Facility

Alone and Away, Part One

I recently went away for ten days. This is not usual for me. I have never left my youngest for half this amount of time, let alone to be by myself for some of it.

But I had decided to go to a writers conference in New York and then continue on to meet my husband at my older son’s spring training in Florida.

I was anxious about leaving for any number of reasons—would my youngest have an emergency while I was across the country? Would my high schooler skip breakfast or have car trouble? And, importantly and preoccupyingly, would the writers conference be very scary?

Needing a pep talk, I talked to my parents on the phone the night before I left (because, as my youngest tells me “Mommy, you might be a woman, but you’re still a girl on the inside!”). I told my parents I’d call them from the conference if anyone hurt my feelings. My dad said, “Oh good—we’ll hear from you everyday.”

The morning I was leaving the house, I hugged my daughter and started to cry—this when I’d had such high hopes of being a woman who blows in and out of her house like a soft breeze, easy, natural, doing just what it’s meant to.

But of course those hopes were miscast because motherhood is subsuming, a fact that when my kids were younger, I was often too busy or tired to notice. I easily lost track of me, forgetting the last time I’d talked about something other than nap times, or summer camps, or travel teams. That wasn’t the stuff my brain went in to motherhood thinking about; I’d even promised myself I wouldn’t let my brain get so completely sucked in, but, well, kids can be so charming, and a vortex is a vortex.

However, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, kids get older. The blurry line between where a kid ends and a parent begins gains definition. Time gets returned to a mother in giant, sometimes less-than-wanted swaths. There is breathing room, and resting room, and contemplating room. The brain gets to think: what did I used to think about? What do I want to think about now? And hey, what are the parameters of this older kid motherhood? How much staying in place is required, waiting on standby, on the increasingly outside chance I’ll be needed?

So I felt torn in this goodbye, stuck between what I consider primary—being here for my kids—and a primal wish to do something for myself. Going to a writers conference wasn’t exactly necessary. The world would still spin if I didn’t go. With one email, my name could be easily and unemotionally crossed off a roster in New York. Only I would care if I wasn’t there, no one else. By definition, when you’re doing something for yourself, you are the primary stakeholder.

I could still cancel, and just, I don’t know—go to the grocery store and Target?

But my daughter hugged me back and said the same thing my older daughter had texted me a few minutes before. “You need this, Momma.”

And honestly sometimes kids just turn out to be so exactly right.

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As I landed at Newark, I tried to remember the last time I’d traveled alone. I realized it had been years. I mean I’ve flown alone plenty. It’s just that I am usually headed to a kid or husband or friends or family. Now I was landing alone and getting to the hotel alone and I felt weird, like I was out of shape for this kind of exercise. With no one else to watch, I watched myself do things awkwardly. Don’t struggle so much lifting your bag off the claim belt. Wheel it better. Look more natural at this. Look more like someone who knows how to leave the house for ten days.

I’d chosen a hotel that we’d stayed in many years in a row with our three older kids. As new parents, my husband and I had definitely day dreamed about showing our young kids the world, but we’d daydreamed this before we fully understood the nightmare of my youngest’s seizure disorder. It would turn out the world was far too big. We couldn’t easily bring our son with us and we couldn’t easily leave him too far behind. New York became our one trip, the outer limit of our travel without him. The world would have to wait; in the meantime, we could show our young kids New York.

Our daughters, consumed by all things Broadway at the time, considered this the best destination in the world regardless. In this era, the girls knew every word of every show. Our family was deranged by show tunes. My older son had some very long car rides in those years, seat-belted between belters. Though: he could probably perform a healthy amount of Come From Away and can definitely nail a Dear Theodosia duet, so likely worth it?

When I arrived to check in, I realized the hotel was not the same. And I don’t mean changed in little ways, like new chairs in the lobby or different light fixtures; I mean it was not even the same building. The original hotel had closed, a holding company had bought the name and moved it to a new spot on the same street. For the whole of my stay, every time I left the hotel, I did two things. First, I turned the wrong way with 100% reliability, as if I’m equipped with an anti-homing device. Second, I’d walk the block, looking at the surrounding buildings trying to decide where that original hotel had been. Did that lobby look oriented the right way? Could it have been this entrance? Or that one?

