It is October 3, 2011. I am reminded of this date every year through the powers of social media — “How is there no AquaNet in my house?” I asked myself and deemed appropriate to share with my network as well. AquaNet, I thought, would be the deciding factor between my new job loving me or hating me.
My new job is as an executive assistant at an independent advertising agency in Portland, Maine, where I now live with my husband in an attempt to start afresh, to salvage a marriage that months ago frayed. We decide that a move to a neutral territory for a year, just a year, will repair the seams. We decide that even to find jobs that pay terribly, we will have the space we needed to work on our relationship and define who we are together without any outside influence. Maine is a place for summers, I think, and apprehensively agree to this plan because I want more than anything to make this marriage work, to prove the naysayers wrong and to build a life with a man who seemed way outside of the parameters of “my league.”
My parents are decidedly of two minds about this job — my mother ecstatic for me to find a job with a salary and the opportunity to thrive and my father dubious of yet another generation of advertising. “It’s a fickle business” he says, and would later in the year send me a card to tell me “You went against my best advice, and I’ve never been so proud.”
I get this job for two reasons — I have experience assisting challenging personalities — once for a woman in college who let me plan her parties and arrange her flowers in exchange for a sum I deemed all the money in the world and handmedowns. The second time, for a man between college and grad school who called me fat on a regular basis and who hoarded splenda packets in such quantities he needed a storage unit for the splenda packets alone. The second thing is the chutzpah I have to call and tell them that I have another opportunity and “are you going to make me an offer or not?!”
On October 3, I walk into the office supremely overdressed and ready to work. To do whatever was necessary to fight the millenial stereotype and make up for lost time in graduating mid recession. I am wearing Navy Blue Ralph Lauren and olive green heels. I am put at a desk a room away from my boss and was moved to the desk outside of his office nearly immediately, displacing a woman who I could already tell was one of the more overworked and underappreciated in the office. His office is large, with double doors on either side, half shrine to Bruce Springsteen and half highschool gym locker room. He is loud until he is not and plays music at a volume that suits his mood, not the agency’s productivity.
He has wild grey hair and will forget my name until he remembers it enough to give me a nickname. His intelligence radiates. No one can keep up. Nothing is precious to him, but everything is sacred.
My days are long and I have an unquenchable desire to fit in, to be one of the cool kids in the office. I watch women in their expensive jeans come and go, on and off planes, presenting to clients in a way that I don’t yet understand. They drink a lot and all I want is for them to invite me to drink with them. They do. The bar next door creates a hole in my meager paycheck and I can still smell the long nights at the office, a mix of bad red wine, hours old sushi and stale smoke. My eyes burn and my pants get tighter and I am proud of every day.
My boss and I joke about Mummenschanz in relation to the overtired reps from our heathcare company. I think he is enchanted that I know anything about Mummenschanz as a 25 year old. This is the first of many weird cultural lifelines that I will build with my boss, until my boss becomes my mentor and the lifelines aren’t so much built as they are nutured. He tells me that I am going to be great, that I am already great and that he will let me know when I’m getting in my own way. He makes me promise to max out my 401k and gets mad at me when I have frivolous purchases delivered to the office. I bring him cold water in a crystal glass every morning and we talk about his schedule and music and books and politicians. He’s the only person in the world who has takes hotter than mine. He never lets me quit.
He tells me I am too smart to be his assistant, that the world has bigger plans for me. I cry. I get promoted. I get promoted again. And then I get promoted again. I am 28. I build relationships with colleagues, with clients and they become friends. I travel around the world. I live for three months in New York, hopping from hotel to hotel, getting yelled at by a man who is written about in the New York Times often. I cry often. I am Eloise and I am Jane Craig. I am an ingenue some days and a real bitch others. I end up at dirty strip clubs off the highway, at brothels in South America and at the best steakhouses in the world. I have the highest highs. I end up in the emergency room twice a year for anxiety and feel anxious for missing the time at work. I have the lowest lows. I refuse to accept that my work or my being is pleasing anyone, though I’m sure people like to be around me more than they like my work, and I am unsure how to reconcile that. I smoke too many cigarettes. I drink too much. I work too much. I am too much. I am not enough.
