For 12 years,
I had a job I loved as the editor of House & Garden, a magazine
that celebrated the good life. It would be an understatement to describe
this enterprise as part of a company not primarily in the business of
philosophical, spiritual or moral soul-searching. Condé Nast’s roots and
branches are in the material world. The good life at House & Garden
generally meant cultivating your own backyard rather than being
involved in the body politic. I pushed against the limits of making a
so-called shelter magazine by publishing articles about spiritual issues
and the environment, but I always felt clear-eyed about how things
stood. I spent more than a decade in the belly of the beast of muchness
and more. That was a precarious place to be when the real estate bubble
began to leak.
The
folding of the magazine was ruthless. Without warning, our world
collapsed. No one was expecting it, though with five publishers in 10
years, we had our share of turmoil. I came to work on a Monday in 2007,
went to the corporate offices for a meeting, had a different meeting,
got the news and was told to have everything packed up by Friday.
Security guards were immediately posted by the doors.
In
the four days we were given to pack up our belongings, I was
overwhelmed with an urge to hoard and began stuffing every House &
Garden paper bag, pencil and notepad I could get my hands on into a box,
so that I would never run out of office supplies. I salvaged enough to
run a small corporation from my kitchen. I didn’t think of this as
stealing. I thought of it as a twisted sort of recycling — part of the
strange new economy of severance into which I had been thrown.
Everything with our logo on it was destined for the Dumpster anyway.
Even
so, a few weeks later I realized I had some gaping holes in the
inventory: I had no ink for my printer. The pages of my résumé looked
faded, ghostly. You would think I was fading, too, but I wasn’t. I was
getting plump. All I could think about was food. This was the beginning
of being hungry all the time. My addled brain interpreted the white
noise of unemployment to mean that I was going into hibernation, that I
had to lay in reserves. After the closing of the magazine was announced,
my public line was, “We had a great run, we took a magazine from zero
to 950,000 readers in 10 years, fabulous renewals, we won awards,
published six books. . . .” I was a zombie. “Great run . . . 950,000
readers . . . six books. . . .”
But
privately, I was in a whiplashing tailspin. My nightmare had finally
come true. For years, I had a profound dread of unemployment that went
way beyond worrying about how to pay the bills. I would like to say that
this was because of the insecure nature of magazine publishing, but my
anxiety had more to do with my own neuroses — though I didn’t think of
it that way. Work had become the scaffolding of my life. It was what I
counted on. It held up the floor of my moods, kept the facade intact. I
always worried that if I didn’t have work, I would sink into abject
torpor.
I
have always had a job. I have always supported myself. Everything I own
I purchased with money that I earned. I worked hard. For the 35 years
I’ve been an adult, I have had an office to go to and a time to show up
there. I’ve always had a place to be, existential gravitas intended.
Without work, who was I? I do not mean that my title defined me. What
did define me was the simple act of working. The loss of my job
triggered a cascade of self-doubt and depression. I felt like a failure.
Not that the magazine had failed — that I had.
The
thing about running a magazine is that there is always too much to do. I
liked not being in control of my time — I was always busy. I didn’t
want time to think things over, things like feeling guilty about
spending more time with my office mates than with my children; feeling
sad that those children were leaving home; or feeling disappointed in
love or frightened by terrible illness. Everything else, in other words.
The demands of my job kept me distracted. Besides, no one else was
paying my mortgage.
With the closing of the magazine, my beloved family of colleagues was obliterated. And so was the structure of my life.
Within
hours of leaving my office for the last time, I could hardly bring
myself to care about my reputation. I just wanted to eat. I began
calling every employed person I knew to take me to lunch. I wanted to
fill my calendar with the promise of meals, even if they were only
penciled in — this, after all, being Manhattan. Only food could ward off
the rage, despair and raw fear that overcame me.
How had I managed to get this far in my life completely unprepared for the unknown — which I had always known was out there?
During
my first post-employment lunch, my panic was full-blown. It was all I
could do to keep myself from wrapping a dozen breadsticks in a napkin
and tucking them into my bag. I floated the idea, actually, and my
companion laughed slightly, nervously, gauging the level of my
seriousness. I managed to control myself. He is a good friend and gave
me loads of advice, which I heard through my frantic chewing. I ended
the meal extracting a promise of several more meals in the future; I
wanted friends bearing menus.
After a few weeks of being unemployed, I began to settle into a routine — of getting up.
