by Zibby Owens
Now, we find ourselves in a strange time to contemplate the idea of “what’s next?” With so many plans on hold as we grapple with unprecedented life-and-death questions, who dares consider the future?
We all must.
First, of course, we must do what needs doing in this moment. Care for loved ones. Mourn our losses. Check on neighbors. Donate to support those in need. But on the back burners of our minds, it’s okay to keep dreams simmering. We have to believe that.
As a recovering perfectionist, I still have a tendency to finish everything I start.
I’m a big fan of the phrase, “If you can see it, you can be it.” Six years of working in a bookstore, for example, changed my writing life; being around books and writers and readers every day for years demystified the writing and publishing process. One of these days, it’ll be time to get up close to your dream, so you can see it. If, say, you’ve been thinking about pursuing a graduate degree, perhaps now’s a good time to research some programs. When you envision next year or the next, you might picture volunteering in a field that uses that degree. How might you get near to the people who are living that life to see how it looks and feels up close? To entertain such thoughts is to give yourself a reprieve from our current reality.
Now, we find ourselves in a strange time to contemplate the idea of “what’s next.”
I often imagine conversations among my selves at different ages. (Please tell me I’m not the only one?) When I try to imagine what my future self would say to right-now-me, I’m stumped. I’m not so sure anymore that I can imagine what the future looks like. I suspect she might say, “Keep going. Keep planning.” She’d want me to be careful. She’d want me to take care of myself and others. But she’d want me to daydream, too. I think she’d want me to take some comfort and joy today in thinking about tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s what we’re living for, isn’t it?
Mary Laura Philpott is the author of I Miss You When I Blink: Essays, now available in paperback. Formerly of Parnassus Books, Mary Laura has contributed to the New York Times and many other publications.
Does My Daughter Miss Her Babysitter Too Much?
JULIE SATOW
The heartbreak of social distancing from a beloved caregiver.
One day about a month ago, I was doing one of my endless rounds of laundry when I walked past my daughter’s desk on the way to pick up her dirty clothes. Lying next to her keyboard was a lined sheet of notebook paper with the word “Penny” prominently written in blue marker.
That’s the name of our babysitter, and I bent to pick up the page thinking it was a letter my daughter might want me to send. But as I gave it a quick scan, I realized it was something else entirely. “Her hair is curly/and her face is pretty,” read the first line, “But that is not all/She gives the best hugs and kisses/And makes you feel better.”
My nine-year-old had written a love poem to her caregiver.
Like so many other children across the world, my daughter has been whipsawed by the changes to her life over these past several months. There’s been the transition to remote learning, having both working parents at home, and the realization that her younger brother is her sole IRL companion for the foreseeable future. She has brushed off most of these alterations, save for one: the sudden breach in her daily interactions with Penny. It’s the single aspect of our new reality that most devastates my daughter, a persistent sense of loss that I am unable to assuage.
The pandemic has revealed what constitutes family, and where those lines are drawn.
Our babysitter came into our life nearly a decade ago when my daughter was just a few months old. She regularly picks up our children from school, shuttles them to lessons and appointments, and over the years, the three of them have developed their own traditions, jokes, and favorite activities.
I know that I am blessed. My family is healthy and safe, my marriage is strong, and my husband and I are gainfully employed. We are also fortunate to be able to employ a babysitter to help with our child-care when so many other families cannot. While I am at work, I am secure knowing that my children are being showered with affection and care, and that they are gaining so much from this relationship. Penny is a grandmother, an immigrant from Guyana, and they learn an inestimable amount from her deep life experiences.
Penny lives with her daughter, who works as a nurse at an old-age home in Brooklyn, one that was inundated with COVID-19 patients. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, as we have done with so many of our loved ones, we have kept our distance.
My husband and I both grew up with working mothers and with a succession of babysitters. There was one who got drunk and wandered off for several hours, leaving my brothers and me to fend for ourselves, while another took it upon herself to explain sex to me, years before I was ready for such a conversation. But while there were some who made bewilderingly bad decisions and I was glad when they left, others were well-loved. One, aptly named Joy, was my favorite. I recall happily spending hours with her as she told us stories of her upbringing or took us on car ride adventures around town.
When I became pregnant, I hoped to find a babysitter who would be firmly in the latter camp, and over the years, Penny became akin to a third parent. Our trust runs deep. She is the one with whom I can leave the children and be entirely off the clock—no need to text about what to make them for dinner or where to pick them up, as she often knows better than I. Penny is my partner, my closest equivalent. Our families are also intertwined. Her daughter has cared for my grandmother; her sister and niece stayed for a summer with us, and her grandchildren and our children are of similar ages and have sleepovers.
I felt grateful that my daughter had such a bond, yet also exasperated that my presence was not sufficiently comforting.
