My musings . . .

. . . on life and family

So, Uh, Where Ya’ From, Anyway?

When my first husband and I decided to call it quits in the mid-80s, I couldn’t wait to get out of Queens and find a place as far away from “him” as possible.

Manhattan was out of reach financially, so I opted for Brooklyn, which I imagined as affordable and not far from my fundraising job on Elizabeth Street. Who knew Brooklyn was so expensive and had so many different neighborhoods?

Rather than choose the neighborhood where I wanted to live, I had to base my decision on the monthly rent. That’s when my new rule of thumb was born: With a non-profit salary, my rent could not exceed $700 per month. I also needed an apartment with a hallway (so it would feel like I was moving from room to room, rather than living inside a box). And I absolutely was not moving in with a roommate. Those days were over.

Since I was in a hurry to move away from my soon-to-be-ex, I took the first place that checked all those boxes: A roomy one-bedroom in a two-family building in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Think Saturday Night Fever, with brickface row homes and Italian-American panache. It seemed safe enough and friendly enough. What I didn’t count on, however, was that I’d become the neighborhood curiosity.

Having arrived with no furniture or kitchen gadgets to my name, what a relief to find everything I needed within a ten-block radius of my apartment. First stop: The housewares store on 16th Avenue. Pots, pans, shelf paper . . . and, oh yes, a pasta canister. Arms full of merchandise, I made my way to the check-out counter, where a 20-something local took one look at my purchases and proclaimed, “I didn’t know your people ate pasta!” I wanted to say we invented it, but I kept my mouth shut.

Next stop: A haircut. For this, I found an inexpensive salon in the other direction on 16th Avenue. The gum-cracking stylist chatted away with me, asking the usual questions. How long had I lived in the neighborhood? One month. Where had I moved from? Queens. Where did I work? Chinatown. Dead silence while she pondered this response. “I was there once,” she trailed off. That’s when I began to realize how insular Bensonhurst was. People lived, worked, and died there, rarely making the hourlong subway ride into lower Manhattan. Why would they, when everything they needed was within a ten-block radius?

Stop #3: A hardware store on 20th Avenue, where a nice young man helped me find all the supplies I’d need to put up shelves. After several minutes gathering wood, brackets, screws and spackle, our conversation went like this:

“My name’s Vinny, what’s yours?”

“I’m Amy.”

“So, uh, where ya’ from, anyway?”

Trying to ascertain whether he meant ethnically or geographically, I finally replied, “I just moved here from Queens.”

“Yeah. I thought so. Ya’ got an accent.”

And thus began my two-year Bensonhurst odyssey.

Postscript: I recently had a chance to drive through my old neighborhood, thirty years later. Gone were any vestiges of its Italian-American roots, replaced by Chinese signage, wrought iron window gates, and a different immigrant group trying its luck at the American dream.

. . . on work

People often ask me how I got my job

For over a quarter century, I have worked in iconic roles within an iconic company, EILEEN FISHER. And the question most frequently asked is, “How did you get your job?” It’s simple. I was in the right place at the right time, at a company that gave me the space to figure out how to activate my personal values within the workplace.

My path definitely wasn’t traditional. An undergraduate degree in Chinese led to a graduate degree in Applied Linguistics and Teaching English as a Second Language. Not exactly the obvious precursor to a pioneering sustainability and human rights career.

There’s a theme here, though. You see, when I was growing up, I liked helping people. I befriended the kids who were being bullied. (I was one of them, after all.) I reveled in becoming the best Girl Scout I could. I helped my teachers with small tasks. And, when I got to college, I worked with refugees settling into their new lives in Washington, DC.

The thing is, I couldn’t quite figure out how to make a career out of service. I wasn’t cut out for social work or nursing or law. So, I headed for teaching. I would work with immigrants and refugees, anywhere in the world.

That idea lasted as long as it took for me to get my master’s degree. The problem? As an introvert, I was exhausted at the very thought of holding a classroom’s attention for more than an hour. Not to mention three or four classes a day.

So, off I went to the world of non-profit. Giving back to the community by raising funds seems like an admirable and rewarding option. What I didn’t count on was that fundraising involves making presentations to boards of directors. And schmoozing with potential donors. And hearing the word “no” more often than “yes.” It was more than my introverted self could tolerate.

