Dining Alone

            So, forging ahead in this new life, I am embracing dining alone. First, I am not, nor ever have been, a fan of cooking. Bruce did the heavy lifting in that department. And it’s not so much that I can’t cook, though some have suggested that.  It’s more that I never know what I want or how to plan a meal. Often my idea of meal planning is popcorn with grated parmesan and a tomato salad or a jaunt to my local ice cream stand for a hot fudge sundae. No, this diet is not ideal but it’s what I’ve got for now.

            When I traveled for business back in the ad agency days, I dined alone quite often. Press okays in those days required my presence – the now endangered species, ‘production manager.’ I loved press okays. Walking into the press room with its clanging presses and the scent of ink in the air, the grizzled press operator who patiently took instruction and made magic happen. I felt we were artists ourselves, making the vision of an art director, photographer and copywriter transform via the mechanics of offset printing into its most beautiful self on a pristine piece of paper with embossing and die cuts and gate folds. When you looked at dots under a loupe to see if the colors were in register, or if there was too much black ink and the type was tailing, or if you needed to cut back the magenta because everyone looked like they had a sunburn. Nobody goes on press okays anymore in this age of digital presses. Digital presses are pretty impressive, but there’s no ink smell, there’s no real adjustments to be made on press, they just churn out images on digitally appropriate paper and get trimmed, collated and stitched as is. I miss the attention to detail that the offset presses demanded. And the smell of ink. I’m sure people who loved letterpress printing felt the same way when offset printing presses made that fairly obsolete.

Anyway, the sales people at the printing plant were generally around to offer to take you to dinner or lunch or whatever, but I often refused, saying, “Oh no, go home and be with your family. I’m fine.” It can be quite nice to be alone in a nice hotel (they weren’t always nice – here’s to you Motel 6 in Jacksonville), in a lovely restaurant to sit with a book and enjoy your own company. The first time I did this was at a very fancy hotel in Atlanta. The maître d’ looked around for any additional diners. “No, just one, please,” I said. He seemed very surprised but seated me at an out of the way table. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to give me a quiet table or keep me from view. My waiter came over very, very often, seemingly worried about my single state. I just relished being able to enjoy a nice glass of wine, a really great steak, a good book and not have to be ‘on’ for an evening.

Now it seems when I go to a restaurant alone, the host doesn’t look around for another diner, they usually just escort me to a small table – not bad, not good, just a regular table. I wondered after my foray to my favorite Thai restaurant last week, if perhaps it’s because of my age. Maybe there’s an expectation that women of a certain age dine alone – widowed, bereft of friends or family. I don’t know why I don’t get any funny looks anymore about eating alone in a restaurant. Is it more common now? I don’t see a lot of other women by themselves, but to be honest, I don’t really look. Maybe that’s the point – no one really looks.

Anyway, this whole eating for one – whether it’s at home or a restaurant or on a picnic bench outside my favorite fish shack is still a work in progress. I don’t stress as much about having a meal plan which seems like an inordinate amount of work. And what if I plan for meatloaf on Thursday but when Thursday comes I don’t want meatloaf? What then? Did I mention that I loathe grocery shopping? I get the cold sweats at the first sound of the Muzak version of  “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” So going to the store on more frequently than every other week is a no go. The least amount of time I can spend in that house of horrors is best. So I do my best figuring out this new eating alone thing and trying not to eat too many hot fudge sundaes.