My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [126]
“I’m really proud of you.” Stacey beams.
“Hey, you did an awful lot to help me get there. This was a group effort, so thank you.”
“I’m so glad. By the way, how were the beasts?”
“The dogs had the time of their lives at the kennel, of course.” These dogs also enjoy trips to the vet; they’re strange.
“And the tiny devils?”
“Um . . . I suspect we’re going to need a new cat sitter next time. I saw some blood on the carpet in the room where I was keeping them, and there’s not a scratch on any of the Thundercats. But what’s hilarious is the kittens were so freaked out to see a stranger in our house that they’ve totally been sucking up to us ever since we got home.”
“Awesome. So, what’s next?”
“You’ll laugh when you hear this, but honestly, as soon as I get the book done? I’m going to work out so much!”
“Good for you!”
“Yeah, it’s time. Plus, I’m going to continue with the Jenaissance. I don’t feel like I’m done learning or growing yet. I mean, I want to see my first opera, live and in person. I don’t have to; I want to. I’ve got a ton of cultural stuff already on tap with Joanna. And Fletch and I are going to keep taking cooking classes and going to wine seminars and trying new foods. Turns out we love having some shared hobbies. I mean, we’ve always been on the same page about society and politics and religion and everything, but in terms of interests, we never had that much in common, so we always ended up doing the lowest-common-denominator activity, which was watching television. Now we’ve got lots of stuff to do to get us out of the house.”
When Fletch and I were on our way home from the Hamptons, we talked a lot about what we’ve both learned from this process. Oddly enough, the biggest lesson has come from Maisy getting sick. When she was diagnosed, we realized our time with her isn’t unlimited like we’d blindly assumed. So it’s up to us to make sure each of her days is happy. Maybe we can’t change the course of her destiny, but we can make every minute with her count.
That’s when it hit us—our own time on this earth is limited and we’re getting older. If we can’t come up with some kind of alchemy to stop the aging process, then we’re obligated to make the most of what we have, and the best way to do that is expand the depth of our experiences. Do we want to spend the next thirty years on the couch, waiting to see who wins America’s Next Top Model Cycle Forty-Five, or do we want to fill our lives with a million new experiences, even if sometimes they’re unpredictable or scary or take effort?
Essentially, we realized we need to keep diving in.
And if we do, our lives won’t be richer for being long; our lives will be richer for having lived.
In the course of this project, I read the original text of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. In the play’s introduction, Nicholas Grene writes that Pygmalion deals with two beliefs in conflict with each other: The first has to do with human beings having the capacity to re-create themselves, overcoming one’s social or regional origin. The other contradicts this, as Shaw also maintained that no one could be so transformed that they weren’t still essentially the person they were before their metamorphosis.
Or, to put it in reality-television terms, you can’t edit in that which didn’t happen.
Stacey laughs as I finish my Hampton tales and proclaims, “I guess your people like to say ‘Mission accomplished’ in cases like this. You danced at the Empire Ball, and now everyone’s whispering and wondering if you aren’t actually royalty. Well played, Miss Doolittle. Well played.”
I should be basking in all my accomplishments over the past nine months, yet there’s one thing I haven’t told Stacey.
I clear my throat and begin. “Um, yeah . . . about that. My record isn’t completely spotless. There was one small,