Midlife is ... a completely different concept for me, post-spring-2022, which is when, at 55, I found out I had cancer. Was I midlife then? Who knows. Who knows when, exactly, is midlife? No one. But I know this: having cancer in that part of life changes everything that comes after it. It puts a different color on all the classic midlife things. What would sending my boys off to college feel like without cancer? What would making the first, super-duper-early musings about what a retired life for my husband and me might look like without cancer? (Some of these considerations are esoteric, but some are concrete and practical. Taking my sons to school the particular year after cancer meant I stood by the car and guarded the stuff while the boys hefted things up dorm stairways; I couldn't lift my arms fully above my head in those late-summer, post-surgery weeks. And retirement, even looking 15 years out, if we move from where we live now? Gotta be somewhere near excellent medical care, the kind that saved my life.)
But really, what is midlife and how do we know we're in it, or near it, or just past it? That's another thing cancer has changed. I lost a best friend to cancer when we were 31. I can tell you, when we were 15 and dancing around her living room to the Bangles (this town is our town/it is so glamorous/bet you'd live here if you could and be one of us!"), she wasn't thinking that was her life's midpoint, but it was. You know what she did at midlife? Convinced me the two of us should enter a young adult novel-writing contest, convince me the two of us could *actually do it*. I needed convincing, she *never* did. (We wrote the novel, longhand over a summer, and typed it up and entered the contest, for which we won honorable mention.)
She didn't know she had 15 or 16 years left. I know some things now. But I don't know what midlife is. It's an impossible question. You can't know what is it, but you can figure out what you want to make of it, or with it. My script changed in spring 2022. The pages are blank and I'm filling them up. Cancer hung a drape in my midlife, and while it's thinner now, it's always there, I imagine it will always be there. But like my friend at 16, and for the rest of the life I have left, I'm going to try to keep brushing it into my peripheral vision, and living as loud as I can.
I find the intersection of these two stories -- yours about cancer as a "drape in my midlife" and your friend's about a too-early death -- so powerful. You're incredibly efficient at creating characters and I have a sense of each of you from this free write and it's evocative anecdotes.
Wow. This is so moving. It's really hitting me, in that yeah, we don't know when midlife is, we don't know our expiration dates, but we sometimes get a glimpse of them. This is just so good - thank you!
Thank you for sharing your story. And thank you for the reminder that there are no guarantees and we have no idea when midlife. Very powerful and thought provoking.
This was so, so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing. This was so striking: "My script changed in spring 2022. The pages are blank and I'm filling them up. Cancer hung a drape in my midlife, and while it's thinner now, it's always there, I imagine it will always be there."
I’m stuck again, not sure how to finish this sentence. “Midlife is…” And then I realize that it’s because I don’t feel like I’m in midlife, can’t quite conceive of my life as a single plot arc. My life hasn’t been one thing that progresses and changes, but more a series of things – the life I lived in my parent’s home. The life I lived with my first husband, the one I toyed with calling “the husband of my youth.” He was also the husband of my early middle age. That life ended and there was a pause, a space of years committed to raising a teenager and grounding myself as a single person. And now I’m at the beginning, not the middle of another life. Midlife doesn’t feel like where I am.
I guess there are continuities – I am a reader and a writer. I am a birth doula. I am a daughter, sister, mother. But even my relationships with my mother and sisters feel like something that started ten or fifteen years ago, not like a continuation of what was there before. Now I’m at the beginning of another life, with another husband.
For this to be midlife, I’d have to remember who I was ten years ago and twenty, and thirty and forty. And I don’t. I know I’ve had other lives – I know there were ten years when I was producer rather than consumer, created three children and hundreds of gallons of milk. I know there was a time when I walked the streets of Paris and stayed out too late to be sure my mother would be glad to see me come home. But these feel like stories I read long ago. They slip away as I try to make continuities, try to imagine coherence and the steady progression of a life.
I love the idea of having multiple arcs, rather than just one. It's like seeing snapshots of who you were at various times. It is hard to remember the full experience of being those people.
