Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl

by Susan McCorkindale

  10. Take Your Team on a Field Trip

  When you work in a city like New York, your field trip options are endless. And when your job is marketing director for a major magazine, a huge part of your position is finding fabulous client gifts. Sure, I could’ve shopped solo, but it’s much more fun with friends. So every now and again I’d schedule a team field trip day and we’d all take off to places like Bliss or the Avon Spa. After all, you can’t confidently recommend a four-hundred-dollar sea salt pedicure and complimentary fruit platter if you haven’t actually sampled it yourself.

  Now, I don’t know about you, but I can only go so long feigning enthusiasm for something. And after three years I was exhausted from pretending to give a damn about beating More for the Almond Board business, and casting about for ways to steal the Catfish Farmers schedule from Cooking Light. It didn’t matter how much money I was making or that I was dripping in Donna Karan (and tripping in my ridiculously high Manolos); I was miserable.

  The commute from my home in New Jersey was killing me. The filth and noise and general madness of my beloved Big Apple were killing me. The only reason I got up and went to work every day was to see my staff. Otherwise I was so beat from faking it, I could barely get out of bed in the morning.

  I just wanted to stay home.

  Why, when my house is about as relaxing as a trip to the dentist, I have no idea. But I did.

  Chapter Two

  THE ONLY GRASS THAT’S GREENER IS THE STUFF YOU’RE SMOKING

  You know the old expression “The grass is always greener on the other side”? Well, that’s how it was with me and being home. I’d climbed the corporate ladder for so long, my calves were killing me.9 I no longer gave a crap about cracking the glass ceiling. I simply wanted to go home, stare at my own ceiling, and maybe even give it a fresh coat of paint.

  Obviously I was at DEFCON 4 on the sleep-deprivation scale, or else I’d have realized that being in my house all day—available to root for my writer husband (“Go, honey! Finish that book!”), help with homework (“Go, honey! Finish that ‘new’ math worksheet I’ve no clue how to do!”), play with my sons, maybe even join the PTA—was just the twenty-four/seven version of what it was like to come home to it every night. And that was not pretty.

  Like millions of working moms, I came in from the office each evening to a house that looked like horses in digestive distress blew through. (Look at that. A little farm foreshadowing. I never realized it until now.) And while I’d never assume others respond as I do to anything,10 particularly something as personal as a mess that’s spread like a rash from room to room, I refuse to believe I’m the only mother in America ever to do what I call the Clean Sweep.

  Starting in the kitchen, I wipe down the counters, cleaning off crumbs from breakfast and lunch, and wonder, “If I saved them up for a week, then used them to coat chicken cutlets, would anyone be the wiser?” Deeming this idea too Mommy Dearest, I turn my attention to the dishes in the sink and escort them to the dishwasher next to the sink. It takes ten seconds tops, but I guess between leaving the sports section strewn about (my husband) and setting up and abandoning every board game they’ve got (my kids), nobody else could find the time.

  Warming to my mission, I sail into the dining room, where I tuck the chairs into the table (yet another task only Mom can tackle), check the centerpiece for tennis balls (why must they use the decorative accessories for slam dunks?), and scoop a mound of crumbs from my husband’s spot. (Frankly, that cutlet idea may have some merit.) Pleased with my touch-ups, I turn to the living room and stop cold.

  You know the other old expression “The lights are on, but nobody’s home”?11 Welcome to my world. Every lamp in the room is ablaze. The TV is on at a deafening decibel. Soda cans and snack packages clutter the coffee table. Small green army men line the arms of the loveseat, and every pillow in the room has been recruited to make a barracks for “the boys.” Crumbs dot the carpet. A teaspoon peeks out beneath the kick pleat on the couch. And my family is nowhere to be found.

