exercise and socializing or tanning and socializing in. It's like talking on the phone- I don't want to do that either. I can't do anything else if I'm talking. I can watch TV and text, work and text. Sitting for lunch I think feels like a trap. B gets it. Luckily, no one is asking me to lunch. It just means I'm probably sitting alone at the pool until Kate and everyone else is done with their lunching.
My favorite days, hands down, are when I get to the pool at eleven, and different groups of my people come in and out all day, and next thing I know, it's five o'clock and we don't know where the time went. We've had great conversation and belly laughs and it's as B called it to friends last night, my version of still being on the college quad. Probably because I know, all too soon, we'll all be back in our houses, in the cold of our autumn, winter, spring, under gray skies, where hanging out isn't just organic. Where you have to make the plans to see the people. Where you can't just drive by the pool and come in, fall into the K-Hole when you only meant to stay for a few minutes, because you saw my car in the parking lot. For three seasons out of our year here, school, work, and our kids schedules keep us so busy it's hard to even see anyone ever. I know I don't see most people I know in town until Memorial Day weekend at the town pool.
Summer is that special time, in this special place, where no one has to make the plans.We all just sort of, end up here, and don't need a plan. And I guess that's what I like about it. This little window of unscheduled time in an overscheduled life. Where no one is responsible for the planning or execution of ANYTHING. And it's just such a short time we get, I'm willing to drop everything, at any given moment to grab even an hour of it.
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