Reinventing Middle Age

 Dear Reader,

I'm trying to figure out what middle age looks like.

Do you know what it looks like? If so, can you please tell me? Because I can't find a roadmap that makes sense to me.

I think twenty or thirty years ago if you'd asked me what it looked like I would have made a snarky joke about buying a sports car, or about saggy boobs, but the truth is I didn't have a clue then, and I don't have a clue now. (Joke's on me: I have no desire nor funds for an impractical sports car, and thanks to breast cancer reconstruction my girls will be perky forever thanks to the silicone blobs that have replaced my feminine flesh.) I certainly wouldn't have predicted the permanent changes brought by cancer treatment, but I REALLY wouldn't have predicted a decade old divorce and living alone. I think my twenty-something self would have been horrified, and would have cried herself to sleep at the thought.

There-there, twenty-something self. It's really not that bad. Actually... it's really good. No, really, I'm not just saying that!

My twenty-something self was a people pleaser. She knew some very important things - like that she was strong and capable, and that her friendships would be her salvation, and that she wanted a life that was meaningful. She was filled with fire, but she bit her tongue too often around men, and played the part that she was told to play. She really, truly believed that she was unworthy of love, and so when people behaved badly she knew that this was just how it went for her. She looked at people who seemed to have it figured out and she took notes: how did they get like that? She couldn't figure it out, but she kept trying, determined and hopeful even when she was scared. (She was pretty scared.) She was aware of her people pleasing and starting to work on it.

My twenty-something self had a roadmap. There was a list of things to accomplish before marriage: college degree, career, financial independence, world travel, multiple boyfriends, live alone without roommates. The minute she ticked off those boxes, she got engaged to a nice guy, and got married a week before her 30th birthday, right on time. She knew what the future looked like: career. House. Dog. Baby. Motherhood.

And then...? I don't know. It stopped with motherhood. I could imagine PTA meetings (note: I find them colossally boring and I am a horrible PTA member, as it turns out), field trips (I loved going on Tessa's field trips!), dinner parties, sleepovers. I carved out little slivers for myself: a girls' weekend once a year if I was lucky, the occasional happy hour.

But I had no idea what came next. Anything past 40 just looked - well, it didn't look like anything. Maybe that's because I was lacking in imagination, or maybe that's because my mother's life was so different than my own (at 40, I had a 7 year old and was deep into parenting; at 40 my own mother had a daughter a couple years into college).

My twenty-something self had no idea. But honestly? My forty-something self didn't, either. Aside from noticing some crinkles around my eyes or how my knees hurt more with running, my forty-something self wasn't that different than my thirty-something self.

But here I am, fifty-something (53, if you care), and it only now occurs to me that THERE IS NO ROADMAP. Nobody wrote it. There are certainly women out there, ahead of me, forging their best lives, but I am not privy to their experiences, and often I just don't know who they are. Hollywood certainly doesn't help (Emma Thompson is a favorite actress, but I still can't get over her middle aged depiction in Love, Actually - her character is so utterly lost in her own life, so lacking spark and vitality...).

Now, before some helpful person tells me about the books that are available on middle age, and that there is a road map RIGHT HERE, let me tell you that Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway might be a brilliant character, but in no way do I desire her particular map of life. Nor do I desire to follow Maggie in Breathing Lessons.

I read every book I could find about pregnancy, parenting, marriage. But I haven't read many books about middle age. I tried recently to read a bestseller book about finding joy "in the second half of life" but I could not find myself in it - the people it was writing for are miserable, I think, and I am not miserable. Maybe I read the wrong book. I quit partway through, because it really wasn't written for me. I couldn't relate at all.

So I'm writing my own roadmap.

I have this metaphor I've been thinking about: we are often told to give our children roots and wings. When they're little we're constantly trying to make sure that they don't fly off and get lost so we clip their wings with hand holding and curfews and other sensible restraints, but now that they are launching into adulthood we are to let them fly. But I also read something that said that a child will only come into adulthood as emotionally mature as their parent(s), and so this made me think of my family's history and how in many ways I feel that I started in a dark place, and as Tessa has grown I asked her to climb onto my back, and I've been climbing the walls of this dark place, heading toward the light, carrying us both. As I've climbed, I've shown her how to climb, how to keep looking toward the life, how to continue even when exhausted, how to find footholds and places to grasp even when they aren't immediately apparent. But now she's an adult, and in moving to college, she needs to let go of my shoulders, flutter her new wings, and continue climbing and flying on her own.

The day we dropped her off at college last year, I watched her new wings unfold, and with happy tears in my eyes, hugged her and promised her that she was ready to fly. I watched her as she fluttered her wings, rose off the ground, circled above me. "Look up, Mom! I'm flying! I can fly!" I heard her spirit exclaim as we put the finishing touches on her dorm room, as I walked to the car alone.

But what I didn't know is that when I left her to fly, my own load was lighter. For better or for worse, I've taken her as high as I can go, given her my best, but what she does now is her path, not mine. I can worry, but my worry will not change things. I can advise, but she can take my advice or not. It is her life, not mine, and when she let go of me to find that life... I lightened. It is not my responsibility to find her path anymore, it is hers. My job is to cheer and support, but not to lead.

And the lightness of this is extraordinary. I didn't realize how much effort it took to carry us both out of that dark place and to the light. But when I looked up and saw the sky, I saw her circling overhead, and my heart was filled with joy. With that joy, I felt my own wings fluttering. I'd forgotten them! But they've been there all along. I can fly, too! I am lighter, and my wings can carry me now. The climbing was arduous, but the flying has such joy! I am aloft, feeling wonder, looking down at the world, my life, the path I've taken, and I'm in awe that I'm here at all.