“Today
is Saturday,” I said to myself one morning. I repeated this several
times, trying to convince myself to get out of bed. Saturday is what I
came to think of as one of the nice days, like Sunday — that is, when I
considered days at all. “Today is Saturday. No one is working today, so
you are no different from anyone else,” I would say out loud.
In
fact, I found it hardly necessary to be aware of what day it was. One
of the pleasures of a workday morning had been to rise early, have a cup
of tea, walk through the garden and get to the train on time, where I
could read the paper front to back. Now that I did not have to get to
work, I no longer had a structured time to read the daily paper, so I
would pile it into a stack, thinking I would get to it later, until I
realized I was creating a weekly daily.
I
missed Fridays especially. They once meant relief, time for rest and
housekeeping. Now every day was Friday. Or Monday. Whatever.
Time
hangs heavily on the unemployed soul. If I ate an egg at 8 a.m., by
9:30 I was starving. I became obsessed with eggs, gazing on their
refined shape in wonder. Perfect packets of nutrients. I ate eggs all
day long. When I had a job, I never thought about eggs.
I
would feel busy, and then, when I was in bed again, realize I had done
nothing. The last time this happened I had a newborn and was so
exhausted from nursing through the night and keeping an eye on the
sleeping infant all morning that I couldn’t get into grown-up clothing
until late in the afternoon. For heaven’s sake, I hadn’t even thought of
it as grown-up clothing since I was a 5-year-old dressing for
kindergarten. Frankly, I no longer saw any reason to get out of my
pajamas at all. A long coat covered everything up when I went out for
food.
The pace of my life had become so slow that I was struggling to keep up with it.
“How
are you today?” my sister Nicole asked whenever she called. She phoned
several times a day. “How was your morning?” my sister wanted to know.
“Incredibly busy. Unbelievable.”
“What were you doing?”
“Sleeping.”
In
this way, being unemployed is a lot like being depressed. You know how
there are millions (O.K., a handful) of things you swear you would do if
you only had the time? Now that I had all the time in the world —
except for the hours during which I was looking for work — to read,
write, watch birds, travel, play minor-key nocturnes, have lunch with
friends, train a dog, get a dog, learn to cook, knit a sweater,
iron the napkins and even the sheets, I had absolutely no energy for
any of it. It made no difference that music and books and nature had
long been the mainstays of my spirit. Just thinking about them exhausted
me. I had absolutely zero experience in filling weeks — what if it
became years? — with activity of my own choosing. Being unemployed meant
being unoccupied, literally. I felt hollow.
“Today is Saturday. Get out of bed.”
Saturday
meant that I could feel a little bit normal. Saturday is not a workday.
What mattered was that everyone else’s Saturdays were different from
Mondays and therefore the same as mine. I rose early. I made a breakfast
of the leftovers from a post-employment lunch and then I put on a hat
and mittens. Did I mention that we were all fired just as the holiday
season was upon us? So much for Thanksgiving.
I
headed into the streets. The early sunlight slanted across the shop
windows. Everyone hurried past me. Suddenly I noticed that the men on
the sidewalk looked strange; they were in overcoats and polished leather
shoes and carrying briefcases. The women were dressed up. They had
introspective, determined, grim faces. Strange for a Saturday.
That’s when it hit me.
It wasn’t Saturday. It was Friday.
After a month
of unemployment, it had come to this — foraging for my dinner, at 4 in
the afternoon. In my own kitchen. I had developed a habit of eating
leftovers from meals enjoyed days earlier; my breakfast of spaghetti and
meatballs at dawn sickened me by noon. Before too long, I was hungry
again, but balky, wary of my own housekeeping. Better to have a drink.
Safer.
Normally
I like a bottle of Guinness stout when I need a nutritional hit, but
I’d gone through my supply. I spotted a nearly empty bottle of Lillet
moldering at the back of the refrigerator. Sugar and liquor only improve
with age, right? I emptied it into an oversize breakfast cup and read
the recipe on the bottle. A twist of lime? Who keeps limes? I threw in a
slice of lemon. Then a few more. Half a lemon. Vitamin C. I like to
rehearse the nutritional content of my food, and there are times when a
drink qualifies as a meal. I took a sip, and it wasn’t half-bad, or, I
suppose, it was only half-good. Note to self: Next time, make an effort.
Have a whiskey sour. More vitamin C.
Drink
in hand, I decided it was time to wash the windows on the second floor.
I could use a little exercise, I thought. Funny how sugar works:
suddenly a surge of energy. Cleaning was an activity I had thrown myself
into in recent days. I might be a mess, but at least I could control
the mess in my house.
