The Key to the Front Door
I have an OLD friend in town.. and I mean that in both senses that we are
A) both feeling crotchety and stubborn and slightly grey, but that
B) we’ve been friends for long enough that we shared a bus ride home on the first day of high school, shared a limo for senior prom, planned camping trips in college, delivered a toast at both wedding receptions, planned the baby showers and continue to send gifts and well-wishes in celebration of various milestones in our young children’s lives.
I rushed home to meet her, having completely forgotten to leave a front door key in the place I promised it would be. In order to make it home to let her in, I had to bolt the five year-old through heavy shopping center doors on the wrong side of the Bay and back to the parking garage while balancing my lava-hot double americano between two fingers and then defensive drive all the way across the bridge. When we arrived home, my friend and her two tremendously sweet children were sitting on my doorstep. A lovely sight!
Tonight, after all the little monkeys have been fed and bathed and put to bed, we do as old friends do and try to distill six months of events, everyday moments of disappointment, joy and utter confusion into a synopsis. And pair that with a bottle or two of wine. As usual, there is far too much ground to cover so we bullet point. Job. House. Baby. Spouse. Future. Past. New Projects. Food (always room for conversation about food). Wine. There is nothing quite like this speed round of highs and lows, especially when you have a little person who will be waking you up at the crack of dawn the next morning and not giving you any sympathy if you stayed up late talking. Everything gets thrown into the mix, and fast.
The conversation circles around to my work, since she is on year four as stay-at-home mom, and I am pushing through year five as “I’ll do anything, just don’t make me stay home with the kid all day”. Since I have been working as a family and estate manager for the last five years (taking care of someone else’s family) she asks, “but don’t you want to be the one with the assistant someday? I mean, where you run the show and you need help doing whatever you’re doing?”
I try in vain to explain that my heart overflows when I can help someone accomplish their goals, and that I find insane amounts of joy in making sure things are comfortable, beautiful and peaceful in people’s homes. I say that I have an exceptional viewpoint into lives of absolutely fascinating people, by nature of having clients with great life stories and unique backgrounds. That the experience of being able to walk around inside the lives of dozens of different people over the years, learning their value systems and measures of life quality is unparalleled. And that in the end I am so totally blessed to be let in, to be trusted to help people deal with their aging parents, their hilarious kids, their new dreams, moments of devastation, and all of life’s big and small moments that everyone should be trying to be me. Not the other way around.
I didn’t say it then but I needed to get that out. I am so freaking lucky to be able to do what I do, it’s hard to explain and sometimes it’s hard to believe.
That was a beautiful post. Love you!
You know, I could relate this to The Fountainhead, too. There is a lesson in that book for every occasion.
I think that so few people have the capacity to really enjoy helping others that it can be really difficult to explain. You’re also working against a society that worships at the alter of fame and it’s hard to fathom that someone, especially someone who sees the “glamorous” life all day long, cannot want it. Have you heard that horrible pop song, “When I’m a Billionaire”? That’s the problem you’re facing in a nutshell.
You love what you do. Tell the naysayers to go hire their own assistant and leave you alone.