Page 41 of Nothing But It All
“Absolutely.” She hands me her notepad. “Just jot down what you want.”
I make quick work of listing what we will need to get through the next week. Then I take my bill and hand her my credit card.
“What are you going to do today?” she asks, fighting with the credit card machine. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“I’m going to clean Harvey’s cabin first. Then I might go down to the lake. I’m not sure.”I’m totally sure. I’ll be avoiding Jack.
“Oh, is Harvey here too?”
Her voice raises as high as her brows. It makes me giggle.
“Now, Mrs. Shaw. Do I sense a little interest there?”
She pats the side of her head. “I might have to spruce myself up a little if he’s around. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I thought you were into beta males. You know Harvey is ... not that.”
“I was into marrying a beta male, honey. Things change as you get older—tastes, experiences, desired outcomes.”
This is not the conversation I expected to have today—least of all with Mrs. Shaw and her corncob-printed sundress.What is happening to my life?
“I’m not looking for someone to spend sixty years with. Heck, I won’t bealivein sixty years,” she says, her eyes twinkling. “You get to be my age, Lauren, and you realize the preciousness of time. You just go after what you want because there’s not a day to waste.”
I pick up the cantaloupe again and weigh it in my palm.
Her words settle on my soul. I might not be in the twilight of my life just yet, but I understand exactly what she means.
“What’s going on, honey?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I set the fruit on top of the others. “I was just thinking about how I get what you’re saying about appreciating time. That’s been a big thing for me recently.”
She places a bundle of tomatoes in the last bag and watches me curiously. But instead of elaborating, I wander around the front of the store.
My face is hot and my heart beats hard. The only person I’ve talked about this with is Billie. It’s a relief to open the topic with Mrs. Shaw, but it also feels like I’m betraying my family.
“Do you want to know something funny?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“Ava and I pulled out a bunch of old VHS tapes from years ago. She’d never seen one before and thought it was the neatest thing sheever did see.” She chuckles. “Anyway, we sat down and watched some of them—old birthdays and family reunions, that sort of thing. And it made me think about how much I’ve changed over the years. I was this little chaste thing when I married Frank, when I was barely eighteen. Then, in my twenties, I started having babies. I was really a baby myself. Oh, those twenties were so hard.”
“I can relate.”
“I’m sure you can.” She smiles. “But then came my thirties—my sexual awakening. The kids were out of diapers and could wake up and not run into the road anymore, and I had a minute to take a breath. Then came my forties. That was probably my favorite decade. The hardest in some ways because the kids moved out, and it was just Frank and me at home, really for the first time since we’d been married. It was scary having all that time on my hands but also powerful. And that’s what I found in my fifties.My power.And, also, my purpose.”
“Can I borrow some of that knowledge? Please?”
She hands me my card. “You’ll find yours. I promise. And one day, you’ll be my age and you’ll look back on all the decades of your life—the easy ones, the hard ones, too—and you’ll realize it was just a beautiful journey. You weren’t meant to be the young, beautiful version of yourself with purpose and power at the same time. Can you imagine that mess?”
I laugh.
“Really, Lauren, you’re the same person the whole time. Just the same person with different experiences. You weren’t born to stay static. That was never the plan.”
I slide my card in my pocket and lift the bags off the counter. A thought prickles the back of my brain.
“Did Frank change like that, Mrs. Shaw?”
Her smile softens. “Of course he did, honey. He was a human being.”
