The Other Lives
The place is called Mulberry Books. It’s situated around the corner from the local art supply store and next door to an indie boutique. It’s across from Trader Joe’s. You can’t miss it.
The space feels wide open when you walk in. There is a long, cushioned bench along the wall to the left, and there are tables and chairs set out in spacious arrangement on that half of the room. The tables are mismatched to their chairs, and the cushions on the long bench are soft velvet of a deep autumn red. The chairs and bench all face the right side of the room, where there is a small stage area. There are microphones and music stands, stools and a karaoke machine set in the corner. If you walk past the stage and the seating area, you’ll find yourself in front of the check-out counter of the bakery. This is the Mulberry of Mulberry Books. There are pastries and cookies and brownies and fudge. Seasonal treats and classic favorites. Every comfort item that can come out of an oven is here. There’s also an assortment of herbal teas, sugar and creamers available, and in the winter they offer hot cocoa.
But there’s more. Keep walking past the baked goods and you’ll find yourself walking through a wide, arched doorway – the Threshold – and the smell of paper and ink and leather binding will waft towards you. The books of Mulberry Books. They are mostly used, some are new. The shelves are organized in the usual way, with over-stuffed chairs tucked away in corners. The most attention has been given to the Children’s section: baskets of books on the floor, small beanbag chairs, and shelves full of colorful books for every age. There are animal puppets and other stuffed reading buddies scattered throughout. There’s an adult-sized rocking chair for Reading Time, which is held twice a week at 10 a.m., Mondays and Thursdays.
Every night of the week is something in Mulberry Books. Monday Night is Family Night, with a showing of a family movie over the stage through a projector, and all baked goods are half off from 5 pm – 8 pm. Tuesday Night is Mad Hatter’s Poetry Slam: wear any hat into the store and you can have one free treat from the bakery and free, all-night refills on any tea you like and we have ourselves a proper Tea Party as you listen to community members share their poetry on the stage. Open mic, anyone can participate, but the poetry has to be “family friendly” content. Wednesday Night is Open Mic Music: any instrument, any group size, can come and play music for patrons. Sometimes Open Mic Music Night gets so crowded it has to be moved outside to the large side lawn, when the weather allows. Thursday Night is Stage Night: music, poetry, monologue, skit, pantomime, dance – anything that makes sense on a stage. Performances have to be approved and are scheduled ahead of time. Elementary kids, middle school kids, high schoolers, and older can come and get a taste of public performance. Groups of friends and sometimes families come to perform together for their community. Friday Night is Karaoke Night: only caveat is that you have to sing on the stage. Saturday Night is Sing-Along Night: a classic musical will be shown over the stage, via the projector, and the audience is invited to sing-along. Anyone can request a musical to the owner and all suggestions will be added to an ever-growing list.
Mulberry Books has hosted authors, who come to do book signings and answer questions and give presentations to kids and families. There have also been artists and musicians and, once, an astronomer. Theater classes have been held there. Music lessons are given there. If you consider yourself a patron of the arts in any way, you’ve been to Mulberry Books. It’s a place where artists are appreciated and applauded, where literature and music are cherished, where gluten and sugar flow in abundance.
And it’s huge. It’s a much larger space than I originally anticipated needing for my bakery/bookstore idea. Bakeries are never meant to be large – you’ve got a hidden kitchen and a counter for taking money, but rarely much seating because people want to grab their doughnut and then go. But it was never about the bakery as much as it was about the stage. It was about supporting the performance arts. So, seating became necessary and if you’ve got seating for 100+ people, you suddenly need a lot more floor space.
Not to mention the bookstore portion. Books take space! Bookshelves, in particular, take up space. I’ve been in used bookstores that were crammed so tight that only one person could walk through the aisle at a time. I think they were aiming for “cozy” but it landed on “claustrophobic.” That would never do for Mulberry Books. Everything about it needed to be comfortable, inviting, and homey. And I think we accomplished that.
People come because they want to experience performance arts. Families bring their kids to give them exposure to raw creativity. I brought this into the community because being creative is part of what makes us human and brings us joy. We needed a space to explore and learn and appreciate together.
That’s what I built. I spent my days cataloguing new books and organizing arts events. I talked to authors and poets and musicians and singers…I was a modern-day Medici! I hired a kitchen staff to take care of the bakery and an accountant to handle the finances. I focused on the arts portion. My husband and kids came for karaoke night and sometimes for poetry night. My daughter started working in the store as soon as she was old enough, she loved everything about it. The only thing it was missing, she said, was a Dungeons & Dragons corner. And I think I was happy. I think I would have been, anyway.