Oh, this was a delicious read. These were my favorite lines: "And then I realize that it’s because I don’t feel like I’m in midlife, can’t quite conceive of my life as a single plot arc." and then the conclusion: "But these feel like stories I read long ago. They slip away as I try to make continuities, try to imagine coherence and the steady progression of a life." So insightful, so resonant. I loved this.
For me, midlife is an emergence. I wrote a book called Midlife Emergence, and on its back cover, it says "Midlife doesn’t need to be a crisis or an emergency—rather, it’s an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible." YESSSS!!! ❤️🔥
Midlife is where I am, mid-stream. I’ve landed promptly in menopause due to a total hysterectomy as well as the removal of my ovaries and fallopian tubes, and lymph nodes. The result of endometrial cancer – Stage 1. No spread was found and now monitoring is all that’s left in my treatment. So I am squarely Midlife in all senses of time and place, body and spirit.
The beginning of Midlife was a growing disturbance and an awareness of the sources of my years of suffering. Seeing my life on its own timeline and the consequences time had on all I had believed was the awakening of a new sense of self. As an undergrad, a professor quoted Robert Frost (who had been his mentor) as saying, “We muddy the waters so we can see in the clearing.” Midlife is the clearing.
The anger resulting from what I see demands a recalibration of my values. With a deep sadness for the losses I’ve endured because I entrusted my life to wrong people and establishments, I forgive myself thoroughly. Midlife is the shedding of skin, like the snake, a spirit animal I now claim. The snake shows us why and how we must do it.
I am fully with you on the anger, loss, and realignment. It feels like a perpetual process. I too had a midlife health event that made me reevaluate A LOT. The muddy waters are indeed clearing. Lovely response.
"the losses I’ve endured because I entrusted my life to wrong people and establishments" is so much of life. But we wouldn't know it wasn't for us unless we did it, right?
I'll write straight in the comments, so it's exactly as I'm thinking it. Which means it may come out as one long sentence - sorry 😬
Midlife is... very much like a rollercoaster ride.. a hall of mirrors if you like.. you've seen yourself in one several times, but there seems to still be an element of surprise each time you walk past one.. or a window for that matter. I'm writing this as I've just landed on my bed to "recover" from my shower, from which I emerged feeling like I've just been through a boil wash, scrambling to find the thinest and softest bit of clothing I can find. Even though all I really want to do is lie down stark bollock naked and spread my legs in a 'smear test' type position, allowing for optimum air flow in all areas! Although I feel that might be deemed slightly inappropriate, as my partner is on the other side of the room at the desk "working from home" (aka - looking at cars we can't afford)... and the last thing I want, in this particular moment, is for him to mistake my sprawling across the bed as some kind of invitation! 😆
How come the cat can lie like that quite happily and nobody bats a eye lid.. so jealous! 🙈
Other than that it's all good.. oh, apart from everything heading south, realising you've only got 15 years left until you're 60, going grey, forgetting EVERYTHING, dry brittle hair and putting on 50lbs of weight if I so much as look at a piece of fucking chocolate!! 🙄🤣
Now that the debris from the implosion of my marriage has settled:
the flotsam, the jetsam
the sharp, rusted blades of resentment, anger, betrayal
the coils of sorrow and fear like tangled razor wire around my ribcage
Now that most of that has been swept clean and I can walk more confidently forward -
no longer picking my steps gingerly while scanning for landmines
No, now I am ripe, full
sometimes bursting with...
I don't know ---- delight?
I feel full with all the buzzwords:
agency
self-efficacy
autonomy
empowerment
self-actualization
grace
I give myself leeway to make mistakes like I never did before
I tell people that I'm dedicated to living as fully as I can
And what that means to me is that I actively, willingly, intentionally embrace to the best of my ability all of what it means to be human - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The upheaval, the shift, the disintegration that was my divorce did me a real solid:
it cracked open my cells, peered into my marrow, dissected my nervous system and then put it all back together.
And it seems to have left out the bulk of my inner critic, the bully that's lived in my head since childhood that says "you're too ____ to ______".
