1
ONCE UPON A TIME
Gretchen
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Gretchen Miller. Gretchen grew up to be a badass. She came from an OK family—nobody hit each other or screamed at each other. They liked each other well enough most of the time. But no one ever had any money. Gretchen’s mom worked at a diner, and her dad worked… sometimes. He wasn’t one of those stereotypical toxic men. He didn’t drink too much or yell too much. He didn’t cheat on Gretchen’s mom, and he attended Gretchen’s dance recitals—when there was money for lessons and therefore recitals requiring his presence. He just had trouble seeing himself as the kind of guy who made minimum wage doing general labor, or driving the shuttle at a car dealership, or assistant-managing a McDonald’s, or, or, or. When he’d drink—not too much, but enough to get maudlin—he would say, “Is this all there is?”
Is this all there is?
Every few months he would decide he was meant for better things. Bigger things. And then he would quit his job in favor of some vision only he could see. Unfortunately, often his visions involved pyramid schemes. Gretchen’s mom was acareer waitress, but she didn’t bring home enough to float the household on her own, so when Gretchen’s dad was in one of his delusions-of-grandeur phases, things in the Miller household would get tight. Tighter. Gretchen and her sister, Ingrid, would get free lunch at school, which sounds great in theory but was in fact not great, as the school only served free meals to kids who qualified for them. Which meant Gretchen and Ingrid also qualified for a lot of cruelty from their peers.
But Gretchen, she didn’t let any of that stop her. Gretchen was the kind of person who watched and learned. She was a hustler. She scrabbled and saved, working through high school waiting tables and teaching at her childhood dance studio. Hell, she worked throughmiddleschool, babysitting and shoveling driveways and doing whatever anyone would give her money to do. She saved that money. For what, she wasn’t sure. Forsomething.
All she knew was that she wasn’t going to be like him. Likethem. She loved her parents, but she’d seen, from a young age, that the key to happiness, to peace, was self-sufficiency. To not need to rely on a man or the Man. To be your own boss.
And I am. Me. I’m Gretchen. The badass. When I was exactly halfway through my two-year community college degree in business and marketing, I sat myself down and said,Now. Now is the time to turn thatsomethinginto an actual thing.
And so Miss Miller’s of Minnetonka was born. Tap, jazz, ballet, and hip-hop, ages three to eighteen. This is my seventeenth year in business. I own my own house. I have a retirement account. I don’t have to wear a suit or a uniform to work. I don’t have to ask my boss when I want to do something, because I am my boss.
I don’t need a husband or a boyfriend to chip in on themortgage or the vet bills or the vacations I’m too busy to take anyway. If a boyfriend started mooching off me, it wouldn’t make any difference to my bottom line. Actually, if a boyfriend started mooching off me, he’d be demoted to ex-boyfriend.
So yeah: I did it. I’m a success. All those annoying memes you see about girlbosses are me.
So what’s the problem?
I’m having a fucking midlife crisis, that’s the problem.
Is this all there is?
My best friend, Rory, stood and clinked her spoon against her glass even though it was only the two of us at dinner.
“I’d like to make a toast to—”
“Shh!” We were at Suz’s, an ice-cream parlor and diner in the same strip mall as my studio. It was often full of my students and their parents, and the news that was about to earn me a toast was not public yet.
“Oh, shoot, sorry.” Rory put her hand on her belly and sat back down. I didn’t know why she was holding the bump. She was barely showing at seven months—she was one of those cute pregnant ladies who look like they have a miniature basketball under their shirt but are otherwise physically unchanged by the process of growing a whole other human inside them. It would have been annoying if I didn’t love her so much.
Rory said, under her breath, “I get the need for secrecy, but if you think I’m not cheers-ing you, you’re crazy. Here’s to you and your growing empire,” she whispered. “May Miss Miller’s 2.0 be as awesome as the original.”
I grinned. “Do you think I need a new name? Miss Miller’s works for a kids’ dance studio, but does the new building, withthe addition of yoga and Pilates stuff, need a name that’s less cutesy? More elevated?”
That’s right: new building. The badass was expanding her empire. After almost twenty years renting in a strip mall, I was buying a freaking building and doubling my square footage.
The answer to theIs this all there is?question had been no. Miss Miller’s of Minnetonka and an extremely shitty dating life that was slowly chipping away at my self-esteem were not all there was.
“Grow with Gretchen?” Rory suggested, laughing when I made a barfing noise.
“Elevated but not crunchy-granola.”
I wasn’t one of those woo-woo types, but I did do Pilates a couple times a week. It helped with the dancing aches and pains. Beyond that, it’s good for your brain. I believed in it—and yoga—as a force for good in the world. And like the dance studio, I wanted the yoga-and-Pilates side of things to be welcoming to all. But also as with the dance studio, I wasn’t in this just to do good in the world. What can I say? People who say money can’t buy happiness have never been poor.
So yeah, I did deserve to be toasted, even if it had to be on the sly. I was on my way to a whole new phase of life. Midlife crisis? I don’t know her.
“I say lean into it and straight-up call it Granola with Gretchen,” Rory said.
“Ha ha.”
“Well, whatever the name turns out to be,” Rory said, “I’m proud of you.”