And then there was the time I chose to hyper-focus on becoming an artist. I turned down dates, turned down relationships, and focused on creating the creative career. I learned traditional painting and digital painting and took business classes to help me become a lucrative free-lance artist. I dabbled in commercial art and design work. For a brief moment I did inking for a graphic novel publishing house.
I loved all of it.
I rented a house with another girl. We lived in the peripheral of one another. Not ever close friends, never really intersecting on any point besides the shared utilities. I grew jaded over time. Not lonely, exactly. It was a restless yearning in me to be part of something bigger.
And so, even though there was no point to it because Peter Jackson had sworn he wasn’t going to make a movie of The Hobbit, I applied to work for WETA Workshop in New Zealand. Because of my extensive time studying all aspects of art at my university and the years of working freelance in so many categories, I was accepted!
I dropped everything. I stored my most precious things at my parents’ house and then sold everything else, bought a plane ticket and moved to New Zealand. It was incredible. It changed me. I fell in love with the ocean and took up surfing! I spent my days in the workshop with phenomenal creative minds and helped design and create the most amazing things. I couldn’t have imagined living in such a gorgeous place when I started college – and now here I was!
I didn’t think I would want to stay away from the United States for too long, but I fell so absolutely in love with the place and the people that I couldn’t bring myself to leave. So, I applied for dual citizenship and put in roots.
Being a full hemisphere away from my family was hard at first. Especially when Mom’s health started declining. But I was able to save enough money to fly occasionally back to the States to see my family. I got to see my sisters’ weddings that way.
But the people and friends I made in New Zealand were so warm and welcoming, far more inclusive than anyone I had known in the States. It was just a part of their culture. I soon found myself with a group of people who felt as close to me as my family back home.
And then the most surprising of surprises: Jackson signed a contract to make The Hobbit. In three parts! And I got to be part of recreating Middle Earth as a designer in the Weta Workshop. Did I love the movies? No. Not really. But I loved creating Tolkien’s words into tangible works of art.
I don’t know if I ever married or had children in that one. Maybe, maybe not. I could have met a handsome “kiwi” while out surfing one time, I suppose. But that really wasn’t the point of that particular path. It was to experience a life dedicated to creating and being surrounded by other people possessing the creative spirit. I can’t speak to the level of satisfaction I had there, I can only speculate, but I do think I was happy.
Did I tell you about the one where, after my Creative Writing professor said to me, “You really ought to be a writer,” I felt the sudden jolt of realization that she was right. The knowledge that pursuing Art was a child’s fantasy and a childish game, I could never make a living this way, shot through my entire body from my head to my toes and back up again. She was right!
I changed majors at the college the very next day. I learned creative writing, world literature, literary analysis, and professional writing. And I was good at it! People were impressed by my eloquence and clarity, my imaginative word-sculpting and prose. I started getting published in small magazines and publications before I graduated. After graduation, I was offered a job in a publishing house and from there I experienced many different facets of writing as a profession. I was a copywriter for a while and then an editor, and eventually took up teaching at a university. I didn’t love the teaching as much as I thought I would, so I went back to publishing and learned public relations writing, which was much more lucrative. Which was good, because my mom and dad were struggling financially again and it felt good to know that I could help.
Maybe I wrote stories for video games or magazines or role-playing games. Maybe I wrote articles for newspapers and publications. Maybe I double-majored in economics and wrote about the economy and money and published a book about economics for the layman. Who knows? That particular road led to many, many other branches that spread out and bent back and intersected over time. I wonder if I was happy there. Happier at least than here, certainly. Not as glamorous as New Zealand, maybe. It had its own appeal in a smaller way.
But the one that I’m really curious about – the one that diverges so much that it’s impossible to accurately predict all the possible outcomes afterward – is the one where my dad questioned his father’s advice. He took it in, of course, but he also listened to the nagging doubt inside the pit of his stomach. And with that doubt, he asked for a second opinion. And a third, then a fourth. He asked his music professor, and this professor was appalled at his father’s worldview and assured my dad that he could easily procure a position in the Utah Symphony as a percussionist and easily plan on an annual income of at least $60,000. A big number in those days. More than enough to comfortably, confidently raise a family.
But maybe that one differing opinion wasn’t enough. So, he took those two opinions and that estimated figure to his bishop and asked what he thought of the situation. And the bishop, not wanting to give an opinion that would determine the future of a young man and his future family so drastically, told him conservatively that his professor’s opinion was probably a very trustworthy one, and that the estimated annual income was very reasonable for raising a family, and encouraged him to take it to prayer and the temple.
