Your Happy Place

I had a meeting again tonight with another group of divorcees. All of them to a woman was desperate to have her story told-I looked around at

this group of well-dressed, educated and articulate women and thought how they must be as mothers, lawyers, accountants, writers.

They must be or MUST HAVE BEEN formidable. These were women who could run countries, feed armies and raise villages but one man

had unraveled each of them so that they would appear to someone unfamiliar with the devastation of divorce like crazy people, spilling their

stories in torrents of words and emotions. Some were still in that state of adrenaline-fueled fear that is sometimes about losing all their possessions

but more often about losing their children. As the time passed and each one relinquished the floor and their over-lapping comparisons

of ex’s and lawyers and judges stopped, I told them all to get ready because all of this torture would end-it always does and that they must

think each individually about “their happy place’. Where and when had they been happiest and it was OK to keep it to themselves or share it

and they need not feel guilty if it was college or pre-children or as mundane as a shopping trip to Loehmans or a day at the beach.

We all have one-one happy place, where we can retreat when everything seems made of putty, falling-down and spoiled. That we will never

have our sea legs again. That we are unmoored. My happiest "places" my and memories were usually of my childhood, my  father, my

mother and my brothers. Hot Alabama summers with my brothers at the Cahaba River and cousins in tire swings swarming into the

Cahaba River's warm but no doubt polluted waters. We need to grab those memories to move off of the desperation and the fear and KNOW that we can get back to that "happy place" and then some!

But we need to remember a "Happy Place" that is strictly adult-a place to aim for-a pace to be recovered. A place that with hard work and patience

and fortitude we can GET BACK. For me that place will always be with my former backer, Fred Distenfeld, who worked with

me at KLEINBERG SHERRILL and made my life so wonderful that every day was magic! Fred came around when we were absolutely down to our

last nickel and our last alligator skin when my daughter was young, a toddler. Driven off by my ex-husband who begrudged him his money and

his weekly thirty minute meetings we had come to a nasty end when my ex refused the logical decision to close our Atlanta store and factory

and move it all kit and caboodle and employees to Fred’s Long Island factory, With difficult economic times and rising rent in Atlanta for a

factory that was atop our store in coveted RETAIL space it was the only prudent decision and I AGREED but my ex knew better and sent us

headfirst into a nasty lawsuit and into years of financial distress. But my Happy Place was with Fred. At his office. At his Mother’s house

happily going through her collection of vintage bags, preserved like Vatican relics in their pristine decades old-boxes and dust-bags. Her pride

in her son and her husband (both parents wereHolocaust survivors) served up with coffee and cookies. During the darkest days of my divorce I would

go back in my mind to Fred. Always Fred. One day I can remember vividly- I am in our retail store on 65^th Street with Fred and my daughter, Anabelle,

comes in all ringleted hair and I grab her up and go to shop at a sale at Jacadi.

I for the first in a long time sure that the credit card would work and Anabelle in her patent leather Mary Jane’s and smocked party dress dolled

up to beat the band. Or Fred and I on a plane bound for Italy and a trade show talking about G-d and the meaning of existence or checking in at the

hotel and finding perfect calming rooms after the jet lag or window shopping on the weekend in Milan and me surreptitiously sketching all

of the competitions latest samples and it being a Saturday and Fred’s Sabbath me signing the checks at lunch and dinner and Fred looking

everywhere for a gift for his wife, his children. Fred always there and solid and good and protective… letting me almost exhaust myself into a

faint as I drew new bags and plotted new PR tactics. Smiling, understanding and kind. A brother. A river. A happy place.