A Love Story

Sometimes I look back at my life from 30,000 feet and all the odd tangents, twists and turns actually look like a straight path leading where I was meant to arrive. When I was walking that path it didn’t always feel like it was heading anywhere.  Still doesn’t. There were unexpected dead ends… breathless uphills… shin-crushing downhills… and of course awe inspiring vistas. I had no map to allow me to look ahead to see the destination… nor an app to telegraph every turn.  Still, I’ve made it… so far.

Growing up I thought the path was more of a ladder — set a goal, work as hard as you need to achieve it, reach for the next rung higher than the last… and so on.  Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I knew nothing of tangential paths, nor pivots.

And then… I took a walk off-campus with one of my dear friends, Sharon. The year was 1987.

Liz: You are literally the first person in my life that I watched step off the treadmill and say, I need a break.

Sharon: Yeah, I am off the treadmill.

Liz: I’m talking about sophomore year in college.

Sharon: Oh, sophomore year in college.

Liz: How did you have the courage to do that?

Sharon: I think it was just from paralysis and not having the foresight to know something was off, and I just wasn’t happy. And looking back, yeah, that was a pretty big move. In the day when there was no mental health guidance or it wasn’t accepted.

Liz: So I don’t know if you’re going to remember this or if I’m remembering it wrong, but we went for a walk. And on that walk, you told me, Hey, we’re not going to be roommates next year. I’m leaving. Do you remember that?

Sharon: I don’t remember that. But that was a pretty shitty thing to do.

Liz: No, I don’t think of it that way. I just think now, given where my life is, it’s hilarious that we were on a walk when you told me. I remember just thinking, “You’re crazy and fearless.”

Sharon: Fearless. Well, in hindsight, it’s a good thing it all worked out. I mean, I have to hand it to Princeton for being so accommodating and so laissez-faire about the whole thing. It was like, “I’m leaving, and I’ll come back someday.” And they said, “Oh, okay.”

In hindsight, I’m very proud of myself because I think it was a very mature decision. But I also think I went to college fully unprepared, coming from a public high school in the Midwest, going to a very competitive university with very high achieving people and not knowing or understanding what major I wanted… Did we have counselors? Did I have anybody in my corner telling me this would be a good major for you… It was just like, here, pick some classes. And you picked some classes and you hoped for the best. So I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. I didn’t want to squander the time and the money not knowing what I was doing. And then I think the Rooming Draw fueled my awareness that I just really wasn’t happy, or this wasn’t what I wanted.

Liz: So the Rooming Draw was a catalyst?

Sharon and I had met on that same floor where I met Anne Chen… fifth floor Witherspoon. It was an all-girls hall on the top floor of a building with only staircases. When we moved in, we didn’t know we had been assigned to one of the least desirable locations on campus. Months later, with five other close friends, we entered the sophomore rooming draw. We were top of the list. Sharon and I, along with Stacey and Josie, chose to live in Blair Arch – one of Princeton University’s most iconic and beloved architectural features. There’s something about that magnificent stone arch that has a way of making even ordinary moments feel significant… and we lived above it.

Daily we could hear the sound of footsteps echoing through the arch below – that distinctive acoustic signature of stone and space that you can’t replicate anywhere else. Living there, you became acutely aware that you’re just one small part of this arch’s century-long story. Generations of students have passed beneath your floor, and generations more will continue long after you’ve graduated. It’s humbling and magical – you’re both deeply connected to daily campus life and removed from it.

The following year as “luck” would have it, we were last in the draw. There were no rooms left. A group of seven of us, including Sharon and me, would have to live off campus.

Sharon: The Rooming Draw was definitely a catalyst. I didn’t want to live off campus.

I think it was as simple as that. And I didn’t want to necessarily live with people that I didn’t know very well. I mean, I’m not a very outgoing person to begin with, and it just felt forced to me, and I didn’t think it was going to be for me.

Liz: How much discussion was it with your parents?

Sharon: Very little. Being a parent now and understanding how important communication is, I think it’s a generational thing. But I had no dialog with my parents about anything, really. Not even when it was time to apply to college … basically, they knew where I was applying. But there was no talk about affordability, location, is it the right fit? It was just you get in and you tell them where you’re going, and they say, “Oh, okay.” So when it was time to leave, it was a very quick conversation, “I’m not going back. I’m not sure what I’m doing.” I think the only thing they said was, “You need to do something, and you need to go back.” And that was the conversation.

Liz: And you went home and lived at home for that year?