I have talks about the future with my boss. He has given me so much. So much opportunity to be great. And what’s next? He tells me to enjoy the moments even though, he says, he knows how hard it is to do that, that he can’t even do that. He pushes me to work harder and be better and stops telling me how great I am. You should already know that, he says when I ask him. I love him for what he gives, but more for what he doesn’t. He tells me that I need to look out for myself, that I will always need to rely on myself to provide and that I should never relinquish the power of independence. He tells me that I need to take time for me, to work out, to think about how I treat myself because I can only depend on me.
It is November 9, 2016. The night before, Donald Trump is elected president and I cry all night. This is also the day I tell my boss I am leaving. I have threatened to leave before — not enough money, too little credit, I’m exhausted, I’m wired, the world is my enemy, the agency hates me — but this time I mean it. I am moving across the country to take a job working for another creative genius. I cry. I am sad for the country and sad for my space in it.
It is December 2016 and I get a package in California from my boss and his most magnificent wife. The note suggests they saw this necklace and thought of me and how am I liking California? I look around my efficiency apartment with beige carpets and I cry. I put the necklace on and never take it off.
It is February 2017 and we are emailing back and forth trying to figure out how to get me back to the east coast. My marriage is frayed again, the fires have destroyed everything that surrounds my efficiency with beige carpet and I want to come home. He tells me “Do not settle” and I understand it as a note on all aspects of my life.
It is March 2019. I am in Maine for my birthday with my husband. Our marriage is on life support. I visit with my boss. The book I sent him for his birthday is still unopened, which is unusual. We talk about all the things we always talk about. He wants me to buy a house, to make diversified investments. He makes me listen to Sharon Van Etten as if I’ve never heard of her before. She’s just so great, he says. He is so proud of me, he says. Look at you now, Lyndsinator, you are the wind beneath your wings, he says.
I have visions of speaking to younger people and talking about him — about finding someone who believes in you and letting them believe in you, because it’s not as easy as you might think it is. I hug him twice and thank him for the millionth time for pushing.
Again he says, Lyndsinator, you did this — you are the wind beneath your wings, Lyndsinator.
He touches his wild grey hair and crosses his arms and we make plans to make plans.
It is April 2019. I am moderating focus groups at a large office park outside of Philadelphia and it is hours before I have a chance to glance at my phone. As soon as I pick up my phone, my life shifts. He is dead. He is dead and I am moderating focus groups. He is already laughing from wherever he is. And now I am sitting in a parking lot crying in white heels. I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I will never understand. I leave. My boss would have been mad at me for leaving. I am mad at him for leaving. I cry for a month. I don’t know how to explain the loss to people. He is my boss, no, a mentor, no, a friend, no a second father, no he is just who he is. And what does it matter? He’s gone.
It is August 2019 and I heed my boss’s advice not to settle by having lawyers draw up papers to end a marriage that has gone on too long. My life is not mine, I tell the clouds, hoping he will hear. I think he does. Talking to him by way of the clouds brings me more peace than talking to my therapist who I fire with no replacement at the ready.
It is April 2021. I have accepted a job offer at a decorated agency in New York. It is the first time I accept a job without his wisdom and by now the millionth time I cannot call him to give him good news.
In the moment, I am Charlie Brown at Christmas. “I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.”
It is impossible for me to enjoy the moment for anything more than a moment because all I can think of is wanting to call my boss. To thank him for the magic, for the push, for never letting me quit. It haunts me that I can’t share this space with him, because even though I know he was proud of me for being me, wouldn’t he have taken some pride, some ownership in this as well? And how can I be so selfish to think about him now. When something special happens to me. Would he just say he’s proud but still think that maybe I’m not doing things for the right reason? Would he have some words of wisdom? Would he tell me to enjoy the moment? Would he tell me to call my financial guys immediately and have them put me on an allowance? I will never know the answer. But I like to hope that somewhere he can hear me, talking to him through the clouds, giving the advice he’d give me to the universe and relying on the universe to disperse it accordingly.
I will have many other bosses in my life, but I will never have another Greg Smith. Greg Smith who was wide open and completely shut. Greg Smith who gave everything he had to those around him. Greg Smith who crossed his arms, and chewed his cheeks and listened to music as a sport.
I got a new job, GS. Tell me I’m the wind beneath my wings, GS.
I’ve fallen in love, GS. I wish you could meet him.
Tell me more about Sharon Van Etten, GS. I wish I could hear you talk about her.
How do you think Uncle Joe is doing, GS? He’s carrying the world on his shoulders, right?
Tell me it’s OK, GS.
You’re the best, GS.
I miss you, GS.
May all your favorite bands stay together, GS.
