I am in New York City for two nights, doing a bit of literary volunteer work.\u00a0 Today has been a long day, nine hours in a hotel conference room.\u00a0 By the time our group is released from duty just before six, I\u2019m ready to get outside and seize the last minutes of sunlight on the first day of the year that truly feels like spring.<\/p>\n
I walk twenty blocks or so with my coat flapping open, cell phone pressed to my ear like a native, checking in with every family member.\u00a0 Then I slip my phone into my pocket and watch Times Square grow even brighter as night falls, a vast neon panorama of news and temptation and blandishment.\u00a0 For a while, it\u2019s fun just to be swept along by the tide of humanity, gazing into shop windows and considering my options.<\/p>\n
Not knowing how long my meeting would run, or how tired I\u2019d be after trying to be articulate all day, I haven\u2019t made a plan for the evening.\u00a0 But now, watching the world go by — families, couples, groups of friends — I feel a little unmoored, wishing for company.\u00a0 I think about going to a show, scoring a last-minute ticket at the half-price booth, but I\u2019ve been sitting for hours; actually, dinner and bed sound even more appealing.\u00a0 Time was, I would have given anything to even have such a choice.\u00a0 Now I wonder if I\u2019m settling for too little, behaving like a boring, middle-aged mother cut adrift, when I should be taking advantage of some big-city experience.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years ago, I was an editor in New York, young and ambitious and poor, putting a life together for myself on a salary of $11,000 a year.\u00a0 One day during my first few months in the city, my boss paused at my desk around lunch time and asked what I was doing.\u00a0 \u201cReading a manuscript,\u201d I said, through a mouthful of tuna fish sandwich.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to see you here, eating in the office,\u201d he admonished, surprising me.\u00a0 \u201cYour job is to get out there, meet people, and hustle.\u00a0 The best stuff always happens at lunch.\u201d \u00a0 In those days, even junior editors had expense accounts, but until Cork Smith gave me a little kick in the butt and told me to pick up the phone and start using mine, I wasn\u2019t quite sure what to do with it.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, my publishing lunches kept me from starving.\u00a0 Knowing I would get a decent meal at noon, which would cost the equivalent of my own food budget for an entire week, I could subsist on a grapefruit and English muffin for breakfast, and a small salad from the Korean grocer on the corner for dinner.\u00a0 Once a day, I stuffed myself.\u00a0 If I was careful, I could just manage to pay my bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou certainly eat a lot, for such a small person,\u201d I recall one elderly literary agent observing. No doubt I nodded, demure, not telling her that my next proper meal was twenty-four hours away.<\/p>\n
I think of those days now, as I sit down to a solitary Saturday night dinner in a French bistro in midtown Manhattan.\u00a0 In a year of stepping out of the comfort zone and learning to say \u201cyes,\u201d this is another little first for me: a restaurant meal without the easy company of a spouse or child or friend along to split an entree, make conversation, share the moment, pay the tip. \u00a0 I have a magazine in my purse, but it\u2019s too dim in the restaurant for reading — no chance of hiding out after all.\u00a0 The waiter whisks away the other place setting at the table, hands me a menu, and I\u2019m on my own.\u00a0 I take a quick survey, relieved to spot a middle-aged man nursing a glass of red wine, a single woman at a banquette against the wall, my compatriots in solitude.<\/p>\n
The memories of my long-ago weekends in New York are still fresh.\u00a0 I\u2019d put my sneakers on and walk the city for hours, soaking it in — smells, sounds, images and glimpses of how other people lived. The bustling restaurants and alluring boutiques were way off limits — the Sunday Times was my one big indulgence.\u00a0 I often wondered what being truly \u201cgrown up\u201d would feel like, whether I would ever be one of those casual, perfectly turned out women with the right sunglasses, jacket, and shoes.\u00a0 Whether I would ever wander into a sidewalk cafe for Sunday brunch, without a thought for how deeply those scrambled eggs would dent my paycheck.\u00a0 At twenty-five, I was working hard to fake it till I made it, a New Hampshire girl with a passion for books, a mostly empty Rolodex, and a miniscule alcove of an apartment on West 83rd — an address that surprised me every time I wrote it out.<\/p>\n
Now, twenty-six years later, I confront the truth:\u00a0 I will never have the right shoes. \u00a0 And the \u201cright\u201d sunglasses these days — oversized, bug-like — would look ridiculous on me.\u00a0 But I also realize that it doesn\u2019t matter much anymore.\u00a0 One good thing about turning fifty is the realization that we don\u2019t have to impress anybody. No one cares what kind of shoes I wear.<\/p>\n
Still, there is a part of me that feels a little exposed and uncomfortable here, claiming a valuable piece of New York real estate — a restaurant table — all to myself.\u00a0 I order a glass of white wine, and look around. Turns out that the other two solitary diners aren\u2019t alone after all — a delicately beautiful red-haired woman has joined the man, full of apology for her tardiness, and the lone woman\u2019s husband has returned from the restroom. I am the only unaccompanied person in the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available,\u201d writes Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Han. \u201cWe are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of a sudden, it occurs to me that at twenty-five, much as I would have liked a date, I also would have been quite thrilled to eat a restaurant meal alone.\u00a0 How grateful I would have been back then, to be able to just enjoy my food, without having to act like I knew what I was talking about, or feign interest in some unsaleable first novel.\u00a0 And so, in an instant, I make a decision:\u00a0 I will eat this particular meal in a way that allows me to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. \u00a0 I\u2019m here, I\u2019m alone, and I am going to fully experience the experience. My salad arrives, and I savor every bite of lettuce and warm goat cheese.\u00a0 I smile at the waiter, observe my fellow diners, take in the convivial atmosphere, the clatter of silverware, the low din of voices, the exuberance of the two artfully dressed young French women seated next to me, tucking into their steak frites.\u00a0 I linger over a dish of mussels, with undistracted appreciation.\u00a0 Happiness, it turns out, is available after all. It was right here all along. By the time dessert arrives (I never<\/em> order dessert!), I no longer feel alone, but intimately, joyfully connected.\u00a0 Alive in the moment, grateful for what is, full and content and ready for the long walk back to my hotel.\u00a0 Tomorrow at this time, I will be back at home in my own kitchen, making a meal, setting the table.\u00a0 Tonight, though, I am dining alone, and glad to be here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am in New York City for two nights, doing a bit of literary volunteer work.\u00a0 Today has been a long day, nine hours in a hotel conference room.\u00a0 By the time our group is released from duty just before six, I\u2019m ready to get outside and seize the last minutes of sunlight on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,30,39,14],"tags":[198,294,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-change","8":"category-gratitude","9":"category-midlife","10":"category-soul-work","11":"tag-gratitude-2","12":"tag-midlife-2","13":"tag-solitude-2","14":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}