I went to get a haircut today and was surrounded by cute young stylists rocking adorable clothes and perky bodies. Greek George cuts my hair and that of many other women and men trying to stop time. The ticking of the clock is a double-sided reality. With age and time comes perspective, a hope of wisdom and momentary "pauses" when you can feel the change of seasons that inevitably haunts us to live a new day, adopt a new attitude and when new songs become necessary.
The older I get, the less I know "for sure", but I do know these things. My mother and father are the foundation for everything that is good in me and I need them now as much if not more than I ever did. I am slightly ashamed to admit that surprises me, but I have watched my friends lose mothers and fathers in the past few years and am so grateful I have them both. Coming to terms with my own mortality and theirs has made them more perfect and charming and me more desperate to hold onto all that is good in them. Old hurts are pale as the morning sky in comparison to the thought of what a dark night it will be when I am left without their mortal presence and only my memories.
I also know that in the end, accomplishment is hollow unless it's infused with passion and meaning not only to the person striving, but to others whose lives are touched by one's gifts. What I mean by this is that in each of us lives a reason for being and life is the daily testing ground for finding those reasons, trying to be true to them and doing your best along the way. I am full of my own failings but not overtaken by them. I am also full of the little patches of time where everything fits together and the failings fade away. Growth becomes the product of not knowing or doing better. While I would never go back in time, I have regrets, but none would be so great as if I hadn't tried my hardest, done my best and fixed the troubling experiences for next-time. With or without companionship, each of us faces that mirror found in the faces, tears and words of others. I alone am responsible.
At the same time, life has little meaning if you don't matter to anyone or if others don't matter to you. The bricks of time are built on chance meetings, detours, open doors, closed gates, entries and exits, fulfillment, disappointment and sea changes that arise from each turn. Opportunities narrow and choices expand.
But time is always there, chasing us with its shadows and memories, sustaining this day. My granny had 29 grandchildren and I had more cousins and second cousins than I could count or know. But Granny gave every one of her grandchildren a hand sewn patchwork quilt made of fabric scraps that became whole blankets to warm us and remind us of her. She had little money and great faith in God. She gave us all the time it took her to piece together work founded in bountiful love. She also gave us our names in embroidery, which signalled our distinct places in her life, on that quilt and in our own travels warmed by its meaning. This is what my Granny taught me, my parents lived and I aspire to embody while putting one foot in front of the other, racing against the shadows of time that will inevitably take me home.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
These are intense issues no doubt. It's scary to think of how fastlife goes and how we only have one chance to live each moment. And then they are gone. I loved hearing about Granny. " Little money but big faith in God" What could matter more than that? I bet Granny lived "waste not want not" and she knew how to keep her family nourished and warm with little. Just her time creativity and some fabric scraps built a legacy to remember. How honorable. And my Mother? Sweet cards in the mail when you least expect them, written in gorgeous natural handwriting. Yes I think there is something to be said for putting pen to paper. :)
ReplyDeleteOhhhh I swear, I could talk for hours about my Granny!!!! (Grandpa Paul's mom). That woman had eight kids on her back, came from Oklahoma to CA with little to nothing, lived in labor camps, lost her husband when Grandpa was in his mid twenties (just after I was born), and had a rockin' spirit. It is the luxury of Grandparents to love their grandchildren with absolute unreserve. She worked picking cotton and peaches and made the best blackberry and peach cobbler I've ever tasted. She said cereal like "ssrul" and my name with the greatest twang and so much love. My favorite memory of her is sitting in the backyard on the patio cracking walnuts from our tree with hammers for fall baking season. I have many others, but that is how I see us together.
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