I should not have been surprised then, weeks into our quarantine, when my daughter suddenly broke into heaving sobs because she was desperate for a hug from Penny. Or when, after one of their many FaceTimes, she got off the call with a look of anguish and told me she would rather have no contact with Penny than rely on this pitiful semblance of a virtual one. When a care package arrived with bread and cakes that Penny had baked, my daughter ate a few bites before pushing away the rest, telling me it made her too sad.
These reactions stirred a mix of emotions in me. I felt grateful that my daughter had such a bond, yet also exasperated that my presence was not sufficiently comforting. My husband suggested that Penny had become symbolic of a greater loss, a representation of the normalcy that is no longer, a reminder of how my daughter’s daily life had been upended. By focusing on a single person, it was easier for my daughter to process and articulate her many complex feelings. All of this may well be true. But to chalk up my daughter’s emotions to such a shorthand would diminish Penny’s importance. The truth is that my daughter also simply, profoundly, misses her.
Much has been said of how this pandemic has laid bare America’s numerous systemic ills, from the racial disparities of COVID-19, to the horrors of George Floyd’s murder, to the millions of newly jobless. Yet it has also revealed truisms in the smallest sense, down to the minutiae of the family unit.
This age of coronavirus has not merely disrupted my family’s logistical balancing act, forcing us to work and learn from home, with all the difficulties that it entails. It has also fractured our family’s emotional makeup. The pandemic has revealed what constitutes family, and where those lines are drawn. If, before COVID-19, I considered Penny our beloved babysitter, I have come to understand that she is much more. While it may have been my daughter who wrote a love poem to her, I cannot help but realize that now I have, too.
Julie Satow is a journalist and the author of The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel.
AUTHOR FEATURES
AT HOME WITH
Compiled by Carolyn Murnick
Janelle Brown
Eight years ago, I cofounded a collective workspace for writers in Los Angeles with a few of my friends.
It’s not just the place where I wrote my new suspense novel, Pretty Things, it’s also been my social hub and my support system.
But for the time being, my office is just a memory. My kids are home all day, and therefore so am I, which means that any writing I’m doing has to be within the confines of our property. Luckily spring is here, which means I’m able to work in fresh air.
I spend my days moving from spot to spot around our home—wherever I can get motivated (and find a few moments of peace). Sometimes I sit at a table in our garden, right under the blooming jasmine, or lie on our outdoor couch, but the kids usually find me fast. Trust me—it’s hard to get in the writing zone when you’re constantly being asked for snacks.
So when I really need quiet, I go lock myself in the studio at the back of our property. We built a desk under a big barn window that I throw open for fresh air; from here, I can even get a glimpse of the Hollywood sign. This is where I’m doing all my virtual book launch events for Pretty Things, and if you attend one, you might even hear the birds chirping in the trees just outside that window. Until I can get my real officemates back, they aren’t such a bad substitute.
Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This is Where We Live. Her latest book, Pretty Things, is being adapted into a television series starring Nicole Kidman.
Dan Peres
If you’re reading this, consider it proof of life. My small home office has been hijacked. I have to write this quickly, before my captors come back. They just stepped out of the room for a few minutes. I hear them in the kitchen just outside of the door, laughing and plotting and eating Goldfish. I can practically make out the sound of crumbs hitting the floor.
There are three of them—all male—with overgrown hair and mischievous smiles that reveal missing teeth. I’m pretty sure the two younger ones are twins—maybe nine—and they’ve been torturing me by “practicing” playing their recorders for an end-of-the-school-year concert that will never happen. I’ve been trying to write, but writing when the hostage takers are around is a bit like eating soup while riding a bicycle down a flight of stairs. This is the most I’ve written in two months. No need to send help, though. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but despite the incessant noise and interruptions and around-the-clock snacking, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. I could, however, do without the recorders.
Dan Peres is a veteran magazine editor and the author of As Needed for Pain: A Memoir of Addiction.
Lauren Mechling
It’s a monastically simple setup: computer, chair, coffee. When I think about it, though, I’m filled with delight and a little smugness for having crept out of bed before anybody else in the household. It’s just me and the early morning light—no sounds, no hungry bodies, no emails coming in from points unseen, those tempting vectors of distraction.
Here is my golden hour—sometimes closer to two hours—when I can sit still and string sentences together. The thing about self-isolation with two small children whose homeschooling requires hands-on oversight is that I no longer have the isolation needed to concentrate. I’m juggling a few projects, a mix of fiction and journalism, and during the day I can take breaks to conduct interviews or answer emails. The writing, though, happens before 7 a.m. I’ve always been a morning writer, but never has this ritual felt so urgent, or so pleasurable. It’s as if I’m getting away with something.
