ALMOST CARRIE ~ The Elephant in the Room

Last August, when I told a friend that I was starting a blog detailing the overlaps between my own real life and that of the fictional Carrie Bradshaw, there was an awkward pause. “What?” I said, “The similarities are a perfect framing device for a blog.” After all, I am a writer in my early 30s who has lived in New York City for over a decade. I love Vogue and vintage dresses and cocktails; I hate cell phones and email and exercise. Add that to the fact that I’ve worked as a Sex and the City tour guide for the past seven years, and the project seemed nearly preordained.

“But you’re not single,” my friend said, not unkindly. “You’ve never been single.”

My friend, of course, was—is—right, a detail I’m reminded of this very moment as my husband places a cup of fresh coffee next to where I type, cream and all. I’m sitting on a couch that we picked out together, purchased to replace the futon that we also bought—and then outgrew—together. We’ve been a pair for twelve years, married for two. It’s been a long time.

My solid relationship is something I’ve avoided since the beginning of this project, something I’ve tried to gloss over, a square peg that didn’t fit in with my cute idea. The truth is, I don’t have any crazy dating stories, and I barely have any notches on my belt. I am, in this way, the opposite of Carrie, and the events of this past month have made that point startlingly clear.

On March 23^rd, my father died—a sudden, excruciating loss. I had written about him in this column only two weeks before, an overview of our day at an indoor pool in Maine, him in his orchid-patterned swim trunks waxing on about the shampoo and conditioner dispensed for free in the locker rooms. He posted a comment about that blog, which now is carved in wireless stone: You nailed it again, he wrote, I keep reading it over and over to capture the fun we shared that day. Get back here so we can do some more pooling. That was the kind of dad he was.

I took time away from the column in the weeks after his death, unsure how to proceed. There was an obvious answer: a tie-in to the episode where Miranda’s mother dies, a general examination of losing a parent at this particular time of life, and a thank-you to the girlfriends who arrived on my doorstep in Maine from all over the country to share my grief. But that kind of comparison would have insulted the particular beauty of that episode which, at its core, was about facing the worst moments in life all by yourself. Carrie escorts Miranda at that funeral because Carrie also knows how difficult it is to be alone. The beauty is in their solidarity.

The death of my own father required no proof of solidarity. My husband was the one to tell me the news that Friday morning, sitting down next to me on our bed just as I was—ironically—putting the finishing touches on that week’s post. My cell phone was off as usual; I had missed the barrage of initial calls, and my husband had returned home from work only 45 minutes after he’d left. There were no questions about plans; my husband had booked us plane tickets before I was even mobile, and a car service appeared to whisk us away. In the course of the following week, he and my sister’s boyfriend arranged the service, unearthed some convoluted life insurance, and organized the milk crates and baskets of paper scraps that constituted my father’s office. At the memorial, I was not alone on the front pew without a partner like Miranda. I was next to my husband.

And so, upon reflecting on all of this, I’ve come to realize how deeply fraudulent I have been. I don’t know the anguish of being alone, and I can only imagine that this sad time would be a thousand times harder without this kind of partner. I know that not everyone has what I have, and the elephant in the room is that I am very, very lucky.

My father and my husband on my wedding day. May 29, 2010.

Emily Sproch is a writer and a Sex and the City tour guide. Each Friday, she chronicles the fine line between reality and fiction in her column “Almost Carrie.”