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72 Janice Shapiro

depressed and miserable and I just roamed around Mont-
gomery County looking for a decent cappuccino.
There was a local Mrs. Fields cookie café with a Faema
espresso machine. I became excited that this would be my
new place to sit, and sip, and figure things out. But the
counter people refused to learn how to use the exquisite
machine. I wrote to Mrs. Fields herself, explaining the waste
of a $10,000 machine that her employees wouldn’t use. She
had someone take the machine back. Now what?
I started applying to PhD programs in the DC/Virginia/
Maryland area. I figured Georgetown would accept me, as I
was an alumni. They didn’t. I took night courses in statistics.
I applied everywhere. I was an experienced therapist by then;
surely someone would accept me into a clinical psychology
PhD program. But no. I was rejected by every single one: evi-
dently, they wanted young male research types, not middle-
aged mothers. I almost ran my car into a pole; that’s how
low I had become, thinking that my life had come to this.
Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to.
Fortunately, I had kept my San Francisco office phone
number. My former San Francisco State professors had
started a freestanding counseling psychology PhD program
and they invited me to start in September. Quickly I formu-
lated a plan: get Jesse into a decent school for the fall, start
the program, restart my practice, and find an apartment to
live in with the kids while Dennis looked for a job back in
San Francisco.
But then Dennis couldn’t find a job, and Jesse was
rejected from every decent school. I was forced to make a
“Janice’s Choice”: Go back to San Francisco with one kid
and save myself , or kill myself in Silver Spring, Maryland.
I went back with Sam.
I arrived on my 40th birthday, started my PhD program
the following week, reopened my practice, and rented a one-
bedroom apartment. Jesse was “excited” to have Dennis to