Backstory blues

Man, it's a long time since I collected my thoughts and set them down here.  The month has sped by with Christmas travels, preparing to start my new teaching job, and finding my footing in the classroom.  I am enjoying my students very much.  I spend a lot of my time thinking about them, and about school, and about lessons, and not much else at this stage (besides how badly my dishes need to be washed, etc.).  I know that after a few more weeks my mind will have room for other stuff, but I'm ok with mentally being at school most of the time right now.

I had an unexpected encounter recently, however, which reminded me that even though our lives have certainly been shaken up, our reality permanently altered, not everyone knows that.  It was pretty typical of the awkward situations that spring up out of nowhere, and which I wish I could learn to handle gracefully.  Here's a sampling of the sometimes funny, sometimes painful, and often odd moments we run into:

• when the salesperson looks up my account on the computer via my phone number and says, "Are you Ramsy?"
• when a high school teacher asks my child, "Are your parents coming to parent-teacher interviews?"
• when I inform the very young bank teller that I wish to make a withdrawal from my husband's estate account and she responds with, "Is it a joint account?" 
• when an old friend from 20 years ago, not even knowing that I was married to a music guy, asks if I still sing.
• when a person I worked with a few years ago sees me in line at Wal-mart and asks how things are going since she last saw me.

What are the right answer to these questions?  Sometimes the dilemma is that the short answer, which is all there's time for, is not the truthful answer.  Sometimes the setting does not allow for a complete explanation.  Sometimes you are so stunned at the incongruity of the question that you can't think of what to say.  And mostly, you are choked by the backstory- the facts and memories and growth and history and tears and all of it- and it leaves no room for the short answer to make its way out.

I keep thinking that I will get used to this, that I will learn to expect the unexpected and have some kind of answer prepared, and I always end up with my mouth hanging open instead. 

Ah, well.

And anyway, the more I run into this experience, the more I become aware that so many, many people feel the same about questions that we ask as a matter of course.  "How many grandchildren do you have now?"  "Where is your wife tonight?"  "Are you still working there?"  "When are we going to see you at the altar?"  I think most of us are actually in the same boat; it's just hard to figure out how to let each other know the backstory.