First We Quit Our Jobs Read online

  I was happy at our lake house on weekends and on our outdoorsy vacations, but living in the middle of the woods on a full-time basis would be something else again. It seemed to me that in order to make this kind of megaleap in business and in life, from huge corporation to tiny mom-and-pop shop, from being several feet from my nearest neighbor to, possibly, miles from the next person, required some adjustment. We would need a kind of transition period sandwiched between the life we’d known and what was to come.

  * * *

  A trip, perhaps? What better way to relax, to readjust the little gray cells, as M. Poirot would say. A trip would be just the thing, we agreed. A space between two lives. Our fantasy life was getting richer all the time. With the offer on the company pending, we came home at night and mapped out routes for what was still just a make-believe trip. Let’s go to Michigan and visit your sister. We really have to get to Colorado and visit with Marianne and Timm. Shirley and Bob are dying to show us their new place in Santa Fe. You know, I’d really love to see Alaska, after all those business trips there. Wouldn’t you love to go back to Jenny Lake? Don’t you think it would be fun to follow the fall some year?

  The scope of “the trip” grew from a little jaunt to something transcontinental. Alaska became our goal. Sandy had been there eighteen times on business, seeing mostly airports, offices, and hotel rooms. He always wanted to go back, and I liked the idea of driving as far as we could on the continent. It wasn’t easy finding a map that showed the entire continent contiguously, however. For the most part, Alaska and Canada were lopped off, relegated to tiny “detail” maps that featured every fireplug and pit stop in Nebraska and Iowa but allowed no way to plot a drive to Fairbanks. Useless for our north-by-northwest getaway. In my atlas Alaska wasn’t even granted the dignity of an entire page, sharing space instead with the cities of Arizona. When we finally found a continental map, I was surprised how vertical it was. I always thought about our orientation horizontally, east to west, New York to L.A. A leftover, perhaps, from school days when we were coached in theories of manifest destiny and westward expansion.

  Looking at the map, I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was wrong. Where were the roads? The lower forty-eight was loaded with steady blue lines, bold red lines, gray, black, dot-and-dash lines. But up where I was looking, there was a lot of white space and a few pale squiggles. I felt sure someone had forgotten to print all the roads: there hardly were any. As I read about accommodations, I became more confused. Where were the hotels? What about the cute B&Bs I’d anticipated? I broke out in a rash, remembering the time Sandy had picked up a case of armpit crabs in a lousy motel. We didn’t think a series of “clean rooms, shared bath, $24.00” would suit us for what was quickly evolving into the trip of a lifetime. The alternative seemed equally ridiculous: We could rent an RV. As Miss Piggy would have said, “Moi in an RV? Non!”

  Even though it seemed unlikely in the extreme that we were “RV types,” on a lark we did a little research. The rental costs for a lengthy trip like ours were absurdly high. Were we nuts? What difference did it make how costly RV rentals were? We had no intention of ever being in one. It was absurd to even think about it. Us in an RV? How would we ever get room service? If, however, someone wanted to travel round trip from New York to Denali National Park, what would be the best way to do it? Surely we could find it! It became a game with a challenge. The trip took on a life of its own. From all the information we could get our hands on, it seemed traveling in a motor home was, in fact, the best way to go. One would have a good bed, clean private bathroom, and home cooking at all times.

  It seemed like pure silliness at first. How could we tell our sophisticated New York City publishing cronies that we were getting excited about the idea of traveling in an RV? We’d never even been in one, knew nothing about them. But we fed the growing dementia and furtively started looking at them. Like sneak eating, we went sneak RV-looking. As we went farther and farther afield to find dealers (they did not share lots with Audi, Volvo, Lexus, and those guys, we found out), we became intrigued with the possibility. RVs (recreational vehicles, motor homes, not trailers, we learned) were appealing homes on wheels. We eventually visited with dealers in five states, comparing designs, engines (how wonderful to have a husband who used to work for an automobile manufacturer), and other mechanical features. We test-drove school-bus-size vehicles on small country roads. No special training or licensing was required. My first time at the wheel, it was snowing. It was just like picking up a rental car at an airport, I thought. The layout of the instrument panel was a little unfamiliar, the rearview mirrors and the seat needed some adjusting. But it was easy to drive and felt nice and heavy on the slushy road. The salesman assumed I’d been doing this for years. If only he’d known.