So it's like I'm seeing with new eyes the potentials all around me, and although they may still scare me, the desire to no longer live passively overrides the fear of being "too_____" (too stupid, too loud, too old, too uneducated, too...).
Kathleen, your words continue to inspire. I love the line, "it cracked open my cells, peered into my marrow, dissected my nervous system and then put it all back together." I feel like I am in this very process all the time.
I don’t remember being born. I imagine it was something like midlife. Emerging from a confinement, once constrained by space and time, having outgrown the container. The transition is difficult, and messy. It is hot, and then cold. There is an all-consuming give and take, a tide of hormones surging and receding in non-sensical rhythms. In the sudden panic of newness, there is a need to scream at random. Rage at unmet needs dominates emotional response. In a brand new light, life is spacious, overwhelming, and full of possibility. What was once a mundane, repetitive existence reveals new friends, new experiences, and a chance to stretch one’s legs in new environments.
What a great poem, Steph! Thank you for sharing it with us.
Midlife is menopause, so I was surprised when I found myself bleeding a year after my periods ended. I had precancerous epithelial cells, the lining of my uterus that never nurtured a child, by choice. They took everything—my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. I thought my other organs would fall into the space, and if they have, I didn’t feel it. At first I felt empty, but now I feel whole, knowing that my body is how it’s supposed to be.
Steph, I love your poem so much. The rage, the sweating, the feel of the cold counter, not caring what anyone would think. Yes!
Midlife is… maybe the opposite of unravelling? Early motherhood felt like unravelling, and now that I have the tiniest bit of space for myself in my life again, maybe I’m ravelling back up?
This new ravelled-up me is less of a pushover. She says no. She doesn’t want to waste time. She knows herself.
She’s more in touch with feelings, which is hard for a logic person. Like, oh bleck, am I having feelings AGAIN and I have to figure out what they mean and what’s happening? Ok, fine.
She knows that she can just keep going and keep pushing and try to get all the things done, but she also knows that she shouldn’t have to. She tries to figure out how to set life up differently. To make it work for her instead of just work for everyone else.
She signs up for ice skating lessons and feels the joy of gliding across the ice, feeling free.
I wrote something once about a time to unravel and a time to "ravel," regardless of whether it's a real word, ha! I love that. I love your use of "ravelled-up me" and the new characteristics she possesses. So powerful! I love the last line so much.
Steph, love the poem. Underboob sweat is a HUGE problem! I love the stream of menopause consciousness that is going on in the piece. Nothing and everything makes sense in the same moment. You speak or allude to all the craziest parts of the physical midlife experience perfectly. The imaginary f-you to the neighbors was my favorite part.
Midlife has passed me now but remembering the night sweats and racing heart that would jar me awake each night at 3 AM still makes me shudder. It was such an unsettled time, surprise periods that would come at any time, middle of the night and especially on trips, they always caught me unaware and ill prepared. Once my 35 year old son had to run to a bodega in Brooklyn for tampons, I’ll never forget he did that for me without a complaint. At my sister’s house on an extended summer trip in Northern Michigan I started bleeding and didn’t stop for 21 days, finally succumbing to a visit to the local Planned Parenthood where they put me on some birth control pills to stop the flow. Like I said such an unsettled time physically and mentally; I had also, just months before, broken off a five year relationship and moved from California back to New Mexico. My body was mixed up and so was my mind. I was in no state to be making decisions but soon, after only 5 months alone I was back in another relationship, one that eventually led to a very dysfunctional marriage.
Midlife is a fashionable identity term that took me some years to understand, not really striking me as meaningful or relevant until I was well into it my first 200-day stretch without a period. I had hot flashes for a hot minute, I didn’t have kids to send off to college, and I didn’t have a marriage to revisit. I got a new job and a new car and had an art show. I had gotten new jobs and new cars before so what was really new about doing new things in my life like having an art show? I haven’t published a book yet either, and that’s on my list.
Death of a parent commonly comes at midlife, and it came for me at age 49. Death of the other parent will come too and I’m starting to think about how to prepare. The discussion of cremation, wills, and visiting graveyards where my ancestors’ bodies lay, with fewer and fewer people still living who remember them as more than names etched into stone.
