Revolving Doors

I live in a New York City apartment building, complete with a revolving lobby door—both an entertainment and a danger for my kids when they were little. It is a daily part of my life, and has been for so long that I hardly think about it. Except for the fact that these days, I am beginning to see my whole life as a revolving door.

Strictly literally, the members of my household use that lobby revolving door at all hours of the day. When others are off to sleep, I am off to work. As I nap, others head off or arrive home. Around and around, day to day, who will be home, or eating, or sleeping at any given time is anyone’s guess.

There are days when life outside my home is no different. Who will be at work with me? With a shift-based schedule, it’s hard to predict from day to day. What will I do at work? With a job in news, it’s similarly hard to predict. And with a work force that changes daily from the pandemic, from company policies, from people’s life changes, all I can really do is keep my balance as that door goes ‘round.

Do I feel as though I’ve been spun through that door a little too fast? Some days. But somehow, a revolving door always gets you to the other side. So, as I juggle work tasks and home tasks and the movement of the people in my life, all I can really do is go with the turn. I will come out on the other side. It just might take more than one time around to do it.

Re:Connection

As an editor, I tend to spend a lot of time in a room by myself (except, of course, at the start of the pandemic, when I edited at home in a room with sometimes awake, sometimes sleeping children). It can be a peaceful little life. I interact with the machine, and the material. And for a short time, the producer who hands me the script and video, and the producer who approves the piece. It requires neither a lot of makeup nor a lot of baggage (literal or psychological). And that’s okay with me.

These last few months, however, I have been less of an editor and more of a director. I am no longer alone in a room. And while I am still interacting with a script and video, and with producers, I now also communicate with talent and other technicians and with anyone else who happens to be in the room or on headset.

I was nervous about the change. About learning the equipment and the routine. And about having that much connection. Yet, while my nerves continue to be at a slightly elevated level, the connection has turned out to be a good thing. I talk through, and I talk to, and I learn. I engage with people more, rather than just executing their vision. I connect.

And re: connection, I realize each day that this is an opportunity that came about because I allowed myself to connect. Allowed myself to believe the people who believed I could do it. Allowed myself to have some pieces of my past connect me to taking steps in my present.

So, re: connection may often be about who you know. But it is also about who and what you allow yourself to know. It’s taking that step from what’s comfortable because you do it by yourself, largely on your own terms, to what’s less comfortable because you are reaching and stretching and learning the rules of others.

Today I know more about more tasks and more people than I did before. Because I allowed myself a little more connection.

Re: connection—I re:commend it.

It’s Time

A few weeks ago, in response to my social media “happy birthday” to a former co-worker, he wrote “thank you” (because people do), and that he hoped I was still writing.

The truth is, most of my writing of late has been in the form of helping kids edit cover letters and college essays. And drafting forceful emails to accomplish things. Or simply “writing” in my head. But his comment stuck with me—through the daily chaos, and the overnight work shifts, and the noise of the world, and the revolving door of family and friends and coworkers. So, maybe that means it’s time….

Time…to allow myself to put out into the world what I’m thinking.

Time…to stop worrying that each phrase I put to paper and to the internet won’t be politic enough, or interesting enough, or good enough.

Time…to think deeper thoughts than how much sleep I will get this morning and what I will make for dinner tonight.

Time…to let everything and everyone go, for just long enough each day to write the few hundred words that I wrote, day in and day out, for five-plus years.

Time…to remind myself that while I may be a mother and a wife and a director and an editor and a technician and a short-order cook, I am also a writer. As most of us are, in fact, more than the two or things that people see.

So, with thanks to that friend who just had a birthday, here we go.

Because it’s time.

There Are Still Peeps

A little more than a year ago, my daughter and I took our first real college exploring trip. A highlight, as it turned out, was the discovery of a store with 75% off Easter candy, including one of my personal favorites, marshmallow Peeps. Despite a certain amount of restraint, we came home with not just notes (some scribbled, some mental) about colleges, but with a bag full of candy (and a Peeps headband!) to boot.

Now, almost a year later, as we wait for the results of the college search that was just beginning then, I am struck by the fact that so much has happened, so many things have changed, but there are still Peeps.

We have managed a college list that has grown and shrunk and grown again, only to shrink before our eyes. But there are still Peeps.

We are older, and maybe wiser, steps closer to some places and miles farther from others. But there are still Peeps.

We have eaten more ice cream and less ice cream, and discovered that more can taste even better after a while of having less. And there are still Peeps.

We have felt defeated and triumphant, and battered and exhilarated, and we still come out swinging. Is it because there are still Peeps?

