I was up at 6:30 the last two mornings, running in Central Park — the same route I used to follow most mornings before work back in 1987, when I lived in a one-room studio on the upper West Side. Being in my old neighborhood this week felt a bit like time travel — there, as always, were the dogs, cavorting in an an exhilarated frenzy of sociability, their bleary-eyed, solitary owners sipping cups of take-out coffee; there were the serious runners, buff men and lean women in coordinated spandex, speeding by me as I loped along in my t-shirt and yoga pants; there were the bikers, usually in pairs, hunched over their handlebars, slicing through space; there were the old folks, sitting on benches with the Times folded into thirds and breakfasts in brown paper bags.
My feet knew just where to go, each turn giving rise to a view that was at once surprising and utterly familiar. I’ve always loved running in the park, where the early-morning city vibe, coupled with my passion for people-watching, carries me much further than any sense of determination I ever manage to muster on the quiet back roads of New Hampshire. Put me down at the corner of 60th and 5th, just as the city’s waking up, and I can run easily for an hour.
But it’s been nearly twenty-five years since I could call myself a New Yorker, and as the years roll by I find it harder and harder to believe that this really was once my life, this city my home, and that I used to be one of those striving young twenty-somethings making my way and trying to figure out where I fit in the grand scheme of things.
“She’s ambitious,” a senior editor once said, warning my boss, I think, that he should watch his heels, that I might be after his job. The comment stung at the time; I thought of myself as hardworking, eager to please, dedicated and wanting to do well — but not ambitious. That word connoted cold-blooded calculation, a willingness to do anything to get ahead. It made me cringe. A small-town girl with no connections, I’d already concluded that the only way I could survive in the world of New York publishing — and still like myself — was to do it on my own terms.
I knew I wasn’t the smartest young editor in midtown, or the most brilliant manuscript doctor, the best dealmaker, or the most desirable party guest. But I was pretty thrilled to have landed in the big city, pretty thrilled with my job, and I was more than willing to give it my all. At the same time, well, I was determined to be a nice person. I hoped that, in a town that could be tough and a business that was often more about names and numbers and who you knew than about literature, there might be some like-minded souls. Other young people who loved the written word and who felt grateful, as I did, for the opportunity to work with authors to make good books even better and then bring them into the world. Turned out that there were, and we found one another.
I was earning $11,500 a year and just barely managing to get by: an English muffin and a grapefruit half for breakfast, an expense account lunch (those were the days when even a junior editor was expected to be wining and dining somebody between the hours of twelve and two), and a cup of soup for dinner. My good friend Jamie Raab was in the same boat, trying to pay the rent and have a life on an editor’s salary that afforded no extras. One Saturday we agreed that we’d both had it with trying to iron skirts on our kitchenette counters; we went to the hardware store together and treated ourselves to two tiny, apartment-sized ironing boards. I remember this purchase vividly because it seemed, at the time, both an enormous splurge and a significant step into adulthood.
I thought of those years as I ran through the park this week. Looking back, I realize now that the older editor who called me ambitious wasn’t entirely wrong. But what she didn’t know was that my yearnings were not so much for a place at the top as they were for a life that would one day be connected to a place. I didn’t want to succeed in business nearly as much as I wanted to succeed in creating a life that felt like a fit with who I was inside. A life in which I would feel that I was truly at home. I knew even then that New York was an experience, a chapter, an important part of my coming-of-age story. And I also knew that I would never have roots there, that my deepest, truest ambitions would ultimately call me elsewhere — to a husband and children, to a slower pace, a quieter way of being, a connection to nature, solitude, a world far from the fast lane.
The wonderful thing is that the very path that led me away from New York all those years ago has now, in middle-age, circled round and brought me back there as a regular visitor. My dear friend Jamie, who counted pennies with me back in the early ‘80s and who set the standard for decency and kindness and intelligence in publishing, stayed the course and is now running Grand Central Publishing, publisher of The Gift of an Ordinary Day. If there is such a thing as a publishing family, Jamie has created it, and I am a lucky relative. Yesterday morning, I had breakfast with my editor, who has also become a dear friend in the years since we first talked about motherhood, the passage of time, and the joys and sorrows of children growing up and leaving home. Karen and I are exactly the same age. Our sons are the same ages. And our lives, which seem at first glance so very different (she represents, most certainly, the road not taken) turn out to be, in the ways that really count, remarkably similar. I may not be attending editorial meetings, doing deals, or racing for a train; she’s certainly not shooing turkeys out of the yard, facing a blank page, or taking long walks at dawn with her dog. But we understand and empathize deeply with the challenges of one another’s days and, what’s more, we share the even more visceral challenges of age, empty nests, grown sons, shifting expectations and new priorities.
It is a stint as a literature panelist that brings me to New York every few months now. What’s different of course is that I come as a visitor, often accompanied by Steve and a son or two; I do my work, savor all the city has to offer, and leave again. It is a wonderful opportunity, to move so easily after all these years between two worlds, to renew an old love affair with the city without questioning for a moment choices made or paths followed. New York has never looked better. I cherish every high-intensity moment that I spend there, and then I sigh with pleasure as I walk back through my own door — exhausted, sated, full of images and impressions and ideas, grateful to have gone, grateful to be home again, grateful to have a life that allows for such contrasts.
“I am rooted,” wrote Virginia Woolf, “but I flow.” Yes, I think, that is exactly right.