When does one reach past midlife? In 15 years, will I age out of midlife and be proud to find another group that call themselves senior citizens who calmly discuss cremation and buying headstones?
Oh, must we age out of midlife? Let's just stay. ❤️😉 It really is surreal how we imperceptibly shift into that "next group" that looms, isn't it? Yes, I suppose one day we will calmly discuss cremation—my parents have calmly, unceremoniously presented me with the file that contains all the information for their services, cremation, the works. It all happens so fast.
Love the poem Steph!! Fantastic! 🤣 I'm totally with you on that one!
Thank you!! 😉
Midlife is ... a completely different concept for me, post-spring-2022, which is when, at 55, I found out I had cancer. Was I midlife then? Who knows. Who knows when, exactly, is midlife? No one. But I know this: having cancer in that part of life changes everything that comes after it. It puts a different color on all the classic midlife things. What would sending my boys off to college feel like without cancer? What would making the first, super-duper-early musings about what a retired life for my husband and me might look like without cancer? (Some of these considerations are esoteric, but some are concrete and practical. Taking my sons to school the particular year after cancer meant I stood by the car and guarded the stuff while the boys hefted things up dorm stairways; I couldn't lift my arms fully above my head in those late-summer, post-surgery weeks. And retirement, even looking 15 years out, if we move from where we live now? Gotta be somewhere near excellent medical care, the kind that saved my life.)
But really, what is midlife and how do we know we're in it, or near it, or just past it? That's another thing cancer has changed. I lost a best friend to cancer when we were 31. I can tell you, when we were 15 and dancing around her living room to the Bangles (this town is our town/it is so glamorous/bet you'd live here if you could and be one of us!"), she wasn't thinking that was her life's midpoint, but it was. You know what she did at midlife? Convinced me the two of us should enter a young adult novel-writing contest, convince me the two of us could *actually do it*. I needed convincing, she *never* did. (We wrote the novel, longhand over a summer, and typed it up and entered the contest, for which we won honorable mention.)
She didn't know she had 15 or 16 years left. I know some things now. But I don't know what midlife is. It's an impossible question. You can't know what is it, but you can figure out what you want to make of it, or with it. My script changed in spring 2022. The pages are blank and I'm filling them up. Cancer hung a drape in my midlife, and while it's thinner now, it's always there, I imagine it will always be there. But like my friend at 16, and for the rest of the life I have left, I'm going to try to keep brushing it into my peripheral vision, and living as loud as I can.
I find the intersection of these two stories -- yours about cancer as a "drape in my midlife" and your friend's about a too-early death -- so powerful. You're incredibly efficient at creating characters and I have a sense of each of you from this free write and it's evocative anecdotes.
Many thanks!
Wow. This is so moving. It's really hitting me, in that yeah, we don't know when midlife is, we don't know our expiration dates, but we sometimes get a glimpse of them. This is just so good - thank you!
Thank you for your comment! ;)
Thank you for sharing your story. And thank you for the reminder that there are no guarantees and we have no idea when midlife. Very powerful and thought provoking.
This was so, so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing. This was so striking: "My script changed in spring 2022. The pages are blank and I'm filling them up. Cancer hung a drape in my midlife, and while it's thinner now, it's always there, I imagine it will always be there."
I’m stuck again, not sure how to finish this sentence. “Midlife is…” And then I realize that it’s because I don’t feel like I’m in midlife, can’t quite conceive of my life as a single plot arc. My life hasn’t been one thing that progresses and changes, but more a series of things – the life I lived in my parent’s home. The life I lived with my first husband, the one I toyed with calling “the husband of my youth.” He was also the husband of my early middle age. That life ended and there was a pause, a space of years committed to raising a teenager and grounding myself as a single person. And now I’m at the beginning, not the middle of another life. Midlife doesn’t feel like where I am.
