Or a big something for it this year. Trips like these mean more now that all my airline points have long run out, and we don’t have a budget like I did in my consulting days.
We’re at St. Mary’s bus stop, waiting for the 4 bus to pull up so we can get on again for old time’s sake. And so we can bring our two new travel companions along for the ride.
“Is that it, Mommy?” Anne Marie wants to know, pinching her nose to avoid the raw fish fragrance as she points at a red double-decker bus coming our way. She’s inherited Rory’s amber eyes, alongside my frizzy hair. I’ve stopped straightening mine since becoming a mom, and one of my favorite things is how people can look at our bushy ponytails and tell that we belong together.
“No, silly goose,” James says.Silly gooseis the closest thing to an insult that we let him say, and he uses the phrase liberally. “We’re looking for numberfour, remember?” He looks enormously proud of himself.
Then, tugging on Rory’s hand, James whispers for verification, “That bus isn’t number four, is it Daddy?”
James is five years old, and Anne Marie just turned three. Dressed in oversized raincoats, with their wellies up to their knobby knees, they look far too adorable to be allowed. Sometimes I still have to pinch myself that I—thatwe—created these miraculous little beings who are growing up in front of our very eyes.
Becoming a wife and mother has been the greatest achievement of my life so far, though it took me a while to embrace this. Even after I quit Leo & Sons and started my life with Rory, the worldly paradigm I’d been worshipping for decades didn’t just dismantle straight away.
The type of joy I found in caring for Rory, and then the kids, felt searingly shameful. I’d been conditioned to believe I was letting women down and letting myself down by giving up my high-powered corporate career to tend to a family. Sometimes I still feel that guilt.
But I guess happiness—fulfillment—isn’t about feeling like you’re doing everything perfectly all the time. It’s just about knowing that the trade-offs you’ve made are aligned with your highest self. That you’re prioritizing what you truly want to prioritize, not what other people have told you to. Blake has helped me see this too, and our friendship has grown dearer over the years that we’ve both been reconstructing what it really means to be a successful woman.
A buzzer goes off on Rory’s phone, and I know what time it is. Anne Marie does too. “It’s beautiful o’clock!” she squeals, beaming with glee through her gummy baby smile.
After all these years, Rory still sets his phone alarm every day to remind me that I’m beautiful. The kids have learned the routine and taken to joining in.
“You’re one fit bird, as they say over here,” Rory tells me, with a quick kiss on the cheek. “Beautiful.”
Though my body has stretched and expanded since having kids, and my wardrobe is devoid of its former designer logos, Rory has an understated way of making me feel like I’m more attractive than the day we met. He doesn’t shout his love from the rooftops or dip me in the street for a kiss. There are no ribbons or bows, no bells or whistles. From the outside looking in, it might look a bit dull, a bit lackluster. But from the inside, it’s the most glorious love I’ve ever felt, deepening inch by inch, day by day.
“Beautiful, beautiful!” Anne Marie parrots it back in a higher voice as I reach down to wipe chocolate from her face, from the hot cocoa we got the kids (and Rory) at Gail’s.
Life as a mother is more demanding than the corporate world ever was, but so much more energizing, filling me rather than stripping me. And though I have no interest in reentering the 24/7 rat race, I’ve found I’m a better mom when I’m pursuing some projects outside the home.
A few years ago, I founded a small consultancy to help local businesses with their strategy and finances. I do the work nearly on a pro bono level, making just enough money to add some buffer to Rory’s teaching income. But the satisfaction that comes from the work makes me feel wealthier than when I was raking in a grotesque salary from sitting up in a skyscraper all day.
We don’t have much, but our cost of living is low, and there’s a harmony that comes from living modestly. We save on childcare too, as my parents and Rory’s jump in whenever we need them (and sometimes when we don’t need them). Now that I see the bond that James and Anne Marie have with their grandparents and cousins,I can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. And my appreciation for Michigan as a place—the open acres and freshwater lakes and slower pace—just keeps growing.
Rory and I might not have waltzed off into a once-in-a-lifetime sunset together in a royal carriage, but we face daily sunrises together from the Adirondack chairs on our back porch while the dogs splash in the water, then shake dry by showering us.
“Keep your eyes out for it, buddy,” Rory mutters to James, nodding to a bus that’s still a bit farther up Upper Street, snaking past the new lineup of boutiques and Tudor-house cafés.
Sounding the alarm, James taps his little sister excitedly. “Lookit, I found the bus!” he exclaims. “I see it, Anne Marie!”
Anne Marie claps and bounces on her toes as the bus huffs to a stop in front of us. The doors squeak open, and Rory and I shepherd the kids on and up the stairs.
James and Anne Marie marvel, as if this bus is singularly the most interesting invention of all time. I, too, feel my inner child squealing with glee at being back atop a double-decker bus.
That’s the beauty of kids—how you get to experience everything through their eyes, like it’s brand-new. Not only have I birthed new life, but it’s made me feel reborn as well, like I’m perpetually mesmerized by the everyday enchantment all around. And I have so much more faith in good to triumph over evil.
With Rory’s encouragement, I ended up reporting Harold directly to Turpi’s board of directors after I quit. He was quietly pushed out soon after, as there had apparently been too many similar complaints to ignore. I didn’t feel a sense of victory with Harold’s departure, but it did help me close that chapter and release its chauvinistic grip.
On the top deck of the bus now, James and Anne Marie plop down on the blue-fabric seats in the row in front of Rory and me.
Anne Marie plasters her hands up against the window, smudging her nose too. “I’m queen of the castle!” she proclaims, staring down at the people, dogs, and telephone boxes on the street.
“Don’t do that—it’s gross,” James condemns, peeling Anne Marie off the germy plastic as he, too, peers out curiously. “I’ve never been up this high in my life before,” he professes, endearingly forgetting the airplane ride to London just a few days ago.
Marlow House is straight in view, the curtains to my old sitting room window drawn shut. It feels like yesterday, and also a full lifetime ago, that I was sitting at that baroque desk, hoping that my knight in shining armor might look my way and save the day.
With the skyrocketing rent prices, Jules and Nina have moved out, over to the quirky neighborhood of Hackney Wick in East London, filled with converted warehouses, but we met up for afternoon tea with them yesterday. The kids couldn’t get enough of the English accents and “silly-goose words,” and Jules and Nina were equally infatuated. Jules texted this morning—Me & Nina are trying to expedite our adoption process after seeing your American angels (no cockney slang there, they are literal ANGELS.)
That might be an overstatement, but I can’t deny we’ve gotten pretty lucky.
