Recently on a Skype phone call with my best friend in Brazil who went to high school with me, we were talking about our present lives and loves. She has a much more resigned attitude towards what awaits us now as we enter our seventies than I do. I attribute this to her training as a psychoanalyst who puts everything into a long term perspective, she believes that what happens is coming from the past into our present and possibly dictating our future as well. She has a very pretty face, pert nose, good cheekbones and the carriage of someone who knows she is someone. Brought up in Rio de Janeiro by nannies in a family fleeing the holocaust from Belgium, she was their “princess”.
I was often irritated by her beliefs which seemed to challenge my thinking that we can change our lives, molding them as we wish not as it was foreseen to be. Yet we are as close as sisters, sharing similar life trajectories of early marriage, children, divorce, remarriage and widowhood. She has two children older than any of my four from her first early marriage at nineteen.
Asking how my present relationship was going, she added:
“You should think about it as one of my friends told me to do: It is the “plat du jour.” We no longer have the full menu we used to have when we were young, now we have the dish of the day. Today! With all of its issues and problems, it is still better than no dish, isn’t it?”
I laughed, “That’s a great way to put it!”
Suddenly I thought but didn’t say that I was still looking at the whole menu and perhaps that’s why I am rarely content. I see what is not there and don’t enjoy what my dish has as much as I could.
As I went through the next few days, I observed other couples around me: they all were putting up with something not on their plate or too much of something they didn’t like eating there.
Years ago I remember hearing:”getting old is for the brave, “then I didn’t get it. I thought that’s crazy, by that time you’re not working; hopefully you have enough to live on and enjoy. You have so many choices, why is that bad? Now I am in the group that wants to be considered brave. At physical therapy with a lovely young PT person moving my legs and sore right hip, I listened as she outlined the exercise program I had to do to feel better. I need her enthusiasm to carry this through, am a terrible exerciser, starting with zeal and soon bored, finding every excuse not to do more. It reminded me of a conversation with an older acquaintance twenty years ago.
“Stretching and staying limber are the two most important things as you age, “she told me as she described her stretching classes.
I barely listened ruminating about all the stretching I was already doing by working, taking care of my four kids and often my ill husband. I secretly smiled I’m stretched to the max- no need of a class for me. Today I want that class – a real one and a metaphorical one, I want to stretch beyond my old menu to accept what is possible on my plate now. I wonder can one add to the plat du jour? Can a new enthusiasm for the present make it tastier? I’m determined to find that out.
So I shared the Plat du Jour idea with some of my friends, those who are married for many years and those now seeking a relationship. It was interesting to me that they all liked the idea. One married friend remarked:
“Even if you were still with your first husband today like I am, you would be having the plat du jour. No one has the whole menu; we all adapt to our new reality.”
Walking to the Charles River with my dog, Philo, it occurred to me that the plat du jour isn’t just the meal of the day. It is homey and familiar; we know and like it. It is warm and comforting because we have had it before and it is made from ingredients that are in most of our kitchens and our lives. Our stomachs don’t balk at its ingredients, rather the plat du jour easily finds its regular place to settle inside of us as it comforts and warms our total beings.
Humorous Humans 
Here are my favorite lines in your blog post, Helen: “I want to stretch beyond my old menu to accept what is possible on my plate now. I wonder can one add to the plat du jour? Can a new enthusiasm for the present make it tastier? I’m determined to find that out.” Your question about new enthusiasm–another way of saying that attitude matters a lot–really resonates with me. And the fact that you’re “determined” tells me that your attitude is working for you. One last thing: we may love whole, big menus–but if we were allowed to order everything we’d like to eat, we’d never be able to eat it all anyway!
Helen, Mark Mueller told me, during our reunion in New York, that his father had always told him that 90% of life is about attitude. The other 10%? Attitude!
I tend to view things a little differently as I married late in life and did not have children. Being single for so many years, while others were married with families, was not easy — the social pressures, once I had reached my thirties and forties, was intense. It was all like, “What’s wrong with you?” It may be different today but that’s how it was. So quite frankly I am happy to have reached an age where I am able to be on my own without being made to feel self-conscious or defensive about it and am able to have exactly the kind of relationships I choose to have. There are advantages to merging lives with another individual and there are advantages to being able to cultivate a variety of friends and interests on one’s own. Guess what I’m trying to say is, I feel that meeting the challenges of the different stages of life — with their different demands on us — is simply an inevitable part of the human experience. How we meet those challenges defines who we are. And almost certainly, based on who we are, we will meet them in different ways.