Orbiting To Find Myself
A meandering tale in the midst of a move and of midlife
I’ve landed on the other side of my move. Me, Dan, the cats — all of us blinking into the light of a new beginning. It’s been almost four weeks now. A whole month.
You’d think all this moving I’ve done over the years would have taught me every emotional contour by heart, but this move— this fluffing of a new nest — left me both dazed and dazzled by what it actually takes to make a home.
So yes: more essays, more wandering, more crumbs.
Coming Back to the Page
Now I’m trying to land myself back on the page, which always feels awkward after too much living in the real world. But here I am at last, on a rainy late-autumn day, bare branches pressed against windows that have watched 140 years of lives pass through. I sit still and let them look at me while I wait for the words to return.
Photo by Matt McHugh.
Deep breath. Fingers hovering.
Lately, so many conversations with friends, mostly women my age, circle some of the same questions. The children grown. The work shifting shape. The parents fading or gone. Our own bodies starting to whisper their warnings.
I think we are all standing from this new place asking:
What now?
Who am I when no one requires something of me?
Portals and the Self
I keep thinking about the play I’ve been writing and how these same questions are tucked inside its bones. What remains of a woman when the scaffolding of expectation finally falls away? Can we recognize ourselves without the roles that once held us upright even if they were not always a good fit.
Maybe that’s why I keep returning to the idea of portals. It’s my instinct to map the self. Writing, making outfits, creating a home: they’re all versions of the same search. All ways of locating self in a chaotic orbit.
Last year I got lost in wonder at the Hirshhorn’s OSGEMEOS exhibit. The twin artists use mirrors, dreamscapes, and cosmic doorways that felt less like art objects and more like invitations. Thresholds. Worlds built by two imaginations sharing not just DNA but an obsession to create art in whatever form speaks to them at any given moment.
I felt a tug of recognition. I’ve been making portals — which I think of as points of entry into new ways of existing — of my own for years; mine are stitched from fabric, memory, and whatever I can coax onto the page. Like the twin artists, making life art.
The Closet as Observatory
And then there are the mirrors. Always the mirrors.
I’ve written about my closet — “the lab” — but what feels truer is that it has always been an observatory. I don’t try on clothes to choose an outfit; I try them on to see myself. Sometimes I catch her, the woman in the glass. Other times she slips away or never comes into full focus. I feel like a ghost version of myself.
When you grow up inside someone else’s reflection, knowing yourself, your north star, where you fit, feels almost impossible. Clothing became the container that held me still long enough to glimpse my own outline.
Kathryn Harrison, author of The Kiss, once wrote about stepping into dressing rooms not to buy something, but to see herself. A woman alone in a mirrored box, testing her shape. The image lodged itself inside me.
Before I could name it, I was doing the same thing — slipping into versions of myself, watching to see if one held.
Some people check an outfit;
I check my existence.
My Mother in the Glass
Aging complicates this further. Lately I keep catching my mother, Conchita, in a passing reflection, or worse, in a friends social media post, and I find myself wondering “What’s Conchita doing at Jess’s on Thanksgiving.” My mother has been gone 15 years, it’s me on Instagram at Jess’s country house, me with my mother’s posture. All those years carving out space between us, only to find her inhabiting my outlines now. Aging is hysterical, as in funny and crazy.
A Memoir Without a March
All of this — the mirrors, the wanderings, the homes I’ve made — has been feeding the memoir I keep circling. For years I blamed myself: not disciplined enough, not brave enough, not focused.
But now I understand the problem wasn’t will; it was shape.
I kept trying to force my life into a neat arc, a hero’s journey. But my life never marched; it meandered.
Then I read Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode and something loosened in me. She describes stories that move like rivers or galaxies — looping, drifting, returning.
And again, I recognized myself instantly.
My memories don’t progress;
they orbit.
They revisit the same surfaces. The houses, outfits, mothers, mirrors all catching new light each time.
