Mighta Been My Life

I like to visit my friends in Connecticut, because I grew up here and in many ways, this should be my life if I'd married a lawyer or a doctor and settled down like my buddies.

Settled down ... hmmm, I was never one to settle down. I lived in Old Greenwich, CT after college for a while and used to work in New York City and would take the Metro North commuter train into Grand Central every day and I found it unbareably dull. It was like being trapped in a John Cheever short story. Even then I was pretty clear I did NOT want to live in a Cheever story, I wanted to write one.

Still, my son is really very conservative and I think would rather I had a more conservative life ... the big house, the big yard, the big job. This morning we are sitting in my friend's big livingroom, poking at the fire in the big fireplace. We're talking about how to build fires, the names of the tools, the tongs, the poker, the bellows. It's a beautiful room and I love my friend and her family (her husband and two sons) and I'm really happy to be here with my son. The living room has a next lower level, a room that's like a conservatory, slate floor, plants, bird cage with chirpy birds, sliding glass doors on the far wall that give to one lower level -- an indoor pool that glows blue. A counterweight to the red glowing fire in the fireplace.

Nothing in the life of a writer is predictable I'm afraid, and I think this will prove disappointing and hard for my kid. Or maybe one day he'll see there was something unique about it. Nah, I doubt it.