Sharon: I lived at home for a while, and then I got a job in Chicago. I worked for a construction company. So that’s where I learned that I was interested in construction and building, and I was able to come back and say, “I’m going to major in architecture.”

I also remember one of the reasons I really wanted to take off is that I was very disappointed that Princeton didn’t have a travel abroad program, because now that I know that is so much of who I am – travel and experience and adventure. And I think that would have solved the problem had it not been so uncommon, and they made it so difficult.

Liz: You don’t know the relief you just gave me… the stories we tell ourselves… I have always thought I just didn’t take advantage of it.

Sharon: Oh, no, it didn’t exist. No, that’s what I really wanted to do. I wanted to study abroad.

Well, I did travel abroad. So after I worked that year in the construction company, I created my own “travel through Italy” summer to look up all of Palladian architecture. I didn’t get very far. I got to Verona and outside of Venice, and then I ran out of money, but that has telegraphed throughout my life: travel. That is what has been a consistent theme through everything I have done in my life: travel and adventure. In fact, I’m just sitting back wondering when the next one is going to be. But it’s Henry’s time. It’s Henry’s era.

Henry is Sharon’s son. He is entering his senior year of high school.

Sharon: I feel like it was my era for so long. I mean, there’s so many things that I missed in his younger years, never, ever picking him up from school. Never, ever was the teacher’s aide, the in-school reader, never brought the treats… because I was working.

Liz: So you couldn’t get there.

Sharon: I couldn’t get there. Until we moved to London, I would say, I was not present in his school life at all. There was a nanny that picked him up or he went to after-school programs. And the irony is that he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember that I wasn’t present because he thinks I’ve never worked a day in my life. He’s like, “Well, you’ve never worked.” I was like, “Well, actually, I did work. I worked really hard, and I worked a lot.” So somehow it hasn’t scarred him or fazed him that I wasn’t around, because now I’m very much around, and he’s going to be sick of me being around because I’m going to relish every moment with him, because when he’s out, I know he’ll be out.

I get it. As Ella grows into herself and needs me less, I feel this urgent pull to drink in every remaining drop of her childhood. I understand why Sharon wants to be present in a way she wasn’t always before. These final years are both precious and fragile, like we’re trying to pour an ocean into a teacup, desperate to capture what’s left. It’s for us…not them…if we are honest. I know we can’t go back, but maybe we can love them fiercely forward.

Like so many other things I missed, I didn’t soak up those last moments of being their whole world before they stepped into their adolescent independence. I didn’t know it was the last time I’d read a story at night or the last time I’d toss her in a pool.

Just like I didn’t know the “lasts” with my parents – last trip, last meal, last “I love you.”

Liz: Is there a life event that you can see as the pivot turned?

Sharon: Oh, absolutely. The death of my brother.

Liz: Really?

Sharon: Absolutely. And it took me maybe a little time to figure that out because you’re still processing, you don’t realize. I was a full-on workaholic. I still had my job. I was commuting all over. Henry would have been in second grade. And his death really, really, really triggered a need for family in me. I just felt that San Francisco wasn’t home, the West Coast wasn’t my home. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was working a lot. So that’s why we moved to Chicago. We picked up and left San Francisco. And it started our pattern of not settling down and just picking up and continuing to move. I thought Chicago would fill some void that I was having with the loss of him, but it didn’t.

That was a catalyst in realizing that my family was just me, Richard and Henry. And I was going to do everything just to protect that, …nothing else mattered.

So that started the journey of, “Okay, what’s the best thing for our family?” Richard had grown up in South America. He lived in Peru when he was in middle school and just thought that was a really, really great experience. So he thought that would be fun for Henry. So we chose London as a path of least resistance.

What is that Yiddish proverb? Man plans. God laughs. Once settled into their life in London…

Sharon: Henry had the courage at age 13, in eighth grade, to say to us, “I want to go to high school in America.” And it caught us off guard because that was not in our plan.

I was actually proud of him. He wanted to come back because he wanted to play American football. You say to yourself, I’m uprooting my life. I’m changing everything that we have planned for so my kid can play football, which I have avoided. I’ve always put him in a school where there was no football team. I’ve always kept him out of any contact football league because of the statistics you read and the head injuries. So it’s like, my kid’s never going to play football. And lo and behold, when your kid comes to you and says, “I want to play football,” because he says it in the way of It’s all I want. And when your kid has never asked for anything, says, “It’s all I want,” you move back to America and you let him play football.

Liz: And did he? He still plays?

Sharon: He still plays, yeah. And he loves it. I mean, he’s not Tom Brady, and he’s not going to play in college, but there’s something about the sport that he just absolutely loves.

