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.

Middle Aged

I find it amusing, confusing, and bemusing that I am middle aged.

At 48, I am clearly in the middle part of my life (if I am lucky). I imagine celebrating my 100th birthday some day, and not everyone gets that lucky: life expectancy for women is 81 years, so if I'm average, I might only have 32 years left. I'm clearly in the middle of my life, no matter how I look at it.

What's weird about it is that I find it somewhat shocking. I suppose that time has passed for me as it has passed for everyone else, one minute, one hour, one day, one year at a time, and that is how I find myself here, but there is a part of it that makes me want to say, "Hold on, surely there has been a mistake?!"

I don't know what middle age is supposed to feel like, so I don't know if I'm getting it right. I have no idea what "right" middle age looks like.

I grew up with jokes that middle aged men had "crises" where they purchased sports cars, preferably red, but this confused me then and it confused me now. Why is that a crisis? If, at middle age, men could finally afford a sports car, and wanted to go have some fun, why is that silly or stupid or sad? But I'm not going to talk about middle aged men here because, well, I don't pretend to understand middle aged men in the slightest, but I have a few insights about being a middle aged woman. (Perhaps my male readers would like to chime in with their perspectives?)

Middle aged women, though, were invisible to me. Not young enough to be considered beautiful, sexy, or interesting, they were not old enough to be sweet little old ladies.

There are so many problems with that last sentence that I don't even know where to begin.

I think, if I have the messages "right," that the societal message for me as a middle aged woman is that I ought to invest in hair dye and anti-aging creme (they do know that the opposite of aging is death, right? do they know that?!). As I face my empty nest (my daughter is 15 and will head to college in a few short years) I am to struggle and wonder who I am now that mothering does not take up 99% of my waking thoughts. I am to wonder at millennials, and technology, and how I am not heard in meetings, and I am to start taking a back seat in my career. I am to slow down, to fade, to be quiet. I am invisible in film, on television, and in print media. I am to mourn that my hair isn't as thick and silky as it once was, and that my body is no longer suitable for bikinis.

And - and this is very important - I am supposed to believe that my life's path is set, that my chance to remake myself, my life, my passions, my impact, is done. I am to believe that it is what it is, I am either wildly successful or my life has been wasted, but it is what it is.

To all of that, I say PHOOEY.

Let's go over a few details about my life to bring you up to speed.

I'm 48, and I'm a divorced (about six years) single mom of a fifteen year old daughter. I'm a cancer survivor (breast cancer twelve years ago) and my body bears the scars and markings of that treatment, as well as the misfortune of living without estrogen since my diagnosis (all part of the treatment). Before divorce, I was a stay at home mom who was out of the workforce for close to a decade. My bank balance floats precariously close to disaster with great regularity; it seems a miracle that I have been able to stay on the right side of disaster as long as I have. Since divorce, I have restarted my career, starting from scratch to enter the non-profit world and working my way to an Executive Director position in that world, before returning to my true love of teaching and - at the age of 47 - taking on a teaching job for the first time in fourteen years.

You wouldn't be crazy if you looked at my life and said, "oh, honey, that sounds tough!" or "Bless your heart!" (if you're from the South). It's not all peaches and sunshine, and I couldn't blame you for thinking, "What a disaster!"

But you'd be wrong.

I am happier, right here and right now, than I have ever been in my entire life. I have a gray streak, funny little crinkles at the corners of my eyes, and my belly is soft....but I am strong, and healthy, and I don't feel gray, I feel...alive. Fiery. Vibrant. Nobody told me that I could feel like that, and I'm actually told that I DON'T feel like that. Take this article from The Atlantic about middle age: the writer tells me, "Perhaps it makes sense that middle-aged people increasingly cling to youth when the alternative is the slow drift into irrelevance."

Well.

No.

I think that the writer (who, to his credit, is reflecting what most people tell me or insinuate about middle age), is comically off his rocker if he's talking about my life. He's NOT talking about my life.

In middle age, I'm finally the me I've been longing to be all along. Oh, make no mistake, I wasn't aiming at a soft belly or a gray streak, but those things are so tiny compared to the rest. At 48, I'm not struggling to find my way under my parents' well intentioned but misguided patriarchal world view ("Why on earth would you want a masters degree if you're just going to have babies anyway?"), nor the desire to be a career woman but to navigate office politics that indicated that mens' voices were allowed but women shouldn't be strident or loud, and I'm through the difficult mess of trying to raise a young child whose needs, by definition, needed to be placed above my own. I created a career after my divorce that was based upon my daughter's need to access me, to flexibility, as well as the need to put food on the table, but now that she's older, I get to pick my own hours, and to cheerfully call her and say "Can you season the chicken and pop it in the oven, because I'm going to be late tonight?" without worrying about childcare or leaving her alone, because she's quite capable of putting chicken in the oven and old enough to enjoy having the house to herself for a couple extra hours as well. While I haven't found a grand romance since my divorce, I've had flirtations and dates galore, and I don't feel undesirable.

