I pretty much never want to turn back the big old hands of time. As much as there are things about getting older—grey hair or creaky knees—I don’t wholly adore, there are other things—a general comfort with being myself—that override the bother, at least thus far.
When I think of my late twenties, I remember an anxious wistfulness about whether things would turn out okay: would we be happy once married, and would we have kids (when? How many? Would we like being parents?). Would we have a house we liked? Would our work lives be satisfying?
I’m writing this little essay in a house that’s totally—messily, chaotically, comfortably—home and I’m seventeen years into a very happy marriage with a totally most excellent dear man and we have four kids we over-the-moon love (and are routinely driven a bit crazy by) and despite a pretty long list of anxieties and frustrations about my work, I’d have to say I love the writing part of being a writer much more than I’d imagined (the rest… well).
That’s to say: it’s much better to live the life I’m living than wonder what my life was going to be like.
Right there as my twenties were concluding, a dear friend was diagnosed with Stage Four Hodgkin’s and I spent a lot of time caretaking. I dropped by her apartment maybe five times a week, did some of the ferrying and food delivery and schedule of helper keeping and worrying. It seemed so beyond fathom that life changed on dimes like that. She was too young—in her thirties—for this.
Amazingly, she recovered from that pretty terrible ordeal.
Not surprisingly, between then and now, I’ve had friends get way worse dimes.
**
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reminded of things from my twenties that I really did enjoy. My upstairs neighbors—we barter childcare for housing—definitely hang out with their friends for nice big chunks of time, in ways I do not (although we do hang out for lovely and often long, almost always loud chunks of times with our friends and our friends’ kids or our friends and our kids). The upstairs’ twentysomething hanging out made me remember how much I loved having aerobics class or a run be the day’s biggest event, often followed by, say, going out to dinner with some friends. I loved my friends with the luxurious expansiveness of time. Hanging out, that was—could be—plunked down in the center of my life, and other stuff, the “have-to” tasks, which took up a ton of time to be sure, they happened, too, but friendships really held the thing called life together.
Then, this week another friend showed me her brand-new, expensive cowboy boots, which she mostly bought just because. She’s in her twenties, and the boots are—as she said, eyes bright and proud—“totally cool.” I envied not the specific boots, but the happiness they brought her. At that moment in my life, I loved spending time looking at pretty things in my friends’ pretty stores, things I might want for myself. There’s not a specific pair of boots or pair of earrings I recall. I was reminded of they way that there was space to consider those things—say, boots—in leisure. I don’t spend enough time in stores for much active coveting, and these days, I barely notice stuff that I’d wear.
Really wanting a pair shoes or getting to have a workout and a shower one right after the other are nice things.
It’s not like I wish to return all the way back there. It’s not like I prefer dinners out to bedtime snuggles. Being reminded of the part of myself that enjoyed my own company and that of my friends, though, I think it’s serving to let me know I’ll enjoy my next era, when my whims can be indulged a little more, even if that remains a ways away.
**
This week, a friend died and then a friend’s dad died, then another friend’s dad died, one early Monday, the other early Tuesday, the next on Wednesday.
I had a pretty profound experience with the friend over these past few weeks following her diagnosis. She invited me to help her begin to fulfill a vision for the community. She handed me a rather amazing gift, not simply of working on a meaningful project. She showed me that so often we don’t choose what it is we have to carry; we only get to choose how we carry it. She carried hers regally and with great compassion for the world and generosity—and with an amazing amount of gratitude.
**
Mixed with facing the reality that in midlife, losses come more frequently, there’s all this gratitude, practically flooding me daily. Grateful is kind of the catchphrase that keeps running through my mind.
Even the hardest stuff, it doesn’t exactly have me longing for a different life, a dreamed-of future, it has me feeling very much filled by all that is. Maybe I know that I can’t stop life from being this way, rich and full and in the midst of being lived and chaotic and so very sweet it becomes bittersweet—and then sweet again. I’m thinking that bittersweet is all about gratitude. I just keep feeling tender and sad and then tender and happy and then grateful.
