Living with Mandy

In 2019, just before the pandemic, I spent a nice chunk of time in Australia. An ex boyfriend of mine and I always talked about going and I bought the plane ticket and made arrangements a few weeks before we broke up, knowing I’d most likely be going on this adventure alone. I fell in love with five cities. My final stop was in Bondi Beach in Sydney, staying in a peach-colored bed and breakfast with concrete steps mosaiced with broken seashells, hosted by Mandy.

If I had to guess, Mandy was in her early 70’s. She had stringy grey hair that she tried to cover up with an unnatural blonde box dye. She wore bright linen dresses and liked having Jane Fonda workout tapes playing in the background while she “worked” and her work usually involved organizing a hoarder’s dream collection of old magazines. She had a cane that she needed but refused to use unless it was absolutely necessary, getting older never agreed with her.

Her bedroom was closest to the main entrance, I always opened the front door as quietly as possible and tiptoed past the entryway. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be forced into an hour’s worth of Mandy’s stories that were selectively spun from the tiniest detail of our dialogue, she just wanted any excuse to share. 

“How was your day,” she’d ask. “Oh it was great. I found a nice little gelato place by the beach after my morning run.”

She’d light up and bulldoze the rest of my sentence with something like, “I once had an affair with an italian man and it all started with gelato…” I would be standing in her doorway for the next hour while she told me every detail of this romp. Mandy’s stories were all sensational and possibly mostly made up. She had no shortage of tall tales about men she slept with, the most noteworthy being Donald Sutherland. 

I was the only uncoupled person living in her home at the time and she needed someone to talk to. It was my fear that she saw some of herself in me. She’d end stories with something like, “anywho, I’ll let you get on with your day. Oh, and Marina, the surfers are not worth your time but if you must bring one home, the condoms and massage oils are in the cupboard next to the medicine cabinet.” I couldn’t imagine bringing a man to that house. The decor was charming beach bungalow meets creepy dollhouse and Mandy was sure to interrogate any Fabio I managed to drag back home with me. She crossed the boundary from host to shameless boarding school mother-hen. In her prime, she said she was an interior decorator, then a photographer and then a tour guide. Every morning, she’d wake up early to refresh the fruit bowl in the communal kitchen and fan out some granola bars and then sit, waiting for everyone to wake up and make their way to the kitchen because it was her daily opportunity for normal human interaction. I never saw her leave the house. She didn’t drive, groceries were always delivered, the bed linens were always sent out and she had everything she needed between her master suite and the sun deck.

By the end of my time with Mandy, she grew on me and I stopped at her room every time I passed her doorway to check if she needed help with anything. I started waking up earlier to spend my coffee hour listening to her stories. I’d come home at night and hand her my camera so she could thumb through the photos. She was an inexcusable but loveable grandmother who just wanted to see and know everything.

Before I left Australia, we downloaded Whatsapp onto her phone and said we’d keep in touch but I didn’t do a great job teaching her how to use the darn thing. So now I think about her often, wondering which parts of herself she saw in me and if there was something she was supposed to teach me, from all the stories and little personal things she shared about her life. Ultimately, she was alone, mostly immoble, opening her home to strangers and calling it an inn. Under the stringy greys was once upon a time a bombshell and she spent her most beautiful years being too picky to settle down, not needing anyone else, and then retired with an expensive property she probably used to dream of sharing. She never wed or had children, but boy did she have stories. 

Thinking about Mandy makes me a little sick to my stomach and makes me want to be back in that old house, listening to her talk about nude beaches and spontaneous trips with rich men she hardly knew. I can’t fault her for saying yes to such a vibrant life. She was looking for love and settled for stories that she tells with the most enthusiasm, but if you listened carefully and watched her eyes, there were dusty stacks of what-ifs hiding under the sexy parts. 

I promise it’s not all as devastating as it sounds. In just a few weeks, that woman taught me more about self love and patience than I ever learned from the many self help books I’ve drunkenly ordered on Amazon. Mandy was so unapologetic with who she was and when I’d wake up early to the smell of coffee and Abba playing from the kitchen, I’d think, My God, she’s fabulous and I’ll be just like her, with lots of stories. 

I have so many stories. That’s what this blog is - moderately sensational stories- all true ones that probably started out with the same hopes and intentions Mandy had every time she chose to give part of herself away. 

I made a friend in a bar the other night; I was telling her about Mandy and I talked about my blog and dating and woven in there was this thought - what if all I ever get are stories. And everything else I might ever need, without needing anyone else. I don’t want that and I don’t think it’s what Mandy wanted either so I find myself in a lake of vulnerability, learning to swim faster to avoid being left with only stories and pretty pictures. 

In a past life, I wrote a song once called Resting Place. There’s a line in there- I’ll never be your better half. Instead, we’ll both be whole, a square peg and a round hole but we’ll fit just fine. It took me one smoothly-sailed divorce to understand you don’t need another half or anyone to complete you. Walking into rooms alone after my divorce felt like the loneliest feeling because I wasn’t missing my person, I was missing the half of me that I gave up and spent years finding again and that half has done so much of the work. “Oh, you should just go work on yourself, sweetheart.” I’VE BEEN WORKING. Not to say the work we commit ourselves to is ever done but from what I know about Miss Mandy, the “work” made her bored and she couldn’t sit still long enough to name what she wanted and maybe that’s how I’ll avoid becoming a coastal inn keeper - by knowing what I want and knowing how to ask for it.

I’ve just reconnected with someone I met at the top of a mountain years ago. That day, we traded a bandaid for a beer and now years later, here we are, on the same coast, both single and seemingly wanting the same things. I have no idea what happens next but in the present moment, I managed to find someone who shares my perspective on partnership and doesn't make me feel like an insane person for wanting some version of the thing most New York men are severely allergic to. The most attractive thing about this person is that he’s not looking to complete anyone and for the first time in my adult dating life, my independence isn’t some intimidating threat. (He doesn’t read this blog so I feel totally okay sharing this with the internet instead of directly telling him he’s wonderful and makes sense of words it took me too long to understand.) 

We’re supposed to build partnerships with our people- healthy ones that feel like balance- partnerships that feel like safe places for us to share and ask for what we want and need in a context where there can’t be price tags or any sort of inauthentic extravagance. Partnership means relinquishing some personal freedoms and maybe that’s something Mandy was never willing to do. Once self-reliance becomes your mode of self-defense, trusting someone else with your love, resources, or security, can feel too sacrificial for comfort. After a quarter-lifetime of trying to please in the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons in hopes I’d have someone to share a big old house with, I’m so grateful to know what I want and to know how to ask for it. And I’m so grateful for my refusal to compromise this part of me that gives away parts of myself so openly, loudly and with the best of intentions. 

I wish I could tell Mandy about all the things I know I want and deserve. Who knows, maybe through a pandemic, she found the kind of love she imagined that big peachy beach house would be built for. 

Dearest Mandy, should you ever find this blog, I hope you still sing Abba songs loud enough for the neighbors to hear. I hope the roses are thriving and the bin chickens are staying away. And I hope you’re in love. In some way.