Fabulous at Forty, the header says in my own unmistakable scrawl. I swallow the last bite of my sandwich and take a long draw on the icy Coke.
Mrs. O’Connor gave us an assignment right before finals senior year. Write a list of the things we wanted to accomplish by the time we were forty. Not a bucket list, not the things we thought we should experience, but more who we wanted to be, what we wanted to achieve. When we finished, she had us pick a partner in class, to trade lists with, and to have the other person annotate the lists with what they saw us achieving. Lucky for us there was an odd number of students in the class, so she let the three of us work on it together.
“Here are the things that I will accomplish before I am forty,” I wrote. “I will be a well-respected chef, with two restaurants in Chicago, one fancy and one a small, casual, diner-type neighborhood place for comfort food. I will have published at least one cookbook so that people can make my recipes at home for their families. I will make sure that all the recipes really work perfectly like those of my hero, fellow tall cook Julia Child, but maybe without so many steps. I will have a husband (who is at least 6'3") and maybe one kid. I will own a home with a really amazing kitchen, and on my nights off from the restaurants, we will have fabulous dinners with my family and our friends—our house will always be full of happy people eating well and laughing. I will do a lot of charity events, and support causes for underprivileged kids and the hungry.” Wow. Don’t think I’m going to be called Nostradamus anytime soon. The only thing I’ve actually done off this list besides being a chef is owning a home with a pretty amazing kitchen. But the rest? Phooey. On the back, I read Lynne’s and Teresa’s notes.
Lynne says that I will also have a weekend place in Michigan for escaping, that she will be the PR person for all my restaurants and that my fine dining place will have at least one Michelin star and my casual place will become a chain, that my multiple cookbooks will all be bestsellers, that I will have my own foundation for feeding hungry children, and that I will have won many awards both for my work and my philanthropy. Teresa notes that I will have two or three children with my tall, successful husband, and that once a year she and Lynne and their husbands will join us for an exotic couples’ vacation without any of our kids. And that once a week we will get together for a girls’ brunch or something that fits into my work schedule, and that we will always celebrate our birthdays together.
So typical. Lynne sees tangible markers of success, made possible by her guidance and input. Teresa is all about family and friendship and personal connection. And I have dreams that seem somewhat achievable, but are missing a bit of the oomph that real dreams should incorporate. Why did I need Lynne to predict wild success and fame, even if she was helping make it happen, and I didn’t imagine it for myself? I wonder if losing the Olympic dream made me a little gun-shy on the whole big-picture thing. Especially since, if I’m honest, despite my drive to get to the Olympics I never really imagined I would win any medals. I never pictured myself on the Wheaties box. I just wanted to be part of the team and have the experience. I tend to dream on the more realistic side of things.
I pack most everything back into the tub, but leave the yearbook and the list on the table. Who knows, maybe when the girls come over next week it will give us a giggle.
Simca uses her little step stool to come up beside me on the couch, curls her body next to mine, and rests her regal head on my knee. I scratch between her ears.
“Get ready, old girl, you are going to meet my oldest friends next week.” And in a weird way, I think, so am I.
Four
I tear in through my front door like a bat out of hell. I’m late and more than a bit frantic. Ian’s coaching went totally sideways today, Geneva had some sort of four-year-old meltdown the likes of which I’ve never before been privy to, and by the time everyone figured out how to calm her down, Ian’s beautiful chocolate soufflé had collapsed into a sticky, sweet, rubbery Yorkshire pudding and his caramel had burnt to an acrid layer of superglue in the bottom of the skillet and set off the smoke alarm. Then Ian cried, which he almost never does unless he is in pain, and then Geneva cried again because she made Ian cry, and Darcy stomped around full of preteenage indignation about how the littles just have to come up with some tears to get all the attention.
Shelby and I did not have enough arms or soothing words to appease them all, and right in the middle Brad came in and, without really jumping in to help, asked if Shelby had picked up ink for the printer, and the two of them got all snippy with each other, which made me very uncomfortable. By the time we got everyone mostly returned to emotional equilibrium, and Brad and Shelby disappeared into his office to talk, I didn’t have the heart to let poor Ian clean up the epic mess alone, so I was over an hour late getting out of there.
By the time I got to Whole Foods it was jammed with the after-work crowd, and the ten-items-or-less line was occupied by a woman of supreme entitlement insisting that the ten items meant ten different types of things, so that her overflowing cart was fine, because multiples shouldn’t count.