At age 32 — after four jobs in nine years - I was physically and emotionally exhausted. And I was no closer to achieving my career of service than when I had graduated from college. That’s when I landed on one path I hadn’t explored: fashion. Growing up, I made all of my clothes. I used to wonder what it would be like to do that for a living. So, I took a couple of courses at NYC’s Fashion Institute of Technology. And then I subscribed to Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), the fashion industry’s publication of choice.

It should be noted that, in those days (the early 1990’s), people still got jobs from printed “Help Wanted” ads. So, imagine my excitement to see two ads, side-by-side one Thursday: “Assistant to the CEO” and “Assistant to the President,” both for EILEEN FISHER, a small women’s clothing designer I had never heard of. “Those are jobs I can do for a couple of years while I figure out my next career move,” I thought.

Within months, I found myself doing whatever was needed for this growing company: Buying holiday poinsettias for the office, writing press releases, running warehouse sales, editing our employee newsletter, ordering birthday cakes, and setting up wardrobing workshops. In my fourth year with EILEEN FISHER, I was named the company’s first Community Relations Manager, where I established our first processes to support our communities. Soon thereafter, I was asked to develop a human rights program for our supply chain. And then expand our work to include environmental sustainability.

A quarter century later, I have built a brilliant team of Social Consciousness “instigators,” helped to position the company as a leader in sustainable fashion, and have contributed to the global Sustainability movement in ways I never would have imagined. I couldn’t imagine a better way to be of service to the world while serving my own inner spirit.

That’s how I got — or, rather, created — the job of my life.

. . . on nature

Who Said There’s No Wildlife in New York City?

When you move to a concrete jungle like New York City, you can expect many things: sidewalks, jackhammers, high rises, and traffic. Lots of traffic.

But I was surprised to know that New York abounds with wildlife. And a lot of it is tiny.

I’ll never forget how excited I was to land my first full-time job at a social service agency in Manhattan’s Chinatown. I’d be able to use my Chinese language skills and, best of all, I’d get my own desk! No matter that it was a fourth floor walk-up in a building in dire need of a facelift.

The blush of my new job quickly wore off when I arrived one morning to the desperate squeak of a poor little mouse, stuck in a glue trap under my desk. The building super had baited the trap with a dollop of hoisin sauce and, sure enough, it worked. “Laoshu, Laoshu!” I called. The super came from the back of the floor, grabbed the trap and disappeared down the hall. Within minutes, he returned to my desk, the trap empty except for a few strands of fur peeking out from under the new dollop of hoisin sauce. No reason to throw out a perfectly good glue trap after a single use, I suppose.

As the weeks went on, I soon discovered the other creatures living in my desk space. A cockroach egg sac had burst open in my pencil drawer, the minuscule little rascals scurrying off in every direction when exposed to light.

Such was my experience working in that agency for two years. Mice and cockroaches frequently showed up uninvited. And I, in turn, grew more and more blasé to the whole thing.

Of course, it’s a whole different ballgame when creatures arrive in your living space. There’s a real sense of violation. It was bad enough that my Bensonhurst apartment housed waterbugs (those enormous relatives of cockroaches that are simply too big to squish) that crept along the inside of my bathroom light fixture — taunting me from overhead. Close enough to see, but far enough away to ignore if I didn’t look up.

But worst of all was the day I discovered a nest beautifully composed of every type of bean and lentil from my kitchen cabinet. Maybe the little creature had come and gone, I thought. But, when we came face to face one day at the doorway between my bedroom and living space, I felt both sympathetic to the cute little mouse, and protective of my private space. I declared war.

My library research (many years pre-Internet) told me to block any holes or crevices in my apartment with plaster of Paris and steel wool. And I am, if nothing else, a good student. So, off I went to purchase the appropriate supplies, and returned to block the only hole I could find: a bowl-sized gap around my sink pipes. That did the trick, as I never had another furry visitor again. Too bad for the super, since I eliminated his only access to my plumbing.

Oh, and the fate of the little mouse? I caught him in a sticky trap behind the bookshelf next to my bedroom door. My Chinatown super would have been proud.