It’s been a busy, busy, busy stretch of time with the move and work, but I’ve missed you and writing these posts.
For almost two years, I’ve been working three jobs, as you’ve heard me repeatedly kvetch: as series editor of The Best American Short Stories, editorial director of Plympton, and director of Heidi Pitlor Editorial. After a financially unhealthy marriage, I was determined to work harder than ever and leave behind the crushing debt that I had. Many of us (myself included) tend to blame impulsive choices and lack of motivation for financial unease, but reality paints a more nuanced picture. We all know that our country is full of people born into privilege. Money begets money. Luck matters, and while I chose to live in an expensive area of the country to be near family and to work in a less-than-lucrative field, I did not choose to lose both parents younger than most or to get hit with numerous other obstacles that I’d like to keep private.
For about the past twelve years, I’ve had no home office. I’ve largely worked at libraries, my dining room table, and on my living room couch. I’ve tried office shares, but my work requires an unusual amount of silence that no coworker should have to abide. A first world problem indeed, but it’s taken a toll. I did have a short stint with a beautiful attic office that was finished just in time for my marriage to end. During the “nesting” years post-marriage, I worked half-time in my friend’s basement studio, which was a godsend.
In January of 2021, I finally moved out of the home where my husband and I had mostly raised our twins (he managed to buy me out of my share) and into a big old quirky rental, perfect for two teens, with its two large bedrooms and proximity to our town center, but less so for me. I found myself living like I had in college, my bedroom a cobbled together space in the attic with no usable closet or light, our bathroom barely able to fit one human body.
At first it was liberating. After ten long, fraught years of renovating an old house, of combing salvage yards for beautiful stained glass and picking paint colors and watching my ex bite off way more than he or anyone else could chew in service to home ownership in the Boston suburbs, I arrived like an asteroid in my new apartment and let whatever I had rest where it landed. The neighbor’s bluegrass band practiced weekly. The bathtub was lined in rust. The linoleum floor in the kitchen, originally green, had taken on a dull shade of bile over the many decades. At first it was all Bohemian and freeing and fun. Until it wasn’t. Just organizing the influx of magazines that submit to The Best American Short Stories requires a certain amount of space and sanity that I’d gone without for too long. For twelve years, I’d carted around stacks of literary magazines, frayed and tattered notebooks full of to-do lists, and the sense that I may never have a sufficient or consistent workspace. The divorce and Covid did nothing to help this sensation.
Blessedly, I was able to save the money I’d gotten in the divorce buyout of said old home. I worked and worked and saved and saved, and once the prospect of college approached, I realized that this savings would have to appear on my kids’ FAFSA forms. Of course I want to give my kids everything I can to help them afford college, but my retirement was anemic, and after three years of rent stability, my rent was about to soar. What to do?
Casually, as mentioned, my person and I began looking at houses with the thought that we might buy one together after our kids headed to college. In October, we drove up to a house I’d been tracking online. Two deer stood calmly at the end of my car, and we stepped out, peered around the yard (yes, we were trespassing), and wondered why this place was affordable, if barely. The price continued to drop, so we attended an official open house. It’s an old house with a few small additions with an unsightly stooped fence out front. It’s not updated, and has certain “needs.” But you’d never guess from the outside what the inside offers, which happens to be our “unicorn”: bedrooms for three teenagers, space for his grand piano, and an office for me, dammit.
On January 29, the movers came. If I hadn’t been so focused on packing up myself and my kids and scrambling to stay on top of work, I’d have paused to take in the significance of the moment: these precious three years with my kids, and the almost five years on my own, were coming to an end. I felt both ready and not ready. But there seemed to be no time to feel anything much at all.
On January 31, bone tired from unpacking barely a fraction of the crap that I and my kids had amassed— and making my Best American Short Story final deadline— I switched off the bedroom light, turned toward the bed, and tripped over a rolled up carpet, landing face first onto a metal grate on the floor. My first thought was, “OUCHFUCKOUCHIJUSTLOSTMYFRONTTEETH.” I blinked fast and flopped over onto my back. I managed to yell out to my person, who was downstairs playing piano and this together with his half-deafness after his surgery kept him oblivious for a moment. I yelled out again, vulnerable and frankly terrified, my face now wet with blood, my eyes and nose throbbing, my front tooth loose. We are both too old for this shit, I thought. Bless him, he came running.
One night at the hospital, one glued up eyebrow, one healthy shiner, untold amounts of pain medication, a demolished ego, a swollen nose, a fat lip (at first, I thought that people paid money for this kind of upper lip, but it quickly turned cartoonish) and countless side eyes from concerned strangers later (to say that I appeared battered is an understatement), my dentist told said, “Most likely you will not lose a front tooth, although let’s make you an appointment with an endodontist just to be safe.” I escaped without a concussion, and my face had had the good sense to land so that the scar will be hidden by my right eyebrow.
Peace and progress does not come easy. It’s been almost two weeks since that night, and I look and feel better. My kids have been here all week, and I’ve been able to take the pause that I needed on the eve of my move.
Combining my person with my kids is a scary step after the divorce, but I love the person and house so much, and these things mitigate the fear. The kids set up their rooms, crucial for teens, and settled right in. My person and I are doing battle with a cursed bathroom and our aging bodies, but if we are able to keep our gaze on the bigger picture, goodness is everywhere. The house is in a more rural part of town and deer eat from our bird feeders. These same deer sleep on a bed of goose feathers in the woods behind our house. A river winds past our backyard, and swans drift past. I’m having a hard time integrating all of this— how is this not a Disney film? We have our own rickety bridge into the woods that line the river. Lavender, dogwoods, massive pines, Japanese maples, and Lord knows what else wait for spring to bloom. The dog already knows how to find the bridge, the woods, the swans, and thankfully neither have tried to attack the other. We have a bathroom near our bedroom (an en suite!), a usable closet there too.
And the office, my office.
My Virginia Woolf finally has a permanent home. It’s all disorienting, really, and there are moments (too many) when I’m not sure I deserve this. I’m used to chaos not quiet, and distraction not focus. I sit here at my desk (Mary Karr’s old one!) with one eye on my laptop and my work, but the rest of me cannot ignore the windows and beyond, where there is nothing, and everything.
Hi Heidi, just read what you wrote. We haven’t communicated in a long time. Sorry to hear about your past troubles but it sounds like you’re doing okay now. Just thought I’d touch base with you and say hello. Not much family left. Hope all is well with Margot and Nelson. Say hello to them. Would love to hear from you.
Congrats on the new home & hope you are healing well!