Pelajaran Terbaik Datang Dari Kisah Nyata

Falling Apart in One Piece

Di buku Falling Apart in One Piece, Stacy Morrison menceritakan tentang perceraiannya yang menyedihkan, yang berbarengan dengan kelahiran putranya dan kepemimpinannya di majalah Redbook. Stacy, seorang perempuan yang berpikir kalau dia memiliki segalanya, membagi perjalanannya yang penuh dengan cerita emosional tentang perceraian that brought a surprising gift: grace.

Berikut cuplikannya:

I suppose I should start where it all started. Or, more specifically, started ending. The night Chris told me he was done with our marriage.

I can recall exactly what I was doing on the June evening this one-way conversation started: I was standing at the sink in the kitchen area of our one-room first floor, washing a bunch of arugula, my favorite salad green, pushing my hands through the cold water in the salad spinner to shake the dirt loose. I was looking out the window over the sink, marveling at the beautiful backyard of our Brooklyn home: an actual lawn, its bright green grass thick as a carpet; a wood deck; and a pergola with grapevines climbing over it in curlicue abandon.

The yard was my favorite thing about our house, a house that we'd bought and moved into just five months before on a freezing-cold January day, when our son, Zack, was just five months old. Stationed in his bouncy seat on the floor in the empty living room, he'd watched with wide eyes as everything we owned was marched through the front door in big cardboard boxes.

I felt lucky to live in this house every single day, especially now that the backyard had come to verdant life. Every evening after I took the subway home to Brooklyn from my job in Manhattan, I'd pick up Zack as I walked in the door and nuzzle his soft, sweet skin, say my goodbyes to his nanny and head out the back door and lie down in the grass while Zack crawled around. I'd stare up at the soft blue sky, drink in the smell of the green all around me and think, I can't believe how lucky we are.

I cherished that skyward view: a simple pleasure that made me feel small in the best way, as if I were being cupped in the hands of the universe. Simple and small were antidotes to the way I had been living my life for so long, with a complicated, jam-packed schedule, forging a career in the larger-than-life world of magazine publishing. For me, small was new, and small was good. I finally felt ready to stop going at a dead run, as I had been for so long, to slow down and settle into being happy.

Making dinner every night was a new pleasure for me after years of takeout meals at home or at my desk. I looked forward to putting in the half hour of calming busywork that getting dinner on the table entails, once Chris had come home and was able to take Zack off my hands. I'd stand in the kitchen and feel my brain slowly empty of the zillions of details and to-dos that make up a day in the office as my hands took over, chopping peppers and onions into just-right dice, whisking a vinaigrette and washing salad greens.

As I poured the water from the salad spinner down the drain that night, I was feeling grateful for everything in my life, but I couldn't ignore Chris's silence pressing against my back. Sometimes people are quiet in a room in a way that feels like company, but today, as with a lot of days in the last few years, and especially since Zack was born, Chris was quiet in a way that felt like an absence.

I started to turn around from the sink, wanting to find a way to pull Chris back into the room. I was sure that when I faced the sofa my eyes would find Chris staring blankly into middle distance, ignoring our tiny son, who was playing at his feet. And that was exactly the domestic tableau I beheld. Chris didn't turn to meet my gaze. Instead, as he felt my eyes come to rest on him, he let out a slow, pointed exhale.

I bristled, disappointed and annoyed. "Want to tell me what you hate so much about your life today?" I said, wincing inward slightly as the harsh words came out.

And so, still not turning his face, with its long, aquiline nose, huge blue-green eyes and those full, pink lips I was delirious to call mine when we were first married, he said, simple as pie, "I'm done." Then he sighed again, and turned slowly to look at me with a flat, empty gaze. "I'm done with this," he said, gesturing with his hand to encompass our living room, our kitchen, our home, our son, our future, our dreams, every single memory we'd ever made together in our thirteen years as a couple--and me, suddenly meaningless me.

I felt my face go slack in shock as my vision narrowed to a tunnel centered on Chris's blank face, and everything else went dark.

Done. Just like that.

Just Let Me Lie Down

Kristin van Ogtrop, managing editor majalah Real Simple, menulis buku Just Let Me Lie Down, yang lucu tapi menyentuh. Buku ini sebuah kisah nyata bagaimana Kristin sebagai working mom menjaga keseimbangan antara pekerjaan dan keluarga. Seperti buku Stacy Morrison, buku Kristin juga merupakan sebuah reminder, walaupun hidup bisa saja dengan mudah berantakan, petualangan dan pengalaman terbaik seringnya datang dari chaos.

Berikut cuplikannya:

Over the years there have been many ridiculous moments in my life as a working mother, but I suppose the worst was the Hutchinson River Parkway Incident. I was nineteen weeks pregnant with my third child and rushing home from midtown Manhattan to catch the annual Halloween parade at my son’s elementary school. I was taking a taxi, something I didn’t do very often, but at the time it seemed a wiser choice than the train: I hadn’t missed a Halloween parade in seven years and I wasn’t about to start.

The driver was a lovely man who, I was later to learn, had four children of his own. He was also, unfortunately, one of those drivers whose foot seems constantly to thump from accelerator to brake and back. You know the type. You probably also know that if you are inclined to throw up, this kind of driving is going to make you throw up faster. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I felt a bit queasy when I got in the car; I had just eaten an enormous bowl of minestrone before we embarked. As we made our way through Manhattan, acceleratingbrakingacceleratingbraking, the queasiness got worse. I tried focusing on the horizon, closing my eyes, sucking on the cinnamon Tic
Tacs I found in the bottom of my purse — nothing worked. I swore to myself that when we got to the Hutchinson River Parkway and ceased with the stop-start driving, everything would be fine.

Alas, everything was not fine. Things went downhill fast when we hit the open road. I croaked, “Sir, I think I’m going to throw up,” and the driver screeched across two lanes of traffic and skidded to a stop in the gravel on the side of the road. Just picture an otherwise respectable-looking woman in a pretty silk blazer with a mandarin collar, trying to pretend she was someplace else. Passing motorists no doubt glanced over and said to themselves, “Oh, go home and sleep it off, you old drunk.” Except for passing motorists who happened to be women; those drivers looked over and said to themselves, “Oh, poor thing. She’s just a half-insane pregnant working mom, trying to make it to the Halloween parade.”

And that, dear reader, is the work-life balance at its best.

Maybe the most annoying part is that it was the only time I threw up during that pregnancy. The only time! At nineteen weeks! Naturally, I blame it on Halloween itself (see Take Halloween, for example , p. 205). The driver was kind and understanding and went on to tell me about his wife and her four pregnancies filled with morning sickness and that the only person who had ever thrown up in his car was Paris Hilton’s boyfriend. Which for some reason — even though I can’t for the life of me remember my checking account number — I have not forgotten to this day. I made the parade, and I was only five minutes late. A small triumph in the life of this half-insane working mom.

Five lessons to be learned from the Hutchinson River Parkway Incident:

• You can throw up in the second • trimester, even if you didn’t in the first.
• Tic Tacs are pretty much worthless: too small to be a legitimate breath mint, and they don’t prevent vomiting.
• Halloween is just a nightmare on so many levels.
• There is often an empathetic older gentleman nearby when you are in distress.
• Things work out in the end, if you have the right perspective.

That last lesson is the key, of course, for anybody trying to fit a demanding job and a demanding family into the same life. But how did I get to that place: a respectable woman, throwing up on the side of the road in my silk jacket with the mandarin collar?