The clarity of hindsight is often overstated, particularly when it concerns the relationships that transform us. The English teacher who taught us King Lear somehow becomes the sole reason that we write; our first big love opened us to the world; our childhood barber is the reason we smoke. But at times in our lucky lives, it is possible to know what you have while you have it. I learned this from someone who’d spent a lifetime trying to accurately perceive what was in front of her.
For nine years, I worked as a personal assistant to the titanic Joan Didion. Joan was in her 80s, I in my early 20s, and for a good chunk of the time I worked for her, I lived with Joan in her apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. We were, to outsiders, an odd pair: Joan, tremendously frail in her small, birdlike body, quiet, exacting; I, on the other hand, tall, excitable, eager to prove my worth, still in the process of self-discovery. Day by day, we sat together and read poems and the newspaper, listened to music, smoked. Day by day, she was teaching me how to sit still, to be watchful, to be present. When you are friends with someone 60 years your senior, you learn quickly that this moment – this exact moment – might be your last together.
