The King and the Quirky by Heather Siegel

Author:Heather Siegel [Siegel, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Those were the days I would walk with Julia in her stroller through the neighborhood for hours, trying to connect with nature and trying to tap into that sense of home (but not pulling either off). Those were days when both my early childhood and the safe and sound feeling I’d had while snuggled up to Jon’s chest seemed like distant scenes from the past. Those were the days I’d slow to peer into people’s houses, as I’d done in East Meadow—though, by then, most of the enigma had been demystified.

I knew many of my neighbors’ familial stories and struggles. I’d learned of them over coffee and girls’ night out dinners where we would order yet more wine, and they would let loose about their own arguments and estrangements, about their own opposing values and ideals, about their own bickering over children, money, and sex. Save for larger mortgages and tax bills, their struggles were identical to my South Shore suburbanite friends who’d subscribed to the program of marriage and family. Women who’d bought into the dream and somehow wound up in a predicament of dependence.

That’s when old plot lines would surface in my head from trashy novels I’d once read as a teenager—melodramatic stories of wealthy, worldly people who, for some reason or other, were unhappy in their relationships and circumstances. And I would remember the sixteen-year-old me, the girl who’d scraped together car insurance payments for a rusted five hundred dollar Cordoba that smelled of maple syrup on account of its chronic antifreeze leak, the girl who would think to herself God, if I had money, I’d never be unhappy.

But I began to understand those thoughts were the same naïve thinking as the person who balked at the personal success of a celebrity, like Oprah, when she’d lost her weight, a person who thought to themselves, Well, if I had a personal chef and a trainer day in and day out, I’d lose weight too.

I’d been penniless, then I’d had some money, and then I’d had some more money. But happiness is in the heart (at least past the earnings of $75,000, the point where money seems to offer no added happiness according to researchers) and so is suffering. They’re both relative.

Not too long ago I had dinner with a friend, a single school teacher in her forties, never married, no children, and she sighed, Oh the pain and anguish: if only she could figure out a way to do the one thing she’d always wanted to do.

“What is it?” I’d asked, on the edge of my seat, expecting a soulful revelation.

“To go one hundred percent vegan,” she’d said, completely serious. “I’ve tried every which way, but I just can’t seem to digest chia seeds.”

Okay, that was ridiculous.

And so was my driveling, I consciously decided. I had long since stopped being an underdog in life. As a thirty-eight-year-old white woman who had a nice home and a family, who had nice throw rugs and paintings to sell if

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