The Girl Who Left Newark
NAPERVILLE - WHEATON - GLEN ELLYN - ELMHURST - GENEVA - ST. CHARLES - BARRINGTON - BARTLETT PHOTOGRAPHER
Before the Fall by Alicia Staley Johnson
The still life at the heart of this week’s story.
Happy Sunday my friend!
After what feels like a very full summer, this week was wonderfully quiet—and I was more than happy to let it be.
We enjoyed Labor Day, celebrated our youngest’s birthday, welcomed someone to the studio to look at it for an upcoming rental, and squeezed in two Chicago shoots. But in between, there was actually a little room to just be home.
I finally made my way back into the garden to do some much-needed cleanup and marvel at my dahlias. This is my first year growing them, and I am completely smitten. Some of the blooms are nearly the size of dinner plates, and every time I walk outside there seems to be another beauty waiting for me.
The tomatoes are coming in faster than I can pick them, we’re gathering the last of the cucumbers, and I’ve had lots of garden time with my grandchildren—which might be my favorite part of all.
The tomatoes are coming in faster than I can pick them, we’re gathering the last of the cucumbers, and I’ve had lots of garden time with my grandchildren—which might be my favorite part of all.
Little Ellis especially loves heading out to the garden with Mimi to help pick the “no-no’s”—which is, of course, two-year-old for tomatoes. And I have to say, everything in the garden tastes a little better when you have a tiny helper beside you.
It was nothing particularly grand or exciting. Just work, family, birthdays, dirty garden hands, ridiculously large dahlias and a little breathing room.
And quite frankly, after this summer, that felt pretty wonderful.
Some BTS from last week.
Soft Focus: The Girl Who Left Newark
It’s funny what the body remembers.
A few weeks ago, Dan and I were flying to New York for the gallery exhibition in Chelsea. We were excited, of course, but not nervous. At this point in my life, I’ve learned to hold these opportunities a little more loosely. I’m grateful for them. I’m excited by them. I love the adventure of them.
But they don’t define me.
So the flight felt like any other flight. I hadn’t even paid much attention to our itinerary. I assumed we were flying into LaGuardia, and when I travel with Dan, I have a habit of letting him handle the logistics while I simply follow along.
But as we began our descent, something strange happened.
I started to feel anxious.
Not panicked. Not even particularly afraid. Just unsettled. Jittery. That unmistakable feeling when your body seems to know something your mind hasn’t quite figured out yet.
I couldn’t understand it.
Then the flight attendant announced that we would soon be landing in Newark, New Jersey.
I turned to Dan.
“Why are we flying into Newark?”
He looked at me like this was an entirely reasonable question with an entirely uninteresting answer.
It had simply been the best flight option. Newark wasn’t far from Manhattan. No big deal.
Except suddenly, it felt like a very big deal.
And then I understood.
The last time I had been in Newark Airport, I was somewhere around twenty-four years old.
And I was leaving New Jersey with a broken heart.
There is a chapter of my life I don’t talk about very often. Not because it is some great secret, but because it feels so far removed from the life I live now that sometimes it almost feels as though it happened to someone else.
Before Dan, I was married.
I was twenty-three years old, incredibly young and, looking back, incredibly naive. He was from New Jersey. I was from Chicago. We had moved east for a job opportunity for him, and although I hated being so far from my family, part of me probably thought of it as an adventure.
Adventure was not something I had much experience with then.
I had grown up in a very small world. A loving world, but a quiet one. Our family didn’t travel very much. We weren’t particularly adventurous. I was the kind of girl who was afraid of her own shadow more often than I would like to admit.
So moving halfway across the country felt enormous.
For a while, I suppose it was exciting.
And then it wasn’t.
Our marriage began falling apart, although at the time I didn’t fully understand just how much.
One Memorial Day weekend, I was scheduled to fly home to Chicago to visit my family. I had a nannying job in New Jersey and planned to return after the holiday.
The night before my flight, my husband left for work. He worked nights and was supposed to be home sometime around two in the morning. He would sleep for a few hours and then drive me to Newark for my flight.
Before he left, though, he said goodbye differently.
It’s hard to explain.
He had been distant for quite some time, and suddenly he wasn’t. There was something unusually emotional about the goodbye. Something that felt more final than, “Have a good trip. I’ll see you in a few days.”
My heart noticed it.
My mind didn’t know what to do with it.
And then he never came home.
I stayed awake most of the night wondering where he was.
Had there been an accident?
Was he hurt?
Was he okay?
Somewhere underneath all of those questions was another possibility my heart probably already understood, even if I wasn’t ready to.
This was long before cell phones and Uber and all the conveniences we take for granted now. I was young, broke, alone in New Jersey, with very few people I could call and a flight I needed to catch that morning.
After a lot of panic and tears, I called his mother.
