Box Girl (33 page)

Watching TV in the kitchen that night, I listened as the National Spelling Bee contestant—no older than twelve and, as far as I was concerned, much more accomplished than me—asked for the definition of “weltschmerz.” When the moderator recited it, I leapt from my chair to get a pen, so taken by its meaning: “sentimental depression about the actual state of the world versus an ideal state.” It was a German word, of course. They always have the best words to describe the worst things. I wrote down the word and its definition. I was delighted. Now I had a sophisticated, final-round-of-The-National-Spelling-Bee word, from the Germanic, to describe what was wrong with me.

I'm omitting some important details. I'd like to leave them out—I was trying to leave them out—but I can't. It just creates too many holes. This post-matriculation meltdown was caused by more than just being bummed that my friends were now scattered across the country and my journalism degree from a top-five party school was never going to get me a job. I was also in love with a guy who lived three thousand miles away and was not my boyfriend. He was one of those friends from college that I was so heartbroken to let go of. And was I that in love with him in retrospect? I don't really know. What I do know is that I was not ready to move to Manhattan to marry my boyfriend, who was twenty-eight (or “thirty minus two,” as my girlfriends sometimes called him). I had just turned twenty-two, and I was terrified. All of the movie clichés I'd ever heard—
that I felt like I could see my whole life laid out before me
—seemed like they were written just for
me. When Rose whimpered from the bow of the
Titanic
, “I saw my whole life as if I'd already lived it,” I thought,
You go girl
. I, too, could see it all: the engagement party in the city, the fourteen-bridesmaid wedding, the house in Greenwich, the kids, the carpool route, the yellow lab named “Bear” or “Buck.” And while both of these guys were good people, this really had nothing to do with either of them. It was—cue yet another relationship cliché—about me. I just wasn't ready for the relationship that fast-tracked me into adulthood.

So I ran away. I broke up with the New York boyfriend, blindsiding him and everybody else by moving to California. Looking back, this move wasn't so much for the other guy (though he did conveniently live there, and we did end up dating for a little bit). It was an escape from a life I wasn't ready to live. My parents were heartbroken, and I was, too—that I had made them that way. But I knew I had to go. I was as close to having a nervous breakdown as I ever wanted to come, and I'd already promised my girlfriends anyway. We were all suffering from various degrees of the quarter-life crisis, and we were certain a dramatic change of scenery was the only solution. In our less melancholy moments, my parents and I were able to make light of it: I was suffering from a quarter-life crisis with a side of bi-coastal disorder. Much like the quarter-life crisis, bi-coastal disorder included symptoms such as sobbing while repeatedly listening to Kelly Clarkson's “Breakaway” and the theme song to
The O.C
. So, my girlfriends and I packed up our clothes and books and beds, boarded them on a Penske truck, and promised our parents we'd only be there a year, no more than two.

But that's not what happened. It never is. And now I understand, as Joan Didion learned, how six months could become eight years. Tacked to the same wall as “weltschmerz” is a line from Didion's essay “Goodbye To All That,” written in red
pen on a torn-off corner of a yellow legal pad page: “That was the year, my twenty-eight, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.” I was exactly twenty-eight when I read that for the first time, and I immediately broke down into tears. How had I not read it sooner? Why had no one told me to? During my first year in California, I sporadically kept a journal, and on one of its pages I wrote: “I wish someone would just tell me where I'd be in ten years so I could stop worrying about it.”

More than that, I wish someone had told me at twenty-two, twenty-three—even twenty-five—what Didion finally figured out. That all of it—even the mistakes and the procrastinations—would count. I wish someone had told me that it would all work out, eventually. That it might take a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would, and that it certainly wouldn't go the way I expected it to. That I would have more jobs and more apartments than I could count on two hands. (In eight years, I moved seven times.) That I would have much, much joy and many disappointments, many highs, and as many hangovers. That I would get over the ones that I thought were The Ones. That, at certain points, jobs would let me down, relationships would let me down, the government would let me down, friends would let me down. That I would think it was cool to be broke until I would no longer think it was cool to be broke. That several things I believed with all of my being—believed so vehemently that I would pound my fist on a barroom table until my micro-brewed beer spilled out of its glass—I would completely disagree with only a few years later. That my twenties would last for fifty years. That a lot can change in fifty years.

I don't know when it was decided that thirty was the year. Maybe over a caboodle of Barbies on Kimberly Baker's living room rug. After cramming Ken in the driver's seat of the pink Corvette (in which the bulky, albeit penis-less Ken never seemed to fit) and placing his golf clubs in the backseat, we'd wave Barbie's rubbery arm from beneath the pink, plastic portico of their mansion. Being a good wife, Barbie would always wave until Ken was down the road and out of sight. Meaning, behind the couch. Then we'd scurry her through the front door; she had to change out of her apron and into something sportier because Skipper was coming over to help her pick out her outfit for the ball that night. (Basically all our Barbies ever did was say goodbye to their husbands and try on outfits for whatever nighttime activity was planned for their return.) In our minds, Barbie had it all: the mansion, the convertible, the closet (though now I realize she actually didn't have a closet, just a pile of clothes that was half the height of the house), the endless social engagements, and a best pal named Skipper who never seemed to have plans of her own but was always more than willing to help Barbie primp for hers. We'd sit there sipping Citrus Cooler Capri Suns, our Gumby-like knees bent out to the side in a position that would be entirely impossible to get into (or out of) now, and plan our lives.