And with that advice, my dad asked his girlfriend, his future fiancé and wife, what she thought of the dilemma and she whole-heartedly encouraged him to stick with his passion for music and his clear savant-level gift for drumming, specifically. And then he asked his bandmates and roommates and fellow music-major classmates and to his absolute astonishment, not a single one of them agreed with his father.
How could that be? His father was a highly educated, highly admired, and widely known psychiatrist, running his own practice and serving on the state board of education. He was, literally, the smartest man in my father’s world. The idea that he could be wrong was, in a word, inconceivable.
Yet, there it was. He had asked everyone he could think of and not one person sided with his father’s ideas.
Was it possible that man so intelligent, so admired, so respected, so burdened with accolades, could perhaps not see the future? Could, in fact, be mistaken (perhaps) in this one thing?
No.
It wasn’t possible.
Everyone else must be mistaken. Idealistic and naïve. He would change his major to accounting, as advised, and find a safe, reliable income in the world of finance.
But he did have the wherewithal to discuss it with his girlfriend before making the change official.
And she said, in the simplest and most straight-forward terms she could manage, that if he wanted to marry her, he would finish his degree in music and pursue the potential position of Symphony Percussionist. But if he wanted to marry his father, then by all means, go ahead and switch to accounting.
That was what jolted him awake. He finished his four-year degree, top of his class and maintaining his full-ride scholarship in Music, and was accepted into a Master’s program the following semester. He married his sweetheart, who cut hair in the local salon to support him as he finished the Master’s program and then he was hired to play percussion in the Utah Symphony.
Where, ironically, his father held season tickets and saw his son perform once a month in the vocation he had said was impossible. A vocation that he, by maintaining and renewing every year his Season Ticket Holder status, was funding. He was basically paying his son to work the job that he said couldn’t be a real job.
He always enjoyed the performances; he never saw the irony.
And they lived near the city and started their family. They owned a modest-sized house and their children attended highly-rated schools, staffed with the most knowledgeable and well-trained teachers, and they never had to claim bankruptcy and they never went through home foreclosure and he never struggled with anger or disappointment or an inferiority complex. He knew his place in the world and he knew he was competent in it and he provided for his family and he felt secure in the belief that the world was good.
And I would have been born into that environment.
Who knows where my life could have meandered from there? If that had been my starting point? The possibilities are endless.
Mom still would have had her health problems, sure. She still would have had hypothryroidism and fibromayalgia. But she also would have been closer to more competent doctors. Maybe she could have gotten better information earlier in her health journey. Who knows?
And with Dad being a professional in music, maybe my sisters and I would have also been enabled to pursue a future in music. Mom had already trained us to sing together. Maybe with Dad’s connections, we could have performed at bigger venues and had larger opportunities. We could have been a singing sister group of four. Who knows?
Maybe we each would have learned to play instruments, multiple instruments each, because we would have been exposed to them from a younger age. Maybe Dad’s coworkers, fellow musicians, would have come over to our house for dinner parties and we would have been influenced by their lives and lifestyles and we would have entered the world of performance and art and music. Who knows?
Would I still have gotten sick? Sanna may have still had fibromayalgia, but would I have had the same struggle with CFS? It’s possible. That battle would have undoubtedly looked different if my dad had been in a more stable financial and professional position. The battle would have looked different if the Symphony had been in the peripheral of my life.
This particular avenue, perhaps more than any other, causes me to grieve. I mourn the loss of this life. I wish more than anything I could have experienced this one.
I would happily trade the destitute years crammed in the “rockhouse,” mom’s vision boards of dream homes, dad’s pent-up anger, the bankruptcy, the job losses, the foreclosure, watching my parents live in a motorhome in grandma’s backyard…I would trade all of that, if I had the power to do it, for a chance in this other life. The Utah Symphony life. The one where my dad followed his passion and his talent, the one where he trusted himself over trusting his father, the one where I could have known my father as his truest self.
And yeah, I see that it’s still a dice roll. It’s still a gamble. I don’t really know if that path for my father would have prevented a job loss or foreclosure on their home. My dad is still neurodivergent, and would still have been undiagnosed neurodivergent in that version of reality, so misfortune could still have befallen us. There’s no way to know anything for sure.
But looking at the path he chose and where it’s led all of us now, I’m willing to make the gamble. I’m willing to make the trade.
Wouldn’t it be funny if, in another plane, another me is typing desperately, “If only my father had pursued a safer career in accounting instead of risking his future on music!”
Perhaps my father was doomed to his existential struggle no matter what path he took.
It hardly seems worth mentioning the other lives after that one. The big finale. The big Regret that will be held for generations. The Regret from which all other regrets flow. It led to the poor choices and missed chances of all posterity for at least two generations.
