Anyway, over the weekend Hil and I didn't have a lot to do. So yesterday we spent four hours or so tramping around the Weather City civic center, looking at all the cool buildings and the sculpture in the parks and generally behaving like tourists. Hil had had the foresight to bring a camera, so she snapped a lot of pictures ... "to show my girls when I get home." (She can't be that old, but she's already a divorced mother of two little girls, aged ... ummm, 9 and 7, I think. That's about nine years younger than my boys, but she has to be more like twenty years younger than I am if I have to hazard a guess.)
One thing that made the outing a little interesting: I was acutely aware that we were walking side by side, talking to each other and pointing out the sights, and not holding hands. Once in a while our hands would bump by accident, and we would both pull them up out of the way to make sure it didn't look like it was on purpose. OK, it sounds like a trivial thing to notice, but I did notice it ... maybe just because (as I mentioned before) I'm a boy and she's a girl. What is more, I began watching other couples ... or wait, let me say "other male-female pairs" since we're not a "couple". I saw a few who were not holding hands, but most were. We were definitely in the minority.
But I was going to talk about food. We had met for breakfast at the hotel buffet, then stopped for lunch when we were both hot and tired. When we finally got back to the hotel we both wanted to rest up a bit and agreed to meet at 8:00 for dinner.
But there was no way I was going to be hungry by 8:00. It was a big breakfast and a big lunch, and I wasn't actually sure I wanted any dinner at all. Maybe just a salad. But this began to make me feel awkward. I didn't want to go out and eat ... but I couldn't very well go out and not eat ... and I felt a little funny about just not joining her at all. What to do? In the end I texted her that I was still tired from walking all over town, so she should go ahead without me. And I figured that -- who knows? -- maybe Sunday would take care of itself somehow.
Sunday (today) she wanted to go shopping at an outlet mall. Hil says she always loves coming to America because "everything is so cheap!" (Isn't this what we used to say about going abroad, a generation ago? Well, and the euro is strong right now.) Since she isn't comfortable driving abroad I agreed to take her to the mall; I grabbed a book and found a bench where I could sit and read ... and watch her bags as she gradually accumulated more and more shoes to take back home. I'm sure I looked just like any of the other husbands who had been dragged along while their wives spent Sunday shopping.
After a few hours she was ready for lunch. I wasn't, but hell -- lunch doesn't have to be a lot of food. We found a food court where I got a slice of pizza and a drink.
I spent a couple hours this afternoon sleeping. In general I think I've been drinking too much coffee lately, so I deliberately didn't have much this morning and I had a non-caffeinated drink at lunch. By the time we got back to the hotel I was plainly ready for a nap. But of course this meant that when dinner-time rolled around, I hadn't done anything to burn off my pizza.
We went to a place near the hotel, where I got a salad and a little sushi. Good enough, and not too heavy. Tomorrow is Monday, and we'll meet for breakfast before heading back to the office. But the thing that puzzles me is, ... Why do I feel awkward (or even embarrassed) about not feeling hungry? What is it that makes this a big deal for me? Is it just that I'm overly-obsessed with myself?
I don't know where I'm going with this, so let me just break it down as I type. Maybe I'll come up with something and maybe not:
- Eating together is a social activity, as much as -- or more than -- it is a nutritional one.
- I could imagine a case where we were working together but nothing more: where we stayed in different hotels, spent all our off-duty time doing different things, and so on.
- But that's not where we are. We are in the same hotel (different rooms!), we rented one car instead of two, and we are spending some (but not all) of our leisure time together. It is as if we are more than strictly colleagues, but clearly we are not romantically involved. Are we friends? Or "business-friends", whatever that might mean?
- When we talk together, often it is about work, or about some neutral topic like our respective experience of international travel. But we also tell stories about our kids. We have told a few stories about our divorces. She's told me that her husband spent all his time on the Internet and only went to bed at 4:00 in the morning, effectively ignoring their daughters; also that she decided to leave when she realized she loved leaving for work and hated having to go home again ... except that she missed the girls. I've told her ... well, gosh, not as much as I've told you because I haven't had the time. But I've mentioned that both boys are in boarding school (and that Son 1 is going to college in September); that Wife is crazy; and that I deliberately waited until Son 2 had moved out of the house before telling Wife that I wanted out.
