More and more, it seems that most of the people I know spend half of their lives in a plane. What are they doing and where are they going? Even when I had money to travel (and paid vacation), I traveled at most twice a year. Once for the big vacation (Europe, Texas, the West Coast) and maybe once for a small vacation (the North Fork of Long Island).
One of the consequences of not procreating that I never foresaw, is that I don't have issue dispersed throughout the country (or the world). One of the consequences of being self employed at home is that I am not "sent" anywhere as part of the duties of my employment (and anyhow, that was petering out in many workplaces thanks to the Internet). I managed to work for 13 years in a high level management job and went out of town "on business" exactly twice: to Cleveland, and the first time I went I fell and smashed up my knee, which was, in retrospect, the last day I felt "young" (I was 54).
Now I don't go anywhere. This apparently has become extremely unusual. It certainly didn't used to be. Most people I knew grew up here, stayed here, had children here, and, if they had demanding jobs, often never even took a vacation except to fix up the new house they bought or catch up on movies.
Suddenly I feel in a position of having to apologize for being here. And yes, I'll be here Monday. Yes, I'll be here the third Sunday in November. Yes, I'll be here on Thursday six months from now.
Except for one week in Maine last year, I have not been farther afield than Brooklyn since 2009. I have not been on a plane since 2007. I have not been out of the country since 2004. Of course, this is true of many people, but it's not true of people like me, you know, "middle class professionals" (which apparently is what I am according to the Hollingshead Index, a formula for figuring out what socioeconomic stratum a child comes from, which I discovered in a reference in one of the articles I edited).
I used to think of myself as a prisoner and my studio apartment as my cell. I get time off to sing in a church (good works), tutor children (more good works), and take care of my partner (yet more good works) and to shop and see social service providers and doctors, and then it's lockdown time, back to my workstation cleaning up grammar and syntax the way real prisoners make widgets, or whatever (apparently when Anne Perry was in prison as a teenager she made cotton bras on a sewing machine). I need to add here that I love singing, the new tutoring that I'm doing, and taking care of my partner (well, I love her, if not the mountains of dirty laundry), but it is still a familiar routine.
After doing a lot of reading about real prisoners, some in solitary confinement, I decided that this was an offensive analogy, so I dropped it. But I still need to read about real prisoners to remind myself that I am not one.
Yesterday after spending an evening at one of my women's Moon Circles (which I love, and find nourishing, but which also, disappointingly, seem to be yet another magnet for ambitious successful professional women who need some New Age downtime and spiritual nourishment) I decided that what I am is a "groundling". This term originated in Shakespeare's time, and was used for the people at the Globe theater who were too poor to have regular seats and had to stand in the pit. A third, metaphoric meaning of this term is "someone who lives or works near the ground". So yes, that's me. I am not in the air, I am on the ground. And even thought my small patch of ground (really, I live between Houston Street and 100th Street from York to 10th Avenue) is the most highly prized and most exciting patch of ground in the world, it is still only one patch of ground. I am of the neighborhood, neighborly. No grandchildren in California. No business meetings in Paris - forget Paris! not even any business meetings in Boston.
Of course, I always could go somewhere, but wait. My number one priority is taking care of my loved one, for however many more years she has. She can't travel. She is too fragile. I have no money, or very little. Yes, I take voice lessons and buy astronomically expensive medicine for my soon to be 20 year old cat, but that's about sustaining life (and even if I could bundle up my partner and take her somewhere, what about the cat? who would medicate her?) So my priorities right now are right here.
Actually there are a lot of interesting things to do here, and I do do them occasionally: go to concerts, go to museums, sit and take pictures in pretty little pocket parks.
But I don't have a lot of show and tell. And if you're always going to be here, people tend to take you for granted.
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