I guess there are continuities – I am a reader and a writer. I am a birth doula. I am a daughter, sister, mother. But even my relationships with my mother and sisters feel like something that started ten or fifteen years ago, not like a continuation of what was there before. Now I’m at the beginning of another life, with another husband.
For this to be midlife, I’d have to remember who I was ten years ago and twenty, and thirty and forty. And I don’t. I know I’ve had other lives – I know there were ten years when I was producer rather than consumer, created three children and hundreds of gallons of milk. I know there was a time when I walked the streets of Paris and stayed out too late to be sure my mother would be glad to see me come home. But these feel like stories I read long ago. They slip away as I try to make continuities, try to imagine coherence and the steady progression of a life.
I love the idea of having multiple arcs, rather than just one. It's like seeing snapshots of who you were at various times. It is hard to remember the full experience of being those people.
Oh, this was a delicious read. These were my favorite lines: "And then I realize that it’s because I don’t feel like I’m in midlife, can’t quite conceive of my life as a single plot arc." and then the conclusion: "But these feel like stories I read long ago. They slip away as I try to make continuities, try to imagine coherence and the steady progression of a life." So insightful, so resonant. I loved this.
For me, midlife is an emergence. I wrote a book called Midlife Emergence, and on its back cover, it says "Midlife doesn’t need to be a crisis or an emergency—rather, it’s an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible." YESSSS!!! ❤️🔥
I love the contrast of emergence vs. emergency. So good.
Thank you! It is an interesting flip on that word and feeling...
Midlife is where I am, mid-stream. I’ve landed promptly in menopause due to a total hysterectomy as well as the removal of my ovaries and fallopian tubes, and lymph nodes. The result of endometrial cancer – Stage 1. No spread was found and now monitoring is all that’s left in my treatment. So I am squarely Midlife in all senses of time and place, body and spirit.
The beginning of Midlife was a growing disturbance and an awareness of the sources of my years of suffering. Seeing my life on its own timeline and the consequences time had on all I had believed was the awakening of a new sense of self. As an undergrad, a professor quoted Robert Frost (who had been his mentor) as saying, “We muddy the waters so we can see in the clearing.” Midlife is the clearing.
The anger resulting from what I see demands a recalibration of my values. With a deep sadness for the losses I’ve endured because I entrusted my life to wrong people and establishments, I forgive myself thoroughly. Midlife is the shedding of skin, like the snake, a spirit animal I now claim. The snake shows us why and how we must do it.
I love the idea of the muddy water clearing and being able to find anger and then forgiveness in what you see there. Thank you for sharing!
I am fully with you on the anger, loss, and realignment. It feels like a perpetual process. I too had a midlife health event that made me reevaluate A LOT. The muddy waters are indeed clearing. Lovely response.
I really loved the imagery of a recalibration of your values and the shedding of skin. So visceral. I loved the last line.
"the losses I’ve endured because I entrusted my life to wrong people and establishments" is so much of life. But we wouldn't know it wasn't for us unless we did it, right?
I'll write straight in the comments, so it's exactly as I'm thinking it. Which means it may come out as one long sentence - sorry 😬
Midlife is... very much like a rollercoaster ride.. a hall of mirrors if you like.. you've seen yourself in one several times, but there seems to still be an element of surprise each time you walk past one.. or a window for that matter. I'm writing this as I've just landed on my bed to "recover" from my shower, from which I emerged feeling like I've just been through a boil wash, scrambling to find the thinest and softest bit of clothing I can find. Even though all I really want to do is lie down stark bollock naked and spread my legs in a 'smear test' type position, allowing for optimum air flow in all areas! Although I feel that might be deemed slightly inappropriate, as my partner is on the other side of the room at the desk "working from home" (aka - looking at cars we can't afford)... and the last thing I want, in this particular moment, is for him to mistake my sprawling across the bed as some kind of invitation! 😆
How come the cat can lie like that quite happily and nobody bats a eye lid.. so jealous! 🙈
Other than that it's all good.. oh, apart from everything heading south, realising you've only got 15 years left until you're 60, going grey, forgetting EVERYTHING, dry brittle hair and putting on 50lbs of weight if I so much as look at a piece of fucking chocolate!! 🙄🤣
RELATABLE. ❤️
Now that I'm post-menopausal
Now that I'm an empty-nester
Now that the debris from the implosion of my marriage has settled:
the flotsam, the jetsam
the sharp, rusted blades of resentment, anger, betrayal
the coils of sorrow and fear like tangled razor wire around my ribcage
Now that most of that has been swept clean and I can walk more confidently forward -
no longer picking my steps gingerly while scanning for landmines
No, now I am ripe, full
sometimes bursting with...