I do have to hand it to him for having the nerve… for him to be able to express that he wanted something different for high school. I really admire that. So we honored that. And here we are in suburban Michigan.

Liz: After moving everything across the Atlantic.

Sharon: Across the Atlantic.

She doesn’t see the similarity. I do. Sharon had the courage to step away from an ivy league education. That same courage echoes decades later in her son Henry, who at thirteen had the clarity to ask for what he wanted most. There’s something profound about how the capacity for brave pivots can pass between generations, not as learned behavior but as inherited permission to trust your own compass.

Liz: I feel like there are two directives you need as a parent. Listen and love them. And if you do those two things, you make mistakes, but you’ll get it right.

Sharon: And I’m thankful that I’ve caught it just in time because he’s still at home. But being a working mother while a child is growing up and having a pretty demanding career and being an older mother, I feel like so much of his younger years, I was managing him like an employee… if I could take it all back, I would spend so much more time loving than managing. It’s the sleep schedule… it’s the right food… They have to be eating this. They have to be reading this. They have to be in this club sport. They have to be doing this. And none of it matters. Absolutely none of it matters.

I saw a man holding his son’s hand the other day, crossing the street. And it made me cry. One, because I don’t have that young child anymore, but almost longing for opportunities I missed at some point to hold his hand rather than to make sure he was doing the right thing.

Liz: And yet, he says he didn’t know you ever worked. So maybe he didn’t feel managed.

Sharon: Maybe he didn’t feel managed. I think my take on parenting has also just evolved since I’ve also jumped off the big treadmill. You just have a different perspective on what’s important, and what matters, and what doesn’t matter.

Liz: Some nights, I put my head on the pillow, and I’m like, What did I do all day? And then there are other days… I probably did more this morning sending that email than I did some days, but I was in an office. So it felt like I achieved something just because of where my body was.

Sharon: Where your body was, right. But it’s the quality of what you do. I’m an example of that. So when I was working at Gucci, I was burned out. I’d been doing the job for a while, and it’s based out of New York.

Liz: And your job was to design and open new stores?

Sharon: Design and open new stores. And it was very demanding in different cities globally all the time and with big teams of people. But I was just burned out. I was single. You’re in your late 30s. You’re never going to meet somebody. You’re tired. You’re working all the time in the office till nine o’clock every night. And so I just went to my boss and I said, I need a change of scenery. The head office is based in Florence. So I want to move to Florence.

So I moved to Florence, and it was very quickly living there that I learned you could work far fewer hours, you could get just as much done, and you could have a much better quality of life. You stop, you have a coffee, talk to somebody, and get to the office by 9:30. Whereas in New York, you’re at the office at 8:00 and your coffee’s at your desk. In Florence, there’s no such thing as a to-go cup. You talk to the people that you’re having coffee with. You talk to your favorite barista that you see every morning. And then you go to the office, and then you work hard, you get your work done, and then you go have lunch. They go to lunch every single day. They don’t go get a salad and bring it back and sit at their desk. And then 5:00, you’re off. You go have an aperitivo, and you go socialize with people, and then you go have your night. You get just as much work done, and it’s just a better quality of life. I had the exact same job in two different locations, and I worked far fewer hours.

So when I was in New York, you’d get back into the grind of getting to the office early, sitting at your desk, not talking to anybody, never going outside…and I would catch myself like, Wow, I’m back in the rut again. I’m back on the treadmill.

You don’t know what you have not experienced. Life cannot be lived in the rearview mirror. If only we could bottle hindsight and give it to ourselves when we need it most—but maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re supposed to stumble through blindly, doing our best with what we know, so we can appreciate the clarity that comes with distance and teach the next generation of women to be gentler with themselves in the fog.

Sharon: The irony is after living in New York 18 years and being single for much of it, I met Richard the minute I moved to Florence.

Liz: Are you willing to tell that story?

Sharon: What story?

Liz: How you met Richard…

Sharon: Oh, sure.

Liz: It’s one of my favorite meet cute’s of all time.

Sharon: Meet cutes? Oh, sure. So I was working at Gucci, and I was going back and forth between Florence and New York.

Richard had been divorced for 10 years, hadn’t really dated much, never felt ready. And then he woke up one day, he’s like, You know what? I’m ready. And so he asked Kelly, Do you know somebody? And she said, As a matter of fact, I do,

And I think Kelly just sent me an email saying, Oh, I work with this great guy. You need to meet him. And I was like, Oh, yeah, right. People say that all the time. When you’re single, people are like, Oh, I know somebody for you. I’m going to set you up with somebody.