What I want now - my roadmap - is to fly up into the sky, to experiment with floating on the currents, making lazy circles of delight, and then zooming here and there to places I want to explore. When Tessa and I find ourselves floating the same current, it's a delight: look at us flying! Hello! Helllooooo! But we also go our own ways, on our own paths. We can meet in the air, and we can meet at home (my home will always be her home, even when it's not), and we can tell each other about the adventures we've had. Sometimes we can share adventures. We can float apart, and then come back together. The nest is always here for our rest. She will undoubtedly go higher and faster and farther than I'm comfortable with. I hope she does. I'll hold my breath until she comes back, but when she does, I know that when I hear her stories I'll think, "Wait, I want to try these new things, too!" and I will fly farther and faster, too. She's teaching me, and I'm teaching her. I try to stay a few steps ahead, but when she passes me it's okay. Isn't that what I always wanted for her?

This is my map. I want to float in the currents, resume my explorations. I want to fly so that my daughter will know that she can fly, too. I want to soar so that my heart can soar.

I worked hard to get out of the dark place. My parents were young when they had me, and their parents didn't give them a model of what it's like to grow or to become who they were meant to be: some parenting manuals might have come in handy, and some support around trauma would have changed everything. I had to figure out a lot on my own; this isn't even their fault (their trauma was inherited, too), but I think it's the truth. But I've been working on it my whole life, and I hope that I brought my daughter much closer to the sky than they were able to bring me, and that I showed her a way to find her own path, and that I told the truth. I hope her journey was easier because of how far I carried her, and I hope that we never clip our wings again, never again forget that we were born to fly.

And now it's time for me to keep going, to stay a step ahead of her, to forge a beautiful life at every age and circumstance.

Middle age is learning new things.

Middle age is knowing what I love.

Middle age is keeping my close relationship to my daughter AND letting her fly.

Middle age is being honest with myself.

Middle age is having friendships that have spanned decades, and treasuring them.

Middle age is knowing that terrible things happen, but that beautiful and amazing things happen too, so I just need to ride out the former to get to the latter.

Middle age is a chance to get closer to my truth.

Middle age is a chance to let go of old lies - that I'm too fat, not good enough, not loveable, not worthy - and embrace new truths: that my body is strong, that I'm filled with love and light, that I have beautiful community, that I'm still discovering my gifts.

There is going to be loss: bodies do not always age gracefully. But I already knew that! At 35, my body got me through cancer, and there was loss, but I am still here, and in that there is so much beauty. At 42 I lost my marriage, but maybe what I lost is not as big as what I gained.

Middle age is what I make of it.

I don't have more than a glass of wine every few weeks because it makes me feel sluggish. I drink gallons of herbal tea.

I am delighted that sneakers are fashionable, because my days of shoving my feet into pointy heels that are hard to walk in are done. 

I still like a plunging neckline when I'm feeling sassy.

A bikini body is a body wearing a bikini, and since I like swimming at the beach I have a bikini body. Not a supermodel body, a bikini body. A body in a bikini.

I'm rescheduling the dinner party that got canceled due to Covid. I have a hike on the calendar for next weekend. I'm determined to write. I love my job. I still believe in love in my future, despite it all. My turn will come.

It's not pointless, and it's not sad, and it's not lonely. It's my job to find the point, to navigate sadness and find joy where it exists, and to remember the community that I have spent decades building and to feel their love.

Tessa will come home for Thanksgiving, and I will pick her up at the bus stop at the airport, and I will squeeze her so tight. She will find the silly matching sweatshirts that I bought for us with a Taylor Swift lyric we both like, and she can wear it or not but it gives me pleasure to give it to her. The house will be stocked with her favorite treats. We will follow our tradition of getting our Christmas tree up on Black Friday, reminiscing about each ornament, drinking hot cocoa, playing carols. And then afterwards I'll lean back and let her go out with her boyfriend or friends, and she'll fly far from me for a bit. I'll fly too, hiking or going to a movie or writing, safe in the knowledge that when she needs me again, she'll find me. By the time I drop her off at the bus stop at the airport, we'll both be ready for her to go. Me to do my routines - yoga class, meeting a friend for happy hour, working late, enjoying a clean sink without her dishes in it! - and her to do hers.

There is joy in this. So much joy. Anything is possible, just like it was when I was 22. I can reinvent myself over and over again, and build community along the way, and lose and discover myself over and over again. Though there has been pain on the journey, it got me to where I am now, and I like where I am now.

I'm strengthening my wings, getting better at flying. I'm discovering new things, new people, new places, new plans. When Tessa and I meet in the currents, I've got a huge smile on my face. We can fly! Look at us, isn't it crazy? Marvelous? Miraculous?

I'm watching my own progress, writing it down, so that one day when my daughter notices that she's got strands of silver in her hair will smile and think, "I've got this!" and she'll see the color of starlight and whitecaps and waterfalls, not decay. No, decay isn't silver.

I have a gray stripe that I thought of dying; my hairdresser was horrified. "People pay to make a stripe like that!" she told me. I don't know if she was lying, but I don't mind. I have grown to like it - my flash of silver in one swoop that frames one side of my face. I don't look 20-something, but I don't think I look "old" either. I just look like myself. Still learning, still hoping, still exploring. Still loving. Still trying. Still believing in the silver light of the stars. Still flying in their light.

And that's enough roadmap for me.