Coins on the counter

I heard awhile ago that when someone pays with real money, something registers in their brain more firmly and they feel the significance of the transaction more. It makes sense - when you have plastic to slide through a reader, it's much harder to watch those hypothetical dollars disappear, just like when you order a hamburger it's hard to imagine concretely the slaughtering and the packing and the trucking that got that meat onto your plate.

I have been known to leave my wallet at home - sometimes I take it out of my purse and stick it in another bag. We've all been there, standing there starkly vulnerable at the front of the long line at the post office, frantically feeling for something we know intuitively isn't there. We smile and shake our heads and say You know, this is just crazy, but I don't think I have my wallet! I, just, I'm so embarrassed! It seems to have happened to me at the grocery store more than anywhere else. Once, in my small midwestern college town, when I had just a few items sitting there on the register, waiting for me to hand over the green, I found I had no wallet and was two dollars short for the whole purchase. The girl behind me watched me struggle and then, in a gesture that I'll always remember, reached out and handed me the two dollars that I was missing. Don't worry about it, she said casually. It was just such a nice thing to do. Earlier this week I stopped for groceries at Trader Joe's, and found that, as I inched my way closer to the check-out counter, I was lucky enough to, firstly, realize that I had forgotten my wallet before getting to the front of the line, and secondly, have exactly $56.00 in cash. I had lots of groceries, but Trader Joe's is cheap, and I decided to gamble for it. I told the clerk and we watched the total jolt up slowly, 56 minus X and counting. It was kind of fun. Leave the oranges and scan the lettuce. Don't worry about the barbeque sauce unless there's enough wiggle room a the end. I went home with one dollar, almost all of my groceries - I left behind the oranges and the barbeque sauce, and a few stray cartons of yoghurt - and a sense that I had collaborated with the cashier on something somewhat interesting for the day. Most of all, I can tell you exactly how much I spent.

There's a little deli down the street from us, one of those places that seems small at first until you're looking for the low-sodium beef bouillon that you need for a recipe and -- to your utter surprise and amazement -- not only do they stock it, but they have three varieties for you to choose from. It's on the ground floor of a high-rise and shares its modest space with a diner. I hear tell (I have not witnessed this myself) that there's an old woman who goes shopping there on a regular basis and who always arrives at the check-out counter with too many food stuffs than she has the money for. I picture her standing at the counter, counting out the money and the change over again, one dollar, one penny at a time, touching her pockets, her jaw kneading up and down as she tries to figure out what happened to those other bills, or that other wad of coins she was sure she had. The cashier and the manager give each other a tired look before they begin to scan things back through the register again to subtract to the total. I suppose the management just gets used to it and starts to feel like she's a nuisance. The image makes my heart ache. The next person in line, I'm sure, will replace the click of pennies, counted out one by one on the counter, with the slick sound of swiping, plastic on plastic. Without even glancing at the sum, they'll assume that the money, all of it, is just there.

My mother was visiting

My mother was always a small woman (she could fit on the head of a pin, Louise used to say), and though she's changed as age sets in, her feet always seem the same. They are lovely, even as she gets older, and white and clean, but she prefers slippers to being barefoot, so I see only glimpses of them before she gets into bed, or when she slips quietly from her bedroom to the bathroom for a shower.

She couldn't help but finger through our kitchen again during this visit - a cramped kitchen, she's told us every time she's here - and she discovered the large plastic bowl of leftover turkey soup that we squirreled away in the freezer after Thanksgiving. She got it out and let it thaw, the clumsy mass shifting every so often in the sink, and then set it to simmer in our stock pot on the stove. She is always concerned about the leftovers. She bends down and rummages through the refrigerator with meticulous dexterity - she always has, ever since I can remember. She will throw together the rice left over from Tuesday night and the zucchini and tomato mix from Thursday for a weekend meal, while H and I go out on a Friday for a decent but pricey spread, only to discover the leftover casserole that we could have eaten months later, pushed to the back of the refrigerator and growing something wretched.

When I was small, she once dumped a plate of food on my head. I remember it - there were fruit chunks that splatted to the floor, and a dry sandwich flopping around. I was being picky about lunch, and in a very rare show of anger, she doused me with the closest weapon at hand, turning my food wholly against me. This was one time in thousands of lunches that she served us up - grilled cheeses, chicken salads, lunch meats, cans of kids' snacks that we requested, while she scoured the fridge and pulled out whatever was left for her own meal.

We ate the turkey soup together, with a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a side of bread with cheese, and I took the leftover leftovers to work for two more meals. There is still more than a serving left, but I can't bring myself to eat any more. I went out for a plastic-wrapped salad today and left the turkey in the fridge. I'll dump it down the drain tomorrow.

She gazed out the window with a pensive expression the night before she left, lamenting the fact that this might be the last time she ever visited us in Philadelphia. I hugged her and reminded her that there would be other places, other apartments with more luxurious kitchens to enjoy, and with refrigerators just the same to rummage through, slipper-footed, warmly and maternally at home and reminding me of the order of things, of how far I have to go.

The conference in-crowd

I was at a conference this weekend in a mid-western city, at a hotel out in the middle of a large parking lot, eating industrial-strength brownies that they set out as snacks and watching carefully as my skin dried out in the air-conditioned, windowless hotel rooms, one pore at a time. The only thing I forgot was my toothbrush, and I smeared the hotel's complimentary toothpaste on my finger and did the best I could.

It was a small conference, just over 300 people, and I was fortunate enough to know about 10 of those people and to meet, through my acquaintances, and get to know (enough for a 48-hour conference, that is) about 10 more, so in every session, at every cocktail hour and snack break, I was good to go with a ready-made and decent-sized posse. And a posse we were. All from the same graduate school, we chatted about the professors, the people we knew mutually, the political decisions of the university, the charming college town where we all spent at least two years of our lives. We smiled sweetly at the other people around us, and then proceeded to let them know, with a quick "Oh, how is Professor Humbledoo?" or "You know what I miss? That sweet little Indian restaurant..." that listen they were welcome to do, but participate in the conversation they could not. We were the in-crowd of the conference. The cool ones who met in someone's room after a session for a round of beers, who actually ventured out into the city for a night at a real restaurant, who skipped out on sessions to meet at the hotel bar and snickered as we texted each other during breaks. It felt like getting a little bit of school back.

I had to remember, after the conference, a large meeting I went to recently in the city. I was alone, and I knew no one. There was a breakfast spread with built-in time for chatting, and I hovered around the buffet table (being the free food vulture that I am) and took my time looking over the muffins, anxiously shifting my eyes to try and figure out who in the hell I would go stand next to after I finished loading my plate. When I finally drummed up the courage to step back from the table, I actually made eye-contact with a woman, smiled, and proceeded to do a full 360-degree turn around the room before coming to join her in her corner. Looking for someone better? Maybe. Just being my plain, socially-awkward self? Definitely. It's that initial meeting, plate-in-hand, that's so painful. That smile and "Hi, mind if I join you? My name's..." that feels so forced. I'm sure I'll find myself in that situation again in no time. When that happens, I'll remember my posse and pine for the days when I was in the in-crowd. It was a nice feeling.