Saturdays with Seniors: Guest post by Ann Parrilli

I am pleased to introduce Ann Parrilli as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. Ann joined our “Me, Myself and I” class at the Chicago Cultural Center this past year and continues writing — and reading — essays while that class meets via Zoom.

Born and raised in Chicago, Ann moved to San Francisco right after college with two suitcases and a radio and stayed for eleven years. After leaving the West Coast she spent 6 months in Rome and one year in New York City before finally returning to Chicago. Here she is with an essay many of us can relate to.

The World inside out

by Ann Parrilli

I seem to have lost all means of measuring these days. It used to be I’d know exactly what time it was without having to look at my watch. Now I’m constantly surprised by where I am in relation to Greenwich Mean Time. Days slide into one another, and my list of things-I-want-to-accomplish today grows longer instead of shrinking.

My organizational skills have morphed from the precision of an erector set to a dish of melting ice cream. I’ve had to give up on quaint things like instinct and finally make a physical checklist of things I need to have in hand when I exit my house. Besides the usual suspects (sun glasses, money, Kleenex, sun screen, cough drops and phone) I now have to remember hand sanitizer and a face mask. Oh, and add wipes to that list, too, for all door handles I touch leaving and re-entering my building.

I’m glad no one is here to see the contents of my refrigerator. Once in the grocery store, I am held captive by visions of an impending collapse of the food-supply chain. I throw things into my cart that will sustain me through the apocalypse, somehow forgetting that I live alone and am a pretty light eater to begin with. The colorful vegetables that looked so inviting in the store regard me with reproach every time I open the fridge door. I’ll get around to making that daily salad, I promise myself. But then suddenly it’s two o’clock and I haven’t yet taken my bounty of produce out of the fridge to warm up to room temperature. And who wants to eat a cold salad? Too late for today, I say as I reach for peanut butter and a slice of bread. My freezer is stocked with home made dishes I’m saving for when fights break out in the grocery store.

I can’t remember the day I last gave the apartment a good cleaning, but the afternoon sun discloses dust particles on every surface outside of the kitchen counters, which, yes, I wipe regularly.

Okay, already, I’m busted, I get it. I add “dusting” to my list of things to get done. Maybe someday I will actually put on my pearls and do a June Cleaver imitation, vacuum and dust cloth in tow.

For some reason my car seems to be an oasis of calm in all this disarray. Contained in my own little world with no schedule to adhere to, I enjoy a leisurely drive to the north suburbs. The soft green of an awakening spring soothes my ragged soul. I put aside the imperative of exercise and give into the soft underbelly of comfort and ease. The radio is off limits. I crack the window to hear my avian friends celebrating life. It’s back to the 50’s, when the Sunday drive was a family event. And, ecology suspended for now, it feels just right.