Settled
SETTLED
Just after the events described in the last chapter of my memoir, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I came into a discrete sum of money. This money -- I won’t talk about how much -- enabled me to get health insurance through The Freelancers Union. I had been uninsured for ten years, since the day my grad school policy ran out. The health insurance, while nice in of itself, gave me the courage to get pregnant. (Little did I know that even with the insurance, I would spend roughly 10,000 out of pocket on this birth – and that’s for a straightforward vaginal delivery – but that’s another article altogether.) The point is, just after the release of NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I found myself married and pregnant – or rather, pregnant and then married – and moving into a new apartment with my newly forming family. I also adopted a cat.
A year earlier, my ex-roommate Rick, a fancy celebrity hairdresser was doing hair and makeup for a fancy reality TV starlet and as they were discussing the movie 2012, she exclaimed, “What is this life?” These are the words that pass through my head now, on a regular basis, as I sit feeding my baby – baby on one knee, cat perched on the other. What is this life? The one in which I have little creatures – one human, one feline – depending on me for their very survival? What is this life? Because I like it.
When I did press on NO PLACE LIKE HOME, journalist types would ask something to the effect of, “Would you say you’re settled now?” When they asked, they’d get this look on their faces – something like, “Come on, Brooke. What’s the deal?” They would ask, “This new apartment…. do you think you’ll stay?” And I had no idea how to answer. The point of my book is, despite the best laid plans, who knows? Shit happens. The Universe has curve balls up its proverbial sleeves. What does it mean “to stay”?
My husband and I are renting our apartment, a small two bedroom in a city that we have chosen in order to be close to the action of the Hollywood thing – playwrights need to earn money. Our baby is small. So a small 2BR suits us. But I don’t imagine we’ll rent “forever.” And we’re still working out our relationship to Los Angeles. Daily I worry about where to raise our son – here or back in New York, near his grandparents, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and my own home-base, the theater.
So when answering “The Question”, I’d stumble through some version of, “Wow, I don’t know. Eventually I think we’ll wind up back in New York. But for now, sure, we’re here.” And of course that doesn’t give anyone any closure – one journalist even called me “a flake”. I think he was looking for something definitive, something like, “Yes, after the journey of NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I have learned my lesson, and I now know how to create stability.” Had I said that, maybe I’d also have sold the movie rights because there would be a discreet transformation. Girl goes from unstable to stable, from transient art “flake” to settled wife and mother. But that’s just not the point.
What does “stability” look like to you?
Just after the events described in the last chapter of my memoir, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I came into a discrete sum of money. This money -- I won’t talk about how much -- enabled me to get health insurance through The Freelancers Union. I had been uninsured for ten years, since the day my grad school policy ran out. The health insurance, while nice in of itself, gave me the courage to get pregnant. (Little did I know that even with the insurance, I would spend roughly 10,000 out of pocket on this birth – and that’s for a straightforward vaginal delivery – but that’s another article altogether.) The point is, just after the release of NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I found myself married and pregnant – or rather, pregnant and then married – and moving into a new apartment with my newly forming family. I also adopted a cat.
A year earlier, my ex-roommate Rick, a fancy celebrity hairdresser was doing hair and makeup for a fancy reality TV starlet and as they were discussing the movie 2012, she exclaimed, “What is this life?” These are the words that pass through my head now, on a regular basis, as I sit feeding my baby – baby on one knee, cat perched on the other. What is this life? The one in which I have little creatures – one human, one feline – depending on me for their very survival? What is this life? Because I like it.
When I did press on NO PLACE LIKE HOME, journalist types would ask something to the effect of, “Would you say you’re settled now?” When they asked, they’d get this look on their faces – something like, “Come on, Brooke. What’s the deal?” They would ask, “This new apartment…. do you think you’ll stay?” And I had no idea how to answer. The point of my book is, despite the best laid plans, who knows? Shit happens. The Universe has curve balls up its proverbial sleeves. What does it mean “to stay”?
My husband and I are renting our apartment, a small two bedroom in a city that we have chosen in order to be close to the action of the Hollywood thing – playwrights need to earn money. Our baby is small. So a small 2BR suits us. But I don’t imagine we’ll rent “forever.” And we’re still working out our relationship to Los Angeles. Daily I worry about where to raise our son – here or back in New York, near his grandparents, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and my own home-base, the theater.
So when answering “The Question”, I’d stumble through some version of, “Wow, I don’t know. Eventually I think we’ll wind up back in New York. But for now, sure, we’re here.” And of course that doesn’t give anyone any closure – one journalist even called me “a flake”. I think he was looking for something definitive, something like, “Yes, after the journey of NO PLACE LIKE HOME, I have learned my lesson, and I now know how to create stability.” Had I said that, maybe I’d also have sold the movie rights because there would be a discreet transformation. Girl goes from unstable to stable, from transient art “flake” to settled wife and mother. But that’s just not the point.
What does “stability” look like to you?
No comments have been added yet.
