My rise to the top was neither swift nor spectacular; nor did it require that I step on the neck of any other person on the way up. but here I am. In a world where many labor their lives out in gloomy slots and cubicles, I have attained a work space with windows facing in two directions; my own paper clip dispenser; a private bathroom only a few feet away. like the brand name on the mustard jar or the vintage year on the wine bottle, this is a sign of achievement; to have reached The Corner Office.
It was a long time coming, this evidence of status. My office has a long history. Once an open wooden porch, it was closed in when we ran out of bedrooms. Years later, as we ran out of children, it became home to old college textbooks, bridesmaids- dresses and back yard plants brought in for the winter.
Earlier my random writing was done in the living room, where I balanced on my lap an old Royal portable bolted into its carrying case. There was no technical means of storing a work in progress. Fort his purpose, I used the space under the center sofa cushion. Retrieval consisted of checking to see whether a sufficient number of paragraphs had accumulated thee. This dog eared accumulation was then pinned to a kitchen curtain in some kind of order. By moving a paragraph up or down on the curtain one hoped to achieve unity, coherence and emphasis, the classic qualities of composition.
One summer the children, then old enough to tell me what to do, decided that I should work in the basement. I had been offered the opportunity to write something fairly long for a decent amount of money. The typewriter and a ream of paper were set up under the stark glare of a naked bulb. All I needed, they said, were peace and quiet. Nothing to distract me but a pile of unmatched socks. Local noises, however as well as a couple of younger children, followed me down the stairs.
I could hear the resident beagle banging on the food cabinet where his treats were stored; my own and the neighbors’ children hollering up and down the clothes chute; someone hanging out an attic window to greet passersby; the outraged grind of the disposal trying to chew up a spoon.
Let it be noted, however, that in spite of problems associated with its production, the manuscript was completed according to the contract and accepted by the publisher.
Now that this room has been converted to an office, lazily, for I am easily distracted, I stand at one window or the other and look down on what is visible or simply alive in memory. The spindly mountain ash planted in the hope that it could create some shade for the sandbox is as high as the house. I see children out there in all seasons, pumping up and down on squeaky swings their father made for them, building sand castles or snowmen.
The writer John Barth speaks of his fear, staring at an empty screen, of the onset of what he calls barecupboardness. I am Old Mother Hubbard now, my mind sweeping across empty shelves. What’s my excuse?
No 6-year-old whimpering over life’s inequities. No 2-year-old is suffering an indignity at the hands of a 3-year-old. Nor is there a meal to plan, prepare or clean up after. I am free to take a walk, take a shower, take a nap. Work here all afternoon. Who cares?
In the “Letters and Diaries of Kathe Kollwitz,” the late 19th Century Expressionist admits that she yearned for the day when her boys, contentious and demanding, would be packed off to boarding school. But when she waved at a departing train and went home to spread her work all over the house, she found herself empty of ambition and inspiration, just sitting there as time dragged and inspiration faltered.
Now that she had time and space for her art, she felt empty and filled with a sense of loss. Was the missing ingredient, she wondered, the necessary tension between the desire to create something and the opportunity to do so? “Is not some blessing missing from my work?” she wrote. “No longer diverted . . . I work the way a cow grazes. Formerly, in my wretchedly limited working hours, when I had to fight for time, was I not more productive?”
About a hundred years later, with all the time and space in the world, you might say, the owner of this long-sought and hard-won corner office asks herself the same questions.
