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They talked of vacation at the beach down the road
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Uncertainty, unknowingness, open to what comes. It’s the desired state, from childhood, or maybe the early aughts, when we reeked with the possible—the entire world, it seemed, was soaked in it.

In my early twenties, I lived in the ultimate sunny clime of the continental US, Los Angeles, mid-drought, much-sunshine. The glow bounced off the concrete. In my memory, it’s a stage set lit in yellow. Affable, easy, the smile of my son, who was born toward the end of those four years.

Before his birth, before I pulled the Mother comforter over my head, we danced to music in our living room after my work and my guy’s med school day, we ate from the bountiful vegetables at the market up the street, (astonished, gob smacked after growing up on cellophane-wrapped tomatoes of New England), I sewed curtains and painted furniture and belonged to a theatre company and made bread and earned our entire income from my low-admin salary at Continental Airlines, a ridiculous job for a college graduate. I went from directing plays and debating theory with a visiting professor from Israel to retrieving mail from Dave Ganary’s outbox while he watched my ass in his floor to ceiling mirror opposite his desk.

The stakes were low in almost everything, yet I was wildly passionate, invested one hundred percent. I drove from LAX to Hollywood for rehearsals in my no-money down Mazda with the faux leather seats (read: plastic, baby) and discussed the character’s motivation ad nauseam with earnest actors, even when the part was tiny, or an equity-waiver ‘showcase’ (read: exploitation of the guileless.) My righteous indignation flew out of my mouth when someone cut me in traffic on the always-clogged 405, or an actor ducked out of performance to film a commercial, or when the theatre company closed down on the eve of my first starring role. Equal opportunity rage.

All of it didn’t matter, our time was our time there, dictated by where his Residency Match would land us, almost certainly out of California all together. Living with the certainty of upheaval, of uncertainty to come, creates a kind of hopefulness. Even when the boredom of the job gave me a permanent migraine, even when the airline filed bankruptcy and we lost our health insurance and income, even when the heat reached 100 degrees for the 100th day (with no a/c), there was an endpoint that took me elsewhere. First NYC, eventually Boston.

I was astonished, only a few years later, when I owned a business and employed women in their early twenties. They dreamed and strived and worked to meet the rent, the credit card bill, vacationed at the beach in the next town over, were content without a promotion or college courses, though I offered. Where I had lived in dozens of places by age thirty, they moved from the first floor to the second above their parents, or to the next street over to be nearer a sister when their children were born. Not all, but most.

I had failed to overcome my growing anxiety and never returned to the theater. And yet, my business was so successful it became a problem, my golden handcuffs. Year after year, I became needful of certainty, knowing what/when/where was next and next. I required infrastructure. Scaffolding to prop me up.

Of course, these are the developmental stages of adulthood. I am not a lesser being for having chosen to have a mortgage, two children, one husband and a couple of renovations.

But now we are in a simultaneously static and explosive world, July of 2020. I am both safe in my home and trapped. August will resemble July and on. Tomorrow is today, yesterday predicts next week. There is certainty in the certainty, and if you follow the science, we are here for another twelve months, minimum.

And now, I understand the courage of my former employees, five years after I sold everything and moved back to California, this time Northern. There is bravery in rising above the monotony, in acceptance of being without striving, without depending on the hope of the next thing. There is imagination in finding the uncertainty in a certain time, the unknowing in a known day. My life depends on an internal engine, rather than an external shift.

(Sure, that’s bullshit, I see this on a good day, on a bad day I believe I will never ever leave my house, even after the Vaccine, because I am now a certifiable Hermit Writer. And so, so happy-insane that no neat inducement will get me out, nor any cool writing prompt tear me away from baking another fucking loaf.)

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