I don't know ---- delight?
I feel full with all the buzzwords:
agency
self-efficacy
autonomy
empowerment
self-actualization
grace
I give myself leeway to make mistakes like I never did before
I tell people that I'm dedicated to living as fully as I can
And what that means to me is that I actively, willingly, intentionally embrace to the best of my ability all of what it means to be human - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The upheaval, the shift, the disintegration that was my divorce did me a real solid:
it cracked open my cells, peered into my marrow, dissected my nervous system and then put it all back together.
And it seems to have left out the bulk of my inner critic, the bully that's lived in my head since childhood that says "you're too ____ to ______".
So it's like I'm seeing with new eyes the potentials all around me, and although they may still scare me, the desire to no longer live passively overrides the fear of being "too_____" (too stupid, too loud, too old, too uneducated, too...).
Kathleen, your words continue to inspire. I love the line, "it cracked open my cells, peered into my marrow, dissected my nervous system and then put it all back together." I feel like I am in this very process all the time.
So good! This was my favorite part: "No, now I am ripe, full
sometimes bursting with...
I don't know ---- delight?."
Your writing resonates with me so much, every single time.
Thank you! I'm so glad you get something from it💪
I don’t remember being born. I imagine it was something like midlife. Emerging from a confinement, once constrained by space and time, having outgrown the container. The transition is difficult, and messy. It is hot, and then cold. There is an all-consuming give and take, a tide of hormones surging and receding in non-sensical rhythms. In the sudden panic of newness, there is a need to scream at random. Rage at unmet needs dominates emotional response. In a brand new light, life is spacious, overwhelming, and full of possibility. What was once a mundane, repetitive existence reveals new friends, new experiences, and a chance to stretch one’s legs in new environments.
I love this: emerging from a confinement. What a brilliant way to portray midlife.
What a great poem, Steph! Thank you for sharing it with us.
Midlife is menopause, so I was surprised when I found myself bleeding a year after my periods ended. I had precancerous epithelial cells, the lining of my uterus that never nurtured a child, by choice. They took everything—my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. I thought my other organs would fall into the space, and if they have, I didn’t feel it. At first I felt empty, but now I feel whole, knowing that my body is how it’s supposed to be.
Oh, Barb, there is so much power in that last line. That gave me chills.
Thanks!
Great poem, Steph!
Here's mine:
Midlife is...
That strange in between
That liminal space
Of always doing
Without much time for being
That midway feeling
Mid-thought
Mid-sentence
Ever in the middle
Of all the things
Exacerbated
Because now
I’m in the middle of my life
Somehow I got here
In the midst of so much
Loving, living, mothering, working and worrying
But midway through
In this uncertain time
I am absolutely sure
I don’t want my life to be mid
My kids have explained
Mid is just meh, mediocre at best
Midlife can’t be that
After so much struggle to get here
If I have to be older
I will be bolder
I will be louder
I will be prouder
It must be my time
Time to shine
Time to be
Time to find my voice
Time to speak my truth
I love this, Lisa! "Ever in the middle of all the things" - that's exactly what this stage of life is like. Let's all be loud.
Thank you! Yes, let's all be loud -- together! :)
It really is such a liminal space, isn't it? Love this, Lisa.
Thank you so much!
Steph, I love your poem so much. The rage, the sweating, the feel of the cold counter, not caring what anyone would think. Yes!
Midlife is… maybe the opposite of unravelling? Early motherhood felt like unravelling, and now that I have the tiniest bit of space for myself in my life again, maybe I’m ravelling back up?
