Finding Me

Finding Me

Chapter 1

I wondered what the hell people actually expected from me as I stared out the gigantic bay window at other old people walking their yippy little dogs of various species up and down my lazy street in the desert town of Sun City, Arizona as the sun rose and cast its golden light across what really should have been yards, but were areas of tan gravel. How did I end up here? What was it in life that brought me to where I currently stood, wondering what to do next? And why did I have an enormous window in the front of my house? What was I supposed to be looking at?

I’m Fran Miller. It’s short for Francine. I’m from New York City; Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to be exact. I spent my life helping my husband, Bert or Robert, run a small grocery store on 4th Avenue, not far from the Gregory Hotel. Life was a lot of work for us. We were born to parents who worked for the city all their lives as bus drivers and subway train operators. To Bert and me, it seemed like our parents never accomplished enough as employees of the city. We wanted to own our own business and have something no one could take away from us.

What we got was a lot of work. We worked long hours, long weeks, long holidays, long everything. It seemed like we could never step more than one floor away from the store. We worked so much that it was a blessing that we lived above the store front. That way, we had no commute to work. It allowed us to become a popular destination for the locals and occasional tourists alike, where they could buy their groceries, snacks, and even beer. We sold lottery tickets and gifts as well. It was a one stop shop.

Bert and I worked our whole lives and raised three children. We looked forward to passing on our family business; that legacy that we worked so hard to build for our children. However, we were three and oh.

Crystal, our oldest, became a flight attendant. She worked for British Airways, and flew back and forth across the Atlantic like she was taking the subway to work. She loved what she did and I’m happy for her, but I barely see her since I live in the Southwest and haven’t seen much of her since she began flying for a living.

Robbie or Robert Junior, was the one that we hoped would follow in the family footsteps, but alas, he grew up in the age where the internet was a technological explosion, with something new and remarkable being launched every day. He grew up like a mole person, locked away in his room, gaming with all his online friends. He became a successful web designer and married a woman named Erica whom he met online while playing something called World of Warcraft. He told me she was a troll and he was a wizard. Not sure how that works, but they both work in web design, which I don’t entirely understand, but it makes him happy and they make a good amount of money, so I guess it’s okay. They remain in Brooklyn and they rarely leave the New York Metropolitan area.

Robbie and Erica have two children; Bobby or Robert III, and Brittany. They’re beautiful children. Erica is a beautiful woman who could have done anything she wanted to, like be a model or a Broadway star, but she likes computers and stuff. That worked out for my Robbie, because online was the only way he was ever going to meet a woman, and she had to be the most beautiful computer geek in the world. The beautiful children that demonstrate Erica’s long line of beautiful people in the family, are currently teenagers and have no idea what to do with their lives. They were certain early on that they didn’t want to own a grocery store in Bay Ridge.

My youngest was our last hope to take over the family business. Her name is Ava, and it was abundantly clear early on that she was never going to do so. She has big dreams and has yet at 30 to accomplish any of them. She wants to be famous and rich and travel the world with the rest of what we used to call the jet set. She routinely falls short of rent for whatever tiny Manhattan apartment she lives in and gets evicted. She then spends some time on a friend’s sofa until she finds someone new to rent from. It’s a cycle that has repeated itself as much as four times a year. Normally, she doesn’t have a steady job, and has never done anything more than bit acting. However, she has her dreams and she doesn’t ask anything from me, so who am I to judge? Seems like a waste of time to chase pipe dreams when you could be getting a real job and settling down with some stability, but what do I know? I probably should keep my mouth shut more often. Ava doesn’t call me.

But I digress. Since my Bert died suddenly of a heart attack three months ago, I don’t know what to do with myself. I have friends in the desert whom I go out with regularly. They too are now widows and they like to get together and be widows, but I don’t know how I feel about that. We’re all from other places. No one is really from Sun City. It’s where old people go to get tan and die while playing golf and bowling.

Margaret or Maggie Cale is from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her husband worked for the General Motors plant in Roanoke where they built trucks. He made a good living assembling trucks and they were able to move to the desert to get away from the extreme weather in the Midwest. Unfortunately, Ralph was only in Sun City with her for five months before having a stroke and checking out. Since then, she’d been knocking around as a widow.

Penelope or Penny Kraft hailed from New Haven, Connecticut where her husband was a local politician for 40 years. Penny never said so, but they were extremely well off for him being a local politician. I never asked and she never elaborated. They moved to the desert to get away from it all was what she always said. Her husband Anders went for a ride in his golf car one day, had a massive heart attack and took out a clock shop in the accident it all caused. Penny never went a day without talking about the incident, and she loved to wear black all the time, even though it was hot as hell in Sun City.

