I just want to open by saying I made myself a birthday party, with the help of family and friends, and it was so much fun! But — this birthday was one of those that brought me to an age that bothers me. I feel old. I even ache all over! That aside…
Last week’s post left off at college and my first mistake. Maybe my only big mistake. Besides the fact that I would not have the same wonderful two children that I have if I had made different choices, my biggest regret is the college I chose. I wanted to be a songwriter, and then I decided I wanted to write for a music magazine (namely Billboard). So it would have made sense to go to school in New York City. I got into New York University — and I got into my first-choice school, Barnard (sister school of Columbia). I also got into Connecticut College for Women and Simmons in Boston. Why did I apply to mainly women’s schools? I heard it was easier to meet men. Go figure. I chose Simmons. Big mistake. Well, I distinctly remember my interview at Connecticut College. All the girls looked wealthy, with long shiny, straight dark hair and perfectly placed black eyeliner. The whole thing turned me off. Or scared me. And my parents did not like the neighborhood Barnard was situated in. Why did I choose Simmons? I did have a couple of reasons: 1. I could major in actual journalism and not just English. 2. My cousin had just graduated from there. 3. I guess I was too scared and not independent enough to go to New York. I might even have succeeded in the music business. Maybe that thought w3as scary too.
College was meh. I did make a group of friends. There were five of us, three in nursing, one in philosophy, and me. Four of us local. I was in four of the five years of the Honors/Pass/Fail experiment, which didn’t continue, so no grades for me. I got mostly passes, but a few Honors, the most important one in my senior project, which was graded a A+++. I developed a magazine called Savoir Faire. I worked part time at the Harvard Cooperative Society store in Harvard Square and that was fun….mostly in the book departments. And my friends and I would take the T in the middle of the night to get food in Chinatown, where they served the hot tea in glasses. I dated a fair amount but never found love. We were supposed to marry MIT guys. I had a good roommate sophomore and junior years after a nightmarish roommate freshman year. I had my own room senior year.
I met my first love the winter of senior year at my roommate’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid. He was an usher. He didn’t really know either the bride or groom too well. They were not local college students. He was cute and charming. He visited me every Tuesday and Saturday in my dorm room from February to May and then he dumped me right before graduation — for no reason. I don’t think he ever left his other girlfriend, who I think he was living with, although he told me he was living with his parents. He was shady. I dumped the long-distance relationship guy I had been seeing (and writing to) for three years (sort of casually, I guess) when this guy came along.
After my depressing graduation, having been dumped, I went home to Lynn and didn’t succeed in finding a job. Not even as an editorial assistant for Little Brown Publishers on Beacon Street in Boston for $90 a week! That summer I dated someone I ran into as he was leaving a date with the odd girl in the house in back of ours. Not too bright was he, but he was fun for a summer rebound.
I eventually got a job in early fall, I guess, as a medical biller in this mean woman’s basement. A couple of months later, the phone (no cell phones then) rang and it was Mr. Wonderful wanting to get back together. We stayed out and talked in the park all night. He had it all planned out: we would date, then move in together, get engaged, and then get married. I was “in love” with him, so I agreed. (The first two things did happen). We had some really fun times at the Playboy Club in Boston. They had great food, great drinks, and great music to dance to. He was a member.
A few months later, I moved in with him when my parents were moving and asked me if I needed a bedroom where they were moving. A few months after that he and I moved to Florida. I volunteered at the animal shelter for a while and then got a job as a reporter at the local newspaper. A few months later I switched to another newspaper as the United Press International editor. I loved that job.
A year after we moved to Florida, everything blew up. He was still in contact with two previous girlfriends It appears one of them gave him an ultimatum the night he called me to get back together. She was down in Florida a couple of days after I left. They got married, and a year or so later she ran off with the neighbor. I think she married about six times. He was her second husband. By the way, he is still in the same area of Florida (not near me), and we did try to get together several years ago after his second wife passed. I was in California, and then I found out some things I didn’t like, including his politics. I saw him a couple of times after I moved to Florida, but the interest was gone on both sides, He does, however, remain my first great love.
So I was back in Boston and afraid to tell my parents my relationship failed. I stayed with a college friend for a while, and then I got an apartment outside of Boston with another college friend. I did temp work. I got very involved in jazz dance AND my roommate and I auditioned to become mud wrestlers in Boston. It didn’t happen! It didn’t seem like something she would ever do — me? Maybe.
