Out Here

By Dani Shapiro

My son Jacob hadn’t quite turned three when we moved from the city to a little town called Bethlehem, tucked just behind Washington Depot. We traded a brownstone in Brooklyn for a house on a hill surrounded by stone walls, views for miles. Jacob would have, if anything, the dimmest memories of his early, urban years: the screech of a bus pulling to a stop; steam rising from a subway grate; the steep steps leading to our brownstone; the competing smells—fried chicken, kielbasa, tandoori—along Flatbush Avenue. In Brooklyn, we had never taken him anywhere without a stroller. In Connecticut, his stroller was stored in the garage until finally, a few months after we moved in, we gave it away.

What did I know about the country? I had grown up in a suburb, went to college in a suburb, and moved to New York as soon as I could. I fully intended to stay in New York forever—raise my gaggle of kids (I was also going to have a gaggle of kids) there. It wasn’t exactly a plan, so much as a certainty. I never stopped to wonder how I’d actually accomplish this: my full-time career, a husband, all those kids. My younger self could never have imagined that I would move, of my own volition, to a house on ten acres in a town of three thousand people in a county known for its horse farms and rolling hills. I suspect my younger self would have been horrified.

But our younger selves cannot imagine our grown-up selves. In my twenties, my idea of a good time involved a fair dose of glamour. The speed of life was what I was after. My days—and nights—were fast-paced, full of people and parties and the pursuit of fun. I sold my first novel at 26, and loved every minute of being a young writer in New York. I wouldn’t take any of it back. But something slowly began to change along the way. I got married, wrote more books, had a baby. And then—one day, I realized that speed was overrated. I had been racing toward something with such velocity and determination that I lost sight of what it was I was even chasing.

That first spring after we moved—seven years ago—what I noticed almost immediately was the stillness. The silence. When friends called from the city, intensely (almost voyeuristically) curious about how it was going, what I found myself telling them was this: there are more hours in the day. It felt true. It continues to feel true. Living the way we do now, there is enough time. Enough time for work, for family, for all sorts of satisfactions. Instead of stepping out each morning into the speed of life, I have to think about how to orchestrate my days. I have been forced to articulate my life, my own self, in ways that I might never have done.

Some afternoons, I pick Jacob up after school and we go for a long walk with our new puppy. Other times, I have been known to hop into the car and drive to Great Barrington just to buy some great cheese at Rubiner’s Cheesemongers. Most mornings I unroll my mat and practice yoga by the fireplace in my bedroom, standing in tree pose as I gaze out at the trees in our front meadow. When I do these things—when I meet myself in the stillness that is still possible at the beating center of a very busy life—I feel a deep sense of contentment. What might have horrified my younger self now feels like an enormous piece of luck.