Roach Motel

NYC_Subway_interior_passengersLas cucarachas entran pero no pueden salir. I am 24 years old, wearing a plaid, belted dress I bought for the princely sum of $50 at Saks Fifth Avenue, riding the subway to my second real job ever, at a big-name New York publisher that pays small-time salaries. No matter which car I enter, or which day of the week it is, somehow this ad is always directly in my sightline. The words have such a pretty, poetic rhythm to them, a stark contrast to their icky subject matter.

The cartoon cockroaches with their tiny valises “checked in” to the roach motels, but they “didn’t check out,” if you recall the television ads. Similarly, I had somehow checked in to the semblance of adult life, but I was nowhere near ready. What time was check-out? I’d much rather go back to college.

Luckily, my workplace was filled with wonderful characters. There were three Lisas, each of them with strikingly different, if outsized, personalities. Simone, stately and poised, instantly became my friend and role model. I wished I had her perfect manners, her Southern unflappability, and her effortless sense of style. Steven, brash, whip-smart and funny as hell, kept the mood sunny, but was always available for a kvetch-fest. Pretty JoAnn, fiercely organized and always professional, seemed eerily adult-like. How were all these young people so grown-up when I was still larval?

Gracie, a sweet, elderly, Ruth Gordon-ish woman, always had a twinkle in her eye and a ready supply of Manischewitz macaroons. She appeared to be in her eighties, and I never quite knew what she did, but she always showed up smiling, her wig neatly coiffed, if a bit off-kilter. Gracie was child-like. I loved Gracie.

My other co-workers seemed to be fully formed adult human beings, with apartments, boyfriends, summer shares in the Hamptons, professional ambitions, and designer shoes. They seemed to think nothing of lunching with Allen Ginsberg, making small talk with Armistead Maupin, or attending publication parties for Andy Warhol, or Roz Chast, or Russell Banks.

I, alone, was an imposter—an anxious phony, a frightened adolescent in patent leather pumps. I had a boyfriend who was an adult. I married him, in an adult-like ceremony. I made adult-like decisions about who should sit where and what they should eat at my adult-like wedding. I invited all of my grown-up friends and did my best impersonation of a mature young lady as I walked down the aisle.

Thirty years later, having waved goodbye to New York and Gracie, and Steven, and the Lisas, I’m still waiting to feel like a grown-up. I have a wonderful husband and quasi-adult children and arthritis and short-term memory problems, but no sense of direction or accomplishment or gravitas. I’m 54 years old, but still feel like I haven’t quite gotten started. One of my favorite songs, “Miracle Mile” by the Cold War Kids, captures my nagging interior monologue precisely: “I was supposed to do great things—I knew the road was long.”

Correction: I thought the road was long.  As it turns out, to mix metaphors, I ran out of runway. Great things are no longer on the menu for me. In their place, I’ve learned to think small. As long as I’ve got something new to learn or a fresh challenge to face, I figure at least I know I’m alive. I really want to learn how to stand-up paddle board, and to write code, and to speak Spanish. I’ve got a head start on that last one—I already know one complete sentence!

Maybe Gracie—childlike Gracie—had it right all along. The secret to being a grown-up is simply to show up, every day, sometimes with cookies. And maybe, unless the joke’s on me, we were all faking it a little (or a lot), and are still doing so now. Don’t tell my kids. They seem to be all grown up and headed for great things.

2 thoughts on “Roach Motel

  1. I like your blog, amusing reading and something to think about. Thank You for sharing your link.

    Tracy
    Your neighbors Nanny : )

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