Field Notes from Romancing the Reroute

Nancy Meyers, but with a cancelled wedding instead of a kitchen renovation.

hat // t-shirt // jeans // shirt // bag // shoes // phone case

I read The Plunge by Lila Raicek yesterday. Devoured it in one sitting. It was a juicy, arresting triumph of a summer novel. It begins with a woman in her thirties whose wedding is cancelled two weeks prior when her fiancee gets in a tragic accident. Sound familiar?

The narrative stops being relatable to me from there, as the protagonist’s story takes a sharp turn into the self-destructive, but it gave me something to chew on, because in a way, the book grapples with the same question I am: what happens when a wedding stops being the organizing principle in your life? When the truth is struggling to break free from the confines of its old container?

My system is desperately trying to escape the ambiguity of those questions, but think I have to accept that ambiguity is actually the drop pin of this chapter.

In a week, I leave for the Hamptons, where I will be for the rest of the summer. I asked myself if I was running away, but I don’t think I am. I think more than anything I’m trying to show myself that my life is still moving. That summer isn’t cancelled — it’s renamed. Okay, so it isn’t “bridal summer” anymore. Then what is it? Field notes from the rupture summer?

Isshi earrings // Bottega Sardine sunglasses // Le Sundial earrings // Good Weather Skin SPF lip gloss // Doen Rocco short // Malo sweater // Autumn Sonata pool towel // Mademoiselle Jules Sardinia necklace // Dries van Noten flip flops // Granado Imperial perfume // Celine bag

I do know that if I stay here, the grief would lie to me and start telling me it was the whole world. I refuse to accept that bullshit. So I am going to the ocean. Because what else does a woman do in the terrifying middle, when love is still present but the plan has collapsed? How do I cancel a wedding, answer people’s questions, protect someone else’s privacy, protect my own dignity, and still eat oysters / swim / write / laugh / want things?

This season can’t just be rumination with better scenery. So here is my summer to-do list:

• If I cry in the morning, then I have to swim in the ocean in the afternoon

• I can handle one wedding task but I will not lose a whole day to it

• I will let people make dinner and visit me and stay as long as they want

• I will cook as therapy and select tomatoes from the farm stand as though I am plucking rubies from a mine

• I will write with voracious honesty

• I will let my dogs run on the beach as much as possible

• All showers that can be outdoors should be

• I will buy myself flowers for every surface if it suits me

• I will talk to the people who sit next to me

My brilliant therapist said that my job right now isn’t to “be healed” but just to prove that the cancellation of something this big doesn’t mean that I too am cancelled. And you know what? Fuck yeah. “Two things can be true at once” is therapy jargon that’s been exhausted by the culture, but it’s pretty spot on right now.

I can be devastated and still funny. I can be in love and be angry. I can be loyal but also self-protective. I can be private and ambitious! Flattening myself into “strong woman” or “pitied bride” or “mess” right now is stupid because I am a human that is more dimensional than one catastrophe.

Elder Statesman cardigan // De Vera beetle wing earrings // Fara Homidi’s new “blonzer” compact // Savette macrame pouch // Sophie Buhai Phonecian Carnelian earrings // Loretta Caponi dress // TWP jeans // At Present necklace // Renata Q. necklace // Ancient Greek flip flops // Yaser Shaw shawl

Yes, my life is in revision. But! I AM NOT A NUN OF GRIEF! I am a woman in a body, in the world, by the fucking ocean, with appetite and wit and long-ass legs and a book and a future and VOLTAGE! I refuse to turn The Love List into “my trauma newsletter”. Ew. If anything, I think I’m allowing this rupture to sharpen my pencil.

The original promise of The Love List is beautiful things, discovery, shopping, pleasure, the hunt! My grief is the weather right now but it isn’t the product. It’s just a lens as my life is rewritten in real time.

I’m writing from inside a Nancy Meyers movie in Amagansett, except the protagonist isn’t being rescued by a charming architect, she’s rescuing herself. She’s putting herself back together via ocean light, button-down shirts, bikini tops worn as bras, watermelon, peaches, SPF, a fucking perfect basket bag, a cold as hell martini, a looooong walk, a good book, a weird little store, and a obnoxiously big bushel of hydrangeas on the kitchen table.

Beauty isn’t frivolous when your life falls apart. I think beauty is one of the ways you come back. I’m not just buying perfume, I’m asking myself what the next chapter smells like, you know? Yes, I find beautiful things for a living, but I also understand why we crave beauty and stories and connection. Out East, the horizon becomes bigger than the problem, because by the ocean, we are all small.

In residence.

So consider this the first field note from a rerouted summer: beautiful things, small pleasures, the hunt — not just for stuff, but for whatever the hell makes me feel like I’m coming back to myself after total detonation. We’re shopping and we’re searching and we’re summer serializing. Because beauty is how I’m going to keep grief from becoming the only room in the proverbial house.

I’m going to stay porous. Lovely things are not frivolous. In many ways, they are how I stay in conversation with life.

Happy July 4th.