In the mornings, my husband and I sit in the room of our new house we laughingly call “the parlor.” We laugh because “parlor” suggests a formality we have never, and likely will never, possess. In this parlor are several soft seating options including a secondhand sofa and chair. There are also three flea market lamps, a flea market cabinet and a coffee table with a gold base and black-and-white, sgraffito-style crosshatching on the top. This last we bought without knowing if it would fit in the room, either aesthetically or physically.
I have stared at this table’s mesmerizing cross-hatch pattern every morning over coffee for two months now, and only the other day did I realize it’s one of those patterns that shifts if you look at it long enough, making lines that appeared to be retreating suddenly appear to be coming forward. It’s a case of something being two things at once, and it’s a pattern that is echoed in another area of my life as well.
If you keep up with my columns or know me on Facebook, you know I got laid off last November. It came as a surprise, and for weeks afterward I thought of almost nothing but the layoff – how it felt to suddenly not have a job, what I believed it meant, what I thought might or might not be in store for me going forward. Meanwhile friends, hearing the news, weighed in.
“You’ll be fine,” they assured me. “It’s a gift in disguise.” “When one door shuts, another one opens.” I greatly appreciated their words of comfort. As someone who has reinvented herself and her career repeatedly, as new beliefs and passions took over for old ones, I know how to begin again. I’m comfortable with the early stages of things, and I’m patient when patience is demanded.
But this time around, whether because of my age, or because it was not my decision to leave the job, it’s been harder to believe the voices of encouragement. They’ve been met, more than I’d like to admit, by the voice of uncertainty, as I’ve been wondering, Carrie Bradshaw-style, “What if I’m not fine? What if it’s not always true that when one door shuts another door opens? What if, in the words of chef and food writer Gabrielle Hamilton, this is not a “chance for correction,” but an altogether final derailment?