  For a moment I simply stand there, stunned by the mess before me. And then I do what any normal mom would do. I completely flip out. Five seconds into my outburst, all three men in my life have surfaced and are scrambling to secure their toys (lest I toss them in the trash); turn off the television (lest I remove the batteries from the remote, permanently nixing the sports night they planned); and generally clean up the newspapers, leftover junk food, and other assorted flotsam they’ve flung everywhere. They’re moving at a good clip, which is pretty impressive, but you know what’s even more amazing? Not one of them can understand what I’m so upset about.

  This same scenario took place every night, so why I wanted to be home, I have no idea.

  Except that I liked my home. And I missed my kids. And sometimes, when I wasn’t so ticked at my husband for launching his literary career before I could launch mine, I actually missed him, too.

  I hadn’t always worked in the city. For ten highly profitable but natural light-free years I worked in our basement as a copywriter, churning out headlines and taglines for some of the biggest brands in the country. Schick. Redken. Tetley. Purina. MasterCard. Maybelline. Dove. Duracell. It was as much fun as you could have and still call it work. I was at it seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. At home. During the holidays. In hotels. I loved the rush of finding the right words. Or, more to the point, the right three-to-five words.

  Copywriting is a lot like that old game show, Name That Tune.12 Remember how the contestant who could name the tune in the least amount of notes won? Well, copywriting works the same way, only with words. The copywriter who can make the consumer respond—in five words or less13—is the one who works.

  And I guess I was pretty good at it, because I was always working.

  I cranked out taglines for Sunlight Dishwashing Liquid from Disney World, and marketing plans for Colonial Homes from Hilton Head. I wrote an entire ad campaign for Liz Claiborne’s men’s line from my cousin Lisa’s beach house in Long Branch, and drafted a series of sweepstakes headlines for Heinz on a plane bound for Houston. No matter where life took me, I took my laptop. Hell, I even racked up billable hours from my bed in the maternity ward at Hackensack University Hospital. I checked in, had Cuyler, and then, between feedings, crafted a brand new advertising strategy for Children’s Claritin allergy medication. (Frankly I think the Percocet they gave me for pain improved my performance, but let’s not let that get around.)

  Speaking of maternity, this might be a good time to tell you about my sons. I have two. Casey,14 the eldest, was born the year before I launched my business. Cuyler15 was born seven years later, at the height of its success. I’m not joking when I say that I had the kid on a Monday and was back at my desk on Thursday. My poor doctor really didn’t want to release me (like Case, Cuy was a “C,” which meant the health insurance gods granted me permission to stay in the hospital a whole twenty-four extra hours), but the twice-daily bedside FedEx deliveries finally forced him to.

  So there’s seven years between my kids, and twelve between me and the old man. That would be my husband, Stu. He was on his way to being a Master of the Universe when we got married—you know, big job, big office, big bucks—and then sometime after Casey was born he decided he really wanted to stay home and be . . . Hemingway. Of course, he’s not exactly like Ernest. He doesn’t drink (at least not to excess) and he doesn’t play with guns (he uses them only to scare chickens from window boxes and “off” rabid foxes, but really, the farm stuff’s coming in a sec, I swear. . . .). And while he likes cats, he accepts the fact that he’s limited to three (and not forty-three).

  I’ve got lots of nicknames for him besides Hemingway. Sometimes I call him Corky or Mac, which are relatively self-explanatory. But other times, like when I’m annoyed at the mess he’s left me in the bathroom, he’s the Dean of the Directionless Discharge, and the Titan of Urinary Untidiness. Not exactly pet names for public consumption, but you get my drift. And h
e leaves me his. Which is how this whole thing started.

  Most of the time, though, he’s simply hon.

  As in “Hon, the recession decimated my copywriting business. And since we still want to pay the mortgage and eat more than macaroni and cheese, I’d better hightail it back to magazine marketing for whoever will pay me the most. Did you hear me, hon?”

  That’s actually what happened. In February 2001 my billing was so far down, I knew something was up. As it turned out, the entire country was nose-diving into a recession. And that terrible, splattering sound you heard as the economy connected with the ground? That was my business.

