A friend of mine, S, who I met through my B's work... she used to work in the same company he works at now... is currently working at Mansfield Oil, and they celebrated their 50th anniversary Tuesday night.  She told me about it a few weeks ago, and said she'd like to take me (we jokingly referred to it as me being her "date") as her husband doesn't like to go to things like that... well, he doesn't go many places with her at all actually.  Being that it was projected to be a kind of "posh" event, and somewhat political as well, he really had no desire to go.  I accepted her invitation, happily.

We found out before the event that Colon Powel was going to be the guest speaker, and that Wayne Newton was going to be performing a concert afterward.  There were meetings held at her company to prepare the employees as to the proper etiquette… and to discuss the evening and its events and the order of the events… unfortunately my friend S wasn’t there for the briefing.

She found out the important stuff afterward though… no photographing either guest during their time on stage.  First would be a speech by the president of their company, then the speech by Colon Powel.  This would be followed by dinner (they told her the menu consisted of a salad, followed by filet mignon, and for desert, lime cheesecake.  After dinner Wayne Newton would perform for about an hour and a half.

She picked me up at about 5:30 and we hustled over to the Riverside Academy which is where the events were to take place.  I’d been there before with B… his company used to do the floors there… and there are a LOT of floors there… all marble.  The place resembles a castle… all brick on the outside and parapets along the roof line.  The grounds are impeccably kept.  Rock retaining walls are topped with flowering dogwoods and flower beds, and the lawns are vibrant green all year long.

I have to say that she looked lovely in a nice pair of black slacks and a black dressy sleeveless top with an embroidered design on it.  She had her makeup done well, soft natural shades, and her hair, which is cut short, was upswept and a little curled on top.  I was gorgeous too... or so B said.  I had my hair, which is long, all curly down my back and pulled up and a little back from my face in the front (I must have used a whole bottle of hair spray... it's been ages since I've done anything with my hair other than just put a clip in it to hold it off my face and just leave it down).  I wore my new (well, relatively new) white frilly blouse which is a sheer overshirt with wide sleeves at the wrists and a flowy flounce around the neckline and down to a "V" at the cleavage and down the front.  There's a sleeveless white shift that goes under it which makes it a little sexy but completely modest.  I had my flowy black pants on and my sheer Cinderella's glass slipper looking heels on.  I felt good getting dressed up to go out... it's been a while. 

We were shuttled from our parking space up three other levels of parking spaces… terraced levels of green lawns and winding roads between them… to the top level where we were let off at the door of the auditorium.  It’s more like a theater with a large stage at one end and rising from floor level are three sections of seats spreading outward and up.  There’s a balcony as well, with a terrific view of the stage, and this is where we were seated because we’d arrived late.

We timed it perfectly though as just as we were seated they announced Colon Powel (and we stood to clap with everyone else).  His speech was inspiring and educational.  He has a wonderful sense of humor, and the issues he discussed were some that are very close to my heart.

Mr. Powel spoke about his service in the army, and then his service to our government while under President Reagan.  He spoke of his visits to other countries and his encounters with various dignitaries and foreign ministers and presidents… including Gorbechev prior to the taking down of the Berlin wall and subsequent “peace”.  His roles were varied, though his mission was always the same… protect the United States.

He was cute the way he infused humor into the evening.  He had the audience eating out of his hand.  He’s 70 years old now, and he’s retired from the army, from the government, and though he’s supposed to be retired now, he realized (he said) after a very short time, that he and his wife were not ready for him to be at home all the time, so he’s active in motivational and political public speaking.

He’s very concerned about the situation over in Iran and Iraq.  He said that although the administration doesn’t like him to call it this, what is happening over there now is a civil war… not between two factions, but between three (I couldn’t remember the names of them… sorry).  He says although we really need to allow them to have their civil war and figure it out for themselves, we’d be leaving them at the mercy of another bad government, or the control of the drug lords.  He says we don’t need to send any more troops there… we need to structure the “war effort” to properly educate and guide the people to a peaceful resolution and help them to form a productive government that will guide it’s people to prosperity.

He spoke of his visits to other countries and his reviews of their educational systems and how much better many of them are compared to ours here in the United States.  One example he gave was of China importing a whole university (he didn’t say which) to teach their students.  There is no comparison with what other countries spend on education and what we spend on it.  He said we need to be more attentive to the education our youth is getting… that we are way behind.

He said he’s looked at the numbers and the studies and can compare the education of second graders in this country with the prison population and they directly correlate.  I think that’s amazing… and very sad.

