First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

What I learned as a Waitress

I used to work at a restaurant revered in San Francisco food circles. I loved being a waiter. (Waitress was not a word we used.) The shifts were short, the crowds lively, the cash plentiful. My middle class parents pouted, envisioning me in a white-collar job instead of one demanding an apron. But in this restaurant, waiters held court, and I grew sophisticated because it was required of me. Continue reading »

Are There Happy Foods?

I had a gooey chocolate chip cookie for breakfast today. It’s one of my happy foods, as is garlic pizza, baked potatoes with sour cream, and my number one happy food, Spaghetti with Bolognese Meat Sauce. Continue reading »

Bitter: Table for One? Not Tonight

–from “Observations of a Spinster,” New York Times, 1905

I think it should be better if my family would openly admit that they consider me a disgrace. I could combat that, but the implied disapproval conveyed in a hundred unconscious ways gets upon my nerves. There is my married sister, for instance. No one ever pays attention to her little spasms of temper. But when I indulge in a little elemental behavior of a similar sort it’s a very different thing. More than once I have surprised my loved ones exchanging a long-suffering aggrieved look-and I do not need to go to a lexicon to interpret it. It means, “What a crank Bertha is getting to be!

A few years ago after a nasty breakup, a friend living in San Francisco’s Mission District, bought a BMW. This was big news. San Franciscans don’t care much for prestige cars and a BMW is considered a little vulgar. In his new car, B– was meticulous about his driving habits. At a four way stop, he would wait patiently until everyone drove through, even when he arrived first. He switched lanes only after exhaustively checking to make sure no one would feel cut off. He relinquished parking spots if there was the slightest competition. B– didn’t want to feed the conventional wisdom that he was a jerk and a showoff. BMW drivers in San Francisco are not given the benefit of the doubt.

Up the hill, two women whom I admire, who are politically and socially sophisticated just assume their daughters will marry. One evening, we fold napkins together, and set them out on the long oak table for dinner. They banter about the kind of men their daughters will end up with. “He’ll be an artist with no money, but she’ll insist on a big wedding,” one says with nervous laughter. “I’m sure Kate will marry a social worker,” the other responds, “and they’ll end up living in Guatemala.”

Inside my head, a voice stirs: “Don’t you know, not everyone marries?” But I don’t say it out loud because we’re having a pleasant time, and I’m afraid to get branded as bitter. I imagine their retort. “Just because it didn’t work out for you, doesn’t mean it won’t happen to everyone else.” I can’t bear to hear that, not tonight, and I keep my mouth shut.

Women Who Knew How to Rough It

These cowgirls–Ben Kirnan, Prairie Rose, Mable Strickland, Princis Mohawk, Ruth Roach, Kittie Canutt and Prairie Little–were well-known participants in rodeo events in Oregon. (I’ll take those boots third from the right.) Photographed in 1921 by Ralph Russell Doubleday.

I {Heart} My Wife

I {Heart} My Wife
by Darlyn Finch from her book Red Wax Rose

“I {Heart} My Wife”
the bumper sticker read
in the window of the pickup truck
ahead of me at the red light,
and I burst into tears
for no particular reason
I could explain
to the crossing guard on the corner
or even to the man driving the truck,
who looked quite ordinary,
and did not realize
those four happy words
could rip a woman’s heart out
under certain circumstances,
when she’s one man’s abscessed tooth,
and another’s dirty little secret.

Then I stopped to wonder,
as I blew my nose
and wiped my eyes,
whether the man had bought the bumper sticker
at all, or if his wife had perhaps
stuck it there,
in the window behind his head,
as a message to women like me,
whom she surely knows are sitting
at every red light
in every town,
wishing they could one day be
someone’s
very best thing.

94 Reasons the Man I’m Dating Isn’t Right For Me

(I’m trying to get to 100. PLEASE CHIME IN!)

He’s too young
He’s too old
He’s too bulky
He doesn’t have enough hair
He has a ponytail
He doesn’t care about music
He doesn’t have finesse
His car doesn’t have air conditioning
His apartment is filthy
He doesn’t make enough money
He’s too close with his mother
He’s too close with his ex-wife
He’s not in touch with his family
He doesn’t like to talk     Continue reading »

What Would You Do with a Husband for a Day?

MUT’A or temporary marriages were designed to allow sexual outlets for men and women under certain circumstances, without subjecting them to the otherwise harsh penalties of nonmarital sex. MUT’A was condemned by Sunni Muslims, but accepted by Shiites and by Babylonian Jews, who allowed a sage entering a new town to request a “wife for a day.”              —from “Marriage, a History” by Stephanie Coontz

Continue reading »

A New Recipe from Debby Maugans, author of Small Batch Baking

I began dreaming about small batches of rich desserts when I was in college.  Baking soothes me, so I often relieved myself of stress by whipping something up. The completion of that task – baking fudgy brownies or an old-fashioned Southern layer cake with coconut frosting– was a welcome distraction from what I really should have been doing – studying, for example.  But I was not happy when that over-indulgence was there to tempt me in the morning. Continue reading »

Surprising Notions about Marriage

Here are a few nuggets from Marriage, a History, the wonderfully written and encyclopedic book by Stephanie Coontz.

Among the Mbuti Pygmies of the Congo, a couple is considered married if they have lived together for two seasons. 

In small scale societies, if a man and a woman are seen eating together alone, they are considered married.

The idea that in prehistoric times a man would spend his life hunting only for the benefit of his own wife and children, who were dependent solely upon his hunting prowess for survival, is simply a project of 1950s marital norms onto the past. The male/female pair was a good way to organize sexual companionship, share child rearing, and divide daily work. A man who was a skilled hunter might have been an attractive mate, as would have been a woman who was skilled at foraging or making cooking implements, but marrying a good hunter was not the main way that a woman and her child got access to food and protection.

Says, historian John Modell of the 1950s, “the ‘sorting’ of women into the marriageable and the future spinsters occurred early and vigorously.” The small, and suspect, minority of women who did not marry at the same age as their peers had less chance of ever getting married than their counterparts a hundred years earlier. They were what the Japanese called Christmas cake, likely to stay on the shelf after the twenty-fifth.

Can Friendship Save your Life?

Last week, I met with an astrologer. What a relief to learn that on the day I was born, Venus was in retrograde in my seventh house, the one governing marriage and partnership. Continue reading »