Cheryl Atherton was from Portland, Maine, and her husband, Charles was very fitness conscious. He ran marathons throughout his life when he wasn’t cooking for others at a four-star restaurant. He’d been a very successful chef who specialized in seafood. He seemed to be extraordinarily healthy and had as much energy as any kid I’ve ever met. However, one day he went for a run in the desert and never came back. Cheryl wouldn’t talk about what happened. The authorities found him. I presume it wasn’t pretty.

My three besties in the desert were widowed years before me, and I watched how their lives changed, or sometimes didn’t after their husbands died. I didn’t know what to do now that I’d joined the ranks of widowdom. Should I wear black? It would be miserable in a place where in the summer it sometimes spiked up to 120 degrees during the day, but in the winter, I might be able to pull it off.

Maggie dated a lot. I didn’t want to do that. I’d never dated much. My Bert was only the third guy I ever went out with and the first one that I, well, you know. I didn’t feel the need to have another man around. I loved my husband, but he was a lot of work. I thought maybe I could relax a little for once.

I thought maybe I could be like Cheryl. She was always busy. She went to the rec centers and did all kinds of activities and worked out every day. She was in great shape, and she was always around a lot of people during the day. When she went home for the evenings, she knitted. She knitted a lot. We all had hand knitted blankets, sweaters, gloves, hats, scarves, and a cozy for every appliance in the house. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with a lot of it, given we all live in one of the hottest places on Earth, but they were beautiful and I kept them just in case.

Bert hadn’t been gone long. I told myself every day to take my time and figure out my next move. I’d been married 52 years; the last ten were spent in Sun City. I didn’t remember what it was like not to be married to him. Now, without his input, I was supposed to figure out a next step. All I’d thought about was other people for a lifetime. Now, I was supposed to think about me. I was not good at that.

I needed to remember what my personal dreams were. It was so long ago I had no idea. I’d run a grocery store with my husband. I’d raised three kids who’d have no problem thinking about themselves, but it was harder for me. I balanced books, I cleaned house, I did laundry and dishes, I cooked meals, I picked up after everyone in the world. I literally spent more than half a century thinking about literally everyone else around me, and not me. It was easy to figure out what everyone else needed and wanted. I don’t think anyone in my entire life from my parents and grandparents to my children and grandchildren ever asked me what I wanted. Therefore, how would I have a clue?

My main problem was I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear black; I didn’t want to look for another mate, I didn’t want to get a dog to walk, I didn’t want to work out, and I certainly didn’t want to knit anything. The truth is, I’d never wanted to move to the desert. That was Bert’s dream, but I didn’t mind because it was an adventure. He wanted to be warm and never have to shovel the sidewalk again. I went along, because I didn’t have a better idea. I figured, why not let him have his dream?

So, that’s the gist of it. There I stood in the giant bay window that I didn’t understand the purpose of, looking out over cacti and palm trees that lined the street while people tried to pick up their dogs’ poop with little bags from the gravel that passed for yards. Bert used to say that the dogs were taking their people out for a walk. I suppose there’s a lot of truth to that. Some of the people in my neighborhood only come out to walk the dog.

Bert and I had moved to Sun City ten years before. I’d spent most of my time redecorating the house room by room, and hanging with the girls at the rec centers and local casinos. I played games a lot. I went to bingo, and the local Native American casinos as we were now referring to them. I went to the occasional movie. I liked to go out to lunch with my friends. That was my favorite thing about Sun City. There were a ton of chain restaurants and some locally owned ones in our area, and you could get pretty much anything you could dream of to eat. No one in Sun City would ever go hungry.

I think I liked to go to the plethora of restaurants because I never did that in New York. We went to the same two or three local places we liked in Bay Ridge, and the rest of the time I cooked dinner at night. Lunch was for leftovers. Breakfast was coffee and a doughnut from Dunkin down the street. Bert and I were extremely routine people. I don’t know why. It was boring, and I often wondered what it would be like to adventure a bit, but we rarely even went into the city. I regularly went down to the park and gazed at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, but we never bought a car and I never drove across that bridge to Staten Island. I also never took the ferry to Staten Island. I’d stand on the shore and look at the skyline of Manhattan and dream a little dream of what I would do if I went into the city. But I rarely ever went, even though there was probably more to do there than in most places around the world. It was only a subway ride, but it may as well have been a million miles away. Such is the life of a city dweller.

What to do? I stood in my ridiculous bay window that I’d never liked and cared for less every day, staring out into the world of desert filled with old people. I needed to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I’d loved the city, but never seen it. I appreciated the desert, but I’d rarely left Sun City since moving there. As I stared out that pointless bay window, I suddenly felt as though my chest was strangling me and like someone was standing on my chest. I all but fell into the chair I was standing in front of. This was it. I was having a heart attack. I pushed the button on the Life Alert knockoff my son had recommended, and waited for the professionals to come and cart me off to the hospital. I was going to die, and I’d barely lived.