The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

Two years ago, I bought my wife a copy of “The Forsyte Saga.” She is

an avid reader and had never explored John Galsworthy. Last week she

began reading it. Last week she also sat down at our piano and caressed a

Debussy prelude and a run of Mozart sonatas for almost an hour. And last

week we went to a midafternoon movie. On a Tuesday.

Why are these things remarkable? Because they had disappeared from our

life. And they returned last week because we took a risk that could be

seen as foolhardy, especially in a society where money is the principal

measure of success. Overnight, we gave up two-thirds of our income with

no promise of even a partial replacement.

My wife and I are both fortunate enough to have skills that allow us

to work from our home as freelance writers and editors. That’s why Sherry

was able to leave her job as an editor at the Los Angeles Times a number

of years ago so she could be at home while our son, Erik, was growing up.

But the demands exploded when he was ready for college six years ago.

Private colleges are outrageously expensive, and although Erik earned a

sizable scholarship, it was essential that his mother return to full-time

employment -- something I was both too old and too crotchety to do.

She quickly found a job in communications at UC Irvine, and because

she’s very good at what she does, Sherry moved up quickly -- which

provided us household upgrades, travel, theater and similar pleasures

that we embraced. What it also provided was more stress, less time to

pursue the pleasures we could now afford, and steadily increasing

dominance of our life by the demands and problems of the workplace --

demands that made less and less sense when weighed against Sherry’s lack

of interest in upward mobility.

When college had been paid for and only Erik’s car insurance remained

temporarily on our budget, we had a new ballgame. And it became very

clear we had a decision to make: What price were we willing to pay in

order to buy back our life?

Somehow our backyard offered me the answer to that question. It is

large and green and dominated by a splendid ash tree under which my wife

and I were married. It beckons me every summer day. Seemed like it should

hold out the same promise to her for a life that allowed the time and

clarity and grace for us to enjoy one another properly.

So answering the question didn’t take long. But acting on it required

preparation. We drew up interminable budgets and created multiple

estimates of how long we could survive until a new freelance income would

meet our reduced expenses. And since there was no certainty in any of

this, we finally said let’s go for it, and Sherry left her job.

That was in January. Since then, I’ve stopped eating two meals a day

at restaurants, betting on hopeless long shots at the racetrack, making

long-distance calls on weekdays and having my car washed commercially. (I

don’t wash it; I just wait for rain.) Sherry, meanwhile, no longer buys

off-season watermelon at the supermarket, has given up regular massages,

gets her hair cut at a walk-in shop and does her own house cleaning.

In these moves toward austerity, there are still a good many choices

on the bubble, depending on how well the freelancing goes. Such things as

having the dog’s teeth cleaned, eliminating cable TV, giving up a second

car -- and similar draconian measures.

What isn’t on the bubble is a whole range of activities that were

getting rusty from lack of use. We’ve rediscovered home cooking, and

dinner-table conversation is no longer dominated by office talk. My wife

once again carries a book with a place marker wherever she goes. She

stops at the piano instead of passing it by without a look. We see more

movies we used to miss -- including a fair number of bad ones.

We walk. We talk. We don’t have to bridge silences because we know

there will be plenty of time and opportunity to connect, and we no longer

have to take that time in gulps. And we each have our own private

retreats. I always had one; now she is scouting out some of her own. I

worried a little that she might want to fix my iconoclasm. That hasn’t

happened.

What has happened is that she is doing extremely well much more

quickly than we anticipated. And we are faced with the possibility that

this, too, might overrun our life. But we’re in charge now. We won’t let

that happen again.

Most lessons are learned painfully. This one wasn’t. Nothing

worthwhile is achieved without risk. It doesn’t have to be all or

nothing. There is grace to be had in increments, too, and we can chip

away at regaining our lives. But what has to happen, first and finally,

is to go for it.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.