It was dusk and the day about to disappear as the traffic signal glowed bright red, then green. I remember my parents’ silver station wagon double-parked at the corner of 79th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, its four-ways flashing. All of my worldly possessions were stuffed into trash bags and packed into that car.

I was leaving New York City. A betting man would not have wagered on my fleeing like this as I’d spent my youth sacrificing to get to and be in this city.

In New York I planned make my mark—become a famous actress, escaping my small hometown in Pennsylvania.

Unlike most teenagers, the summer I was fifteen, I rode the Bieber Bus from rural PA to NYC everyday for auditions, go-sees, and casting calls. When school started that year, I kept at it, going to class in the morning, then commuting two and a half hours to the Big Apple, only to return each evening, suffer through homeschooling, go to bed and then do it again the next day. By the holiday break of my senior year, I’d completed enough credits to graduate early from high school.

nyc-waterviewI moved to the Big Apple after Christmas, first living in Queens, then relocating to Stuyvesant Town on the Lower East Side, and finally settling 79th St in the Upper West Side.

My days were full with college lectures, auditions, go-sees, guest appearances on soap operas, exciting messages on my answering machine, a waitressing job at night, museum visits, near-miss screen test for big films, half-price Broadway tickets, and new friends from all over the world. But more than anything else, there was a sense that something great was about to happen. That my dreams were within striking distance.

This was my city and I would never leave. I was going to be a creative–an artist.

But.

Hormones have a funny way of changing things. Like getting hit by a Mack truck. I met a handsome professional soccer player and suddenly thought I was in love. And just like that I found myself in my mother’s car sitting shotgun headed toward the Lincoln Tunnel. I was going south. Next stop, Dallas, Texas.

First, we’d swing through Pennsylvania for a wedding. My husband-to-be, that professional soccer player, flew into Philadelphia from the West Coast, and at nineteen-years-old, I walked down the aisle of my small country church and sealed my fate one a rainy New Year’s Eve.

In my new, hotter city, I was the only married college student I knew at the University of Texas—an unusual status, for sure.

Fast-forward a couple decades. Four cities. Two children. A house in the suburbs. A real estate career. And a marriage complicated by my husband’s addictions.

At age forty, my younger self came calling, wanting to know what had happened to the creative person I had set out to be. How had I ended up where I had promised to never return—small town Pennsylvania.

I was lost.

It wasn’t as if I wanted to start acting again. When I walked away from the stage, I did it sincerely. In hindsight, I was too quiet, too introverted—being the center of attention made me comfortable (still does). But the long-buried artist wept secretly in the shower at night and yearned for more.

So, I tried knitting. After making twenty scarves and buying too much expensive yarn, I still wasn’t satiated.

That’s when began to write in an attempt to quell my creative hunger. I’d always kept a journal and I’d secretly written bad poetry for years. Plus, I loved to read. My undergraduate degree is in Literary Studies.

Slowly, one word at a time, I came back to myself.

And I’m back in New York. Divorced after thirty years of marriage, my children are almost launched and I am starting over in this city that held me as a girl.

Sometimes I fear it is a moment in time that I’m trying to recapture—to revisit an instant when anything seemed possible, when the future was wide open. If I am honest, I’d like a do over. It’s been a hard reckoning, but I understand that there won’t be more time. That’s the folly of youth. The misconception that, “I can do that later.”

Mark Twain wrote, “Twenty years from now you will be most disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbors. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

So before it’s too late, I am trying to do this now. My young adult kids think I’m a little crazy and fear how they might show up in my writing.They don’t yet understand the slippery nature of time. And how it just might trick you.

My writing seeds are sown. I fertilize them and wait for sprouts. Twelve years later, now fifty-two years old, I have an MFA in Creative Writing, two published novels, several viral articles, my first off-off Broadway production as director/producer about to launch, and a heart once again filled with hope and dreams.

Still the committee in my head drives me crazy (and my family, too). It’s a battleground.

One voice says, It’s too late.

The other says, The journey has just begun. The time is now. Let’s roll.

* * *

Midlife: when the Universe grabs your shoulders and tells you, “I’m not f@#ing around, use the gifts you were given.”

—Brene Brown

* * *

Need fast Sunday Dinner? Something you can make in a New York minute? Try Tyler Florence’s Smothered Pork Chops. Click here for recipe and instructions.

smothered-porkchopsYummy!

***

My novel, What The Valley Knows, will be released January 25, 2018. Woohoo! Preorder now, using the code PREORDER2017 to save an additional 10%. Click HERE to purchase and enter to win a $100 Barnes & Noble gift card or a Kindle Paperwhite.

“This sensational novel is a moving, poignant story.” (Readers’ Favorites)

xoxo,
Heather

 

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