Here’s a true story as I stare down the barrel of 41. It’s been so long since I logged into this account that I forgot a) my password and b) the new* WordPress format of adding headers, layout, body, etc., etc., etc. (*From maybe early 2020, sigh.) Is 41 old? Is 41 when you start to yell at technology changing too quickly? Don’t answer that.
So much has changed here. And so much has changed HERE.
At the end of June, it’ll have been a year since we moved from Chicago. Friends, I absolutely love our new home in my old town. My kids are thriving, my marriage is solid, my giant dog is cautiously learning manners and, despite my over-tending, my rhododendrons are flourishing. Yet I still don’t feel fully grounded.
Yes, pandemic. (Oh my God, pandemic.) I definitely haven’t been able to see (and hug) the people Back East that I’d hoped to by this point. I miss our Chicago peeps like limbs, and know that they’re in transitional phases of life as well. I’ve yet to actually walk inside my kids’ elementary school (even though I somehow was crowned Yearbook Layout Chair by the PTA and had to add names I didn’t know to faces I didn’t recognize, oh WHIMSY). But the non-grounding seems more related to a shift in my age, maybe? For sure with my parenting phase.
A few days ago, I was running errands and listening to a playlist of mine on Spotify. It abruptly changed mid-song to a different playlist. Nora’s playlist. I immediately got a text from my 11 year-old: “Mom, I’m sorry I bumped you!” I responded that it was totally okay, that she could use the Spotify account while I was out. “You sure? LOVE YOU!”
It was a nice moment.
IT WAS AN EFFING WEIRD MOMENT.
What happened to the kid on her first field trip away from me, during which I was totally cool and not a weird pile of feelings?! That kid is graduating from fifth grade in a few weeks and, later this year, starting middle school from the same middle/high school where my Dad graduated.
Time, man.
And I’ve become more aware of Nora’s age and stage lately. She’s a really nice person. But she’s a really private person. So in respecting her stories as just that- her own– I’m finding myself without nearly as many publishable quips and adventures and milestones from my O.G. review buddy. And that’s okay.
Because she writes now, too. Up on her bed with her bluetooth headphones blaring, she whips through short stories (and looooong stories) in journal after journal after journal. Her stuff will continue to be captured for posterity- just not always by me anymore. That’s okay.
I promise that’s okay.
I’ll be 41 on Sunday, friends. I thought that packing up two decades of life during a pandemic while turning 40 was weird; it doesn’t even hold a candle to turning 41 in your hometown in one of your childhood homes.
41 isn’t even a number. What the heck is 41?!
I had written a blog right before my 40th birthday- I never ended up posting it for a variety of reasons. But upon a re-read of that draft, a few things resonated with me, things that I realized I was just about to re-write about where I am creatively, where I am parentally, and where I am physically.
Can I quote myself? I can:
What’s really been holding me back from writing is the fear. The fear that I’m not writing enough, that I’ve forgotten how to keep going when the words feel stuck, that once I stop I’m really going to stop. There’s also the fear that the world is too much right now, and that I won’t do any of it justice. That I haven’t been doing a great job of chronicling this deeply unsettling and anxiety-inducing time and maybe jumping in right now as a safely sheltering at home white woman of privilege isn’t the narrative that the people need?
But then I remember that I started this blog on June 1st of 2008 (happy blogiversary, blog!) with a post about Patrick Swayze, so maybe this space has always been less about relevance and more of a thumbprint for me and maybe- eventually- my kids that I was here, and this is how I lived my life and, even if an earthquake across the world is devastating, that I’m allowed to cry a few tears for my own damn dislocated pinky.
For example.
(My pinky is not dislocated.)
(And my Dad would tell me to buck up, anyhow.)
If the past handful of years have shown me anything, it’s that the only way out is through. And, at the very real risk of getting Dr. Seussian up in here, it’s one step, two step, go go go, push, push, push. (Which is a terrible rhyme for children, I’ll admit it.) With marriage, with parenting, with anxiety, with packing, with writing, with pain relief, with attempting to work out/stay healthy…I’ve just continued to show up.
Even on the days where it sucks.
Especially on the days where it’s nothing even close to resembling art.
When I was a little kid, I couldn’t wait to know what my life would look like. What I’d be doing, who I’d be with, when I’d meet my kids, how many ponies would live in the stables near the wraparound porch gingerbread Victorian on the seaside cliff…
You know, normal kid stuff.