“How are you today?” my sister asked. She was down to calling two or three times a day. “How was your morning?”
“Incredibly busy. Unbelievable.”
“What were you doing?”
“Vacuuming.”
I
got a big sponge out from under the sink, filled a bucket and climbed
the stairs to my bedroom. A few more sips of the Lillet to fortify me
for the job, and my mind was racing. As I reached for the corner with my
sopping sponge, sucking on the lemons at the bottom of my cup at the
same time, I imagined the casement snapping under my weight.
I watched myself fall out the window. I watched my cup shatter on the flagstones.
I
looked down from the window and saw myself splayed on the stone
terrace, my back cracked and spine twisted — like the lime that’s
supposed to be in my drink? — my head resting at a birdlike angle. This
is where they (who?) would find me four days later, when it occurred to
them (who, though?) that I hadn’t been seen for a while, hadn’t kept an
appointment (do I have any?) and hadn’t called the children.
The
children? I can’t help it. I think of Alex and Theo as children still,
though they are grown and out of the house. The children were not going
to be the ones to find me broken-necked on the terrace. Frankly, no one
would. I’d rot.
I
decided I was in no condition for housekeeping this evening and dropped
my sopping sponge into the bathtub. O.K., so now I had watched myself
hit bottom. That’s what you have to do to get better, right? Anyway, I
was hungry. For a change.
There
were three jars of peanut butter — protein! — on the shelf. I didn’t
even bother to find my reading glasses so that I could choose the
freshest jar, but I took down a dessert plate, just to maintain
standards. I fished around in the utensil drawer and found a spoon,
unscrewed the lid and dredged deep. I dolloped the stuff onto the plate —
an extra helping so I didn’t have to go back downstairs for seconds. I
put the plate of peanut butter, a half bottle of wine, a glass and a
linen napkin on a tray and climbed back to my bedroom.
I started to lift my glass in a toast.
“To nothing.”
I thought better of it.
“To
life!” I said out loud. Then I gave myself another one of my hourly
lectures. Buck up. Just because something failed doesn’t mean you’re a
failure. Just because something has ended doesn’t mean it was all a
mistake. Just because you’ve been rejected doesn’t mean you’re worthless
and unlovable. Sound familiar? It should, if you or anyone you know has
gone through a divorce. This felt like the same thing.
Worse.
I had no control over any of it. And no one was holding a safety net
for me. For years I relied on only myself, but my confidence was
shattered. Now what?
I began keeping
notes about how I was feeling, what I was doing. Writing had always
been my way to absorb things; I often wrote out my troubles. It even
crossed my mind to write for a living. I had not changed my lifestyle
while I was working at Condé Nast, so I had saved some money. I knew
that writing wasn’t lucrative, having spent my career supporting
writers. But I figured if I got consulting work and lived carefully, I
could subsidize myself. Then I developed a strange typing problem — and I
am a world-class typist, having spent years as a secretary. I kept
mssng the “i” key — thngs kept comng out whtout t. There was certainly
nothing wrong with the middle finger of my right hand. Mssng the “i”
meant constant retypng. That was the end of wrtng.
Within
months of House & Garden folding, the entire economy was in
freefall. Advertising was vanishing, layoffs and buyouts were announced.
I was beginning to feel like an antique, an artisan whose skills were
no longer even respected, much less needed. Editing? How quaint.
Managing creative people? All we’re trying to manage is to get rid of
more of them.
It
was strange and maddening to be forcibly retired. Even the generational
rhythms were out of whack. It seemed just yesterday that my father
retired. How could we have reached the same stage of life together?
Four months after
being laid off, I decided to sell my house in the suburbs of New York.
The stock market was sliding perilously. I didn’t want to spend my
savings maintaining the mortgage and high taxes. I wanted to be out of
debt.
It
took me ages to create my home — 25 years, and all the years before
that of daydreaming about how I wanted to live. This was the home I
thought I would grow old in. It was a forthright, dark, wood-shingled,
center-hall colonial revival, nearly a hundred years old. It was
supposed to be my Forever House — the home you think you will never
leave, the house you love beyond all others, where you’ve recaptured
only what made you feel safe and happy in your childhood and left the
rest behind. The Forever House is where you’ve passed along the values
you admire to your own children — and filled the rooms with laughter and
tears.
I
called a real-estate broker, a cheerfully competent person who arrived
disconcerted at the kitchen door, unwilling to brave the front path
overhung with gnarled, carefully pruned azaleas. They gave the entrance
character. Was I thinking, Character doesn’t sell, when I made my home?