  When we got home, we called our RV-owning friends in Toronto, Gordon and Kathy, and grilled them. We learned the lingo, figured out that, if we ever owned an RV, we would want an “A” class, bus-front style, because they offered great views. If we ever bought a motor home, it would have to have a spacious bathroom. Obviously, in the unlikely event we purchased one, it would have to have a queen-size bed that we could walk around so that neither of us would have to crawl over the other to get out of bed. In the living room we preferred a couch to barrel chairs, and of course, we would need a dining banquette. Amazing how many opinions we had about something we barely knew existed.

  * * *

  And then, six months after Sandy lost his job, I got sick. Not life-threateningly, just a four-month bout with pneumonia, bronchitis, laryngitis, and any kind of bug that caught me. I couldn’t get myself together and felt it was an enormous chore to do most anything. My staff and boss were very understanding, but there were three hundred books a year for which I had direct responsibility and another four hundred with which I was involved. Missing any time, discussions, meetings meant losing a few threads in the fabric of daily life. I cut back my office hours to half time, got call-waiting at home, had my mail messengered to me twice a day, and canceled all my holiday plans.

  I recovered, but sadly, during that same period of six months or so, others didn’t. Charlie was my wonderful funny neighbor with whom I’d gone through sporadic periods of jogging. We’d compare notes about the latest diets, though neither of us would ever be accused of being slim. The summer before, however, Charlie had miraculously turned svelte. Though he looked handsome and healthy, for some reason I held back from asking him which diet he was on this time. He died of AIDS at thirty-eight. Joan, my cousin’s best friend, died at forty-nine of a rare stomach cancer that, the doctors determined, she had probably picked up while she was a volunteer in Thailand. My dear friend of twenty years, Jane, who had left the rat race years ago to build and run a bed and breakfast in Kauai, Hawaii, died at forty-nine of colon cancer. A colleague died in her sleep of an aneurysm, another was found dead in her kitchen at fifty-one by a friend when she didn’t answer her phone while home with the flu. Then Sandy’s ex-wife died at fifty-three of kidney cancer. It was an ironic death because it also set us free from a lifelong commitment to alimony payments. Suddenly, but sadly, it was a burden no more.

  I was no stranger to death. When I was fifteen, my mother had died after five years of battling cancer, an event so colossal, it seemed to remake all the atoms in my universe. It separated me for all time from those who had not known death at an early age, those lucky ones who thought life went on seamlessly, painlessly, until we quietly slipped away under some prim granite headstone. After that, my world was made up of those who knew and those who didn’t. I didn’t begrudge them their innocence, but rather steeled myself against the time the next death would strike in my life. Aunts, grandmothers, uncles, family friends, a cousin my age, even my shrink had died.