That’s an issue that really bothers me… has for a very long time.  It’s annoying that there are actors and actresses, and sports persons making millions of dollars a year and a teacher, even a university teacher, the people forming the minds of the future generations, are making pathetic salaries.  How are we supposed to attract the best of the crop and encourage them to become teachers if they can’t get decent salaries?  What about an incentive program?  What if teachers made a bonus at the end of the year based on their percentage of students who passed, or better yet, on the percentage of students who’s grades were A’s?  Or how about getting a bonus for the students who make the most drastic improvement from one year to the next?  Teachers would be encouraged to reach out to students on a whole other level.

Well, anyway, his speech was amazing and I was really glad we got to go.  Dinner was good… very fancy and sparkly, and the food was flavorful and cooked to perfection.  There were about 700 guests, and the banquet hall was filled to capacity.  The conversation was interesting as the people who ended up sitting next to S and I (we’d started our own table because she knew very few people and I knew no one) were very nice couples who had actually grown up with the President of Mansfield Oil.

Wayne Newton’s show was very good.  His musicians are amazing, and he has a backup singer, a woman, who he introduced as the gospel singer voted top in the country (sorry, I don’t remember her name).  She sang a song and her voice was very strong and clear, and as she was singing to a bunch of southern Baptists (the majority), she went over VERY well… people actually gave her a standing ovation.

I have to say, and I’m sorry for those of you who love him (my B included), but Wayne’s performance, although very animated and energetic, was not so great.  Maybe he had a cold or maybe he was just not in the mood or something, but his voice… goodness!  I was very disappointed.  B had told me that he had a wonderful voice… ummmm… not that night he didn’t.  He didn’t know some of the words of the songs, he was off key quite often, and I think there must have been something wrong with his microphone because he faded in and out and half the time you could barely hear him through the band.

I have to give him credit in the musical instrument playing though.  He played the piano and was pretty good… then he played the guitar (a couple of different ones) and he was really good there, and then he played the violin… WOW… he was amazing at that one!  He played the banjo too, but I thought one of his other musicians was way better at that.

S and I left just before he did his encores so she could avoid the rush at the end.  It was a very pleasant evening, and when I got home I spilled over with information… I had to share it with B.  I had recorded it all on my voice activated recorder, but for some reason, it didn’t take… you can’t hear Colon Powel hardly at all, and certainly can’t understand what’s being said, and the concert sounds very far away… I don’t know… maybe I should have held the machine in the air or something.

Well, that’s what I did the other day… and I had a blast.  I’ll get round to visit everyone within the next couple of days… right now I’ve got to go make dinner.

I asked my B if anything was the matter while we were at dinner tonight. 

He took me to Ryans, and I had a wonderful time with their salad bar and the yummy chicken soup they had tonight.  I love that place because I can eat a zillion veggies, cooked all different ways…and I don’t miss the starches or grease or anything.  I had steamed corn on the cob, steamed broccoli with garlic, green beans (I think they were sautéed), and grilled zucchini.  

Anyway, B was quiet… he’s usually quiet, but he seemed unusually so tonight, and all I could think of was how we were sitting there together, eating out, and not saying a word.  I’ve often watched older couples together… out to eat and all they do is eat… they barely look at each other and they don’t smile or even look like they’re enjoying themselves… I always feel so sad seeing that, so, when it’s happening to B and I… I just can’t stand it.

He said everything was fine… he had a little bit of a headache, but then he said “aside from the debacle of this house I’ve tried to buy… everything’s fine.”  Debacle?  Debacle?  I teased him about that one… I asked if he’d been reading the dictionary lately, and that got a smile out of him.  He raised one eyebrow over his piercing and now sparkling blue eyes and said “Edie, I know a lot more vocabulary than you think I do.”  That cracked me up and I had to keep teasing him… I said I’d never know it… how could I if he never used his vocabulary?  He said he didn’t need to, then in an affected southern back-woods red-neck way said “most git whut I’m sayin’”.  At least we were talking… I felt better.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how very different we are.  He was telling me a story about the parents of a friend of his, and how they’ve stayed married, but don’t do anything together.  They live separate lives in the same house… sleep in separate rooms and have mostly separate friends.  He said he thought the man was very unhappy… it just “seems that way” to him.  I asked him if he thought we were doomed to the same kind of future together.

That shook him up I think because he looked a little scared and he asked me why I would say something like that.  That we were different because we love each other.  I said those other people probably loved each other that way too at one time… what made him think we were any different?  We have extremely different tastes, likes and dislikes… we do everything differently… think differently.  The only thing we really have in common is that we love each other.  He said that he was happy, and that it was enough for him… then he asked me if it were enough for me.

