Today I must do laundry. I’ve packed about ten days’ worth of clothing that will need to be washed weekly, and shirts and sweaters for both warm and frigid temperatures. Here in Roundrock, in the middle of central Texas, today is like an average winter’s day in Germany, nothing like the warm, almost summer weather I had anticipated. This motel serves no breakfast – only coffee, so Natalie’s care package comes in handy. But there is a laundromat. I walk across the hall to the laundromat and try to talk to a Hispanic teenager doing what looks to be the family laundry. His English is sufficient to tell me that I need quarters to do the laundry – a lot of them. I don’t have more than one or two. I walk down a long corridor to reception. The receptionist, also Hispanic from all appearances, is engrossed in a long phone call. Finally she hangs up and glances over at me. “Excuse me,” I say. “I need to do my laundry, and it looks like I’ll need quarters. Do you have any?” She shakes her head.

“No, we’re all out of quarters. I can call and ask, but they won’t be able to bring me any until this afternoon. But you can go to the IHOP over there – ” she points out the window to a pancake restaurant across the street – “and ask there. Or at the gas station.” I see there is a gas station, also across the street.

I thank her and head out to the pancake house. No quarters. None of the guests waiting to eat there have any either. I ask at the gas station. No quarters. I walk down the road a ways to another shop. No quarters there either. And wherever I ask, I encounter people who look like they could be from India or Pakistan, or somewhere in South America. Texas seems to be full of immigrants! I go back to the receptionist and tell her I’m going to really need those quarters. I can’t do laundry for now, and there is nothing else to do but sit in my room and read a book or watch TV. I feel trapped in rural Texas.

A few hours later, Rhett and Natalie both show up at the motel to take me home for lunch. I’ve packed a change of clothes to bring along – we’re going to a Valentine’s Dinner at their church in the evening. It feels so good to see familiar faces! Natalie serves a delicious cream of shrimp soup she has doctored up, and a salad with some bread. I think it tastes great, but Natalie apologizes – she has only improved on a can of soup she bought at the supermarket. She leaves to attend a funeral. “You two can catch up while I’m gone – I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Rhett looks awful, attached to a breathing tube. Breathing is an effort. He looks exhausted, and this is one of his scheduled “up” days. His doctor came up with a way he could engage with some of the life around him, by decreasing meds every few days, so he can be awake and alert. But the “up” days are so strenuous, he has to sleep for two days afterwards. What a life! And this has been going on for years. I feel so sorry for him. He was so vital, so interesting and funny when I knew him during my childhood and youth. Now we have some interests, our Christian faith and our basic values in common, but politically he’s quite conservative, and I’m more liberal. It will be interesting to see what he and Natalie have to say about the political situation right now, and the wall that Trump wants to build in Texas. We talk a a bit about this and that, and I show some photos, but I can see just talking to me wears him out.

Chronic illness is one of the sad things about aging, and I am now among the ranks of the aging, at least statistically. My sister has had cancer and chemotherapy, and another sister has already died. She was only sixty-three. My husband has passed away, suffered a stroke that strucke him down even before he reached sixty! Old age hits some people awfuly young, it seems. I must be fortunate to be in such good health. It is hard to be here, watching my cousin suffer, but this is a part of life I must face.

He leaves to rest a bit, and I am left alone in the living room. I wonder what I’m doing here. Why did I come to Texas? Am I an intrusion for my cousin, or a welcome guest? I feel uncomfortable, wishing I were back in New York, or perhaps even in Germany. I feel very out of place here.

I read from the book I brought along until Natalie returns. “You may think this is hard on Rhett, having you here,” she says. “And any exertion is. But we’re so happy you came. Rhett has been looking forward to your visit and talking about it for months!” Okay, so I can at least trust that I am meant to be here, even if I feel trepidation right now. “And I apologize for the mess in the house. We’ll have your room ready for you by tomorrow night. Then things will settle down a bit.” Another reassuring thing to hear. Natalie is always so wonderful and understanding.

An hour or so later, we change into our good clothes and head out to the church. “We’re going to be spoiled,” Natalie says. “This is something the church does for the ‘more mature’ members, as they call us seniors!” I truly feel like a visitor from another country. Yes, we decorated shoe boxes in school as kids and bought valentines for our friends to put in each other’s shoe boxes, but all that has long since faded out of my life. The only way Valentine’s Day gets celebrated in Germany is that the florists advertize it, and people do buy chocolate or flowers for their sweethearts. I have always made or bought a card somewhere for Peter and bought chocolate or flowers, and he’s done the same for me. But the day doesn’t get celebrated institutionally, like here in this church, or like what I experienced at school.

Natalie used to be a teacher before she retired, and she has grandchildren who are in elementary school. “Nowadays, kids have to buy cards for everyone in the class,” she explains. “No more favoritism is allowed.” That sounds like a nice step up from kids in my day, when we each counted our cards, with some privileged few feeling perhaps smug or entitled, and others excluded. I was always in the middle somewhere, but felt bad for those who got few or perhaps no cards at all except the one my mother made me put in each kid’s box.

The fellowship hall/gymnasium is all decked out in red, the tables beautifully set. Everybody seems to be wearing red – even the men have red shirts on. Young people from the church escort us to our assigned places at tables, and then proceed to serve us. Looking at the people here, I feel a little as though I were back in Minnesota, where I come from. This church was started by Swedish Methodists, and still has many Scandinavians, the predominant culture I experienced growing up in Minnesota. There are some people of color here too, but here there is an atmosphere akin to what I experienced as a child in white, middle-class Minnesota.

The food is indeed delicious – chicken breast in a tasty creamy sauce, with potatoes gratin, vegetables, yummy salad, a fruit punch to drink, just like in my childhood experience. All served on paper plates and cups and plastic cutlery. Now that is different from Germany, where people have always been a bit “”green” and would be horrified at the idea of using paper and plastic. For dessert we get strawberry shortcake – and chocolate-coated strawberries! And everybody gets a red rose or a carnation.

After dinner, people start to dance. Now this is something that never would have happened in our Baptist Church in Minnesota, and I bet still doesn’t! The couples look so happy, relaxed and elegant, moving together comfortably. We play a form of Bingo with questions about oldie music, starting from around the 1960s. Here I come in surprisingly strong, and between all of us at our table supplying answers to each other, Rhett wins. He looks happy, and people have been telling him all evening how good it is to see him there. It’s been a fun evening. I have truly enjoyed myself among these “mature” people, feeling very welcome and relatively comfortable in this setting in small-town Texas.

Rhett and Natalie drop me off at my motel. The receptionist has quarters for me! Life is beginning to look up.