It's taken me 51 years to achieve a level of anonymity so total, my kids think I'm the most boring person on earth. If you were to see me shopping at the grocery store, a chunky vision in yoga pants and a dog-hair-flecked black sweater, you wouldn't spare me a second glance. My unruly brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail that exposes its gray roots; I push my glasses up on my head when I need to read something, often forgetting about them and donning a second pair when I leave the store. I am chronically convinced that I have forgotten my car keys, and spend long minutes rummaging through my purse for them in the parking lot. I wear running shoes or ergonomically designed flip-flops, and outerwear from North Face or Lands' End.
In short, I am a master of disguise. "Be what you wish to seem," says Aristotle, and I wish to seem like every other middle-aged single mom in my leafy, liberal neck of northern New Jersey. Some of my happiest moments have derived from this experience of fitting in. I'll be walking my dog in the park by the train station, watching commuters run for the 8:05, and suddenly be overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude that nothing fucked up is happening.
This is not a sensation I'm used to. Thanks to my background, I have never been frightened of events that scare most people senseless, like losing my job, leaving my partner, or waking up in a foreign country without money or documents. In fact, my finest hours have occurred when things are falling to shit and I can apply my competence to fixing them. Give me an alcoholic husband, an unplanned pregnancy or a pink slip and you'll see me at my best. If you want to sucker-punch me, set me up with a family, a steady paycheck, and a house where the refrigerator and microwave can run on the same circuit without plunging us into darkness.
I once read about a band of children who spent a year fighting for scraps in the rubble of Dresden during World War II. When placed in homes where food, clothing, shelter and some level of emotional support were provided, these hardy little survivors sabotaged their surroundings to recreate the chaos they knew best. That image pretty much sums up the first 40 years of my life.
Here in the suburbs, I meet middle-aged people who feel they've sacrificed their "real" selves for a deadening life of Subarus and softball practice. At summer barbecues on somebody's lavishly landscaped patio, they speak longingly of the adventures they would be having if only they'd kept that married boyfriend in Paris or studio apartment on Avenue C in Manhattan. I make sympathetic noises, but frankly, I can't relate to these complaints. Take it from someone who knows: It's not that hard to stay poor or make stupid decisions about your relationships.
Less frequently, I meet others who share my outlook -- people I think of as undercover mothers (and dads). We've pursued married lovers, and spent lonely Thanksgivings imagining the children we'll never have with them. We've ended Saturday nights throwing up against the back wall of CBGB, only to stagger off to our AA meetings on Sunday morning. We've qualified for food stamps and been slapped around by people we loved.
Yet somehow, we've survived -- scarred and blistered, but with bodies and minds largely intact. And we've been given the precious gift of standing in the back yard of this beautifully restored Victorian home, inhaling the spicy fragrance of planked cajun salmon as we listen to a handsome man bitch about quitting his band to go to law school.
In these situations, I am liable to get a huge, stupid grin on my face as I reflect on how great it is to be here. This is sometimes followed by a jolt of fear that whoever's in charge -- the town trustees, maybe, or the school board -- will discover I'm an imposter and ride me out of town on a rail.
But after fifteen years, I am pretty confident they are going to let me stay. Now that I've passed the half-century mark, I realize that my behavior as a younger person did not, in fact, change the course of world events. I swung from a few chandeliers, did some things that were stupid and others that turned out to be brilliant, and here we are. The fear and shame that led me to constantly reinvent myself, and my failure to recognize my accomplishments along the way, may be regrettable -- but they're not fatal. I suspect that letting them go won't be fatal, either.