Lives Lived – Page 2

December 11, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

Driving Me Crazy

On Saturday my son will make his first long-distance road trip alone, driving home to Virginia from college in Connecticut. When I was his age (20) I really didn’t drive at all. I had a license but not a car, and I lived in Manhattan. The first time I did a long-distance solo drive, like the one he is about to do, was . . . well, let me think . . . it must have been back in . . . a few months ago.

So maybe it’s not surprising that I have some trepidation. I’m not afraid of flying. Statistically, it’s much more likely that a car will crash than a plane. I’m not afraid of driving, either. But I’d rather do just about anything else, if I had a choice (though I don’t, so I drive every day). Perhaps my less-than-ardent relationship with cars has something to do with the fact that my father died in a crash when I was little. Or maybe not.

Part of me wants to tell my son to take a plane or train. Part of me curses his decision to attend an out-of-state school. Though luckily, the other parts—the saner parts—always win.

Worrying doesn’t make anyone safer, so I’ll try not to think about my son’s post-final-exam trek from north to south. It should be easy to focus on other things. After all, I’ll be at a funeral.

The deceased was in his sixties. He wasn’t in a car or a plane. He wasn’t a soldier or police officer or a sky-diving stuntman. He was an economics professor who sat down to breakfast the morning after Thanksgiving and had a heart attack, out of the blue.

What’s the lesson here? It’s not that we should avoid eating breakfast. Or driving cars. Or taking planes. Maybe it’s that every day we can’t be sure it’s not our last. Every day is like Thanksgiving. So I’ll give thanks right now. Or at least when I see that silver Corolla pull up in the driveway.

April 12, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

Ready to Reveal

Julia Louis-Dreyfus showed us this week that a middle-aged naked woman can be fun to look at. Her cover photo for Rolling Stone is cheeky, funny, and sexy (and who cares if it’s a teeny bit historically inaccurate?).

I’m going to reveal something here, too. (Don’t worry, no naked photos, I promise.) It feels like a dirty little secret to tell you this. Why is it so hard? I write about my life. I’m a memoirist. I’ve recounted so many embarrassing details about stupid mistakes I’ve made, it should be easy to tell you this one simple fact:

I’m 47. Today’s my birthday.

I can’t hide my age, anyway. I have a 20-year-old son, so nobody’s going to believe I’m 20. Even if I did go through puberty early.

I was feeling bad about this birthday until I read “This Is 57”:

In her blog, Catching Days, Cynthia Newberry Martin makes turning 57 seem so beautiful that I started to look forward to my birthday a decade from now.

Maybe if you read about my 47, you’ll look forward to turning my age, too.

47 is a second marriage, a second career, a second child, a second chance

47 is being grateful to be alive and solvent after early-adulthood medical and financial scares

47 is being done with my education

47 is being mature enough to finally “go home”

47 is knowing how to say no, how to speak up, how to ask questions, knowing that the only way I’m going to find out anything is to ask

47 is having lived a life interesting enough to write about

I was on the plane a few weeks ago and the man next to me asked how old my children are. “If I tell you you’ll guess my age,” I said, then laughed akwardly. But I should have just said, “My children are 10 and 20. And I am 47.”

Maybe that’s the best thing about this age: being finally ready to reveal.

Here I am, with my clothes on but my secret off my chest. This is 47, too:

December 30, 2013 By Sharon Harrigan

Resolved: To Be More Like a Man

My husband, daughter, and I were sitting at the breakfast table. I was folding James’ underwear when he burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, and he read aloud a story about football teams competing in a “beef bowl,” eating up to eight pounds each at a sitting.

“That’s disgusting,” Ella and I agreed.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s funny, too.”

“The only thing a man proves by gorging on meat is how insecure he is about his masculinity,” I said.

“It’s selfish,” Ella said. “They should leave some meat for everybody else. It’s like people who want to kill wolves because the hunters want all the elk meat to themselves.” She’d been following the New York Times stories about the wolf debate in the West. I wasn’t sure I saw the connection, but I gave her credit for trying.

“Men,” Ella and I said to each other with our eyes.

I hate “battle of the sexes” conversations, and I didn’t mean to engage in one. My husband is the most accommodating man I know. I have no complaints.

“The beef bowl is pretty funny,” I admitted. “As funny as me sitting here folding your underwear.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “It’s a gesture of love.” And then I started to silently laugh. At myself.

How many other ways did I use my time carelessly, as a mother, wife, writer, editor, and friend? It’s the time for New Year’s resolutions. I resolve to be more selfish. More driven. More focused. I resolve to work more like a man.

I realize that last line is provocative, that I am perpetuating nothing more than a stereotype. That’s because I don’t need to be more like a real man, but more like a stereotypical one.

I vow to put my work first, to make finishing my book this year my first priority. In the past two months, I agreed to write four interviews and five book reviews. I’ll follow-through with my promises, but I won’t agree to take on any projects in the interests of being a good “literary citizen” until my own work is done. I’ll try to make 2014 the year in which I don’t do the metaphorical equivalent of folding my husband’s underwear, in my career.

We’ll see what happens. If I’m seized with uncontrollable cravings for a plate of meat as heavy as a newborn baby, I’ll let you know. It could be funny.

November 18, 2013 By Sharon Harrigan

Odyssey

Last week my aunt and uncle drove me back to the woods of northern Michigan where I spent many idyllic childhood summer days, first with my family and then, after my father’s death, with my grandparents. We used to drive four hours from the city starting at four in the morning. We would arrive at eight, the whole day ahead of us.

This time we drove at five and arrived at nine. It was the first time I’d been back since I moved out of Michigan for college and for good. I’d returned to Detroit (“downstate,” as we Michiganders call it), the place I was raised, many times. But northern Michigan, where my grandparents and ancestors were born, feels like my spiritual home. The pipelines overgrown with blackberry brambles, the red pines, the white pines, the salt licks for game, the deer blinds. The intersection of Sharon Road with Shively Road, my first and maiden name. The place my people come from.

I am writing a book about my father, who died when I was seven. Why have I waited decades to try to remember—and discover—the facts about his life? Why haven’t I returned Up North since I became an adult?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that on this trip my aunt and uncle gave me my father’s copy of The Odyssey, his name inscribed and notes peppered throughout. It’s the only book of his I own. A treasure. A relic even. I’m listening to it, as quietly and purposefully as a hunter listens as she waits for a porcupine to pop its head out of a hole in a tree before she shoots.

This is one thing the book says to me: Odysseus took decades to return to Ithaca from Troy. He was sidetracked and detoured, sirened and lured, tempted and tricked. Yet he never gave up hope. He finally made it home. So will I.