I needed to find the memories, but I couldn’t, that swatch of history lost, of course, because New York is anything but static. I mean we all know the place is an insomniac. But did you know what it’s doing all night while it’s not sleeping? It’s building. Things going up, things coming down. A symphony of construction noise that in other cities would only be tolerated during daylight hours. It’s breathless, unstoppable change. Not unlike those three kids who passed through that once-lobby, old enough at the time to roll their own bags and young enough at the time that those rolling bags had their first names embroidered brightly on the front zip pockets.

Dragging behind them everything they’ve now outgrown.

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Maybe this new old hotel was a good thing. Maybe I’m too easily lost in reverie and that Holding Company had done me a favor, given me a clean slate, forcing me to focus on my Now Me time instead of my Then Us time.

I’m rarely alone in my house for any long stretch of time. Some mornings—like right now—it can feel magical: writing, tea drinking, listening to a tortured poet. Other times, though, it can feel more lonely than alone, holed up in a place that once bustled with noise and activity and has now, for longer hours, gone museum-quiet. As if I’ve moved from Times Square to a place in the country where I’m supposed to observe the birds out my window more carefully and take greater interest in the lettuce my husband grows in garden beds.

Would alone but away feel different? I hoped so but wasn’t sure. When I was planning my trip, I’d asked my oldest if she wanted to come down from Boston to meet me in NYC to see some shows, a Broadway tour of nostalgia. But she has dwindling minutes left in her college career so I knew and understood she wouldn’t want to leave campus. When she listed the top 26 things happening on the weekend in question (Q: do college kid weekends have the same number of hours our weekends have?), I told her I’d probably still go see a show because this was my shot to see Sutton Foster. And, also: when in New York!

She texted back, “That will be so fun but by yourself ? :(”

“I’m great company!” I told her, not at all sure this was still true, knowing that in recent months, I’d had some trouble getting along with myself, as if Tamoxifen Me and Regular Me might be well served by couples counseling. My husband had tried to get the two of us me’s to talk, had even surfaced a mutual friend who’d had a similar experience on Tamoxifen who I might like to reach out to? But like most women, I am an Expert in Transitives: when you present me with C, I think first and immediately about what A was, and how you got from A to B and then B to C. So here, though this was a well-intentioned offer, I knew to have sourced this also grumpy-on-Tamoxifen person, my husband had to have mentioned to at least one other person that I was grumpy on Tamoxifen. And this made me grumpy.

Behold the beautiful mindset I was bringing to my alone time!

But then: New York has a way.

After the first day of the conference, where the other writers were lovely and supportive and not scary, I walked the 20 blocks back to my hotel in 70 degrees. I live in the cushy climate of Northern California, but the weather here has forgotten how to be its consistently nice, trademark self; more and more, my Seattle-raised husband says our dreary weather reminds him of his childhood days. So, this New York afternoon felt like my first spring day. And of course, having grown up on the east coast, I have muscle memory for first spring days when good will and good feelings hatch because something brutal has finally ended.

The weather was perfect, but that wasn’t the whole of it. The whole of it was the city itself. I don’t know what it is about New York that makes it feel accessible, that although you’re walking around in a crush of strangers, it feels comfortable and familiar. Maybe because there are so many people, it feels reasonable that you could be easily added, just one more drop in a humanity ocean. Zero dilution.

And I don’t know how the city makes you feel like you’re doing something even when you’re not; how it makes you think there are so many possibilities, and you are just in the process of deciding what the next exciting thing you do will be. You might return home and not realize any of this. But here, on these city blocks, in this soft air, it’s all about the promise. Here, it really is up to New York.

I got back to my hotel and didn’t want to stop being outside so I went running in Central Park. I’ve never liked running with people I know, but I do really like running around people I don’t. I like being in a giant shared exertion, slipping into the slipstream of runners, pretending a current’s taking me, not my legs. I like looking at what other people chose to wear to exercise, the myriad gaits, wondering what a given person’s work day was like before this run and what they’re going to have for dinner after it. I also like pretending I’m in a race, and Central Park offers an unlimited supply of competitors. I kept thinking of my HS track coach who used to tell our team to identify a person in front of us in a race, hook our sights on them and reel them in. I don’t think I’ve caught or passed a runner in nearly 40 years without thinking of Mr. Grasso. Teaching, coaching is so profound.

