A few weeks ago I got this email:

Hi Sylvia.  I see from your blog that you are on your way to Florida.  I also blog. My premise is to blog daily about the dinner I ate the previous night. The people who invite me to eat with them are impactful people who are willing to discuss what they are passionate about. If you would like to consider being profiled, please invite me to dinner.  Many of my readers are women approaching and beginning retirement. They’d love to hear your insights and learn of your work.  I hope you have a safe trip and enjoy the holidays. I look forward to hearing from you on your return.  Thanks, Erin.

Needless to say I was immediately fascinated and, although how much impact I’ve had is questionable, of course I always enjoy talking about the things I’m passionate about.  A few emails back and forth and we’d set a date:  January 4th.

So now the question was how to prepare a meal for someone I’ve never met.  Should I go with traditional Jewish food?  Should I prepare the most elaborate recipes in my file?  Having had a migraine for three days beforehand wasn’t helping any.  Truth is I decided to check what was already in my freezer and when I found a container of home-made Mole Poblano (a thick, rich chocolate-tinged sauce which some consider Mexico’s national dish which I’d learned how to make at a cooking school in Cuernevaca, Mexico a few years ago) the decision was made … it would be a meal with a Mexican flair.  We started with quesadillas and guacamole, then had Chicken Mole, Mexican Rice, a Jicama Salad, and ended with mango and strawberry sorbet, chocolate and coffee. I’d also made a pitcher of Sangrita (not Sangria … check the recipe because it’s wonderful!) because I figured she’d not want alcohol if she was writing notes.  I got started preparing a little bit late in the day so was rushing around like a mad woman right until she arrived.  Of course trying to do this when half of my main floor is in a shambles made it even more challenging.  No question about it; I was quite nervous about this which sort of surprised me.  I guess knowing that what you’re going to say is going to be published is a bit nerve-racking itself.  Somehow because this included her noting what she’d been served there was another element to the tension.  I remember when I was doing my Doctorate and I did a series of interviews with a number of women who’d made it to the top of various fields (understanding that “made it to the top” is automatically a problematic term because in our society we tend to measure whether or not someone has “made it” by their level of income and power which, in my opinion, is pretty short-sighted; I wish we’d see it as someone who’s leaving the world a better place than they found it).  About 15 minutes into the second interview each one of the women told me how she’d lost her virginity.  Yup, in some detail.  The first time that happened I was surprised; by the third time I was dumbfounded.  I even went to one of my mentors – Sylvia McPhee who’d been my Grade 1 teacher – and asked her to review my interview protocols to see if someone I was leading them to this.  In the end – after all but one of the women had shared this detail of their growing up with me – I came to the conclusion that they were introducing this because there was some sense in which they wanted to say “you see, even though I’ve accomplished a lot in a male-dominated world I am still a woman.”  I thought at the time that I might write a book titled “How Women Who Make It Lose It” if I needed to raise cash in a hurry, but my sense of honour won out and even though they’d all given me permission to use the content of our interviews I deleted this part from my computer so that I’d never – in a moment of weakness or financial crisis – share those details.  I suppose what I’m thinking is that I was particularly nervous because I thought I’d be judged somehow both on my accomplishments as an educator and social activist and on my culinary skill.

Erin arrived right on time and within a few minutes we were sitting munching and talking and talking and talking.  Erin kept notes on everything; I asked why she didn’t tape her interviews (that’s what I did when I did the interviews for my Doctorate and I thought I’d offer to lend her my 360 degree microphone if she’d like to use it) and she said she was more visual and tactile and felt more connected to the notes than she would to listening to a tape.  For nearly four hours we talked about everything, sharing our views and ideas about education (she’s a teacher), social justice, children, families, politics, the environment, violence and of course feminism today.  She had commented that she was really glad to see me using the word feminist in the title of my blog because so many young women today are hesitant to call themselves feminists even though they expect social, political, monetary and artistic equality between men and women.  This is something that often bothers me so we had a good talk about it. I was fortunate that feminists had worked hard even before I became an adult and therefore with continued work we were able to really transform the world in many ways (or at least our western privileged part of the world) so that doors that might have been closed ten years earlier were open to me as I made my way.  Perhaps too many young women today simply work on the premise that this is how it’s always been and that equality – as women – is an assumption.  Hearing Erin talk about her own feminism with dignity and pride was really nice.  I was reminded of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party which was first exhibited in 1979; we have – indeed – come a long way at least in some ways.

And so I return to my thoughts when I was first contemplating retirement.  Several articles I’ve read recently have concluded that my hunch was right and that the experience that women have retiring is quite different from that of men.    For instance, in Women Confronting Retirement: A Nontraditional Guide, the editors remark that today we’re seeing the first large wave of females retiring who’ve been continuously in the workforce, and that women traditionally have not needed to confront the issues of work cessation, identity loss, and income diminution . . . until now.  Now that I’m starting to feel more “settled into” retirement I’m starting to become more and more aware of how women’s transition from career to retirement is unique to us.

If you’d like to read Erin’s interview, you’ll find it at www.sustenance.ca.   If you think you might want to participate in an interview with Erin – and invite her for dinner – you can contact her through her website; she is willing to do some travelling.