- So somehow it seems fitting that we eat together. I felt a little embarrassed and awkward Saturday suggesting we not.
- But I also feel awkward if I don't eat much. Why? I feel like I am calling attention to myself if I eat less than the other person at the table ... especially because I often eat kind of fast and therefore run the risk of being done long before the other person.
- What's more, I feel like I am inviting a question: "Why aren't you eating more?" Maybe it's just my father who asks questions like that, but I don't want to have to answer. I feel like the next moves in the conversation will be: "Are you on a diet? Are you a vegetarian? Are you allergic to this or that food?" And each of these questions sounds to me like it really means, "Am I (the questioner) under some kind of obligation towards your food, to make sure that it's OK for you? To make sure we go to restaurants that are suitable for you? To make sure that I don't suggest things that are wrong for you?"
- The fact is that I don't want to say anything about my eating that sounds permanent, that sounds like a statement of principle. So for example ...
- Maybe I recognize that it would be good for my health, well-being, and self-approval if I could eat a little less than I have been eating lately; maybe I would like to pull my belt in by one notch to where it was a few months ago before I had to let it out recently; but No, I'm not on a diet! Why not?
- I associate dieting with vanity, and don't want to admit to being vain. (But really, am I somehow not vain?)
- I associate dieting with failure, and don't want to set myself up for failure. (But really, do all dieters fail?)
- If I say I'm on a diet, then I have constrained my future freedom of action because other people will be able to watch me and think, "Hosea shouldn't be eating that." (But really, does it matter so much what other people think? And if it does, isn't that actually salutary?)
- And if I say I'm on a diet, then I risk making other people feel self-conscious in case they are not dieting. I risk making people feel that I condemn them if they aren't as abstemious as I am.
- Maybe I recognize that a man who is not thin and who is in his fifties should be careful about cholesterol and heavy animal fats; and maybe I feel ethical compunctions (albeit inchoate and inconsistent ones) about the cruelty with which the food industry treats animals who are destined for our tables; but No, I'm not (exactly) a vegetarian. Why not?
- Some vegetarians are self-righteous prigs, and I don't want people to think I'm one of them. (But really, is that all vegetarians, or even a majority? Vegetariansim is pretty mainstream these days.)
- In principle I don't mind the idea of eating meat if it is humanely raised and humanely killed. (But I don't want to have to talk about it long enough to explain this codicil, and I should still be careful for health reasons.)
- Sometimes it's inconvenient to choose a vegetarian alternative, or I'm just feeling lazy, or there's some other reason that I don't feel like choosing the vegetarian option right now even though most of the time these days that's what I truly feel like eating; but in any event, if I say I'm a vegetarian, then I have constrained my future freedom of action because other people will be able to watch me and think, "Hosea shouldn't be eating that." (But really, does it matter so much what other people think? And if it does, isn't that actually salutary?)
- And if I say I'm a vegetarian, then I risk making other people feel self-conscious in case they are not vegetarians. I risk making people feel that I condemn them if they aren't as abstemious as I am.
That's a whole passel of reasons, most of which are silly or stupid. The last one in each of the last two sections -- the part about not wanting to make people self-conscious -- is interesting. When I started this post -- two hours ago (but I let myself get seriously distracted several times throughout writing it) -- that's the one I wanted to explore. Is it a real reason, or an excuse? If it's an excuse, what is hiding behind it? And if it is real, how did I (or we, as a society) get to a place where saying honestly that I'm not all that hungry might make somebody else self-conscious? Because on the surface that doesn't make much sense.
But I don't have any good, obvious answers for those questions. And I've taken so long getting to this point that I should probably sign off and go to bed. Sneaky of me to wind up before I have to do any real work, ain't it?
Why should something simple like food be so complicated?
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