New Life Crisis

            Today, after 20 years with three different Senators in the U.S. Senate, I’m leaving work.  I’ll turn in the ID, give up the coveted underground parking space (complete with a daily bomb inspection of my car that saved me countless dollars as alert Capitol Police identified a number of undercarriage and tire issues before they got out of hand), and empty the desk of random paperclips, whip notices, and an inherited schedule for Ted Stevens from 1976 (I’m keeping that).  On Monday, for the first time in 20 years, I won’t be at the office – or on planned and paid leave from the same – at 9 AM.

            Unlike many of my Democratic colleagues, I won’t be moving to K Street to cash in on my years working in crummy conditions for crappy pay.  The revolving door spit me out instead into a field of Icelandic sheep in the Shenandoah Valley.  There, my husband Nick, daughters, and I will run a small sustainable farm selling everything from fresh vegetables to farm slaughtered chickens – while maintaining a presence in DC to tap a wealthy market hungry for local food and justifiably scared of mass produced commercial agricultural products.  In other words, I chose the farm and not PHRMA.

            Of course, this wasn’t a decision made last night over margaritas (a place several other important decisions in my life occurred).  We have spent several years building up college funds, eliminating debt, and breaking a lifelong addiction (mine) to eating out.  The latter was the hardest, with Nick proclaiming heartily almost every night “I’d pay money in a restaurant for this” as the kids and I pick halfheartedly at a ground beef casserole made with “our” cow (Bessie, to be exact, and a word of advice for those of you tempted to try this at home: don’t name animals you expect your children to eat).

            My 13 year old calls it a midlife crisis and goes on to explain that, by choosing to have it at 44, I have set my age of death at 88. I had hoped for 90, but will trade two years for an early start on a new life.

And, really, that’s how I see this transition: a new life crisis.  I can’t stand to read a book when I know the ending.  That probably explains a lifelong distaste for history tomes and Shakespeare’s tragedies; why get invested in a story when I know everyone is dead by the last chapter or the final curtain?  After 20 years on the Hill, I looked into my future and saw a thick biography of King Henry the VIII, a performance of Hamlet with no intermissions.

I saw 20 more years of fighting for the causes of those who pay me (don’t get me wrong, in the Senate, I almost always agreed with the priorities of the Democrats I worked for, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was a paid solider to their General).  And the fights don’t change: Who balanced the budget and who unbalanced it?  Who is getting the money and who should?  Who really cares and who just wants to give a speech?

       And I could see 20 more years of working for the week in Florida (Paris, if I went to K Street), two weeks in Hawaii.  Twenty more years of vacationing in places where I relax by pretending I could live there (even picking up real estate brochures sometimes) if only I didn’t have work on Monday.  And then, a gold watch (do they do that anymore?), a place on the Cape or in Aspen, charity balls, a subscription to the Opera.  End of story.

Or I could open a new book with no idea where it is going to take me.  I am talking about farming for pity’s sake.  We could go broke.  We could lose limbs in any number of the spiky looking, semi-functional equipment Nick has spread around the farmyard.

But I will be able to work outside all day, and at its end, eat or wear what I don’t sell. My schedule won’t be determined by Harry Reid, but by the sun, moon, and rain.  I will feel, smell, and taste what I produce, sell what I am proud of.  By treating the land right, I will be able to come out from the air conditioning and fluorescent lights, and live on it

But that starts tomorrow.  Today, I will one more time squeeze into the control tops, cross the 14^th Street bridge, grab my Starbucks and a muffin, fight the tourists for a place on the elevator to my office, and return this particular book to the shelves.

January 2007