Liz: Yeah, that’s part of the club membership. You got to bring somebody else in the club.

Sharon: You got to bring somebody else. So lo and behold, I actually get an email from him and after probably only two or three emails back and forth he said, “I’m going to come to New York. Would you like to go to dinner?” I said, “Okay, sure.” He said he was coming on Valentine’s Day, and even though I wasn’t busy. I said, “No, I’m busy. I can’t. It will have to wait until the next day.

I can hear the theme to Love Story even as I write this… or is it the music of Love, Actually…

Sharon: He had bought play tickets for the 14th, just in the event that I might be free. And I said I wasn’t free. I only found out later that he had theater tickets, and he went by himself because I feigned that I was not free.

Liz: And you owned up to it?

Sharon: I owned up to it. Oh, yeah, for sure. So we met for dinner the next day, which was February 15th at my favorite restaurant, and we had a great time. And then I was like, well, “I got to go. I’m going to London. I got to leave” because that was the reality of my life in those days. I was never really anywhere for very long. He said, “Okay, it’s nice to meet you.” And then we texted a little bit, or he emailed me. I guess we didn’t really have text. So he said, “Where are you going to be next?”

“Well, I’m in Florence.”

“Would it be okay if I came to Florence, I’ll come to Florence to see you.”

“Sure, come to Florence. I don’t care.” So he came to Florence and we went to dinner.

And we had a great time. And then he said, “When can I see you again?” And I said, “Well, I’m going to be in London in April. My brother’s running the marathon.” He’s like, “Okay, I’ll meet you in London.” So he came to London, and my mom was there, and my brother was there. And they’re like, “Who’s this guy?” This is Richard. And we had a great time.

Now this is a Lather. Rinse. Repeat. cycle I could listen to forever.

Sharon: He said, Can I see you again? “Well, I have a week off. Do you want to come to Italy? We can travel.” So I picked him up at the Rome airport. We went to Puglia. We had a great time.

Wait for it…

Sharon: And one day, he said, “I think I’d like to marry you.” I said, “Well, you’d have to ask me.” He said, “Okay, I’m asking you.” I’m like, “Okay, let’s get married.”

Three months since they had met.

Sharon: So the next morning, I was driving him to the airport because he had to go back. I drove down from Florence and he flew out of Rome. I said, “So are we getting married?” “Yeah.” 

“Okay, let’s call my dad.” So he called my dad and starts telling my dad, “I really love your daughter. I’d like to marry her.” And my dad said, “Oh, you can put that marketing material back in your suitcase. If my daughter loves you, it’s okay with me.”

When Sharon again strayed far from the prescribed path—when she stopped chasing the next rung on the ladder and started chasing what felt right, when she took a year off, when she moved to Florence not for career advancement but for a better way of living— it opened the door to everything she’d actually been searching for, including love and eventually the family that sustains her. She remembers,

Sharon: Jim had just died. A couple of years had passed since his death, but it still was with me. And it was a turning point of nothing mattered but my family and my own happiness. So whereas they always say, Don’t sweat the small stuff. I was like, I don’t sweat the big stuff. It’s like, nothing really phases me. Been through family death, then through breast cancer, then through moving ump-teen times, uprooting my life, changing schools, changing this. It all gets done. And we’ll be fine.

I have listened to and reread those final lines umpteen times now, and every time I get a sense of comfort and peace. She is right. We’ll be fine. Sharing Sharon’s story feels like tracing the constellation of a life—how scattered moments of courage, loss, and unexpected moves eventually form a recognizable pattern when viewed from enough distance.

We had convinced ourselves that constant motion equals progress, that being physically present at a desk means we’re achieving something meaningful. In our shared longing for the simple act of holding a child’s hand, we cut to the heart of what we actually lose when we’re too busy optimizing our “serious work” lives to live them.

The story suggests that our most important journeys happen when we’re brave enough to listen—to ourselves, to our children, to the quiet voice that says “something’s off” even when everything looks right from the outside. Sometimes the most direct path to where we need to be is the one that looks, to everyone else, like we’re walking away.

I titled this one A Love Story not in reaction to the meet-cute between Richard and Sharon although you might think that the reason and it undoubtedly fits. Nor is it so titled in reference to a mother’s love that runs so very deep. It’s not even the love between lifelong friends. It is realizing over decades that the greatest love story all along was to fall in love with our own life. 

Sharon: It was meant to be.

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