  But this latest onslaught was something else. The combination of these deaths coming so close together, all the people being our age, had a major impact on us both. My thickened layer of self-protection couldn’t separate me from my own fra
ilties. We had always suspected we were mortal, but this was a wake-up call for the comatose. Emotions rose to the surface. Maybe the notion of enjoying life while we still had time wasn’t a frivolous one after all. We’d have to have been in a trance not to recognize that we were at a moment in our lives when we had the opportunity to recast our goals, to reinvent new lives that would suit our future, not our past. What were we working for? Wasn’t being together more important than anything else? Were two-week vacations really worth the price of being apart all day long for the other fifty weeks? Were all those meetings and deadlines and making someone else’s bottom line look good worth barely having the energy to click the remote control on weekends? The more we talked, the more it seemed we were maintaining a lifestyle we couldn’t enjoy because we had to work so hard to maintain it. We were both exhausted physically and emotionally. It seemed to me that after years of seducing authors, cajoling agents, pacifying bosses, and coddling colleagues at breakfast, lunch, drinks, dinner, and the office, I just wanted to be quiet for a while.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the seller of the company in New England wanted to know more about how we’d improve the business. We took this as a positive sign and went back to discuss it face to face. It was exciting to come up with these plans together. Meeting with a group of eight at the home of one of the principals, Sandy and I laid out our ideas. Afterward we felt the meeting had gone very well. Our rhythms and attitudes about working coalesced. Our desire to work together increased. We discussed the fine points of our offer with our broker, who set to work negotiating.

  Heading home, we felt confident our plan was falling into place, though on some level it felt like make-believe to me. The principals even seemed agreeable to a closing six months off, allowing us time to take our decompression trip. Elated, we stopped in at every RV dealer along the way, comparing prices, mechanical features, and interior layouts. With a list of preferences now in hand, we called the dealer nearest the lake house and asked if he had anything that matched our needs. He told us to come right over. On the lot he showed us a 29’ 10” used RV. It had been a rental and was one year old, with 30,000 hard miles. It had a huge front window, a queen-size walkaround bed, and the right furniture and layout. On each side of the bed was a good reading light and a night table. The floor plan allowed for two sets of interior doors—one to close off the middle from the front living area, the other the back bedroom. This created a good-size bath/dressing area in between. It was a lot like a boat, where stowage space is cleverly taken advantage of everywhere. The shower would provide ample hot water for hair washing, and whether plugged in or by generator, there would always be electricity for a blow dry. The living-room sofa was comfy, and the dinette benches and table provided good space for eating, letter-writing, and trip-planning. The stereo sounded fine, the pantry was ample, and the kitchen reminded me of the one in our New York City apartment, only the views were much, much better. We took it for a drive. It was quieter than most we’d been in, and it handled well. It was way past closing time on a Saturday night when we got back to the dealer’s office. We talked about the features, we talked about the future. We could have walked away. Instead, we put a one-thousand-dollar deposit down on a Winnebago Brave. Brave indeed. On Monday we quit our jobs.

  Our bosses were stunned, our friends cheered, our colleagues scratched their heads and wondered when their turn was coming. Our families were great. I had learned long ago to tell my father something worse than what was actually going on, so the reality wouldn’t seem nearly as bad. By the time we told him we were just quitting our jobs and going to Alaska for the summer, he was relieved. It was better than buying a cattle ranch in Australia or some other tale I’d spun out along the way. In fact, he wanted to know whether he could join us for a few weeks. Other people were simply speechless. Were we rich? they wondered. Were we ill? they asked. Neither, we replied. People said we were brave. I thought about that a lot, how it was perceived as bravery to take charge of one’s own life. Maybe so. To us, at that point, it felt as if we were doing the most natural thing in the world in order to save our lives.

  * * *

  Memorial Day weekend was rainy and damp, muting the expectations of summer hopefuls. We were deliriously happy. Friday had been our last day at work.

  Writing out the check for the motor home had been easy. It was about the same price as our car. Getting it home was hard. It was twice as long and three times as high as a sedan. The parkways between the dealer’s lot and our lake house forbade large vehicles. The streets were old, winding, narrow, and shoulderless, with tree branches flopping in from both sides. Very inhospitable to large vehicles. I suddenly had new respect for truck drivers. As Sandy drove the RV home, I trailed him in the car. Now and then I had to close my eyes for an instant when he tried, with his usual impatience, to pass a bus. He hadn’t accepted the fact that he was a bus. At one point, I saw the road ahead narrow even further and dip under railroad tracks, leaving very little headroom. I held my breath. Would he fit? Sandy suddenly pulled over into a parking lot, the same thought crossing his mind. Jumping out of our respective vehicles, we eyed the situation. There was no sign indicating a height limit. School buses must come through here, we reasoned. Off we went, automatically ducking a little as we went under the tracks, arriving home without incident just as it got dark.