We have made good choices and not so good ones. And ones we’re not sure how to rate. But there are still Peeps.

We have guessed right sometimes, and not so right others. And, yet, there are still Peeps.

We began on one path and have wandered a lot, and are still not sure of our destination. But there are still Peeps.

Both our little world and the big world look a lot different than they did a year ago. And yet, I walk out into both of those worlds, and at every drug store and discount store and candy store, there are still Peeps.

A lot of things in life change in a year. But just when I think things have changed beyond recognition, and I just can’t handle it, I look around me and realize—thankfully—there are still Peeps.

Pajamas In The Daytime

I pad downstairs to the mailbox, and the package room, hair wet from a shower, in my afternoon uniform of fleece lounge pants, a giant t-shirt, and slippers. Mostly, I am self-contained, oblivious to others’ opinions on my appearance. Yes, I am walking around, in semi-public, essentially in my pajamas, in the middle of the afternoon. Who does that?

Well, I do. For me, 4pm might as well be 10, since at midnight, I will be at work.

But today, in my post-shower, pajama-clad state, I am reminded of a very different time when I was home all day. Then, I was self-conscious about my appearance—in fact, about my whole presence. Then, I was longing desperately to find new work that would deliver me from being home all day. Then, my trips to the mailbox were full of hope that there might be a check, and dread that there would almost certainly be a bill.

But now, my pajamas in the daytime fill me with a certain sense of peace. They are a part of my daily normal, part of a routine that makes my upside down schedule doable, and part of my reward each day for the previous night of work.

I suspect that there are people in my building who know my drill (“oh, she looks like she just got up because she works overnight”), and people who wonder if I’m sick or unemployed or just a little crazy. But these days, when I don my pajamas in the afternoon, I find that it doesn’t really matter to me what they think. A little fleece in the afternoon, and I am reminded of how lucky I am. And I am reminded that it is almost time for my next nap.

Fancy Footwork

My daughter dances. (She sings and acts too, but for the purpose of this metaphor, she dances). She takes classes and learns new steps and explores new styles and performs when she gets the chance.

I don’t dance. I can’t really watch a video and pick up steps, I am far from light on my feet, and “performing” tends to scare me, except when it simply means doing the job that is expected of me.

Yet, at the moment, I find that I am becoming adept at a lot of fancy footwork. Truthfully, it has little to do with my actual feet. While seated, feet completely still, I am clutching on to some degree of control in this college admissions waiting month by attempting to arrange and rearrange all our info. If X college is a “no,” what does that mean for colleges A, B, F, and Q? And is the “no” from X a complete no (either in their minds or ours), or is it a redirection to another program? And is that program one we (I know it’s “she,” but it feels like “we”) can live with? 

In some ways, her dances and mine are the same—based on fairly constant movement, built from a million tiny pieces, designed to create a smooth flow. But while she dances in front of an audience, my footwork is strictly behind the scenes—in minutes and hours when others are busy or asleep, in my mind or on many pieces of scrap paper or in assorted Word docs and emails, for situations and results that may not end up requiring the practiced steps. I am hopeful that my fancy footwork will, in some way, help her to continue hers. And, in the meantime, the fancy footwork is making me feel as though I am taking steps. Even if some of those steps are simply walking in circles.

I’ve Fallen And I Can Get Up

I am headed home from work—at 8am, because that is when I head home from work—and in an instant, I have gone from barreling across the street, backpack, shopping bag, and all, to being flat, face down, looking at a stranger’s shoes. “Are you ok?!” I hear, the speaker of those words sounding even more surprised than I at my trajectory. Thanks to multiple layers of thermal clothing, an enormous coat, and the gloves I usually forget to put on, I am virtually unscathed. And when, later, I feel bruises in places that surprise me, what strikes me the most is how very fast I went from being literally flat on my stomach on the ground to up and walking to catch my bus. The “are you ok?” man didn’t even have time to help me up, as I was on my feet—on the move, even—within seconds.

I am still a little shocked at my good fortune—to have fallen on a sidewalk, rather than in the street, to have caught the sidewalk edge in the light of day, rather than in the darkness, to have been so padded that I barely felt a thing, to have encountered multiple strangers willing to help if I needed. And more than anything, I am struck, and warmed, by the fact that, both physically and mentally, I am still quite full of the instinct to get up. I was on my feet without actually thinking “you have to get up.” I was walking without even pausing to consider any other scenario.

So, as I face what feel like challenges, in work, in parenting, in life, I can’t help but go back to that moment of falling and getting up. For, as long as I know that I can, and will, get up, it’s not nearly as scary to fall.