As I grow older there are blind spots and blank spots.
Blind spots in the navigation of a world that grows unfamiliar, and blank spots where loved ones used to dwell. I am finding my way, but not without bumps and bruises. Four years into this singular existence, I still reach for the “us” that shaped my days. She did the heavy lifting of organizing our lives, and my equilibrium was only complete when she was smiling or dancing. She always smiled when she danced, though she did not always dance when she smiled. Silly me for thinking joy only worked one way.

Since she has been gone there is no one to kiss my forehead when I think I have a fever. No one to kiss at all. She had the softest lips. That is not romance speaking, that is fact. Forty-six years is not a marriage, it is a nation-state with customs and language and private weather. When we were not screaming on the roller coaster of life, we were laughing. Often, the screaming and laughing were the same sound.

The other day, in the calm sterility of an acupuncture room, I found myself talking to my doctor of Chinese medicine. I am Jewish; confession halls for me have fluorescent lights and herbal charts, not stained glass. While she placed needles in my chest and arms, I told her I am not interested in finding someone new. Not because I am lost, but because I am full. I had my lifetime.

And then I began to think about the others who filled those spaces.
Herbie Katz, my first best friend. Worked in Guantánamo after college on the desalination plant—no fresh water, imagine that. Yes, the one who married the general’s daughter. Then Australia for a few years, then back to the States, West Coast, divorce, life’s carousel spinning like it does when no one gives you the manual. We used to sit in a deli and I would tell him stories about Aunt Stella, and he would listen like it was scripture. Bagels, pastrami, friendship, the sound of easy laughter bouncing off Formica.

Then memory shifted again, as it does now.
Aunt Stella pulling frozen bagels from her freezer, heating them in the toaster oven. Long Island everything bagels, garlic bagels with butter sliding down the sides like a blessing you did not ask permission for. Later in life, vegetable cream cheese—ordered light now, though back then “light” was something you turned off, not a dairy instruction.

Those bagels were not food. They were belonging.
Continuity.
A ritual disguised as breakfast.

So these days, I toast the bagel myself.
I spread a respectable portion—a schmear, maybe a little more than a schmear—because restraint and dignity can coexist with memory and appetite. I sit, take a bite, and for a brief moment the kitchen fills with voices again. The world feels familiar. The blank spots soften. The blind spots brighten.

For a few quiet bites, everyone is there.
Smiling. Dancing. Or sitting in a deli booth listening to Aunt Stella stories like it’s the Book of Life read aloud beside a bowl of pickles.