Separation Anxiety

Dedication

For my family: Brendan, Ben, and Lady.

And for Lisa Bonchek Adams, who really should still be here.

Epigraph

There may be situations, depending on your circumstances and the nature of the disaster, when it’s simply best to stay where you are and avoid any uncertainty outside by “sheltering in place.”

—U.S. Department of Homeland Security website

If it was once a stigma when you divorced, today the new shame is choosing to stay when you can leave.

—Esther Perel, Where Should We Begin?

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One: Sheltering in Place

The Sling

Well/er

Driving Teddy

Morning Meeting

The Snoring Room

Couples Therapist Number Four

The Bird on My Head

The Forehead

Part Two: Cabin Fever

Host Family

The Secret Pooper

The Arrival of the People Puppets

Therapy Dog

Inhabitancy

Escape

Off to See the Forehead

The Sleepover

Noble Journey

Leaving Early

Part Three: Bracing for Change

Michael Wasserman

Adult Braces

Walking the Reservoir

Contained

Family-Style

Making Plans

Spotlight

Thanksgiving

Acknowledgments

An Excerpt from Small World

Untitled Prologue

Only Idiots Smile All the Time

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part One

Sheltering in Place

The Sling

I start wearing the family dog, a mini-sheltie, a little Lassie, in an unbleached cotton baby sling across the front of my body like a messenger bag, a few weeks shy of fall. Until I slip the sling over my head and feel a strange surge of relief run through me, a liquid narcotic from an unknown source, there’s nothing special about the day. It’s no one’s birthday, it’s not the anniversary of someone’s death or a reminder of an ancient career milestone, long gone and unsurpassed. Nothing in particular is reminding me more than usual of life’s quick passage of random moments, some good, some not so good, some very very bad, disappearing like train cars into the vanishing point of a distant horizon. It’s just an opaque Thursday in late August, a month before New England is ready to give up the thick haze of summer, a day I randomly pick to try to radically de-clutter the basement using a book everyone is swearing by. The ruthless purging of possessions to the point of self-erasure is what I’m after. I already feel invisible; why not go all the way?

I’m fifty when I head down to the basement. My son is thirteen. He no longer wears matching pajamas or explains the virtues of Buttermilk Eggo waffles compared to Homestyle, or holds my hand when we cross the street or walk through a supermarket. He no longer begs for LEGOs, pulling me into the store at the mall, pointing at all the boxes, jewels on the shelves, gifts waiting to be given.

It’s hard for me to believe those moments ever happened; that I was ever in the middle of all that love, and time, and possibility, and that now I’m not. Life eventually takes away everyone and everything we love and leaves us bereft. Is that its sad lesson? That’s the only explanation I have for why I now wear the dog; my version of magical thinking: little tiny cracks are forming inside me every day and only the dog is keeping me from coming apart completely.