NONFICTION 
        

standing at the edge of the pool, wishing I could jump in.  -  -
                       photo by Mike Lambert                                    

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Standing at the Edge of the Pool *
by  Cathy Fiorello

​When my granddaughter Leah asked me if I would be the subject of a college paper she was writing dealing with images of womanhood in her generation and mine, I agreed. She flew to San Francisco from her home in New York and we spent three intense days talking about my life, past and present. The question of regrets came up in our discussions. Looking back, I asked myself, was there a risk not taken that I now wish I had? A fear I did not overcome that I should have? I gave what I thought at the time was a shallow answer: I said I regretted that I had never learned to swim.
 
On further thought, I feel that answer has real depth. It brought back visceral memories of standing at the edge of the pool, wishing I could jump in but not believing I would pop up again like the other kids. It brought back the longing I felt as I stood at the ocean’s edge watching my older sisters and brothers frolic in the waves, fearing that if I went under water, I would not float back up to the surface as they did. It brought back all those times I dared not let go of my mother’s hand. I now think of that fear of taking the plunge as a metaphor for how I have lived my life: the times I jumped in, the times I stepped back.
 
I was in my twenties, recently out of college and saving every dollar I could spare for a dream trip to Europe, my first. My uncle died and left me the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, enough to finally take that trip. I spent months planning it, booking transportation on the French liner Liberte, reserving hotels, signing on for tours of wonders I had only seen in books. I was going alone; I was going to do it my way. This was to be my breakout adventure. I would quit the writing job that had taken years to climb up to and put my career on hold.
 
While I was doing all that planning, I started dating a man who was an artist at the same magazine where I worked as a writer. With passport in hand and a departure date set, I realized that I didn’t want to leave him. I cancelled the trip. We married and built a life around all that marriage entails—children, mortgage, college savings plans. Twenty years later, kids sent out into the world, mortgage paid, tuition-free, I saw Europe for the first time. 

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​I had never thought of cancelling that trip as a regret. There’s no time for regrets when you’re young. You set your life’s course and you plunge into it without looking back. Then, suddenly, it’s 50 years later and you begin every day looking back at the things you didn’t do, the paths you didn’t take, and you wonder: Had I taken that trip so many years ago and fallen in love with Paris then as I did so many years later, would I at some point have lived there? How different would my life be today?
 
My granddaughter’s assignment was to choose a woman she admired and learn of her roles in society and how changing times have influenced those roles. I took my part in this assignment seriously and submerged into an unsettling reflective period. When I look back at my life, I see the things I didn’t do; Leah sees only what I have done. She looks at my life as ground-breaking for its time, and in some ways it was. By going to college, I didn’t fit the mold set for women of my generation and circumstances. I had to overcome my mother’s objections; she didn’t think higher education would make me a better wife and mother, the path followed by most girls in that day. But even then, I knew I wanted more.
 
Nor did she approve when I went back to work after ten years of stay-at-home mothering. Again, I was going against the norms of my time. Working moms were frowned upon because it was believed they neglected their children and demeaned their husbands by questioning their ability to provide for the family. I took the flack on both scores and began a second career. It was
something I needed to do, not only for myself, but also for my children. I’ve never believed that martyrs make good mothers.
 
Returning to Leah’s paper, she concludes, “My grandmother is a woman who has always kept her hand up.” I would like to say that’s true, but I would be lying. I should have had my hand up much more often than it was. Instead of just wishing things were better, I should have worked to make them better. Joan Didion said, “A writer is always ratting somebody out.” I’m ratting myself out here. 

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​When Leah asked if I would be the subject of her paper, I thought, what a treat it will be to spend time with a busy college student who wants to reminisce with her grandmother. I did not expect to sit again on the stoop of the Brooklyn brownstone where I was born, to fight again the epic battles with my mother to go to college, to live again the delights of places I’ve loved, and to suffer again the heartache of loved ones I’ve lost. Nor did I expect to come to terms with the times in my life when I didn’t take the plunge; to ask myself, if I had jumped into the deep end of the pool all those years ago, would I have gone on to face life’s challenges more boldly.
 
Leah sent me a copy of her college paper based on the three days of conversations we had. It has much in it that makes me content with the way I’ve lived my life. Seen through her eyes, I am a paragon of womanly achievement. Though I am not as exalted in my own eyes as I am in Leah’s, I accept her sanguine assessment as something that comes with the territory. All her young life, she has looked at me through rose-colored glasses.
 
However, she may have overstepped even the bonds of love when she put my name and Maya Angelou’s in the same sentence. She writes, Though Angelou and my grandmother faced different circumstances, both women stood for what they believed in and pushed against what was expected of them. Both women used the power of their voice and the strength of literature to inspire other women to do the same.
 
When I move on from the discomfort of being placed in such lofty company, I admit that I am a little more than pleased that Leah thinks of me in that way. Talking about my late-life move to San Francisco, she writes, It’s the land of the Beat Generation, of flamboyance, exuberance and liberation. It’s the land where, at age 75, my grandmother jump-started her life.
 
Though I had always lived within conventional bounds, I did embrace this new laissez-faire lifestyle. But when Leah asks about my hopes for the future, I rat myself out again. I tell her that I sometimes long for the simpler, safer world I grew up in.

*  Excerpt from the book, Standing at the Edge of the Pool (Plantation: Breezeway Books, 2018) by Cathy Fiorello.

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​Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey 
Cathy Fiorello’s passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.

Other works in this issue:
Nonfiction:
Take Me
​Knowing When to Quit

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