But even though I’d daydreamed and planned and- sporadically- put in some dang hard work, I couldn’t have fathomed how each span of time would play out.
My twenties were spent onstage. Williamstown, London, Chicago. Black box (shoebox) theatre, main stages with architectural details so gilded they made my head swim, experimental pieces in parking lots and forest preserves, shows packed with people hanging from the rafters, and performances to an audience of three (including two relatives). I met my husband onstage; a guy who made me feel like we really didn’t need to perform at all to seek that rush of connection.
My twenties were spent with my first babies; my nanny families. Julia, Lily, Lucas, Peyton, Patrick, Chance, Scout, Jack. These were the babies who got the best of my early morning energy and late(r) night shadow puppet shows, on whom I practiced my early childhood theater curriculum on to then take to neighborhood schools later those same days, and who adventured around Chicago parks and fields and train stops and zoos and sidewalk cafes with me, armed with Bugaboo strollers, Baby Bjorns, and a messenger bag stuffed to the brim with Cheerios. These were the babies who made me really, really, want babies.
My twenties- the very, very end of them- was when I first became a Mom.
My thirties quickly became All Things Baby. (And then toddler. And then preschooler.) Three kids in four years in a home we patched with duct tape and filled with classic vinyl dance parties. As soon as they were borderline able to sit still, I took them to see Shakespeare, ballet, improv comedy, opera, puppet shows, and musicals. If this sounds braggy, I assure you it isn’t. Or maybe it is, but only from a place of physical stamina; raising small theatergoers is an intense amount of work. Teaching them/enforcing what their tiny bodies should be doing during each act and how their smallish brains should be processing what they were seeing, hearing, feeling…it was work. (And occasional bribery with sugar.) I think I fully experienced maybe one show in seven years without becoming a hair trigger about not ruining the performances for the ticket-holders around us. Still worth it.
My thirties found me inching towards my dream job. An arts column in a beloved Chicago magazine, a monthly print byline, and the freedom to take my family to reviews and press trips that my previous public access budget marveled at. Soon after came newspaper features. Intensely cool blog interviews. Netflix.
My thirties- the middle and end of them- was when I lost my Dad. Became intensely ill. Started a business. (Loved it.) Broke my brain for a bit, got a little sicker. And decided that we were ready for something different, something healing. (We didn’t know what that looked like, but we opened ourselves up for the right change to smack us across the face with its rightness. And hoo boy, DID IT.)
So now, my (almost) forties. I have a feeling I know which direction I’m pointing my boat…but who knows how everything will play out? Clearly not me. I do know that I’ll be back in my hometown, in a home that’s always felt like home, with the people I’d still choose to quarantine with- if I had a choice- which, even though that’s an incredibly high compliment, pleaseGodinheaven do not ever again make this a thing I’d have to choose.
Apologies for the melodrama if this reads like an obituary. I ain’t dead. (Even though I clearly recall my parents and their friends with a plethora of “Over the Hill” and Grim Reaper-themed party decor for the milestone of 40. Why? Why.)
Kudos if you’ve read this far, amidst the daily battering of (actually important) news.
It feels good to be writing. It feels good to be (almost) 40. And it feels good to take moments of gratitude for what they are in an increasingly unfair world.
I’m grateful. I’m hopeful. I’m ready to do the hard work for life, for our country, for my kids, for my new/old town.
And I’m super excited to meet my pony.
So. 41.
A full ‘War and Peace’ later, turns out this is still what I want. This- as you’ve no doubt seen- means obviously less blogging. Like, “next to nothing” blogging. But I’m not ready to turn off the porch light yet. It’s just…not time.
What it is time for, however, is my book. The one I’ve been writing for years, but writing daily now for months. And eventually it’ll have to be done, right? (…Right?)
And that’s where I’ll put my minutiae, my weirdness, my infrequent bursts of creative energy.
Because even if the world doesn’t need another darkly humorous murder mystery (and you know they do), at the very least I’ll know that I can stop talking about maybe someday writing a darkly humorous murder mystery.
I can already sense the takers for that GoFundMe.
And if you’re one of the long-time readers of the ol’ LolBlog, thanks. Seriously…thanks. I am full of so much gratitude for so many things in my life right now. And people who’ve chosen to continuously read my nonsense and my melodrama and my brain deluges? (Thanks.)
Here’s to gratitude. Here’s to family. Here’s to health, time working the way it ought, unexpected moments of joy, and favorite songs playing on the radio (even if it’s on a cringey station).
Here’s to 41.
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