I had a hard time answering that one.  I had to be honest and say I really don’t know… that I can’t imagine being more lonely than I am now, and that I didn’t want to end up just being glorified room mates.  He said he didn’t know I was lonely… I was shocked!  I’ve told him countless times, and I said that… I said I’d told him many times before… that I have no one to do things with, and that I’m not the type of person who likes spending extended periods of time alone.   B wanted to know if I was lonely because he “won’t go to an art museum” with me. 

It’s really so much more than that.  I explained that having someone to go to things like that with is important to me.  There are times he wants to go to specific concerts with me… one’s that he likes, or to places of interest to him… but anything I like… culture, classical music, ballet, any of the arts really, he shows no interest in… doesn’t even make an attempt to share that kind of stuff with me.  I mentioned the aquarium and he jumped on that one… he said he’d love to go to the aquarium with me… that it might be a “one time only” thing, but he’d like to go…and he said it as if that makes everything all better.  (He just walked by and said “you’re flogging your butt off, ain’t ya?”… he calls this “flogging”, rather than “blogging”, just to mess with me… it’s cute, really.

I hope he takes a little bit of our conversation to heart, really I do.  I want it to work between us, but there has to be more effort on his part to share in some of the things that interest me.  I do make the effort to share his likes.  I watch sports with him on television… I’ve gotten to know some of his favorite players by sight so that I can comment on their actions during games…so he can feel like I’m participating… I get excited with him when his teams are doing well, and I try to console him when they’re not.  I’ve even peeked in on the action of a race on occasion, when he was working and couldn’t watch it, and I’ve called him with updates on how his “Dale Jr” is doing…I sure wish that guy would win one for a change!

I don’t expect him to attend every little thing I want to attend…goodness… that would be too good to be true!  I doubt anyone… male that is… exists that would like ALL the things I like, I’m realistic about that… but some things would be nice.  Once in a while to have someone who would go to a book store with me and not rush me out… or who would like to go to a classical concert… and would actually enjoy the music… I can’t even play classical on my computer while I’m on it without hearing some derogatory comment from him. 

I’ve learned to like country music because it’s his favorite… I’d NEVER listened to it prior to knowing B… and he knows that.  Actually I catch him chuckling to himself once in a while when I’m singing to a country song… I can see it in his eyes and in his self congratulatory smile… he thinks he’s converted me.

Well, I really don’t want to complain so much… there are so many other things that he does that are very sweet, and I can see the effort he puts into spending time with me when I know he’d be happier somewhere by himself… he likes being alone… probably because of habit… most of his life he’s been a loner.  Well, he says he likes being around me more than anyone else, ever, in his life, so that’s a good thing.

I want to just enjoy the times we have together, and not worry so much that it’s not enough… but I’m always so… I’m always wishing.  Wishing that he took more interest in things I find fascinating… things I feel take talent and hard work… even just the architecture of an old building, or the way a small town is laid out (seen as we’re passing through it)… even the beauty of a garden someone has taken the time to plant… flowers in a yard… a beautifully manicured yard… many times I point these things out and he looks at me like I just grew another head or something.  He says he likes that I’m observant like that, and that I appreciate everything, but that I’m silly.

I hope that with more encouragement from me he will find some enjoyment in a few of the things I do.  I point out paintings sometimes and comment on the lines, or the color choices… or even the brush strokes that are visible or the hidden things in the background a person has to look for.  He looks…sometimes I think I see interest, but it’s gone so quickly… I wonder if he thinks it’s not manly or something… if he thinks he shouldn’t be interested in things like that for some reason.  I’ve asked him, but it’s like pulling teeth sometimes when I’m trying to draw him out.

I suppose in matters of art and music I’ve been more exposed to it than a lot of other people.  Growing up in New York we had access to so much.  Even in Vegas there are places of interest… but Atlanta has it all too… so does Savannah… though if you don’t venture forth very often I guess a small town like this one doesn’t offer much in the way of culture.  It’s beginning to, now that it’s grown so much… and is continuing to grow.  More concerts and events are planned here now than when I first moved here 11 years ago… I’m definitely grateful for that.

Somehow I’ve got to learn to do things more on my own.  I don’t like it, but if I’m going to do the things I like… if I’m going to attend functions that don’t much interest B, whether he goes or not, and it looks like I am going to have to do that, then working on being able to enjoy it alone is a must.  I suppose I’ll develop friendships with people with similar interests, which is what a lot of people do, I know.  I just have always felt that a person’s mate… the person you plan to spend your life with, should be someone you can do anything with… someone who likes to do things with you just to BE with you, even if it’s not exactly their forte.

Well, time will tell.  Hopefully there will be some kind of compromise in our future, and we’ll find our common ground… that is, some other common ground besides liking to go out to eat together.