This is your hotel? he asked.
Looking around with his sharp, almost-5 eyes: You brought your house with you.
Serendipitously, I encountered the author Fiona Davis, of so much great historical fiction, like “The Address,” about iconic NYC high-rises, who writes as though she lives in my head. It is inexplicable, really, how much I love living where we are. I hunger only for more space for the people I love to occasionally lay their sleepy heads. But all of this is not the point.
Bonnie, pupstar who doesn’t meet a stranger and happily dances for the treats stocked by the concierge, has added “Going down!” “Going up!” and “Floor nine!” melodic elevator prompts to her lexicon. She has a nose for which direction to turn when it opens. And she has mastered the revolving door, at the first-floor entrance, from the building to the world. This is the point.
The calls come when you least expect them. The childhood best friend from three hours away in the middle of the night who wanted me to be there when she told her toddlers in the morning that their daddy died. The small, loved one who fell and didn’t wake up. The new mommy too sick and weak to leave the bathroom. The family’s rock of Gibraltar still in so much pain recovering from a complicated spine surgery. You will think me dramatic when I tell you I have mourned how long it takes me to pack a go bag. Attempting to master that has been a long obedience in the same direction.
We never know when someone will need us. J. always called the idea of this the ministry of interruptions. It is, if you are our circus dog, the turning on a dime … her, in a turnstile space on a leash with feet bearing many times her body weight pressed next to her. It is, for me, the glass cage of the project timeline, the press of what’s next on our daily client traffic report, and the feared crush of approaching deadlines.
Get a little skinnier so you can grab a pair of jeans, tee and hoodie without thinking about how they’ll look or fit.
Buy two of every cosmetic or care product and make a travel kit. Include the vitamins that make your body work and rest. Resolve that you don’t need to travel with a pillow.
Take inventory of your life and simplify what you can. Who needs so many containers to water?
Give a neighbor a key.
And the little mantras we all know: no one is invaluable, it can wait, prioritize people over plans …
All of that is good but not much of any of it is very reasonable. Life happens and we do the best we can. I believe I found the best strategy in what someone related to me once in a coffee shop. She said she didn’t have time to call. Who doesn’t have time to call? Who can’t reshuffle the deck to spare five minutes to call?
Was she talking about me? I don’t believe she was talking about me. That is me. I don’t easily reshuffle the deck. I have come to believe that the reason I love living here for this season in our lives is because we have simplified everything for a moment to be open to anything. We are practicing going out. Out into the world. Out when someone we love needs us. Out because we love.
