Visiting the life you could have led 👋
For my birthday last week, the stars aligned so that we ended up in Brooklyn for a long weekend, and a friend’s wedding, which segued into a family trip on Long Island and my nephew’s first birthday party.
In Brooklyn, my husband and I stayed at an Airbnb in Greenpoint. I know Airbnb’s whole schtick (besides cheap room-sharing) is that you, as the guest, get to stay in a real person’s home, in a real neighborhood, and be a part of the place you’re visiting. Which is corny and problematic, but also true. Each morning, we walked through McGolrick Park to the same coffee shop and sipped our drinks on a bench while watching all the good dogs of Brooklyn out for a stroll. As soon as our coffees were gone, we walked around the corner for the best bagels in the world, then hopped on the subway to meet friends, celebrate good things, and spend way too much money on drinks.
It was a fun getaway, but it did make me feel a bit wistful. When I was younger, I always assumed I’d move to Brooklyn or Queens after college with the rest of my friends. Instead, I moved to Texas for seven years, then North Carolina for eight and counting. I’m settled and happy down south, but that didn’t stop the twinge of regret I felt as we stepped out of the apartment and into the street each morning, everything we needed within arm’s reach, so much life thrumming just outside the bedroom window.
It reminded me of my favorite Dear Sugar column, in which the letter writer feels ambivalent about having children and wants to know whether he should go for it or not. It's lovely and you should read the whole thing, but the last line is perfection.
“I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”
Of course, the decision to move to Brooklyn and the decision to have a child are very different - the stakes are far lower in my scenario. But the idea of the ghost ship still rings true. As I carried my coffee through the park, I imagined the life I might have led if I hadn’t fallen in love and followed a boy to Texas. It’s so easy to be charmed by that sister life because it represents the unknown, while the life I’m living is, well, lived. Messy and imperfect and sometimes disappointing but mostly good. And deep down, I know my other life, the one I didn’t choose, would have been all those things, too.
When it comes to decisions, I weigh the options, make a choice, and move on. Not because I’m particularly sure of myself, but because I believe there's no such thing as a single path, a meant-to-be, a destiny. We have so many choices, but saying yes to one thing means saying no to a thousand others. Honor each no, but don't dwell on them. Focus, as much as you can, on the yes. 💛
✨ Snack of the Week ✨
Whenever I visit my family, every healthy habit I've cultivated over the last 37 years is thrown out the window. Vegetables? I don't know her. Ice cream? Another scoop, please. This TJ's twist on the Neapolitan classic made it easy to ask for seconds. I love cookies and cream, but the strawberry was a delightful addition. If you're one of those people who dreads August (honestly, HOW?) then this ice cream will make things better, I promise.
Relatable Reads
American Has Never Been So Desperate for Tomato Season, The Atlantic. "On social media, the grotesque and silly all get swept together in one endless stream, dizzying and outrageous. Chernobyl selfies get uploaded next to pics from last week’s beach day. Tomatoes—wholesome, unextravagant, and endlessly photogenic—exist somewhere in the comforting middle, a mundane joy in an absurd world." 🍅
A History of Fear, Laura Price Steele in Solstice Literary Magazine. We're approaching the one year anniversary of Hurricane Florence, and I keep thinking I should write something about it. Instead, I'll probably just reread this essay by my MFA friend Laura one hundred more times. It says everything I want to say, but better. 🌪
America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made it One, New York Times. "Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us." 🇺🇸
A Tiny Challenge
I schedule these newsletters to send at 10am on Sunday each week, which means right as this hits your inbox, I'm sitting in LaGuardia, waiting to fly back to North Carolina. If you know LGA, you know. This week, let's try to be 1% nicer to the people around us. We're all stuck here together and it helps.
See you next Sunday! 💌
Want to buy me a ☕️? Venmo: @Christine-Hennessey