Winging It: Dispatches from an

(Almost) Empty Nest

Reviewed by Bonnie Boehme

Adventures, Decisions, and Insights
When you open Winging It: Dispatches from an (Almost) Empty Nest (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2008), prepare to be entertained and inspired. This little gem of a book, written by Catherine Goldhammer, makes for a delightful read.

In the author’s first book, Still Life with Chickens, Goldhammer relates the challenges of embarking upon postdivorce life with a precocious 12-year-old daughter in a ramshackle house by the sea—painstakingly restored to beauty, or at least livability—with a dog, a cat, and a backyard clutch of chickens. It’s not necessary to read the first book to appreciate the second (Goldhammer “catches you up” on her life situation in the Introduction), but the two work well as a team.

Winging It comprises four parts, each with multiple short chapters, and each of these in turn relating an adventure, an arrival at a decision, or the gaining of an insight. In one of her forays, she makes a rare trip to New York City to visit her daughter’s godfather, Danny, and attend his discussion group of famous writers. This gathering proves to be a real eye-opener for Goldhammer. The group’s members have been meeting for years and know each other, but not really at all, and in their egocentric pomposity never venture “anything resembling enthusiasm for one another’s books.” She is glad to escape back to her home in Six Mile Beach.

As for decisions, one of her most important involves her now 15-year-old daughter’s desire to attend a conservative but intellectually rigorous Catholic high school, which would entail her living away from home. After tussling with her decision and acknowledging that she is not yet ready to let go, Goldhammer tells her daughter Harper simply that the plan is just “too complicated.” Harper’s sarcastic reply—“So . . . am I going to be able to go to college?”—is a classic teen response. Haven’t we all heard something similar? Regarding insights, one stands out: the dawning realization that her own sensible, strong, ever-available mother will not always be there and, like all mortal mothers, will ultimately fail to obey Goldhammer’s wistful “law . . . that mothers have to live forever.”

Longevity, Midlife Romance, and Lyrical Lines
Four qualities of Goldhammer’s writing (though certainly more could be counted) permeate these pages. The first is honesty. The author is not afraid to rip the drape from her inner self and expose what’s there. For instance, her neighbor directs her to a Web site that calculates longevity. Ms. Goldhammer, thinking she has but a brief time left (she’s 55), hits the compute button with “a combination of trepidation and morbid disregard.” Age 93 pops up. So, according to this Web site, almost 40 years remain to her, or 30 before things start to “go south.” She philosophizes: “Being washed up is one thing when you are living blithely in the paltry quality of one day at a time. It is another thing entirely when you think of 30 years of paltry quality.” True enough, but scary. Also honest about her less admirable thoughts and feelings, she confesses to jealousy (mingled with love, of course) of her blooming daughter’s future, of the stretch of tantalizing possibilities before her.

Second, the author’s humor threads throughout the narrative. Returning to the longevity Web site, we read that a friend takes the quiz and informs her sister that they can expect to live to 103. When the sister makes no response, the friend advises her that smokers can subtract eight years. Hilariously, and understandably, the sister answers, “I’m taking up smoking today.” Sometimes the humor is not anecdotal but arises simply from the way Goldhammer puts words together. Of her reluctance to resume dating, she pronounces, “Maybe pheromone deficit had set in.” This writer’ humor makes the reader want to pull up a chair, have tea, and talk with her.

Midlife dating is just one issue that ties into the third noteworthy quality: poignancy. A sense of what once was and never again will be—the wanton vitality and freedom of youth—and the knowledge that gravity and time will have their relentless way pervades the book. It is to Goldhammer’s credit that poignancy and humor often walk hand in hand, and so the book never becomes maudlin or falls into the trap of self-pity. She writes of the daunting prospect of seeking romance when her interest in men is “rusty and disused.” Of assessing the risk-benefit ratio—the degree of danger that lies in putting oneself on the line. Of allowing a glimpse of the now far from perfect body and an entrée into a heart wounded by disappointment and marital failure. All this versus the one miraculous chance that a “big, messy, something-to-live-and die-for, smash-that-sucker-flat love affair” could happen.

Goldhammer actually does reconnect with two old boyfriends from her wild-child days. Harold, who has now been married for years, does end up meeting her again. He comes by to visit with his son, and the reunion goes well, a pleasant re-established friendship. Hunter, who is divorced and sends her gifts of beautiful feathers and maple syrup, suggests that they rendezvous; however, we never get to meet him “in person.” (Next book, maybe?) The push-pull of wanting not to be alone yet wanting not to be hurt again touches the reader, especially the empty nester flying solo.

The fourth quality of Goldhammer’s prose arises from the writing itself. Even before she tells us she has been a poet, it becomes clear that she is one. The sentences, rhythmic, alternating long and short, achieve a flow much like the author’s beloved sea itself. Here is one among many passages of lyrical, Japanese-silkscreen beauty:

“In the meantime I would walk and wait and watch the endless variations of waves and sand, in Six Mile Beach, where once, on a day of big surf and clear water, I could see—right through the crests of the breaking combers—hundreds of small black stones held suspended in the tall waves of pale blue-green water.”

And beauty is not the only hallmark of Goldhammer’s language. With a few words, she can aptly convey a concept. We see her life in Six Mile Beach so vividly that when she refers to the first postdivorce town in which her ex-husband lives as Richer-than-Me and the second as Hipper-than-me, we sense the flavor of those towns, and that she feels at home in neither. The best town name, which first makes its appearance in Still Life with Chickens, is what she calls the upper-crust place she moves away from right after her divorce—Hearts-Are-Cold. It conjures up the image of a high-priced tony neighborhood with costly homes, status-conscious homeowners, but absolutely zero soul.

The Journey, a Discovery of Self
In Winging It, Catherine Goldhammer succeeds in touching on the universal that connects us all, while at the same time regaling us with the specific. She presents this slice of life as a study of contrasts: the old and new, the familiar and unfamiliar. We take leave of the book with the idea that something novel is always out there waiting to be found, but that equally exciting is the most introverted, yet expansive, of journeys, the discovery of self.