I Don't Know Why #9

I am happier than I’ve ever been and I don’t know why. The ninth installment of an occasional Oldster Magazine column by bestselling novelist Laura Lippman.

The author in her velvet cargo pants.

I have reasons to be happy. Good health. (Knocks wood). No financial worries (knocks wood again), although I am always vaguely worrying about money, and if I’m not vaguely worrying about money, then I am experiencing some kind of shame about money.

I received two unexpected small royalty checks the other day and bought a pair of ridiculously over-priced velvet cargo pants. This is not grown-up behavior. I’ve been alive so long and I’m still not a grown up. Cue the Peter Pan soundtrack.

But also—things are Very Bad in the world and if one expresses pleasure in anything, there is always someone ready to scold you: How can you be happy? Don’t you know how horrible things are?

Well, yes. Which is another reason I’m confused about being happy.

Why am I happy is not one of the questions we are encouraged to ask in a capitalistic society. We are urged to worry: Why am I unhappy/How can I optimize my life, because those questions produce endless opportunities to sell us stuff. I’ve long been vulnerable to self-improvement, the idea that a “better” me will lead to a “better” life. But suddenly, I can’t stop seeing the glass half-full. Heck, my cup runneth over. Not that long ago, my teenage daughter hugged me and said, “I love you” IN FRONT OF HER FRIENDS.

This momentous thing happened when I dropped her off in a North Baltimore neighborhood adjacent to the neighborhood where I once lived, the place I had assumed would be my forever home when I bought my first house 34 years ago, desperate to begin adulthood. The neighborhood is within the city limits and yet suburban in its essence. Big, beautiful houses with spacious lawns, lots of trees. I still do my grocery shopping in the area because my sister is in an assisted living facility there; my mother was in a continuing care community just down the street from my sister until she died in 2024. All the instruments agree: I was supposed to be a North Baltimore “girl.”

Why am I happy is not one of the questions we are encouraged to ask in a capitalistic society. We are urged to worry: Why am I unhappy/How can I optimize my life, because those questions produce endless opportunities to sell us stuff. I’ve long been vulnerable to self-improvement, the idea that a “better” me will lead to a “better” life. But suddenly, I can’t stop seeing the glass half-full.

But 23 years ago, I followed my heart to South Baltimore for a relationship that lasted 18 years, which wasn’t the forever we swore to, yet an overachievement under the circumstances. South Baltimore is not inexpensive; you actually get less for your dollar, square footage wise, than you do in North Baltimore. It’s also a neighborhood where one lives cheek-by-jowl, with reminders of the city’s poverty and crime. On my daily sunrise walks, I pass a man who sleeps in the entryway of a shuttered store. Sometimes, his bare feet poke out from beneath his makeshift blanket: He has only two toes on his right foot. South Baltimore can be sad and dirty and even a little dangerous. I adore it.

No, it was in that lovely North Baltimore neighborhood, with its gracious homes and gorgeous old trees, where I had a panic attack and literally began breaking out in hives. With my blonde bob and my barrel jeans, I looked as if I belonged there. But I don’t, not anymore, somewhat to my daughter’s disappointment.

On the drive home from what I’m no longer allowed to call a playdate, she began to catalog my former neighborhood’s wonders. “My friend Chris can go anywhere—” she began.

“You can go anywhere,” I interjected. “In South Baltimore, you can walk to the snowball stand, to the gelateria, the Italian deli, you can get boba tea or coffee, you can walk to Chipotle and Starbucks*, you can—“

“It’s not the same,” she said. “Chris can go to a playground, or walk down to the stream, or the graffiti tunnel, or the grocery store . . .”

“But it’s basically the suburbs,” I argued. “And if we lived there, eventually you’d come home one day and find me swinging from the rafters.”

“Way to make this dark, mom.”

When you’re a kid, it’s common to yearn for the opposite of what you have. I grew up in an idyllic city neighborhood where I ice skated on a pond, roamed a wooded parkland, caught crawfish and salamanders—and all I wanted to do was live downtown.

When my husband left me in what was once our house, I was sad for a while. Then one day I wasn’t. Not loving someone who didn’t love me turned out to be one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. It’s akin to having a cinderblock on one’s foot: it’s painful and then you realize that all you have to do is remove the cinderblock. And once the cinderblock is gone, you get all the feeling back in your toes.

Yet I initially wasn’t wild about moving to the oh-so-urban South Baltimore when the opportunity arose. It was a compromise: my then partner, eventual spouse, inevitable ex needed to live near his young son. I have now lived in the house we bought together for almost 24 years, longer than I’ve lived at any other single address. And since February 2020, I have lived here as a single parent.

When my husband left me in what was once our house, I was sad for a while. Then one day I wasn’t. Not loving someone who didn’t love me turned out to be one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. It’s akin to having a cinderblock on one’s foot: it’s painful and then you realize that all you have to do is remove the cinderblock.

And once the cinderblock is gone, you get all the feeling back in your toes. If you’re lucky enough to have all your toes, something I will never take for granted again because of the man I see sleeping in a doorway five blocks from my house.

It’s been a long time since I’ve made New Year’s resolutions, but I do try to pick a word for the new year. At the end of 2024, I chose “fun” and vowed to have more of it in 2025. Go figure, I did. I tried new things, I said “no” more often to work, “yes” more often to pleasure.

But the main thing I did was begin telling my friends how much I love them. In Whatsapp groups, in texts, face-to-face, I have essentially been braying I LOVE YOU to them all. Single, with very little family to my name, I rely on my friends more than ever and I want them to rely on me. Which is tricky because, outside of my role as a parent, I am feckless as hell.

I am beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be a grown-up. (Got another royalty check, browsed through more stupid-expensive cargo pants, but resisted buying another pair. So far.) Maybe it’s precisely because I won’t grow up that I’m happy. Maybe the trick is to be a Lost Boy (or Girl) inside a grown-up’s body because growing up really might be awfuler than all the awful things that ever were. Have you seen what the alleged grown-ups have done to the world?

I am beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be a grown-up. Maybe it’s precisely because I won’t grow up that I’m happy. Maybe the trick is to be a Lost Boy (or Girl) inside a grown-up’s body because growing up really might be awfuler than all the awful things that ever were. Have you seen what the alleged grown-ups have done to the world?

But also—do you remember how the musical adaptation of Peter Pan ends? Once all the Lost Boys are under the Darling roof and have pledged to resume maturing, Wendy asks Peter not to forget his promise to return for her. (Would you want to grow up in a household full of former Lost Boys?) The next thing we know, Peter is blowing the fairy dust on some ho named Jane.

Wendy, here’s my advice: Take the cinderblock off your foot, refuse to help your parents rear those Lost Boys, embrace your inner Lost Girl. Consider a pair of velvet cargo pants, start telling all your friends that you love them. And if you find yourself happier than you’ve ever been—maybe don’t interrogate it.

*This was before the union called for a national strike, which my family has strictly observed.

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Check out the whole series.

Previously Laura Lippman published an essay called Whole 60 on Oldster, and took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire. She publishes the newsletter Shaved Meats, Piled High. Lady in the Lake, a miniseries based on Laura Lippman’s thriller by the same name, is currently streaming on Apple TV. Her latest novel, Murder Takes a Vacation, was published in June.

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