musings

I’m surrounded by kind, thoughtful people who ask now and then how I’m doing.  The question is not simple to answer.  In some ways I feel mostly ok, as though I’m moving through my days with a new, stubborn shadow over my existence but moving all the same.

In other ways I feel not at all ok, and if I’m honest, I’m a little bit surprised that that’s still true.  I didn’t think I’d “bounce back” after Dad’s death, necessarily, but I thought I’d maybe feel more functional faster.  My days oscillate between these two realities: wow, I’m doing okay, and wow, I’m still so darn sad.

But more than anything – and this is what I usually say when asked – I’m astonished by the sturdiness of my disbelief.  The sheer disbelief I feel about dad being dead can only be categorized as irrational, and I’ve never been irrational before.  Intellectually I understand that he is gone.  But emotionally I still seem to not quite get it.  At least once a day I bring myself up short with the thought that my father is dead.  It is often seeing his photograph that brings that thought to mind.  It’s also often the sudden thought, “oh, I want to tell Dad about this.”

And then … oh, wait.  No.

How long will it take to feel real?  I honestly don’t know.  We are nearing the six month mark, and I’m still as astonished by the truth of Dad being dead as I was the day after he died.  Life is clearer now, and I feel a bit closer to “normal.”  This was brought home to me last week when I finally looked through the basket of Christmas cards that has been on our front hall table since December.  I literally do not remember seeing at least half of them.  December was such a blur; in retrospect I’m sort of amazed that I walked through it.

When I think of those first weeks, when I’m confronted with evidence of how “other” that time was (like the cards, which I definitely opened, read, and put in the basket) that feels like another life.  The days and weeks since then have crawled by, as I’ve mentioned.  Yet it’s still not real that Dad’s dead.  I can’t believe that I can’t believe it, and yet I can’t. The phrase I return to over and over is sturdy disbelief.  Like the sturdy joy of which I wrote several years ago, this feeling of not-real-ness is immovable, stubborn, solid. Maybe it’s some kind of coping mechanism.  I don’t know. I have to imagine it will release its hold on me, this disbelief, and gradually Dad’s death will sink in.  But for now, I move on, daily gasping when I remember yet again that he’s gone.

Onward. Limping, but, eventually, dancing again.

I’ve written about being a runner from Boston, and I guess it follows that I love the Boston marathon. I’ve never in my entire working life had the day off, so I usually am working and glancing at the results from my desk.  A couple of times I’ve watched friends run, which has been inspiring.  But truthfully, I’m not historically one of those people who watches, riveted, or who’s a big fan-girl of marathons.

Which makes what happened this year unusual.  By chance, I watched Desi Linden cross the finish line in my living room, and I burst into tears.  Matt was standing there and he was surprised by my reaction.  I couldn’t get enough of her story.  Of the way she thought at the beginning that she wouldn’t finish.  Of the way she waited for Shalane Flanagan to run to the restroom so they could run together.  Of some of her tweets, which I shared on my Instagram stories:

What I love about running is encapsulated by Desi’s story.  She’s a supportive competitor who cheers on her rivals when they win (Shalane at the New York marathon) and who puts teamwork and comrade-ship above an personal edge (Shalane, waiting for her in this year’s Boston).  She’s toughed it out for 7 years since she came in 2nd in Boston by two seconds.  She’s also an adult, a woman of 33.  I also love that marathon runners are often adults (I particularly loved the way the men’s winner has a full-time job in an office and has chosen to keep that vs. becoming a full-time sponsored runner) with lives and perhaps families (Kara Goucher, I’m looking at you).

Last Monday, in the pouring rain, I was touched by the winners of the marathon and by their stories, but I was also tremendously impressed by the thousands of people who slogged it out in the most inhospitable conditions I can imagine.  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the way I was unusually moved by the day, the stories, the effort.  I suspect it’s linked to my thoughts about other odysseys.

I just finished the most wonderful book: An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelson (my brilliant sister recommended it).  It’s about fathers, it’s about literature, it’s about epic poetry, it’s about travel.  I’m all in.  But the book also made me realize all the strands in my life that connect to The Odyssey (which I’ve, shamefully, never read).