At 48, I feel like I'm finally, at long last, just getting started.

Irrelevant? I'm supposed to drift into irrelevance?

Not even close.

At 48, I've returned to work that sets my soul on fire, and, because my soul is on fire with caring about it, I excel at it. I am at ease with my students in a way that I wasn't when I taught in my early 30s, and when they test me with their teenage antics, I can raise an eyebrow at them and say, "You're kidding, right?" in a way that lets them know that they can't get away with it, but that I love them anyway.

At 48, I no longer go out on dates with men who don't interest me. I know who I am, I know what I like, and I know what I'm worth, and I can't be bothered with dating for the sake of dating any more; I have nothing to prove in that category. I hope for Le Grande Passion, but I'm not worried about it. It'll happen when it happens.

At 48, I've gotten political. I register people to vote. I hold meetings to discuss the issues in my home. I participate in local activities such as Citizen University or lectures. I'm not woke, but I'm waking, and I'm on fire with the desire to create equality within society, and to fight inequality when I see it. I'm not afraid to speak up (I'm not a little girl, and I've got experience, and education, so why wouldn't I speak up?) but I'm not as brash as needing to talk all the time, either, and I find the listening fascinating.

At 48, I'm reveling in these last years of heavy duty parenting. My 15 year old daughter startles me with the strength of her voice - I was not so sophisticated at her age, did not know my own mind so well, nor how to articulate my view of things - and when she reveals her strengths to me I'm overwhelmed by love and the desire to see her fly past me in life. I hope and pray that the things that held me back will not hold her back, and that she will surpass me, and that instead of this being a burden to me, it is a joy. I'm still ahead of her on the road, and I know that her life (as well as my own) will be easier if I can cut the path for her, so I'm inspired to be a model for her about what it means to really live, and in this way she keeps me young. One day she will teach me, and I can't wait to learn from her and to grow because of that, but for the next minute or two, I'm still guiding her, and having fun finding new ways to do that.

I am not as fit as I once was, but I see this, too, as temporary. Just a few years ago I was in the best shape of my life, but as I focused more on politics I focused less on exercise. At 48, I do not see this as proof of my mistakes, but rather, as an acknowledgment that one can't do it all all at the same time. This year is about re-entering education. I can run a marathon another year. I might.

At 48, my house is filled with real, true, deep friendships. I can call the people in my life that I call friends and they will come drink wine with me, or help me lift something heavy, or let me cry, or share my celebration. They hold my hand as I go for cancer testing, and then they're just as happy as I am when the results are good. These friendships are without jealousy, competition, or sly side-talk. I am included in their lives, as they are in mine, and we can go a month without talking or we can talk every day but they are constants none-the-less.

At 48, I shared my #metoo story and was released from it.

I march in the streets to proclaim my view of what the world could be. I know what matters to me, and I speak up for it. At 48, it seems, others want to listen to me. They say that I have a way of viewing the world that helps them, and they want to join me in my quest to improve things.

At 48, when I'm asked to join the committee/the board/the event, I know that I can be flattered but still say no. I know that when I say yes, I will commit with joy.

At 48, I am just getting started. I am finally, at last, free of some notions that didn't serve me. I am filled with wonder at it, that I can be so wholly myself, without a young woman's confusing lack of experience to guide her, but not yet elderly or infirm. Instead, I'm informed, excited, interested, and capable. Whether it is in the kitchen, where I whip up delicious new ideas without fear and then share them with friends and family, or in the workplace when I try new ideas and hope for the best (and course correct when they don't work), or in community activism where I take on leadership, or in parenting (where I find that I absolutely love mothering a fifteen year old because she's funny and smart and, though occasionally exasperating, she's fascinating and wonderful and I don't want to change her).

And best of all? I don't need to tell you all of this and then apologize for appearing too brash. I am not apologetic about my strengths, though I was taught to do so.

It's not perfect. Cancer + divorce = scary finances (or, as my friend B. once said, "scary-fine - I'm okay, but it's still scary, so I call it scary-fine"). I'd like to believe that there is a man out there who would make me a great partner, but I haven't met him yet, and so that makes me a little sad.

I don't have models for what middle age looks like, so I'm making it up as I go. Luckily for me, I have friends doing this work alongside me. I look at them, at us, and think that you couldn't pay me a million dollars to go back in time, even if that meant that my belly would be toned and that the world would see me instead of looking slightly past me. My friends and I - as well as new voices that pop up in newspapers and, on lucky rare occasion, film - are finding our way, in a new way, in uncharted territory.

Middle age is awesome. It's better than it has ever been in my life, and nobody told me this was coming. I was told to be afraid, to fear my irrelevance, to shrivel, to shrink.

Middle age is for growing, and I'm growing. The sky is the limit, and I'm just getting started, and I am making my own rules.

I have a great deal more to say on this topic, but I'd like to hear from you. What is your experience of middle age? How do you feel about being middle aged? What middle aged stereotypes do you encounter? What startles you about middle age? And - most of all - what are your suggestions for navigating middle age with some zest?

I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for reading!