She and her partner drove from Pompton Lakes, a 30 minute drive, to pick me up and take me to Newark Airport. She was always very kind to me, and I remember being so grateful for her that morning.
I boarded the plane for Chicago not knowing where my husband was.
Not knowing if my marriage was ending.
Not knowing, really, what came next.
Days passed after I arrived home and I still hadn’t heard from him.
Back then, before caller ID became commonplace—or at least before we could afford it—we had a little system. If one of us wanted the other to know who was calling, we would let the phone ring once, hang up, and then call back.
Our secret ring.
A few days after I had flown to my parent’s house, I decided to try it.
Ring once.
Hang up.
Call again.
He answered.
“Hey, Liz.”
Hmmm…Liz was not my name.
Apparently, our secret ring wasn’t just “our” secret anymore.
And in that instant, I knew.
The marriage was over.
There are times in life when everything you thought your future would be disappears almost overnight.
At twenty-four, I didn’t have the emotional tools I have now. I didn’t have perspective. I didn’t have decades of life behind me proving that heartbreak can be survived, that beginnings sometimes disguise themselves as endings, or that the worst thing happening to you in a particular moment may one day become nothing more than a chapter in a much larger story.
I was simply heartbroken.
Scared.
Lost.
And flying away from Newark believing, I’m sure, that my life had gone terribly wrong.
All of that came rushing back as our plane touched down this summer.
Not the details at first.
Just the feeling.
Walking through the airport, I kept noticing how familiar everything seemed. And the more familiar it became, the more I understood why my body had begun reacting before my mind did.
It remembered.
Thirty-some years had passed, but somewhere inside me was still that young woman walking through Newark Airport carrying a suitcase and a future she could no longer recognize.
And then I looked at Dan.
The man I have now spent more than three decades building a life with.
The man sitting beside me as we flew to New York because two pieces of my artwork were hanging in a Chelsea gallery.
And I thought about the woman who had left this airport all those years ago.
She was broke.
She was frightened.
She had no idea what she was going to do next.
And now she was coming back.
Not because life had turned out exactly the way she imagined.
It had turned out bigger.
I became a photographer. An artist. A business owner.
I built a career I never could have dreamed up for myself at twenty-three.
I married a man who became my partner in every possible sense of the word.
We built a family.
We traveled the world.
We raised children.
We welcomed grandchildren.
We built a business.
We created a home filled with people, dogs, flowers, noise, projects, dinners, celebrations and all the beautiful chaos that makes a life.
And somewhere along the way, that frightened girl became someone who regularly gets on airplanes headed toward places she has never been, says yes to things that scare her, creates work and sends it out into the world, and still finds herself wondering what adventure might be waiting around the next corner.
I wish I could go back to Newark Airport that morning and find her.
I wish I could sit beside her for just a minute.
I wouldn’t tell her that what was happening didn’t hurt.
It did.
I wouldn’t tell her everything would be easy.
It wouldn’t.
I think I would simply tell her:
You have no idea how much life is still waiting for you.
This thing that feels like the end isn’t the end.
Not even close.
One day you are going to come back here.
You’ll walk through this same airport with the man who has loved you for decades, on your way to celebrate something you created, in a life so big that the girl you are right now wouldn’t even know how to imagine it.
Just keep going.
And perhaps that is why I’m telling this story now.
Because somewhere, someone is sitting inside a chapter of her life that feels like the whole book.
It isn’t.
Sometimes the only evidence we have that things can change is the life of someone who has already walked a little farther down the road.
And sometimes, if we are very lucky, life brings us back to the exact place where we once thought everything was falling apart…
just so we can see how far we’ve come.
*This essay and more can be read on my Our Cozy Compound substack
Dan and I dancing in front of an image of the Brooklyn bridge.
WHAT I’M LOVING THIS WEEK
Inspiring Follow: @gill.meller
This week’s inspiring follow is chef and food writer Gill Meller, and I honestly cannot get enough of his work.
Yes, I follow him for the food. His cooking is simple, seasonal and so connected to the ingredients and the natural world—basically everything I love. But it’s the way he shows it that has me completely hooked.
His reels feel like little pieces of cinematic beauty. They’re quiet and calming, beautifully filmed, and somehow make the simple act of preparing food feel like something worth slowing down to notice.
Now that I’m dipping my own toes into creating recipe videos for Our Cozy Compound, I find myself watching his work with an entirely different eye. The light. The movement. The sounds. The pacing. The storytelling without needing to say very much at all.
Basically, cinematography goals.
I have a very long way to go, but I love following people whose work makes me want to learn something new and push myself creatively—and Gill’s does exactly that.
If beautiful food, seasonal living and the kind of videos that make you want to slow down for a minute are your thing, I have a feeling you’ll love following him too.
What I’m Loving: Dolce Vita Beny Loafers
I have been looking for the perfect loafer for fall, and I think I may have found her.