Maybe Candide is right, and this is the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps these other lives lead to wreck and ruin. Maybe all of them, in meandering and bizarre ways, lead to the emptiness of the Nevada desert, which is where I find myself now.
In this desperately dry desert, another life has shown itself to me. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if my soul wasn’t so thirsty in this parched and sandy wasteland. I find myself thinking about water. A lot. The ocean, specifically.
The one where I lived on a boat.
I spent every weekend for months of my senior year of college on the ocean pier with a local couple who had agreed to teach me how to sail. They taught me the vocabulary of sailing and boat maintenance, navigation, use of the radio, and how to read weather patterns. When I graduated, I bought a one-person, sea-worthy boat and I set sail.
I documented everything about life on a boat to my YouTube channel, Artist At Sea, and I held nothing back. I shared the good – the gorgeous sunsets and watching dolphins, and I shared the bad – being stuck in storms and equipment malfunctions, and I shared the ugly – mucking out seaweed and scraping barnacles and the details of waste disposal. The channel did moderately well. Enough to make payments on the boat and keep her fueled, anyway.
I spent most of my time painting. On the deck of my little boat, I would paint the varied moods of the ocean and the sky. I became expert at capturing the subtle changes in color of the water and the movement of her waves. I painted the islands and towns that I visited, and I would sell the paintings when I came into harbor. Social media helped a lot with building up hype for my paintings and preparing people for where I was going to land next. Eventually, some galleries picked up my work and then I had enough money coming in to buy new paints and new canvases and support my eclectic life.
And that’s how I became an artist. I painted landscapes and seascapes and island villages and fantastical scenes and I sailed anywhere my little boat could take me. I saw all kinds of places and met all kinds of people. I connected with the community of boaters – other individuals and families who have chosen to live on boats instead of traditional houses. And it was enough. Docking every few weeks and connecting to other boaters was enough socializing to keep me sane. Painting and playing ukelele while the sun set into the ocean kept me happy.
The initial challenge was to live on a boat for a full year, which was part of the gimmick to start the YouTube channel. But after 12 months went by, I asked myself, ‘What is there on land that I could look for, except this again?’ I fell so completely in love with traveling around the ocean and living alone on my boat – independent and self-sufficient – that I decided I didn’t want to stop after one year.
So, I became the permanent Artist At Sea. I reached out to other YouTubers and did some collaborations, which was fun and increased my audience. Pretty soon, enough money was coming in for me to hire a financial investor, a production team, and by painting and sailing I was able to secure my retirement. I found a way to travel to Australia, New Zealand, and all those surrounding island nations. I expanded my abilities and equipment to sail anywhere in the world I wanted to see.
The solitude was comforting. Being surrounded by water on all sides, all the time, was just enough to slake the thirst in my soul. The constant painting, drawing, and creating brought perfect fulfillment to my spirit.
But loneliness comes for all of us, I suppose. Even those of us who like being alone. We can’t escape that we are, biologically, social creatures.
I don’t see any way for my husband to have found me in that life. Maybe not impossible, but certainly highly improbable. Also, very unlikely that any of my children could have come into the world in that life.
Maybe that’s why the very specific situations that would have had to happen for that life to have unfolded, never happened. In reality, I was too sick to go to college full-time, so I didn’t qualify for scholarships. With no scholarship, there was no chance I could go to a school near the ocean, like Texas or Hawaii, to learn swimming and sailing and have access to a boat. It’s possible that those limitations were not punishments or examples me being ‘held down,’ but divine interventions to ensure that I would take the opportunity to marry and have children.
I think I can say, with a large measure of certainty, that I would not have chosen to be a wife and a mother if the choice to live on the ocean had been on the table.
Maybe God knows what He’s doing.
The stream of time I swim through now seems small and disappointing. I look at the other lives and I wonder about them. Sometimes yearn for them. They are closed to me. I cannot change what is behind me and I cannot affect what lies in front of me. I could drown in the sorrow of it.
Or, I can choose to trust that there is a higher purpose to our mortal journeys. I trust there is a Creator who is invested in His creations’ lives and well-being. I trust that His guiding hand will lead me to a safe harbor, where I will understand my purpose and find fulfillment.
The other lives are not in my past and almost definitely not in my future, but they are still part of my journey. I carry them with me. They are part of the amalgamation that is my Self. They are as important to me and, in some ways, they are as real, as memories. Only God sees how they fit into the larger tapestry that is my life. I continue forward, waiting to understand it the way He does. In the meantime, I strive to accept my current path. I will try to enrich and magnify the life I’ve been given, and for the sake of my mental and emotional well-being, I will try not to obsessively fixate on what might have been.
And only occasionally ponder, with melancholy curiosity, the other lives.