Matt and I had two readings at our wedding, one of which was CP Cavafy’s Ithaka.  This poem has always meant a lot to me.  It was the favorite poem of my dearly-beloved English teacher at Exeter, Mr. Valhouli. He had it tacked to the wall of his classroom and referred to it often.  I dedicated my college thesis to Mr. Valhouli, and the dedication (the irony and poor phrasing of which I realize now, since Ithaka is not about the arrival) read:

“This thesis is dedicated to the memory of James Valhouli (1942-1995)
Mr Valhouli,
Your inspiration will always be with me.
Thank you for teaching me passion for Ithaka.
I trust you are there.”

That thesis was about the mother-daughter relationship in the lives and work of three 20th century poets: Maxine Kumin, Adrienne Rich, and Anne Sexton.  I loved that topic, and have written often of the way that my 21 year old self couldn’t have possibly imagined the ways in which her research and study would become a central theme in her adult life.  It’s as though that choice presaged one of the central preoccupations of my life now.

But the other subject I thought long and hard about writing on was Tennyson.  Specifically Ulysses. It’s funny how pressingly urgently Tennyson presents himself in my life these days, and this book is just one example.  Ithaka. Ulysses. The fact that Whit is currently studying those myths. The fact that my father loved those stories.  I’m surrounded by these ideas and concepts, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that it’s not an accident, why we think of the seemingly random things we think of.  I am certain there’s some reason – inchoate, yes, but real – behind why certain stories, songs, words, thoughts come to mind when they do.

The odyssey and the marathon.  But, are meaningful to me right now because they are reminders that life’s about the journey.  That it’s about what we amass along the way.  My father certainly believed that, there’s no question about it (he used to quip that “life’s the stories you tell your grandchildren.”).  And I do too.  And even my unexpectedly emotional reaction to the marathon makes sense to me through this lens: it’s about sportsmanship and gritting it out and not giving up and keeping those on the path with us company as we go. It’s about the journey.  Like many cliches I’ve encountered (most?), that one contains a deep truth.

As Cavafy says, “hope that the voyage is a long one.

I do.

I was thrilled to participate in the re-launch of the HerStories project.  The piece that I wrote for them, which is featured here and which appears below, is called Nothing Like I Expected. I love what they’re doing with the HerStories Project and recommend their site heartily.  Gen X women at midlife?  Sign me up.

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If you’d asked me when I was a teenager what I wanted my life to look like in my 40s, I would have probably told you the following: I’d like two children, I’d like to have a happy marriage and a fulfilling career, and I would like to live in Cambridge. I’d risk going further: it wouldn’t be bad to have a degree or two, ideally from good schools. I’d like my parents to be happy and healthy and nearby. I’d like to have done what Dad had been urging me to do since my memory began: find my passion.

Lo and behold. I am 43, and this is what my life looks like: I have two teenage children who are entertaining, motivated, and tremendously good company. I have two Ivy League degrees and a career that I am proud of. I have a happy marriage to a man I met when I was 23. We live in a house in Cambridge a mile from my parents’ house. I am passionate about writing, which I do in space around the edges of the rest of my commitments. Life looks an awful lot like I hoped it would.

And yet.  There is so much that has surprised me—so much that continues to surprise me—about adulthood. On every dimension and at every turn, life has startled me with challenges and wonder in equal measure.

Parenting has been far, far more bittersweet than I ever expected. From the very beginning, when my daughter was born more than 15 years ago, every laugh and every milestone has been shadowed by its own passing. Somehow the arrival and growth of my children has served as a sharp reminder of how short our time here is.

I try very hard not to let the sometimes dazzling pleasures of parenthood be entirely occluded by my knowledge of their impermanence, but I find that difficult. Having children has reminded me, unavoidably and indelibly, of life’s basic drumbeat forward motion. Grace and Whit have made me painfully aware of how quickly it all passes, and they have simultaneously made me appreciate life’s extraordinary beauty in a completely new way. There’s no question in my mind these two things are woven inextricably together.

Marriage has been altogether different than I expected, too, both more difficult (in short: anyone you live with for 18 years is going to get a little, shall we say, irritating sometimes) and more wonderful (the familiarity and intimacy of those 18 shared years creates a comfort I couldn’t have imagined). One of the unanticipated pleasures of marriage, for me, is seeing my husband as a father, and seeing traits of his animate in our children.

I can’t remember where I read that marriage is the most private of geographies, but that’s definitely true. After 18 years, I know that I don’t know anything about anyone else’s marriage. Many of my assumptions and high-minded ideas about what marriage is have been destroyed, and in their place is a deep appreciation of the joys that come from making a life alongside one other person.

