Sunday Night

Twenty years ago, I’d spend hours in my parents’ apartment listening to music and looking through the windows of the buildings across 86th Street. I’d see a young couple sharing breakfast, an old man brushing his teeth, a maid mopping a kitchen floor, and I’d think every person in every window, in every apartment on every block, had a story. As a lonely looking lady stood at the mirror and pinned up her hair, or a man in a suit walked through his door and dropped his keys, I knew every one of them was so much more than what I could see – that inside each of them were countless stories of joy and sorrow.

Forty-three years ago, I began my walk through this life. It included being loved by my parents, two of the wisest people I will ever know. It included being stuck between two brothers I couldn’t wait to escape, brothers who became outstanding men who would do anything for me. My upbringing was not perfect, but it was energetic and alive and honest, and the only thing expected of me was that I live my life fully. I was raised in an environment where no secret was kept, no feeling hidden, everything buried was released and revealed, and always handled with care.

Seventeen years ago, I met a man I adored, and one year ago, I questioned my future with him. Two months ago, I could no longer deny my dissatisfaction, and three weeks ago, I rented an apartment one block from the home I shared with my family. My exterior life is much as it always has been, taking care of my daughter, spending time with her father--and then I make the short walk across 110th Street to a place I call my own. I clean, I cook, I work, I sleep. I burn candles, bathe and listen to music. I read, I weep and I wait.

Four days ago, my husband told me he had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. Gratitude that I was courageous enough to shake things up, crack things open, to not accept a life of contentment and comfort, but to insist on something more. And although he has no desire for us to part, he knows a truthful life together isn’t possible when one of us is dreaming of something else. Under the shock and the grief and the fist through the wall, he knows this was needed, and we can both see how it serves all three of us.

Eventually we’ll divorce, but until then the word “Separation” doesn’t fit. We’re not separate at all. I wash his socks, he buys me juice; we put our baby to bed. What has changed is when we look ahead, we see a blank canvas, not a future. Sometimes, the thought of the unknown feels like a thrill ride, but more often it does not, and in my moments of despair, I remind myself we are a family and that will never change.

Tonight I’m at my husband’s apartment, the place we celebrated eight of our daughter’s nine birthdays, the place I now call “The Homestead,” the place I used to call home. And later, after she's bathed and in bed, I will return to my studio and listen to music, or read or stare at a wall, and weep while I wait. And maybe someone from the building across the way will see me and think I must be someone with a story, someone who has loved, someone who has experienced joy and loss. Perhaps they’ll imagine I am so much more than how I am seen on a Sunday night through a New York City window.