Sonoma Sojourn

I consider this the ‘Year of Me’, which is why I’m on a flight from Boston to Sonoma. Smokey’s coming with me; we’ve been through too much together to be apart now.

Before I leave, I tell Diane (my counselor of more years than I can remember) that this is all her fault. Her eyebrows shoot to her hairline as she drawls, “MY fault! Why is it MY fault?” It’s a compliment, I tell her. She is always able to translate my ramblings into succinct, brilliant declarations, and she didn’t disappoint a year ago when I sat across from her and wondered why I was feeling so unsettled, so disjointed.

The end of my 23 year marriage to Paul three years earlier had come as a surprise, even though we had been in counseling for several months (again). I thought we were getting through the vale of crabby conversations that had populated our lives for the past year or so and, in fact, I had fallen in love with him again as counseling progressed. I hadn’t seen the warning signs of his great discontent, and so his announcement that he ‘couldn’t do it anymore’ came as a complete shock to me. I was horrified, terrified, and very, wholly, completely sad.

I was embarrassed, too. Rejection rips away self-esteem and challenges you to love yourself (how can you be worthy of love – wouldn’t you still be together if you were worthy?). Intellectually I knew that I would be fine again one day, but I had no idea how long that might take.

It took one year to get out of bed (only a slight exaggeration,). No longer wife or partner, everything familiar to me had changed. Holidays became torturous; long-term plans to retire in Wyoming evaporated. I learned to pay bills on time and I learned to live as a single again (no one to pick up my dry cleaning while out running errands or to bring up extra chairs from the cellar for Thanksgiving dinner). My two sons now were married with families of their own; everybody and everything seemed to move on, to move forward … except for me.

It took the next year to consider the future. My financial future said, “Get a Job”; my emotional future said “Get a Job”. And so, through complete serendipity, I got a job. My assignment: manage the rental program for the beautiful homes of Nashaquisset on Nantucket.

What luck! What good fortune! A job where I HAD to live on the island 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod for six months each summer.  Not just a seasonal job: a job that was year-round and which could be administered in the off season from anywhere with my computer. And for the first two seasons at Nashaquisset, I worked everyday except for perhaps two. During the summer season, it was seven days a week as I greeted rental guests and coordinated cleaning crews and sometimes unclogged a toilet or sink. Back in Cambridge, we worked on revamping Nashaquisset’s web site and revitalizing other marketing efforts as we aimed to increase weekly bookings for the 2011 season. I was busy: work took up a huge amount of time, and I dated a bit, and of course I needed to see my family and friends, and I tried to continue to make jewelry in my spare time — but there didn’t seem to be much spare time for that or for sinking into a good book or for just feeling happy.

So a little over a year ago, I sat in Diane’s office and wondered why — for as much as I had rebuilt my life — I felt stuck.

Diane’s succinct summarization went something like this:  “Find things that fill YOU up, Suzanne.”

Somehow I knew exactly what she meant, and that is when “The Year of Me” first took root.