The Baby That Changed My Life

Jennie, Eli the Mover of Men, and Jonah the funny and charming Wunderkind!

Playing one's life in reverse often shows the randomness and absurdity of it all. For example if someone were to ask "How Do You Become a Magazine Editor?" one obvious answer would be to go to school for journalism and design and get an internship at TIME. But another answer can be: "Get born in Kansas, go to school for Economics there, date a girl you met in class whose best friend is visiting from San Francisco, crash into her years later when she holds the door for you because you broke your foot (I forgot, "go break your foot"...) and you learn she is at PEOPLE magazine and there is an accounting job and you take it and one day...blah, blah, blah."

So I had a plan to be in LA and rise to the top at FOX and I was on my way. My unit gets sold, my boss gets the ax, I am out the door. Meanwhile because I went to high school with my friend Jon he knows me and hooks me up with his friend PL who is in LA and has a book club. I join and meet all sorts of great people I never would have met. His partner is the head of programming for a major film festival and I get a job screening for them and then I work at the festival in Park City where I meet related TV people who work in New York. There is a job there I want and I go for it. But then nothing. And nothing. And then I do another festival. And then nothing. Meanwhile unbeknownst to me, back East people I don't know are procreating and one in particular does just that. Maybe even just as I was finishing making my bed and headed to return some lightbulbs before I headed for the gym in Hollywood. On a random Tuesday. But right then my life has changed. And I don't know it. She has to go on maternity leave and a fill in for her job is posted on-line where two friends who I worked with years ago in children's programming see it and e-mail it to me. I apply and do three phone interviews and I get it because I had the work experience and I worked at this related festival. I move to New York. And here I am.

There are a million of these stories. This was mine.

Yesterday I got to take a train out to New Jersey (they have those conductors with the hats and the clanging and the whole thing. I loved it!) to meet beautiful Eli, Jennie and Mikhail's new baby, who is really THE major reason I am living on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, eating really excellent bagels and on the subway every morning instead of in Los Angeles traffic. And for me this is a heavenly change. He is lovely and I will be grateful to him no matter what happens. And only because wee Eli was born am I working in Times Square and starting a whole new chapter. The rest has yet to be written, but it all doesn't matter and/or I don't really write it anyway. I simply put it out there and people are born and people die and I jump aboard.