Getting Off the Train

I don't know when this trip began. Was it when I drove the U-Haul to New York after two years of waitressing and playing in Chicago, hurtling down whatever highway it was with my right thigh in tatters from the cat in the carrier next to me who, despite the kitty valium, spent 18 hours with his paws snaking wildly through the bars, clawing at my flesh. I frantically parked the U-Haul, deposited my stuff and my treacherous cat at my parent's house (he was declawed before you could say the word 'upholstery'), rushed to the mall to buy my first real “work” clothes, took my mother’s hair appointment (at her urging) to try and shape my hair into something remotely corporate, and jumped on the train to New York City, my first real job in publishing, and my first sales conference. Donning my new navy Ann Taylor jumper, collared shirt, heels, and name tag, I entered a suite filled with people wearing jeans and Hawaiian shirts who preceded to ask me for Eagle snacks all evening. My career had begun.

Or was it two years before that, when I pulled up to the blue and white walk-up on Newport St. in Chicago in my packed Plymouth Sundance, fresh from a summer-long post-graduation trip across the country and back with the first love of my life, my college boyfriend of 3 years who I knew I'd be leaving come September, and did. A wild group of girlfriends awaited upstairs and one of the many rooms in this run-down but bright and beautiful apartment had my name on it. My heart raced and I smiled wide as I stood on the sidewalk with my hand over my eyes to block the sun, looking up at the beginning of my new life.

Or maybe it was two short days prior to that, when I pulled away from my parents house in New Jersey to drive to Chicago and into my new life, away from my parents and two younger sisters whom I love, from the family home I grew up in from 2nd grade where I would never live again (okay, except for two short stints while apartment hunting in NYC, but those are other stories), from six years spent at a terrific private girl's school filled with great friends who would turn into amazing women, from four years at a wonderful small college filled with a posse of the closest girl friends a girl could have and I have to this day, and that dear boyfriend who, despite all the boys that followed, was bested in my heart only by my husband nearly 10 years later. I spent the first several hours of that trip playing Annie's Song over and over, sobbing and singing at the top of my lungs.

I can't pinpoint it, but it has been a loud, busy, and wonderful trip, full of many late nights at the office and many other late nights at bars and apartments full of booze and laughter and, in the early years, cigarette smoke. There were lots and lots of manuscripts, there were big disappointments and huge successes beyond (or because of) my wildest dreams. There were plenty of boys, as varied as the sky is wide. There was some yoga, but still there wasn't much quiet...there was too much busyness, and rushing, and noise. And while there was so much love, there was also way too much time spent turning things over and over in my mind, too much worry, too much obsession, too much static, and no spiritual direction at all.

I am profoundly grateful for my life, full of people I love dearly. I don't want to change them--but I am ready to change myself. I am a mother now. I have left the corporate world after 12 years. I have gotten off the train, walked down the steps into the grass, and I’m looking around. It's quiet, if I let it be. I can see some sky. I hear wind in the trees. There are new women walking towards me. I smell freedom, and something new. And I am open.