My roommate went to Washington, D.C. the next year for grad school, and I moved into an old house in the Boston suburbs with four guys who had graduated from MIT. I took the tiny, inexpensive upstairs room and stayed there for three years, during which time the Great Blizzard of 78 happened. I worked for a couple of years as a medical transcriber from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. so I could take jazz dance classes in the afternoons. I was in love with my adorable (and gay) jazz instructor Jeremy, who brought me to tears and broke my heart when he said he would put me in his jazz company if I lost some weight. (I wasn’t fat; I know that now.) After the medical transcribing, I got a job at a hospital where I met my bestie friend, who moved to Florida before I did, and was at my party last week. In fact, she met her husband at a party we gave in the house with the MIT guys,
Finally, I got sort of a real job — at a computer company in Framingham, MA. But I was really just a secretary in the technical publications department. I stayed for six months and then they wanted to hire an editor. I wanted the job, but my boss wanted “a guy who just wants to sit and look at print all day.” I left and got a job as a technical writer at Wang Laboratories. Although it was 40 miles away from where I lived, I loved Framingham and by that time had left the house with the four guys and gotten a modern studio apartment in Framingham – complete with gold shag carpeting! And a pretty brick wall. One of my current friends, whom I met on Facebook a few years ago and lives here in Florida a couple of hours from me (we met because we both love the same oldies music) is from Massachusetts and we discovered she also lived in those same apartments with the brick wall, maybe at the same time!
I moved from tech writer to tech editor to editing supervisor in the six and a half years I was at Wang. I didn’t love corporate life or technical stuff very much, although I did win a couple of awards from the Society of Technical Communications. At Wang I developed a crush/friendship with a corporate trainer there and decided that would be fun to do. He had gotten a masters in education at Harvard Grad School of Education to do that, so I applied and was accepted as one of a very few part-time students since I had a day job — and Harvard’s classes are in the daytime. I took three out of the eight courses and quit. It was a far commute from work to school to home, and I had to leave work early – too big a hassle.
I had moved to a one-bedroom in Framingham and while at my pool one day in June of 1983, I saw a guy sitting in a chair at the pool studying for his GMAT test. I had an eye infection at the time, so who knows what I looked like, but we became friends. I watered his plants when he went to L.A. to see the Olympics. And in October of 1985, we got married. He was nice to me and I knew he would be a good father and husband, although he really wasn’t my type and we had no similar interests except the desire to be married and have a family. And I was already in my 30s! He was five years younger.
I quit Wang even before I got pregnant. Ultimately, my wanting to be a stay-at-home Mom wasn’t great for the marriage. I did some freelance editing onsite and at home. Our daughter was born 15 days late in February of 1987. My husband worked for New England Telephone doing something I never understood, something with product marketing. He started with a physics major at UCLA and decided to switch to equestrian science in West Virginia. He did some competitions and horse training. Not lucrative.
Our son was born in August 1988. Now with two little kids, I was very busy My daughter and I were in a mother’s group from the time she was several months old. I made a good friend there who had a baby daughter as well. Then there were three of us when my son was born. We had bought a townhouse in Worcester, MA, right before we got married. My friend lived in Westboro, and we used to take the little guys to the Mcdonald’s playground. And the friend who met her husband at my party now had three kids, and we hung around a lot too.
I never liked the cold weather. I asked my husband if he would consider looking for a job in a warmer climate. He was in telecom, which was booming at the time — early 90s. I was thinking of somewhere in the Southeast: the Carolinas or Georgia or Florida. My friend who met her husband at my party (I met her at work in 1976) moved to Florida in 1990 for her husband’s job.
First, my husband got an interview in Minneapolis….can’t get much colder than that!!!! But he said the driveways were heated and there were indoor walkways downtown. We didn’t go there. Then he got an offer in Chicago. Cold again, but it sounded like an exciting place. But we didn’t go there either, thank goodness.
Then he got an interview in Petaluma, California. Never heard of it, He went out there and like it, so then we both went out there — and liked it. It was 1993, and the kids were about four and six. We drove cross country in nine days to move there. We saw lots of things in those nine days, including New Orleans, The Space Museum in Huntsville, an approaching tornado in Oklahoma, the Grand Canyon, Albuquerque, and Mammoth Lake, not in that order.
We got to Petaluma at the very beginning of May, and I expected warm sunshine. I was surprised to see pouring rain the next morning. If you are unfamiliar with Petaluma, we lucked out. It is a great place in Sonoma County (wine country) with Marin County right to the south. It has a quaint downtown that used to be filled with antique shops. Parts of Peggy Sue Got Married and American Graffiti were filled in the charming downtown,. What a great place to end up!
OK. This is going to be a three-parter. I hope you are not too bored, but this part is long enough.
Next week: California and Beyond…
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