Maybe these portals are maps. Not a chronology but a topography: ridges and valleys, fault lines and desire lines, places I fled and places I rebuilt. Maybe the memoir will bring me into full focus: the inside of me on a page crisp in black and white. Ah, there she is, a distinct entity from Conchita.
Looking back, I can see I’ve been charting myself all along. Every home I created, every outfit I tried on, every essay I wandered through — each one a coordinate.
Maybe that is the memoir.
Not a sweeping narrative,
but a constellation — nebulae and all.
Is memoir just a mirror with better lighting?
These words keep circling each other — memoir, mirror, memory, mother — and maybe that’s why none of this ever feels linear.
The Personas Arrive
Waiting inside these portals are the personas I’ve been gathering for years — quiet companions who stand beside me in the closet, in the mirror, in the periphery of an outfit. They helped me draw my borders, the frontier of me.
The first to arrive was the Euro Romantic Dreamer.
She is the Tweeds mail-order catalog come to life; she smells faintly of Anaïs Anaïs.
She is Isabella Rossellini in Cousins — tender, luminous, a little fated. She arrived early and ushered me out of awkward adolescence into a graceful young woman, if only in my own mind. Her style was easy to emulate from thrift shop finds. She was fresh and womanly and exactly who I needed as a role model. She taught me that mood could be my map out of an unhappy childhood.
For a long time I believed these personas were phases.
Now I understand they were guideposts.
Coordinates.
There are others — overlapping, interwoven, each with their own scent and soundtrack:
The Clown.
The Pirate.
The Caravan Disco Queen.
The Rich Old Italian Lady.
They’ve carried me through decades. Maybe they’ll help you recognize your own guideposts.
The Euro Romantic Dreamer only peeked out here; her full story is coming. These personas aren’t costumes or winks. They aren’t even inspirations, they are guides on a trail of a life well-lived. I have taken them for granted before but now I know better.
Where the Breadcrumbs Lead
You’ll meet them all soon, here on Bread Crumbs. They arrive with their own libraries and soundtracks and secret fragrances-sensory details that fill a room or a page or your imagination.
I used to think I created these personas.
But now I see they’ve been creating me.
And maybe that’s the whole point: to follow the breadcrumbs not back to where we came from, but toward the woman who has been walking quietly ahead of us all along, turning back every so often to make sure we’re still following.
Things I’ve Enjoyed In DC
I walk to Union Market almost daily, and the mission is Bread Alley for a baguette with the crispy little tips Jerry used to call the Pope’s nose.
My friend Tom Story insisted I see Lie Low, a play by Ciara Elizabeth Smyth. Now my eye is trained on Solas Nua, whose productions I’ve seen and enjoyed before. This show has closed, but let’s stay tuned in and go see what they bring us next.
Also at Union Market: I finally went into the location of Vintage Vintage Vintage, and I was almost like a kid with a crush who ducks under a random desk to hide from her heart’s desire. It was a brief moment and I’ll be back. Of course, I have a lifetime of my own thrift sources, but as a vintage lover it is deeply satisfying to see clothing and accessories merchandised with care and distinction. One doesn’t have to dig through a heap of ugly because it’s all so beautiful.
Even if you’re squeamish about vintage, see this shop — it will change your mind. And if you’re crazy about retail like me, you’ll appreciate it all the more.
One day when I need to rest my weary mind, I’m going back to try on a bunch of things until I find the perfect new addition. I’ll likely take myself to Pastis for a glass of champagne after.
Who is joining me?
Finally — what have you enjoyed in DC recently?
Yes to Pastis and Double Yes to memoir! 🍸📓
“I don’t try on clothes to choose an outfit; I try them on to see myself. Sometimes I catch her, the woman in the glass. Other times she slips away or never comes into full focus. I feel like a ghost version of myself.” What a lovely thought, and so well-captured. Brava, bella.