I love that Virginia Woolf quote — very much how I’ve always felt about my own life. I appreciate being tethered to something, but hate feeling tied down, if that makes sense. This reminded me of your “Eating Alone” post several months back, which I very much enjoyed. Glad you are back! I’ve missed your words.
It’s taken me a long time to really feel those roots, to stop seeking and wondering and to just settle. And I absolutely get what you mean about the comfort of feeling tethered–a perfect word. Thank you.
Katrina. Oh Katrina. How I wish I had someone like you in my life, here and now, to guide me in the way that your words do. To help me through my own season of change, from one of corporate ambition to one where I truly feel at home and can help my heart sing. I read this and I think, maybe, just maybe I can do it.
You inspire me in ways I cannot easily express. Really and truly. Thank you.
xo
You CAN do it. But maybe not at this moment. To all things there is a season, yes? I think that sense of rootedness grows over time, not overnight. But remember this: we ARE in one another’s lives. So glad you’re here.
As long as I know you, I keep learning new things about you. Thank you for this lovely look back.
Likewise! Maybe that is the silver lining to friendships like ours — rarely face-to-face, but connected nonetheless — they unfurl slowly, and grow their own kinds of roots.
I don’t even know how but I found your book just at the right moment in my life. And I can’t thank you enough. Please continue writing you inspire and help me see my life with a new meaning
So glad my book came into your hands at the right time, and that you found your way here, too. Welcome!
Oh I just loved this. I was right there, eating soup with you in your studio apartment. I often think back to my own single life when I was “ambitious.” I had an apartment in an old Victorian in downtown Palo Alto. I go back there often in my mind.
This wasn’t just a look back, it was a discussion about ambition and competition and what it means to be young and female and good at what you do. This was so beautiful. Thank you!
My guess is that we could all have a pretty interesting conversation about ambition, expectations, and how these words change for us as we grow and change ourselves. Thanks for being here, for reading and commenting.
love to read your writings!
Thank you. Glad to know you’re there!
I don’t always comment, but I read every one of your posts. Whenever they show up in my reader, I slow down and take the time to savor them. Thank you for sharing yourself with the world!
Thanks Cate! Slowing down is a gift we give to ourselves — so glad that you’re here.
Oh, I have never read that beautiful Woolf quote and how perfect it is. Thank you, thank you. xox
The idea of being both rooted and flowing makes me think of some of your recent posts, too — the way your life contains contradictions and extremes, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Neither would I!
You were in my state and I was in yours! I thought of you, as I always do now, as we wound through the wooded NH roads to my brother in laws house. I knew you were ‘just around the mountain’ from me, once again. Some day our paths will cross, maybe at the country store in Lyndeboro! 🙂
Beautiful post. Beautiful picture. Reminds me that I need to get back to that special City before we head west.
Judy
What perfect timing: I am about to leave on a trip to New York, a city where I lived in that same pre-kid season of life that you did. Being there now feels both familiar and liberating (and not only because I can now afford to indulge in some of the same activities – like eating a real dinner, or having two glasses of wine at a bar – that felt like the most indulgent luxuries to me when I lived there).
The anecdote about the ironing board is especially resonant to me. My own symbol of adulthood was a set of decent knives in a wooden block that perched uneasily on the non-counter between the stove and sink in my tiny kitchen.
Thank you for helping these memories bubble up today.
I wanted to live in NYC in my early 20’s. I remember how it really worried my dad (now deceased for almost 4 years). Now that I have kids, I can finally relate to why my dad worried about the prospect of me living in New York. I was a CPA and my ticket into NY was going to be as an FBI agent. I applied and made it to the final round of the application process (3 levels of application at that time). In the end, I did not make it through the final round of interviews, but all’s well. I loved reading your reflections about completing circles and circling back around. Although my kids are young, I have started to have some circle / reflective moments, too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and talent for writing with all of us… it feels good to not feel alone in my deepest, heartfelt, rarely expressed emotions, especially since I struggle to find the right words to bring them to the surface to share with others.
I feel that gap between the life that was and the life that is — sometimes sharply.
With my divorce, and the things that followed it came a divorce from much of the life I had lived before. Friends drifted out of my life who had seemed at one time central to it. Not long back I was in a neighborhood where I used to turn – I found myself craving the chili soaked enchiladas that I lived on in those days. I looked on trees that I had loved and remembered the days when my little son played in our tiny shared yard. It seemed a life that was hardly my own and yet, somehow I remembered it.
I’m often struck the the vaguely synchronous tones of our separate paths. In 1987 I lived in a one room studio apartment on Thompson Street, a narrow extension of 5th Avenue after it ends at Washington Square’s arch. I loved to run around that park, walking home facing the Twin Towers where i often worked as a temp on Wall Street while angling for my break as a filmmaker. Directing, agents, moving to LA, finding that publishing was no easier than Hollywood, but making wonderful connections all along the way…
I remember leaving New York city with my then girlfriend, now wife, on New Year’s Day 1988—only to return for lovely trips, some with my kids, but New York always lives so vibrantly in my heart.
As my ambition tames to little more than a wish to create for the pure sake of it, and to help where I might, life grows softer and increasingly tender.
Namaste, BD
Oh, I have a scar on my ankle from the morning I was late to my editorial flunky job at S&S and I was ironing my skirt on the floor on a towel, and I slid that iron right into my ankle. Thank you for this–such a vivid evocation of those days in the late ’80s.