The Dolce Vita Beny square-toe loaferhas that slightly vintage, menswear-inspired look that I love, but the squared toe and soft suede keep it feeling modern. I especially love this warm camel color—it’s one of those neutrals that seems to work with everything.
And if you remember the double-breasted blazer from Anthropologiethat I featured in last week’s newsletter, these are so good with it. Add jeans and a simple tee or button-down and suddenly you look completely pulled together with very little effort—which is pretty much my favorite kind of outfit.
They also feel very autumn in Europe to me, which, quite frankly, is enough to get me every time.
A classic loafer with just enough personality to make it interesting. I have a feeling these are going to be in heavy rotation this fall.
As I sit here writing this week’s newsletter, I can hear our piano being tuned in the other room.
Every six months, almost like clockwork, Michael Dulka of Downers Grove Piano arrives at our door, tuning equipment in hand, ready to keep our beautiful old baby grand in the best condition possible.
Michael has been tuning her since we moved into Our Cozy Compound nearly eight years ago. And I say “beautiful” very intentionally because, while she may not exactly be one of the world’s finest musical instruments, boy, is she pretty. 😂 She’s an antique with the most beautiful, ornate case and so much character that I fell in love with her for her looks long before worrying about her pedigree.
Michael works on some truly magnificent pianos, so I’m fairly certain tending to our old girl is a bit of a downgrade. But he has never treated her that way. He shows up faithfully, works his magic, and keeps her sounding—and functioning—as beautifully as possible.
There is something I love about finding people who are masters of these increasingly rare trades. People who understand old things, know how to care for them, and appreciate that sometimes something doesn’t have to be extraordinarily valuable to be worth preserving.
But my favorite part comes at the very end.
When Michael has finished tuning, he sits down at the piano and tests his work by playing the most exquisite classical piece. For those few minutes, I stop whatever I’m doing and just listen. It is truly heavenly. Suddenly our beautiful old girl fills the house with music, and Our Cozy Compound feels a little less like home and a little more like a concert hall.
Quite frankly, I think I look forward to that part every six months almost as much as the piano does.
So, if you happen to have a piano in need of a little love, Michael is your man.
FROM MY KITCHEN
Some recipes are inspired by the garden…and some by breakfast in New York.
When Dan and I were in New York, we stopped for breakfast at L’Amico, where I ordered the most delicious smashed peas and avocado toast. And naturally, after one bite, I was already thinking, I need to figure out how to make this at home.
This version isn’t exactly the same, but it’s pretty darn close—and so delicious. Sweet peas, creamy avocado, fresh dill and mint, cottage cheese, and a perfectly poached egg, all piled onto a thick slice of toasted sourdough.
It looks a little fancy, but it’s actually surprisingly simple to make. And with fresh herbs still coming from the garden, it feels like the perfect little bridge between summer and fall.
Save this one for a slow weekend breakfast. Or, if you’re like me, make it for lunch and pretend you’re sitting at a café in New York.
SMASHED PEA & AVOCADO TOAST
Makes 4 servings
For the smashed peas
2½ cups frozen peas
Zest of 1 lemon
Pinch of chili flakes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Handful of fresh dill, roughly chopped
Handful of fresh mint, roughly chopped
1 cup cottage cheese
For the avocado smash
1 large ripe avocado
Juice of ½ lemon
Pinch of kosher salt
Pinch of chili flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
For serving
4 thick slices sourdough bread
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
4 large eggs
Extra-virgin olive oil
Fresh dill and mint
Chili flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
Lemon wedges
INSTRUCTIONS
Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil and prepare a separate bowl of ice water.
Add the peas to the boiling water and cook for about 40 seconds. Drain and immediately transfer to the ice water. Let cool for one minute, then drain well.
Place the peas in a food processor with the lemon zest, chili flakes, dill, mint, kosher salt, and pepper. Pulse briefly until the peas are roughly smashed but still have plenty of texture.
Transfer the pea mixture to a bowl and gently fold in the cottage cheese. Taste and adjust the seasoning, then set aside.
In a separate bowl, mash the avocado with the lemon juice, kosher salt, chili flakes, and freshly ground black pepper.
Bring a medium saucepan of water to a gentle simmer and add the vinegar. Crack each egg into a small individual bowl or cup. Stir the simmering water in a circular motion to create a gentle swirl, then carefully slide an egg into the center.
Cook each egg for 2–3 minutes, or until the white is set but the yolk remains soft. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a plate. Repeat with the remaining eggs.
Drizzle the sourdough slices with olive oil and toast until golden and crisp.
Spread each slice generously with the avocado smash. Spoon the smashed pea mixture over the top and finish with a poached egg.
Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and garnish with fresh dill, mint, chili flakes, black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon.
with love and light,
Alicia Staley Johnson
of Alicia’s Photography
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