  By May, one of my three top accounts folded. Another laid off ninety percent of its employees. And my largest account, the one worth just under a hundred grand for each of the previous four years, pulled everything in-house. I think I billed them seven thousand big ones in ’01. OK, I know that’s all it was; a fact like that you never forget. No matter how much sangria you swill.

  Hon and I cut out the extras: highlights and haircuts and dinners out and magazine subscriptions and Netflix memberships and weekends away and any kind of credit card with a usage fee over five dollars. Our goal was simple: make the mortgage, and keep the kids in Ridgewood’s five-star school system.

  In July my hair began falling out and panic attacks set in. We’d blown through our cushion and were borrowing against our life insurance; I knew it was time to bite the bullet and go back to the Big Apple.

  And all I wanted from my first day there was to come home. To my messy house. My hon. My boys. My basement.

  Take Suzy’s Clean Sweep Survey!

  You didn’t actually think I could end this chapter on such a sappy note, did you? Trust me, that is so not my style. Oh yes, poor me. I hated working in the city. I wanted to come home. It was such a hardship earning in the high six figures during a frigging recession. Please. Somebody slap me. The toughest part about being at Family Circle all day was pulling cleaning duty all night. And since I know I’m not the only wife and mom tagged with that task, the real question is, do you do the Clean Sweep too?

  • First comes the cramping . . . The Clean Sweep comes on like a contraction the minute you walk in the door. Which might not be so bad if you could just arrange for an epidural during your commute.16 The key is that your husband and kids have been running amuck sans adult supervision, and the pain upon viewing the destruction is akin to being at ten centimeters on two Tylenol.

  • Assess your risk . . . The Clean Sweep is triggered by the dynamic duo of marriage and children. If you’ve checked both these boxes there’s a good chance you frequently wield the family-size bottle of Fantastik and a jumbo-size roll of Bounty. With one hand.

  • ’Til death do you dust bust . . . If you’re married and your husband is like mine—his idea of straightening up the kitchen is putting the newspaper in the recycling pile, he thinks he’s tidied the bathroom simply because he put the toilet seat down, and his approach to making the bed means pulling the duvet up over the dog—you do the Clean Sweep.

  • Congratulations, it’s a wrecking ball (er, boy)! If you’ve got kids and your kids are like mine—their backpack contents cover the entire top of the bed; their toys overtake every room in the house; their bathing habits rival those of Charlie Brown’s old pal Pigpen; and they possess the ability to scarf down every snack food in the fridge in less than fifteen minutes and leave the empty containers in such far-flung locales as in the closet, beneath the bed, in dresser drawers, and my personal favorite, under the pillow—you do the Clean Sweep.

  • Prognosis: The Clean Sweep is not a particularly debilitating ailment, though it can be painful for family members who find themselves in the sufferer’s path.

  • Treatment & Support: Believe it or not, fellow Clean Sweep sufferers, you can learn to curb your clutter-conquering tendencies and embrace the mess your loved ones leave you like a gift. And you can do it all without a prescription. Simply join your local Clean Sweep Support Group. It’s completely anonymous, so when you tell them (as one woman I know did) that your kids typically join the cat in using the sandbox as a Portosan, and that their idea of rainy day fun is freeing the hamster in the house, then following its feces to find it, you don’t need to further embarrass yourself by providing your name. We know who you are. You’re one of us. One of the millions of harried moms desperate to step off the treadmill of tidiness. To welcome the chaos you come home to. To learn to find joy in the jumble, relaxation amidst the mayhem, delight in the disarray. And a recipe for those crumbs you’ve been collecting. Cutlets, anyone?

  A note from the blonde in the boonies: Hold onto your $2,600 Louboutin bag. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

  Now that our relationship’s a little further along and you’ve put up with my kvetching about work and commuting and cleaning, and alluding to chickens, cows, and rabid foxes for a bit, it’s time to tell you how, in the space of a single Sunday afternoon, I went from hotshot (but miserable) marketing chick to counterfeit farm girl.