By the tourist-awaiting horse drawn carriages, I ran up on a troop of small runners, all bar counter height. They were not racing, I don’t think, but they were in some sort of organized group, running with adults who might ring in their heads decades from now. They each were wearing royal blue shirts with different words, seemingly of their own choices, on the back. I ended up in the middle of them, trying to read every shirt, entertained by the choices: ICE, HUSTLE, BINGO STAR, #ONE. My favorite was FACILITY, and I wondered if the kid wearing this meant to evoke a building—something solid, formidable, in the spirit of Refrigerator Perry—or if he meant he has an easy time with things, a natural aptitude. I ran along not sure which option I liked better. Both were sure and certain, both were amazing in their specific ways.

The kids were all running crooked like kids do, weaving in and out and around each other. Adult runners would never waste so many steps— knees and hearts need more conservation and economy with every year. But what do kids care? They have unlimited strides to give. And they don’t think about pace at all, sprinting for a stretch, nearly walking for another. Easily starting up again.

I hoped these kids were doing this blue-shirted running because they loved running. But I worried they were doing it because Extracurriculars are Extra Important in today’s world. After I passed them, I decided their shirts were funny but I wished they weren’t wearing them.

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I walked to a Broadway show that night in a flow state. I’d done all the things I love to do, all in one day. Like that United Airlines Magazine feature Three Perfect Days but I didn’t even need the other two!

And guess who I was getting along with really well? Myself! I loved being alone. At home, I spend a lot of time zoomed in on our family. I loved the chance to zoom out, gaining that perspective that only comes from distance. Like how you need vantage to absorb a great view — if you’re too close you notice less. Isn’t this the beauty of staring out at an ocean? Finally giving the horizon the contemplation its due.

As the second act of the show was about to begin, and the audience tried to stop talking about how much Jonathon Groff spits while performing, my older son called me. My last minute ticket was in the second row, and once seated, I understood why this ticket had still been available for purchase. The stage was eye level, and the actors quite immediate feeling. I was too close, firmly in the splash zone and practically in the show—I couldn’t answer.

I wish I was someone who didn’t conclude every unexpected phone call is bad news, but I’m not! I texted my son back Everything ok? but he didn’t answer quickly, and though I wasn’t with any of my kids, I could hear how they would reprimand me for my bright screen as the house lights went down just the same. I put my phone away and tried not to wish away the second act. I tried to merrily roll along.

After the final curtain, I exited the theater quickly—you can really bob and weave when you’re just one person pushing through a crowd—such liberty! I started my walk back to my hotel — at night, by myself because New York allows this: 2p and 10p differ only in lighting, not safety. At least this is how I felt at the time. A friend and a native New Yorker later told me that I was not exactly right about this. Still, feelings are important.

I called my son back. What’s up? I asked with extra inflection.

“Oh nothing. I was just calling to see how today went.”

Score another one for the kids.

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That night, back in my hotel room, I Facetimed my youngest. I reminded him I was in New York, and told him I would see his brother in Florida in a few days. My youngest is rarely unhappy, but on this night he was. Quite. I knew he was probably off balance because I, of all people, had left and therefore home did not feel usual.

“And then after Florida you will come home…” He wanted me to confirm.

“Yes. Of course!”

“And you will bring my brother and sister with you.”

“Well, no, honey. Remember they are in college. They have to stay at school.”

“But, Mommy,” he said, tears pooling, “I don’t feel like myself without them here.”

Dear lord. These kids.

He let this land, staring at me as if with enough time, his eyes might burrow into some part of me where the answer to this dilemma is stored. I have bad news for him: I’ve done the same searching. I’ve found nothing.

And even there in New York, alone and away, feeling more like myself than I had in a long time, I could only agree.

“I know what you mean. I really do.”

Jen.