No. I was thinking, This looks good. To me. We toured the house: “And
over here is the laundry room, with bookcases built in — ”
“I’ve
never seen so many bookcases!” the broker said. “People don’t want
bookcases. They don’t even want libraries. They want media rooms. Where
did you say you hid the TV?”
I
could see her mind whirring as she began to figure out just what type
of character she had on her hands . . . single, unemployed, not going
out much, reading instead.
We walked through the kitchen. She eyed the walls warily.
“Interesting color. Very.”
Isn’t that what people say when they can’t think of anything nicer to say?
“You’ve
decorated your house so beautifully,” she continued. “This kitchen is
gorgeous. Now you’re going to have to clear all the counters. Books.
Knickknacks. All the stuff. I love what you’ve done with this house.
Make sure you put it all away.”
Knickknacks?
Maybe houses are like children. You can see yours only through eyes of
love. Soon strangers would be tromping through my house, passing
judgment, but the only way to have an open house is to shut away
everything that made it your home.
“Don’t
worry,” the broker went on. “You don’t have to be here. You shouldn’t
even be in town! I’ll handle everything. Don’t forget! Counters! Walls!
Personality! Cleared!” The broker smiled graciously. She was
fantastically reassuring.
I
felt as if I were in the presence of a dying beast. If Wendy and her
brothers could have a big dog for a governess — well, this house could
be my Nana. It was steadfast, if creaky; it gave me years of solace and
protection. Every once in a while, when I thought of how I was about to
abandon it, I would lean into a wall and kiss it. I loved my house.
I
could not step past the threshold of a son’s room without becoming
engulfed in memories, triggered by things as slight as the worn patch on
the armchair where my elbow rested while cradling a nursing baby. This
was the home I imagined my children would return to visit, with their
children, whose first steps would be taken in the garden, their tiny
fists curling around the white azalea branches for support, just the way
their fathers’ had. I wish we still lived in a world in which houses
were passed down through generations, but our sense of home has become
portable. That may be one reason we invest our possessions with so much
more meaning — they, rather than rooms and gardens, carry the memories.
The
house sold quickly. It struck me that I had lost House & Garden,
the job, and was now losing house and garden, the life. What took years
to create was about to be undone in a matter of minutes. Come to think
of it, kind of like being blasted out of a career.
I
had access to a city apartment owned by a friend, but I couldn’t commit
to living there all the time. It made me too sad — an unresolved
chapter of my last decade. I decided to move to the small, coastal Rhode
Island town where, after divorcing years ago, I bought a run-down
Modernist house that had been on the market for years. I was rebuilding
it. I know I was lucky to have such a choice — no, not just lucky! I had
worked hard to save enough to buy that house. It was a wrenching move. I
was haunted by the anxiety that it wouldn’t be the last, either. This
was just the beginning of letting things go — starting with the Forever
House.
I
called Alex. “How can I give this house up? I’m walking around thinking
this has become the museum of my happiest moments. I’m making a big
mistake. Don’t you think? The museum of my happiest moments. . . . ”
Alex was used to me by now.
“Time for a new museum, Mom.”
Spring blew in
so wildly that year that it seemed unnatural, or perhaps I just noticed
what spring feels like once I wasn’t sealed in a climate-controlled
building all day. Weather — the actual experience of it, not the
forecast — is one of the more dramatic discoveries to come with a slower
pace of life. There were days at the office when I didn’t know whether
it was muggy or cool, or if it had rained. It dawned on me that there
was something unsavory about having been so cut off from nature that I
was surprised by the golden hue in the slant of light at four in the
afternoon — on a weekday, no less.
I
took to wandering in my garden at all hours. As if to give me one last
chance to change my mind about leaving, spring unfolded in splendor. The
daffodils multiplied generously and spilled across the front in a riot
of gold. Bunches of hellebores appeared in March and nodded their prim
white, mauve and purple caps for more than two months; when I bent down
to turn up a small head and peer into a quiet, trusting face, I winced
at the thought of leaving them vulnerable to whatever depredations a new
owner might visit upon them. I apologized in anticipation. I strolled
the paths, examining the thick, furry spools of the unwinding ferns; the
gnarled purple fingers of the peonies clawing out from the damp,
fragrant earth; the green stubs of the Solomon’s seal; the sharp tips of
the hosta encircled by improbably large patches of bare ground that
would soon be hidden by gigantic leaves, bearing aloft the fragrant
white wands that seduce the moths at dusk.