  Sandy and I spent the weekend sprucing up our old house and fixing up our new motor home, trying to add a natural fiber here and there to a world that featured only the synthetic. Placing our favorite Amish quilt on the bed made it homier. As Monday evening came around, we were still busy affixing hooks and curtains and were pleased to see the sun trying to break through the mist. Instead of cursing the fact that the weather was improving just as the weekend was ending, I was simply happy to see the sunshine.

  It felt incredible to be free. It was the eve of the first day of our new life. Not since 1955 had I awakened on a Monday morning without a hint of regimentation in sight. Weed the garden? Okay, when it cooled off. Cook dinner? In a bit. Have company? Anytime. Hit the road? Ready when you are!

  Motor Home

  & Garden

  First, the bad news. We didn’t get the company in New England. It seemed they had gotten cold feet about selling. Sandy was more disappointed than I was, but we were both certainly let down. Now what? We had no jobs, no prospects. Plan B appeared obvious: Travel at our leisure and look around for other ideas as we went, while our friend and broker, Jerry, kept his eyes open for us in New York. Maybe it would even be better this way, I rationalized. With no new pressures pushing in at us from afar, we could truly be open to carving a new life. We were now working, or not working, without a net.

  We continued fixing up our motor home as if it were a new house. Nest-building was something we both had always enjoyed. We bought new sheets and blankets, a toaster oven, a shower curtain, and lawn chairs. Friends in Texas, Jan and Dean, no kidding, sent a portable gas grill so we could barbecue under the stars. The interior design motif was simple: unbreakable, washable, and portable. Fabrics were by Rubbermaid, Velcro, and that great god of the outdoors, Gore-Tex. Being good little consumers, we found a catalog of all kinds of wonderful things for RVs and their owners. On our doorstep appeared Pop-a-Plate, a handy paperware holder and dispenser; Hide-a-Spice, perfect for compact undermounting; and a garbage sling with a self-contained roll of one hundred plastic bags.

  I guess there really are boy and girl genes. Sandy hooked up the CB radio we’d been advised to get, wired in a better light over the couch, and got all the speakers working. I sewed some heavy denim into blackout curtains for the bedroom windows and skylight so we’d have some darkness in the Alaskan summer nights. Sandy tackled electricity like Thomas Edison and I blasted through sewing, ironing, and replacing those curtains in no time. (The reverse would likely have ended in fire either way.) He packed his favorite tool (an electric screwdriver), and I packed mine (a folding 1,500-watt hair dryer). I didn’t worry abo
ut finding the next best seller, nor did I miss the queasiness about needing to outperform last year’s sales. Sandy never once complained about our lack of budget or executive committee meetings. The cherry tree in front of the house, which had failed to bloom the previous year, was lush with vulgar pink blossoms. A new life was dawning.

  As we busied ourselves with the details of trip and travel, we tended to our current homes and the details of organizing their care in our absence. The garden would have to be watered, the mail picked up in both places, bills paid, and emergencies covered. We tried renting the house for the months we would be away, but the short lead time worked against us. In addition, we struggled with what to do with Pete and Norm, our adorable young Scottish fold kitties. Sandy had brought them home to me at Christmastime, when I was feeling so rotten. They’d cheered me up and assumed I would always be around to play with them. Norm (named by the breeder after Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, with his striped chest and indelicate walk) and Pete (unacceptably named Lord Byron by the breeder, we had renamed him after our catman friend, Peter, who introduced us to the breed) were housecats. The thought of losing them on the road was more unbearable than leaving them in someone else’s care. Luckily we found Ann and Joe, who would temporarily adopt our guys into their large household of nine. No kennels for these felines. It was off to cat camp in New Jersey.