This rooted comfort and intimacy become more important than I could ever have imagined in the last few months, because of another of life’s shocking surprises. My husband and I both lost our fathers in the autumn of 2017, 2 months and 3 days apart. These back-to-back losses have bound us together in a dark, sacred space of shared grief and radical empathy. My father’s sudden death from a heart attack is by a wide margin the most significant loss of my life. I’m certain that my experience will forever be split into before and after, with that one afternoon of bewilderment, fear, and gratitude balanced in between.

My professional life has been yet another surprise. I joined a management consulting firm when I graduated from college, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I quickly went to business school and then returned to the same firm. I moved into a recruiting-focused role for purely practical reasons (my husband traveled a lot and I could see that this would be impossible once we added children to our lives). For many years I worked part time and while I knew that I did not want to stop working entirely, my sense of my professional identity wavered, and I felt a bit purposeless.  I wrote about working part-time and the way it meant that I had a foot in two worlds and a home in neither. I felt like I was slogging, alone, up a very long, very steep climb.

And then somehow in the last few years the trees at the top of the mountain opened, and I could see the view. It’s been worth the climb. I started a company with four former colleagues and I truly love my professional life for the first time. I would never have imagined that I’d be an entrepreneur—and my husband often says the same, with a shake of his head and a smile. I love being a part of founding and growing something, and the joy and satisfaction that I feel professionally has been one of life’s greatest surprises so far.

I’m glad my father knew about the company I co-founded, and about our early success, before he died.  He had always urged me to find my passion, and he was proud of how much I was loving this new endeavor. But writing, another midlife discovery, is equally the central passion of my life. I found my way back to the page after 20 years in business, and it was like coming home. He knew this too, actually, and was probably the most regular reader of my writing of all, and for that I’m also grateful.

All of my myriad roles matter crucially to me: mother, wife, financial services professional, writer. None of these individual pieces is simple, and in aggregate they form a complicated, noisy life. There’s no question adulthood is messier and more complex than I’d ever imagined, but it’s also more beautiful.  This is the deepest, truest, and most enduring of midlife’s surprises for me: in the dissonance lies the music.

I have shared that the last few months have moved uncharacteristically slowly for me.  I’ve been thinking about that, wondering less about why (that seems clear) than about what I can learn from this unusual slow down in life’s pace.

I suspect that the message is: notice your life.

I’ve certainly learned lately in abrupt, even violent ways, about how fraught everything is on our lives, about the way we daily walk the border between normal and extremely not-normal.  It’s a short hop from awareness of life’s fragility to remembering anew that all we have for sure is now. I wrote about this many years ago: how sheer the veil is between this life and another. I wrote and thought about it then.  I know it now.

There’s a reason I’ve long said that if I ever got a tattoo, it would say “be here now.”.  As life’s crawled by since November, I find myself thinking about those words often.  I wish I could say I’m here, and present, and engaged, but the truth is I’m the same person as I was before everything skidded off the rails.  As aware as I am of time’s markedly slower passage, I am often still distracted, elsewhere.  This always feel dissonant, of course, but lately, even more so.  The persistence of life’s slowness has been nagging at me.  This new pace doesn’t seem to be changing, and it seems to be pulling my attention to it.  I’m sure it holds a lesson for me.

Time and its speed is a funny thing.  It’s clear I’m supposed to be paying attention to this right now.  Last week, one evening, I sat at my desk and watched the world burst into incandescence.  This was unexpected after a day of clouds and rain.  But the light was so notable that I watched it, and while I’ve seen many sunsets from my office window, this one was different.  The clouds were lit from below.  I shared a photo on Instagram here.  Also, and what struck me even more, was that the clouds were moving faster than I’ve almost ever seen.  I should have taken a video, it was that fast.

I opened my window and knelt in front of it, spellbound, taking photos and watching.  It was over in a few minutes.  And that made me think of speed, again: even in a life that’s slowed-down, there are moments that fly by.

Life flies and it crawls, and in the space between these extremes we live our ordinary days.  For whatever reason – actually I suspect I know exactly the reason – this seems to be something I need to remember right now.  Time’s always struck me as a sticky, elastic, complicated thing, both profoundly linear and irrevocable and deeply non-rational and full of pockets, potholes, and switchbacks.  That’s never been more true than right now.

And so I do the only thing I know how to do: begin again.  Look out the window.  Take a deep breath.  Think about my father and my father-in-law. Watch my children, who basically leave trails behind them because they’re moving so fast. Notice things. Be here now.