16 Rearview Mirror
16
REARVIEW MIRROR
Gretchen
The thing about coming back to reality was there was a lot of reality to deal with.
When you abandon your life for a month, especially when the main item on your life to-do list is “Expand empire,” a lot of stuff piles up. Admin for the existing studio. Getting ready for the fall sessions, which were more numerous and better attended than the summer sessions. Writing job descriptions because I was going to have to hire a receptionist/studio manager for the new place. Historically, I’d done that role myself with some help from some older students who covered the front desk when I was teaching my own classes in exchange for free lessons, but I wasn’t going to be able to scale up that informal approach to things. I’d only ever hired teachers, who were independent contractors who invoiced me, so this was a whole new ball game involving payroll taxes and all kinds of stuff that hurt my head.
I had stuff to do on the home front, too, most urgently making nice with my cats, who were mad that I’d left them with my sister for a month—Ingrid had moved into my place while I was gone, so it wasn’t like they’d been uprooted. But still. They were prickly. I understood.
I meant to go shopping for a hammock, but I never got around to it. It was still written on my physical to-do list, though. And the garden, I decided, would have to wait for next spring.
And of course, the new building. My baby. My enormous, time- and energy-sucking baby. I struck a deal with the sellers for them to do the asbestos remediation before closing.
I was entitled to one more walk-through, and Justin and I did it together. He drew up plans, I signed off on them, and we started purchasing materials and booking subtrades so he’d be ready to hit the ground running after closing, which was fast approaching. I found myself uncharacteristically indecisive when choosing finishes, though. From flooring to wall color to the countertops in the kitchen on the second floor.
“You want me to hook you up with a designer?” Justin said one morning while we were looking at toilets at Home Depot. “I have one I use on some projects. Mostly residential, but she’s good.”
“Oh my God, what is the matter with me that I can’t even pick a toilet? I couldn’t even tell you what the toilet at the current studio looks like.”
“Doing a space from scratch is a lot different from moving into a rented space,” Justin said diplomatically, when what he should have said was, Choose a damn toilet, lady .
One morning at the studio, I was waiting for a rep from a software company to come by and demo some software I was thinking of buying—unlike the dance side of things, yoga and Pilates were going to be drop-in, and I wanted to automate payment, waivers, and attendance taking. Take the pressure off the receptionist. Who I still had to hire.
And what was I going to do when the receptionist got sick? Or took a vacation? Did I need a backup?
I was the backup. Which probably meant I should, at least initially, cut back on how many dance classes I taught.
Which would mean I’d need to hire more dance teachers.
The door opened, and it wasn’t my software dude; it was Rory, carrying two coffees.
“What are you doing here?” She was in her final month, and she wasn’t teaching the last summer term.
“I’m bored.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting and making Mike rub your feet and wait on you?”
“Boring.”
I grinned. I was glad to see her. “You know what else is boring? The presentation I’m about to hear on software.”
Rory kept doing that—showing up at random times with coffee, claiming to be bored. Over the next few weeks I kept telling her to go home and put her feet up, but she wouldn’t listen. She came with me to pick out flooring and bathroom fixtures—I finally settled on a freaking toilet—and a front desk setup for the new space.
“Are you OK?” she asked one morning.
“I’m fine.” She didn’t say anything, so I added, “Do I not seem fine?”
When she still didn’t speak, I said, “What?”
“I don’t know. You seem subdued. Or just kind of… off.”
I was off.
The terrible truth was that I missed camp. I missed the stupid hole dance that had no place in my real life. I missed Teddy, who also had no place in my real life.
Earlier this summer, before camp, I’d decided that my Midlife Crisis: Averted project had two pillars. Pillar One was the new building. The new empire. Become too busy expanding my empire to be in crisis. Pillar Two was giving up on dating, on men. Going to camp was supposed to jump-start Pillar Two. Go to the woods and become a crone.
So why was I back from the woods missing my camp boyfriend and unable to choose a toilet for my new empire?
This wasn’t me. I didn’t dither over toilets and moon over dudes. I shook my head. “I’m just stressed about everything I have to do.”
“How can I help?”
“You are helping.” I held up the coffee she’d brought me. “Also, without you I’d probably have a completely subpar toilet.”
“You remember when I was in my old apartment after Ian moved out? You used to come over, and we’d dance in the empty living room.”
“Yeah.” I smiled. Those were good memories. I had a whole dance studio to myself after hours, but somehow Rory’s empty living room—her ex had taken all the furniture—had inspired bursts of creativity. We’d organized an entire Go-Go’s-themed recital in that apartment.
“Maybe after I have this baby and you get going in the new space, we can work on the holiday recital.”
“For sure. And that sounds great.”
I thought about telling her about the hole dance. But it would sound so stupid. What would I even say? I made up a dance that was maybe about the patriarchy and there was a lot of leaping out of holes? The piece was fading from memory. It wasn’t that I couldn’t remember the steps, more that the urgency I’d felt about doing that choreography had faded.
Rory and I had talked lately about her nervousness about labor and delivery, about how women always say you forget the pain of childbirth. “How can you forget the pain of pushing a human out of your vagina?” Rory had exclaimed incredulously.
I thought I understood. The experience of life after childbirth—of keeping a baby alive, of dealing with the rest of your life, whether that meant other kids or jobs or relationships—made the “bigness” of the birth experience shrink.
Time stripped emotion from an experience, and without emotion, you just had plot. Things that happened: I gave birth. I made a dance.
I made a dance once. Not that long ago, even. But from this vantage point, I couldn’t remember why.