I heard from an old friend this week, someone from
college. He was in our wedding, in quite
a few of the pictures of dorm life, is one of those intense connections you
make at that time of your life when you are intoxicated with self-examination
and the bigness of the world. For me,
that means he and I have had actual conversations about the person I wanted to
be (and who he wanted to be.)
And then suddenly, I'm a 45-year-old woman who is a stay at home mom,
living in the suburbs, overwhelmed by millions of small tasks I leave undone so
I can play at being an artist. Not quite
what I had pictured in 1992. To be
fair, I was never one of those people with a laser clear vision of what they
wanted to be when they grew up. I’ve
known a few of those; they find their path and they follow it. How wonderful. My path is scribbled in pencil – watercolor pencil
– rather than set in stone.
So here I am, chatting (not even a “real” conversation) with
this guy that I met 27 years ago. Back
then I was a bit… brash. I was kind of a
bully with my ideas. I understood words,
but not feelings. I wrote gobs and gobs
of poetry. I made a few good
friends. I had long-distance boyfriends
who were willing to spend hours on the phone (remember long-distance fees?!)
but who weren’t actually there.
Now, I am married.
Two kids. I clean up messes and
drive kids to soccer. My husband and I
talk about schedules, the future, money, our kids’ quirks, and what is going on
at work. There’s little talk of
philosophy, unless it is in the form of politics. Someone is around and needs
something from me all the time. I write a few poems a year, which no one
reads. We are on auto-pilot, letting the
stream take us. There’s no thought of
jumping the banks.
So, for the duration of our chat, I had to reconcile this
gap. What I discovered is that I’m a)
quite boring and b) jealous and c) unsure quite what to do about that.
I won’t go into his life because I don’t have his
permission, but I’ll say he’s very successful.
He has the trappings of success.
I’m jealous because he built something.
And though I never even WANTED to have that sort of life, I am jealous
that he worked, quit/failed, went back to work, changed things, and worked some
more until… he got here. I’m also
jealous that he got that chance. It seems
like since he’s a man, it’s ok for him to fail.
That just makes him a high-stakes risk-taker. It makes me a flake.
I feel pressure to be satisfied with the life I have. After all, it is soooo much better than most
people get. I was privileged from the
start and have stability and luxury that quite a few people would envy. This is a white woman disease (although the
white men are the ones who kill themselves over it – or kill other
people.) The trappings of the cushy life
we’ve created are actually trapping us in a solitary, sad place where we post
how we fill everyone else’s expectations, but we don’t feed what actually makes
us good, solid people.
I talk to my kids (or I used to – time for that talk again)
about making choices that make them their best selves and I think now it is
time I make a few of those choices for myself.
Less phone, more reading. Less
sitting, more walking outside. Less
anxiety about people who don’t get back to me, more following-up. Less despair about this world, more doing
small things to repair it.
As a mildly pudgy middle-aged mom of two crazy kids with a
day job I gave myself and no actual title or significance, maybe I can let go of
some of that self-examination (self-recrimination?) and instead remember the
intoxication of the big world. My
inspiration has always been the marvel of how things go together. My job is to enjoy the marvel. Help others remember it. Strengthen it.
I’m still in here.
The blessing is that the brash has been worn off a bit. I can listen a little better, maybe hurt others
a little less. I’ve also learned lessons
in… staying power. I have some
perspective on who really gets hurt in this world: everybody. If you’re alive, you’ve probably struggled
against loss, or addiction, or glass ceilings, or prejudices, or violence. But let’s face it, some people have it way
worse than others. I didn’t really know
that in college. Not really.
So yeah, maybe I turned out a little more boring than I’d
hoped, but what put me here are my own choices, not cultural injustice or
misfortune. I’m not at all jealous of
his commute or his lifestyle or the pressure he feels. As for what I’m supposed to be
doing, I’m doing it. I need to trust myself a little more. Maybe I'll fail in this stage in my life, too. Maybe I'll lose more relationships. Maybe I'll continue to suck at the things I've always sucked at doing. I'll never get "success" from my art. However, if I’m really lucky, I’ll
paint a piece; it’ll make someone’s day; they’ll buy it; and every time they
see it, it will give them warm fuzzies. My initials will be on it – all three.
Because Shelley Helms from 1992 didn’t have quite what it takes to be
this person, but Shelley Helms Fleishman in 2018 does.
A poem from last year:
What I am Not
It has taken me a long time
to grow up,
past independence into dependence, again.
I raise my own and still cannot say I have
a hold on what it takes to
make a life – more
make a life full and worthy and clean,
if there is such a thing.
But what I can offer is progress, the moving
of the stakes: I do
not accept
how things were
as how things are.
I am not unthinking about the seasons
of light or who lies at the right hand.
I am not the person I was;
I will change and change.
Maybe it was a gift to be a child
who stayed a child too long:
the angst of differentness
rolling mostly down my back
and now the lagging mindfulness bloats
onward with creeping surety. Wisdom
being the property of the aged,
my aging coming slow and stupid,
fast as a glacier, but steady,
steady on.
- SHF