“When we're thirty,” we'd say, because it was always thirty, “we'll move in next door to each other, and our kids will play in the cul-de-sac, and our husbands will play golf, and we'll try on clothes.” It was the all-American dream, pre-packaged for us by Mattel.

Years later, in adolescence, it was still thirty. “If we don't find anyone else to marry by the time we're thirty,” I'd say, to my best guy friend, “Then we'll marry each other.”

And even at twenty, it was still thirty. One night while dancing on the bar at a saloon in South Georgia, I reached for Melissa's wrist to hoist her up. “Come on!” I shouted over Def
Leppard's “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” my swollen, beer-fat body stuffed into a sundress, my shoulders magenta because this was also before I wore sunscreen. “We can't do stuff like this when we're thirty!” Since that night, I have been made fun of for this line way more than thirty times.

One night, not long ago, the foursome from that first house in Santa Monica reunited for dinner in LA. It was a rare treat to have us all in the same city—by that point, we were strewn all over the country. Heather had moved to New York for an even better producer position, Melissa was in New York for law school, Rachel was enjoying a successful career designing children's clothing San Francisco (yay, painting degree!), and I was still in LA. During dinner, we talked about my impending “big” birthday. It seemed like I was supposed to be upset about it—thirty, the big 3-0, the end of the line, the party's over—but all I could think was,
Thank god
. If anything, I was relieved to be getting out of my twenties. How many lives had I lived during this interminable decade anyway? Five? Fifteen?

Like me, they weren't particularly upset about thirty either. We'd always prided ourselves on being “fiercely independent” women, and quite frankly, we were tired of being “fierce” and “independent.” While at one point the thought of living anywhere but New York, LA, or San Francisco sounded simply pedestrian, we found ourselves at thirty talking romantically about cities somewhere in between. Longing for lives more pastoral, slower paced. The phrase “a farm in Wisconsin” was said, as well as “the burbs of Chicago.” Even “Kansas City,” for chrissake. After nine lives worth of tiny apartments, failed relationships, too little money, and too little sleep, these places started sounding idyllic, a suburban Valhalla.
Just give me a
good coffee maker, a laptop, a Tahoe, and a carpool route
, I thought. And as soon as I thought that, I was haunted by one of my many former selves: Isn't that exactly what I was running away from when I moved to California? But that was then. And if it weren't for all that living in between, I would have resented it, rejected it. Freaked out.

What was it then? Were we feeling maternal? For being so independent—
make them chase us, don't call back, don't text first
—at thirty, did we really just want a husband, a house, and a couple of kids? In an attempt to be less of a mess, I now occasionally record snapshots from my day in Word documents and save them in a folder on my desktop titled “Notes.” The documents have titles like: “Notes on Technology,” “Notes on LA,” “Notes on Dad.”

One of them is “Notes On Nightmares About Babies”:

Losing my babies under beach towels at the pool.

My nephew's head keeps falling off when I hold him.

Does this mean I'm not ready to have children?

Is this normal?

Needless to say, this desire for a downshift was not necessarily maternal. It is interesting though, that when my mom was twenty-nine, she already had one child and one was on the way, yet she still felt way behind the curve. That was the early '80s in Augusta, Georgia, though. My mom didn't marry until she was twenty-four and, at that age, was considered an old maid. This must have had something to do with the fact that every Christmas after college, she had to be “re-presented” to society at something called The Spinsters Ball.

“The
Spinsters
Ball?” I repeated, on the phone. “The name alone.”

The Spinsters Ball was a black-tie gala at the country club, my mom explained, with the sole purpose of announcing to the
whole town which women were still single. “About halfway through the night,” she said, “they got the crowd's attention, and everyone gathered around the ballroom floor. The master of ceremonies called out our names, and we all stood in a sort of semicircle, and everyone applauded.”

My mouth was agape.

“So that was sort of embarrassing,” she added. She told me they sent an engraved invitation every year, inviting her to participate.

“Well could you turn it down?” I asked.

“Oh no you didn't turn it down,” she said. “It was considered an honor to be invited.”

The Spinsters Club was the sister society to The Bachelors Club, but, as my mom told me, “All
they
did was throw one heck of a costume ball. They were just out to have a good time.” As bachelors typically are. (Again, the name alone.) My mom was twenty-three when she made her final appearance at The Spinsters Ball. “I said, ‘If I am not engaged by this time next year, I am
not
doing this again.'” Fortunately, my dad proposed that spring. I sort of wish he hadn't, though. I would have loved to know if she would have kept that promise.