“Vijfsprong” – crossing with five roads. Image from Flickr via (Creative Commons license) 

Reflecting—that’s what we all tend to do in the second half of life. As we indulge in our routine reflecting, we find ourselves pausing at the crucial places . . . the places where we made choices with life-changing consequences. This is part of our series on such forks in the road.

New beginnings are old-hat to me.  

After graduating from college, I was having a great time gallivanting through Europe and South America as a professional figure skater with the international division of Holiday on Ice. My mother summoned me home. My sister, Liz—11 months younger than I—had zoomed through college in three years and had finished her first year of law school.  It was time for me, according to my mother, to get real. Prancing through Europe and South America as a skating carrot in a Bugs Bunny number did not a career make.

My first career moves didn’t require much pondering. I bounced from one opportunity to the next as only an ambitious twentysomething can. I dreamed of becoming a writer. I got my foot in the door as an assistant to the head of the circulation department at New York magazine, then worked as an assistant to best-selling author Gail Sheehy, became a staff writer at SELF magazine, and got an advance from Little, Brown to expand one of my freelance articles for The New York Times Magazine, “Little Winners,” into a book.

At 30, I didn’t lean in. I dropped out. Six months after Little Winners was published, I met my husband Howard at mile 1 ½ of the Great Bonac Road Race. Having six magazine deadlines when my daughter, Lily, was born, I quit writing and spent the next decade as a wife and a mother to Lily and her younger brother, Teddy—cooking and chauffering and reveling in being part of the “Mom” network.  We moved from Manhattan to a leafy suburb in Connecticut. For pin money, I taught skating at an outdoor rink. I became a “Mother Pucker”—member of a team of ice-hockey-playing moms. I got a part-time job working as the public relations coordinator at my children’s school. Life was good.

Then Howard and I divorced.   I bought the cheapest house in town. My book club buddies came over to help me strip the metallic wallpaper and pull up the shag carpeting in the master bedroom that a dog had peed all over. My friends thought that the divorce had sent me over the edge. Lily and Teddy, now 14 and 11, thought the same. Despite the spectacular location along the Silvermine River, this house was a dog.

A recently divorced friend gave me the gift of a consultation by her architect and interior designer. I agreed with their assessment that the present house was too far gone for cosmetic changes and embarked on a yearlong “from-the-studs-out” renovation. Before the house was finished, the project was over budget. I bought a tile cutter at Home Depot and cut and installed the tiles for the kitchen backsplash and bathroom tiles myself.

I was receiving no alimony and got minimal child support, and had only a part-time job. I HAD to get a full-time job.

On February 14, 2001, I was standing in line at the Food Emporium. I didn’t have enough money to buy the makings for a special “Blanquette de Veau” (Veal in Cream Sauce) Valentine’s Day dinner for Lily and Ted. My credit card and debit cards were declined. A sweet man from church was behind me in line. He saw what was happening and handed me $30.

I was all too painfully aware that this was my fork-in-the-road moment.  

I finished the house and secured a full-time job as communications director at another private school. Gardening had always been a passion, and I had landscape architects in my family. A few years later I earned a Certificate in Landscape Design at the New York Botanical Garden and started a landscaping company.

In the past decade, I’ve changed hats almost as often as Bartholomew Cubbins—a Dr. Seuss character who tried to remove his hat when the king passed by, only to have another one pop back onto his head.

I’ve owned and managed GreatScapes, become a realtor, started writing again, honed my photography skills to a professional level, taught photography and landscape design at a local community college and at the New York Botanical Garden, where I had been a student

The creativity of artistic pursuits like landscape design and photography, and the hard work required to own and manage my own business, sell houses, and write a 300-page book have engaged both the right and left sides of my brain. (Although my 61-year -old brain isn’t all that strong if I try to multi-task, so my current mantra is “Better in the Moment.”) I have learned, through thick and thin—and with the support of loving friends and family and the grace of God—that I can get through anything and land on my feet.

While I have known financial anxiety many times since Valentine’s Day, 2001, it was nothing like what I felt that day in the Food Emporium—my “fork in the veau” moment.