This new ravelled-up me is less of a pushover. She says no. She doesn’t want to waste time. She knows herself.
She’s more in touch with feelings, which is hard for a logic person. Like, oh bleck, am I having feelings AGAIN and I have to figure out what they mean and what’s happening? Ok, fine.
She knows that she can just keep going and keep pushing and try to get all the things done, but she also knows that she shouldn’t have to. She tries to figure out how to set life up differently. To make it work for her instead of just work for everyone else.
She signs up for ice skating lessons and feels the joy of gliding across the ice, feeling free.
I wrote something once about a time to unravel and a time to "ravel," regardless of whether it's a real word, ha! I love that. I love your use of "ravelled-up me" and the new characteristics she possesses. So powerful! I love the last line so much.
Steph, love the poem. Underboob sweat is a HUGE problem! I love the stream of menopause consciousness that is going on in the piece. Nothing and everything makes sense in the same moment. You speak or allude to all the craziest parts of the physical midlife experience perfectly. The imaginary f-you to the neighbors was my favorite part.
Thank you, Ingrid! I wrote it a year ago and was like, where will I ever publish something so irreverent and inappropriate...um, OBVIOUSLY HERE! 😂
Midlife has passed me now but remembering the night sweats and racing heart that would jar me awake each night at 3 AM still makes me shudder. It was such an unsettled time, surprise periods that would come at any time, middle of the night and especially on trips, they always caught me unaware and ill prepared. Once my 35 year old son had to run to a bodega in Brooklyn for tampons, I’ll never forget he did that for me without a complaint. At my sister’s house on an extended summer trip in Northern Michigan I started bleeding and didn’t stop for 21 days, finally succumbing to a visit to the local Planned Parenthood where they put me on some birth control pills to stop the flow. Like I said such an unsettled time physically and mentally; I had also, just months before, broken off a five year relationship and moved from California back to New Mexico. My body was mixed up and so was my mind. I was in no state to be making decisions but soon, after only 5 months alone I was back in another relationship, one that eventually led to a very dysfunctional marriage.
"My body was mixed up and so was my mind." They often go hand in hand, don't they? Thank you for sharing so generously. ❤️
Midlife is a fashionable identity term that took me some years to understand, not really striking me as meaningful or relevant until I was well into it my first 200-day stretch without a period. I had hot flashes for a hot minute, I didn’t have kids to send off to college, and I didn’t have a marriage to revisit. I got a new job and a new car and had an art show. I had gotten new jobs and new cars before so what was really new about doing new things in my life like having an art show? I haven’t published a book yet either, and that’s on my list.
Death of a parent commonly comes at midlife, and it came for me at age 49. Death of the other parent will come too and I’m starting to think about how to prepare. The discussion of cremation, wills, and visiting graveyards where my ancestors’ bodies lay, with fewer and fewer people still living who remember them as more than names etched into stone.
When does one reach past midlife? In 15 years, will I age out of midlife and be proud to find another group that call themselves senior citizens who calmly discuss cremation and buying headstones?
Oh, must we age out of midlife? Let's just stay. ❤️😉 It really is surreal how we imperceptibly shift into that "next group" that looms, isn't it? Yes, I suppose one day we will calmly discuss cremation—my parents have calmly, unceremoniously presented me with the file that contains all the information for their services, cremation, the works. It all happens so fast.
Midlife is my bedside table.
There is a bottle of water,
A glass of water, night cream and
two piles of books. One has three, the other four.
There is a lamp on one pile of books, an iron on the other.
There is a ficus plant. Its leaves, dusty and wide.
My bedside table is dusty too. Change that. Grimy.
At night I sit next to my bedside table, on my bed and rub my feet.
Every night my feet hurt. I rub and bend my toes back and forth.
It hurts and so I bend further. I like this ritual.
Sometimes I pick the shellac from my toenails. The shellac is purple now.
It's thick and peels off like paint, because it is.
Sometimes I peel off a really large piece and think,
what do I do now? And then I think, midlife is my bedside table.
Oh! I love this. This was such a captivating, vivid way to capture midlife.