Wednesday 15 August 2018

If Not Now, When?



Yesterday, I turned 28.

Upon waking, I found that it is a strange age; I was more comfortable with 27. 28 is firmly detached from that early-to-mid-twenties chaos and confusion, but not quite encroaching on a more settled 30, either. There is so much I thought I’d have done by 28 that I haven’t, and mounds I never thought I’d do that I have.

Last month, my daughters turned five, and the transformation in them is inescapable. They’re taller, leaner, hips suddenly curving slightly in a way that marks them no longer as simply children, but as distinctly female. Their hair is blonder now, their art and writing becoming more complex, and together we’ve embarked on reading our first of many novels together. They chose my childhood copy of The Wind in the Willows− my name scratched shakily inside the front cover− and have quickly become entranced with the adventures of Water Rat, Badger, Mole, and Toad of Toad Hall. I read them a chapter every night before bed, and as they lean into me I notice the way their legs dangle over the edge of the couch, and how their scent has lost its lingering baby notes of diaper fluff and milk. Now they smell like cotton, grass, sunshine, and the sticky sweet sweat of summer. The alteration unsettles me.

Though my girls still love being held and hugged and kissed as much as they always have, they are asserting more boundaries too, and I am beginning to experience the ache of realizing we cannot go back; regardless of what miracles may occur throughout their lives, they will never be my babies again. The evidence is walking and talking around me daily, as kindergarten looms and the public school system reaches out to snatch the better part of their days from me for the next thirteen years.

And as our last untouched summer winds to a close, I realize with some deep, ancient part of me that soon all I'll have left of these moments are photographs− we will never be here again. Each day Time gives me a little more of my girls, and yet mercilessly steals other treasured parts away; I feel simultaneously flooded and like I’m desperately trying to catch a wave with my fingertips. The pain is palpable, and through I welcome the new stage we’re entering, I think I’ll always feel the loss of those baby years acutely.

Unlike my daughters however, while my digits have increased, physically I remain much the same. I have no more and no less wrinkles today than I did yesterday. My height remains firmly 5’4 (and a half). I am still a voracious reader, a mediocre cook, a major night owl, and a terrible reverse-parker. Sure, I get slightly more hungover than I used to, my knee and elbow skin seems looser, and as my boyfriend often says, we’re reaching the age where injuries are less funny and more scary. But bodily, I'm effectively unchanged− it is my mentality where there's been a less-than-subtle shift.

For the first time I feel like I am beginning to truly fill in my form, as though my insides are growing to fit exactly who I’m supposed to be. Nowadays, waking up in the morning seems like pulling on a pair of latex surgical gloves; my skin sits seamlessly and I’m more secure, sure, and confident both in the choices I’ve made and the risks I want to take for the future. Perhaps that's a normal part of growing older, but to me it feels like too special of a transition to be labeled, "ordinary". As someone who has spent the better part of the last ten years mired in anxiety and uncertainty, to be slipping into some form of surety is a thrilling, and necessary, development. 

Particularly because for me, 28 is going to be a year of metaphorical cliff-jumping; on top of having two kindergarteners and encountering more freedom than I’ve had since I was 22, I’m planning on taking a massive career leap that may or may not result in me crashing horribly, crushed and defeated. But I’m going to do it anyway, because through my children I have finally begun to understand that if I don’t take advantage of the years I have, I will lose them forever. Despite what Back to the Future and HG Wells told us, time travel isn’t real if I wake up unfulfilled at forty, I will never be able to claw my way back to my twenties and remake those huge decisions. The days ahead now seem less limitless, and more limited a road that narrows towards an horizon line along which Time is determinedly driving all of us.  

And while I always thought aging was the enemy, it turns out that the more I accept and embrace it, the less powerful and terrifying it seems; with each increasing year, my fear of the future diminishes, and I am less afraid of death because it is less unknown. And unfortunately it’s taken me 28 years to recognize the way I’ve wasted so many seasons, passively watching the passage of life without either appreciating the one I’ve been given or asking myself what I really and truly want from it.
   
So I refuse to be frightened any longer. I refuse to hope someone else will come along and give me the answers. I refuse to wish my days away, living outside the very moments I’ve been blessed with. I refuse to ever again be a passenger of my own existence. Though I cannot control what time has taken and turned to dust the parts of myself and my children that have been left behind I can control how I use what still remains ahead, those possibilities that dangle palpably with each new sunrise.

I suspect now more than ever that 28 is going to be big, and scary, and exciting, and chaotic, but it is mine every single tumultuous piece of it. I will claim it with my hands and my heart, grabbing a firm hold and wielding it unassisted.

After all, if not now, when? And if not me, who?








(Image Via Pinterest)

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