Lauren Mechling is a journalist and author of How Could She: A Novel.
Rochelle Weinstein
Quarantine moved my writing space from Miami, Florida to Beech Mountain, North Carolina. I went from a vibrant, densely populated city to the rural mountains where the nearest Target is fifty miles away.
The cooler temperatures provide hours of writing overlooking layered, lush mountains. Deer pass, birds squawk, and dogwoods rustle in the wind. It’s exquisite. But I confess, I’ve gone days without showering; morning to night spent in my pajamas. I’ve survived on Milk Duds and Twizzlers and been startled by bees and snakes. Soon, I plan to sleep on my deck, capturing every sound and sensation for an upcoming scene I’m working on.
The quarantine has sucked—let’s be real. Being told you can’t do something is almost as bad as not doing it. Yet lockdown has returned many of us to simpler times. It doesn’t get any simpler (or more inspiring) than creating while nestled in nature under a cozy blanket.
Rochelle Weinstein is the bestselling author of novels including Somebody’s Daughter, Where We Fall, The Mourning After, and What We Leave Behind.
POSTCARD FROM THE PAST
Compiled by Carolyn Murnick
Megan Angelo
Before there was my summer of Hamilton, there was my summer of Felicity: An American Girl. I went to Williamsburg’s official Felicity tour. I was in Virginia with my whole family, but only my mom and her trusty fanny pack came with me for this part. My two younger brothers are no doubt on a bench in the shade somewhere, furious that we are somehow still not at Busch Gardens, while my father picks a fight with “Thomas Jefferson” over perceived historical inaccuracies in his spiel.
Megan Angelo is the debut author of Followers. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, where she helped launch comedy coverage, the Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Elle, and many other publications.
Alice Berman
People say that Montana is “the last, best place,” and they are absolutely right. I have been heading out West every summer since I was two years old. Some of my earliest memories are here, trout fishing in a sundress and burning marshmallows on the side of a mountain. My family members have long been acolytes of the beauty of Paradise Valley, where my sister and I would conveniently forget the learnings of years of English riding lessons and execute all of the daredevil jumps no one should do. (My sister was famous among the group of families we went with for bending off her horse so far she could pick flowers.) There is no comfort like the wind in the flickering silver aspen leaves, the smell of woodsmoke after a long ride, the endless stretches of empty green land.
This year, of course, we are lucky enough to be staying home and staying safe, still monitoring the weather in our favorite place as if we’re going—it snowed there the day we would have arrived. My family group chat is filled with updated COVID-19 numbers for Montana and photos of the wilderness there. There is such comfort and normalcy in sharing this, in knowing that this genuine paradise is waiting patiently for us. In the meantime, I’m rereading A River Runs Through It, which is worth a perusal even if you’ve never considered Montana of interest. To me, it will always be my best place.
Alice Berman is the author of the Audible Originals mystery I Eat Men Like Air. She sold her book, Lost Boys and Technicolor Girls, to ABC, where it is in development to become a series with Freeform.
Casey Schwartz
I was hideously jetlagged on my trip to India. I had taken an Ambien the night before and, mysteriously, it hadn’t worked. I walked through Kolkata that day in a kind of dream state, in awe of its particular atmosphere, its grandeur, its decay. It was January 2016, and I was thirty-three, single, and anxious. I was traveling with my mother. By the end of that year, Trump would be elected, and I would meet my husband.
I think I had the impression that it would somehow always be possible to venture through the streets of Kolkata, to see every inch of the world. Now, all I can think about is how utterly precious it was to glimpse even that ordinary, crumbling building.
Casey Schwartz is a journalist and the author of Attention: A Love Story.
Teresa Sorkin
We were in Positano, at Il San Pietro. We had just finished dining on the most amazing lunch of local mozzarella and fresh tomatoes with basil. I can still smell the lemon trees that surround the property and feel the cool breeze from the ocean air.
Unfortunately, our beloved Italy was one of the first countries after China to be devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, with nearly thirty-five thousand death
s thus far.1 Today, they are in a better place after enduring four months of strict quarantine and have recently opened their country to most visitors, but US travelers are currently prohibited. While it breaks my heart not to return this year, I know that we will one day be back and Italy will be better than ever, as the famous song “Come Back to Sorrento” goes.
Teresa Sorkin is a television producer and coauthor of the thriller The Woman in the Park.
1 Number at time of original publication.
AFTERWORD & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The acknowledgments section is usually the first thing I read when I start a book. I love getting that inside peek into an author’s mind: their writing process, inner circle, and general thoughts. It usually reveals a lot about their personality and infuses the story with an added layer of meaning. If you don’t typically read the acknowledgments page, you should! You can start with mine. Actually, look, you already did. Fantastic!