  If I’m honest, I have to admit that my descent from publishing diva to reluctant pasture princess didn’t actually occur in the prick of a cattle prod (because nothing—other than a pimple; cold sore; or jumbo jet-size hive the day of your huge job interview, date, or photo shoot for the book jacket of your first book—happens that fast), though it sure did feel like it. But you know what? I just don’t feel like being all that honest.

  I feel like bitching about the bill of goods my guy sold me, blowing things out of proportion, and pouting. (Admit it: Sometimes nothing satisfies like a good pout.) But before I get ahead of myself, I invite you to see for yourself what happened next.

  Ready? Kick off your Tod’s, pull on a pair of Timberlands (or don’t; God knows I won’t), and come with me back to August 2004. . . .

  Part Two

  SUZY IN STICKSLAND

  Chapter Three

  “DARLING, I LOVE YOU, BUT GIVE ME PARK AVENUE. . . .”

  “It looks like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house.”

  We were standing side by side, staring at a red, four-square-style farmhouse with a white porch, situated on a five-hundred-acre beef cattle farm, when my husband, aka Hemingway, aka hon, aka Mr. History, pulled that little factoid out of his well-read head.

  “Don’t you think?” he prompted, with a grin so wide my hackles shot straight to the skyscraperless sky. “Sue, don’t you think it looks just like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house?”

  Now, how the hell would I know what Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house looked like? If it was featured in In Style Home, I might have a fighting chance of having this chat intelligently. But alas, it hasn’t been, and frankly I’m a little out of the whole “birthplace of American literary giants” loop.

  “I see Nate didn’t have any neighbors,” I cracked.

  “That’s part of its country charm,” continued my bizarrely ebullient better half. “It’s quiet.”

  “Quiet? It could be the setting for the In Cold Blood sequel.” Was he kidding? Except for our conversation and the occasional moo, it was as silent as a toddler in a Benadryl-induced nap.

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Susan. It’s peaceful, not desolate. Don’t you remember we talked about this?”

  You know how some people can recall a conversation verbatim? Well, I’m not one of those people. Unless it’s something life-or-death, like whether I’ll be getting a $35,000 bonus and stock options, or a $45,000 bonus and company car. That conversation you can bet I’ll recall (and I’ll hold you to it, too).

  But when it’s something like my husband droning on and on about some trip to Home Depot that he needs to make to buy mulch or fertilizer or primer or pipe or caulk, and I just don’t give a crap, you can bet I won’t remember a word of it. Except maybe that he said he was going to a store, and that I wondered if there was a Starbucks nearby.

  So as far as the accuracy of the conversation I’m about to recount to you goes, on a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a seven
, which is pretty good because, as you’ll see, the subject matter is rather weighty. Having said that, you’d think I’d recall it word for word. But I don’t. This either means I’ve repressed it, or I’m stereotypically blond enough to make big life decisions without paying too much attention to the details.

  Hmm. That sounds about right.

  Anyway, what I remember most about the day I decided to give up my high-profile, high-paying, headache-inducing position in magazine publishing; sell my lovely home in suburban Ridgewood, New Jersey; put six hours’ driving between myself and my mother; and wrest my kids from their best friends (and me from mine) to follow my crazy husband into, of all things, farming, is that it was brilliantly sunny. Just the kind of cloudless, happy day I adore. The kind that makes me want to drop the top on the Mustang and drive to the mall for a little shopping, a little lunch, a makeup session, and a manicure. What can I say? I’m just an outdoorsy kind of girl.

  On this particular perfect shopping day, we’d left the boys with my mom and driven to no-man’s-land, aka Upperville, Virginia, where my husband hoped I’d finally buy the lifestyle change he’d been pitching for three years.