A Different Kind of Life

Part fiction. Part daydream.

Andrew Wyeth, Wind from the Sea, 1947

There is this woman I dream of.

I think I love her.

Or–is that tightening in my chest–jealousy?

Perhaps I am appalled to find her there, living inside me.

Her life, so unlike mine, surfaces in flashes: quick, intense bursts of vivid image and sensation. Other times, she is a blur of emotions and fragmented truths. But if I look closely, slowly, like turning the fine focus on a microscope, the details unfold. Crisp, undeniable, fully formed (for the most part).

She lives in a small, colonial cottage at the end of a long, winding road. The house is the sun-soaked color of driftwood, with cornflower blue shutters. The front porch has sloping steps and creaking boards. Two pale yellow rocking chairs sway lazily in the breeze, flanked by terracotta pots brimming with trailing vines.

Inside, the rooms are small. The ceiling is low. The furniture is mismatched, collected over time. Everything is soft-edged, worn with use. The fireplace is wood-burning and always dirty, ash settling into the corners like old memories. She has never minded mess, preferring to feel cocooned by all the things that delight her and those that tell her story.

The house is surrounded by woods. In the summer, they are wild, humming with activity. In the winter, they stand barren and still, waiting for life to return. There is a small town nearby, the kind where everyone knows everything about everybody, and secrets wind through the cracks like ivy through stone, persistent, relentless.

She lives with her dogs, a beagle and a German Shepard. Both are old. Their short coarse hairs cling to every surface. When she steps outside, they bound out behind her, teeming with energy. Inside, they are almost always asleep.

Does she have a husband? Children?

When I look at that part of her life, it is like trying to hold smoke; I can sense something, see it swirling, but the moment I get there, it’s gone.

Her days are slow. Her world is small.

Her clothes are loose, natural, buttery soft. Everything in her life is slightly weathered.

She is slightly weathered.

Her skin is tanned and freckled, etched with laugh lines around her eyes. Her thick, smoky brown hair is streaked with gray. And yet she radiates an easy, youthful energy.

Her hands belong to the earth.

In the garden, her fingers move through soil with ease and instinct, as if they were made for it—soft, damp, alive. She can tell by touch whether the soil is dry or living, just by its weight in her palm. She knows she should wear a hat, but she prefers the sun warm on her face—the way it reaches inside her, wrapping her in its comforting embrace.

She is either living squarely in the present or wholly immersed in fantasy. Nothing in between. Her internal world is vivid and vast.

She writes. Usually with paper and a pen, sometimes at her desktop on a heavily built mahogany desk that belonged to her grandmother. She remembers sitting at the foot of that desk as a child. Her grandmother writing letters, paying bills, doing the matter-of-fact tasks that filled her days.

She feels everything.

Her grief is sharp like a jagged shard lodged beneath her ribs. Her anger is all power. It pulses with heat, radiating through her hands, swelling in her chest, a force that wants to expand.

Her joy is effortless and free.

She has no patience for small talk, and as a result, her world is filled with a small group of intense people. The kind of people who ask big questions and wait for real answers.

When others speak, she listens deeply. She hears what they don’t say. She has space for people’s pain.

She is often alone. Comfortable in silence.

And sometimes, she looks directly at me.

Her gaze pierces, knowing. Inquisitive. Her head tilts, lips part, as if she’s about to speak.
But she doesn’t.

Still, I hear her.
“What is this big, busy life you’ve built? Are you happy?”

I’ve always loved stories. The kind rich with character, set in fantastical or dystopian worlds, or grounded in the intense beauty of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Since I was a little girl, I’ve devoured books with a hunger I’ve never been able to quench.

Somehow, I made it through both undergraduate and graduate school without ever taking a creative writing class. It wasn’t until this past year, in my late thirties, that it hit me, I want to write fiction. There are characters I want to bring to life. Worlds I want to build. Stories I want to tell.

Of course, another voice quickly followed: This isn’t the time. You have a growing business, two small children, a big, busy, demanding life.

I try not to let that voice grow too loud.

Maybe now isn’t the season for a novel. But I can still carve out small pockets of space to write a short, heartfelt story about a woman whose life is so different from mine, but with whom I feel a deep and passionate kinship.

I’m so grateful to each of you who took the time to read it.

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