With
all the anxiety about the move, my brain flipped a switch, and I went
from sleeping all the time to being utterly lost in sleeplessness. In
exhaustion, my memory faltered. Black holes gaped open before me as I
spoke; in the middle of a sentence I groped zanily for safe passage to
the next word. During the moments of sleep that I could snatch, I had
vivid, disturbing dreams. I was being born — I was blinded by a bright
light — and seconds later I was dying. I was reaching for the telephone
to call an ambulance but couldn’t remember which number to dial: 411?
911? 411? 911? 411? 911? What did I need? Help? Information?
I
turned to the wisdom of the ancients. I went to Ovid, where women run
from rapacious gods, and Dante, where women writhe in purgatory, and
Homer, where women unravel their work, and finally I pulled off the
shelf the old black leather-clad King James Version of the Bible I was
given in high school. I read feverishly from cover to cover. I had
forgotten how much of it is about fear — over and over again, the
response to change, even to the miraculous, is fear. I was fighting
fear. And what was I so afraid of? Being alone with myself long enough
to wonder what is the purpose of my life?
I
turned most frequently to the Psalms, whose gorgeous, intricate,
sensual prayers blanketed me in wonder. There I found my anthem for that
year, the most eloquent expression of grief I ever read: “I am poured
out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax;
it is melted in the midst of my bowels.”
One
night, at four in the morning, in a panic of sleeplessness, I went to
my piano and on impulse pulled an old volume of music off the shelf, J.
S. Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations. I picked my way through the first aria,
which has a quiet, dignified, spare quality. It is elegant, contained;
it holds much in reserve. The music did nothing for my sleeplessness; if
anything, within hours I was more completely, wonderfully awake than I
had been in a long time. Unexpectedly, I felt a peace suffuse my bones
as I lost myself in Bach’s lines. My own anxieties were no longer
drumming through my brain; my mind, that hobbled old draft horse,
stopped loping along in the same rut it followed night after night. It
was locking into someone else’s harmony.
Bach
has become a nightly visitor. I am obsessed with him: his musical
tricks, jokes and puns; his charismatic energy and passion; his
resilience through tragedy; his rigorous discipline; his bedrock belief
in a force greater than anything human.
I
have to teach myself, all over again, how to practice, how to silence
the critic in my head. I have to remind myself that the repeats matter,
that respect for the rests is important. What my fingers lack in speed,
my heart makes up in feeling. If I have to, I will crawl through
sarabandes and quadrilles, letting the dance fill my soul.
Slowly,
slowly, the months go by, each one a variation transposing loss,
loneliness and anger to gratitude and hope. I no longer dread the advent
of another rosy dawn. As I stop struggling so with fear and simply
accept the slow tempo of my days, all those inner resources start
kicking in — those soul-saving habits of playfulness, most of all:
reading, thinking, listening, feeling my body move through the world,
noticing the small beauty in every single day. I watch the worms, watch
the hawks, watch the fox, watch the rabbits. I open my heart to new
friends. I settle into my new home; its healing balm has been there all
along, nestled in a sofa that beckons me to pick up a book, hovering
outside the window inviting me to take a walk. I find room in my life
again for love of the world, let the quiet of solitary moments steal
over me, give myself over to joy. What a surprise! That I can cook a
meal for my children, or take a long walk on the beach, or watch an
osprey wheel through the sky, or set down a page of thoughts — these are
moments of grace. Old Testament loving-kindness, the stuff of everyday
life.
One
adventure is over; it is time for another. I have a different kind of
work to do now. I am growing into a new season. At the water’s edge,
watching the tiny, teeming life of that mysterious place between high
and low tides, the intertidal zone, I begin to accept the relentless
flux that is the condition of these days. I am not old and not young;
not bethrothed and not alone; not broken and yet not quite whole;
thinking back, looking forward. But present. These are my intertidal
years.
In
those sleepless nights, when I am at the keyboard, I connect with
something I may have once encountered as a teenager and then lost in the
frantic skim through adulthood — the desire to nourish my soul. I do
not have the temerity to think I have found God; I think instead that I
have stumbled into a conversation that I pray will last the rest of my
life.
I
cannot move through the music the way I hear it in my head. Nothing
works the way it used to. My hands feel stiff. But every once in a
while, I accomplish a passage adroitly. Fingers dance over keys. I take
all the repeats. I observe the rests. I enjoy myself. And I am happy for
small-boned miracles.
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