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.
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