A Personal Peace

In a few days, it will be my birthday. I have always loved having an August birthday. First of all, I loved that my birthday was just at the start of the new school year. I’ve always loved school, and I loved getting my new school supplies. I still remember the excitement in my heart when I’d pick out my new pencil box, pencils, scissors, paste, and backpack. Every few years, I’d even get a new lunch box. Back in the 80s before the overwhelmingly apparent effects of climate change had occurred (I just earned myself a codgy badge with that sentence), there was usually a day in late August or early September when the air would turn crisp—ever so slightly—but you could tell that autumn had begun. I felt that in Vermont while we lived there too, and it made me remember my fondness for August. That is not how August felt in Pennsylvania by the end of my time there in 2011. It is certainly not how August feels here in 2024 in Southern California. But, nevertheless, I still feel that crispness in my soul when my birthday rolls around. New opportunities, new pursuits and ambitions, a new year of celebrating and marking old traditions—I love it all. 

I also love where my birthday is spaced in relationship to the winter holidays and Mother’s Day. This is because, each of these intervals offers the opportunity for gifts or self indulgence (or both) and I can pace out my wish list just so. Concretely, this means that by the time I’m running out of my large, expensive bottle of Aveda shampoo, the next installment is purchased and waiting for me to open it on my birthday, or Christmas, or Mother’s Day. 

Now, Mother’s Day is a weird one. I’ve gotta say, if it weren’t for the fact that I love my fancy shampoo, I may not even want to know when it is happening. This is because I have come to the conclusion that—and for all you mothers out there your emotional experience may be completely different—no matter what my loving and thoughtful family does on Mother’s Day, there will never be a direct, positive correlation with their expressed appreciation and how invested I am in our family. That is to say—there is no way to adequately thank a hard working, emotionally invested, and dedicated mother for their service with one, arbitrary day of celebration. If we enter into this day expecting the celebration to be commensurate with how much we have invested in our families, we will absolutely be disappointed. 

When I was a teenager—long before I had kids of my own— I remember my own dear mother bursting into tears around 2:00 pm on Mother’s Day one year. This was after one of her daughters (who shall remain nameless) did not prepare a gift or card and so thought it would be funny to write upon a square of toilet paper, “Happy Mother’s Day” and present it to her.

And so, ever since, I’ve tried every which way to get ahead of the potential hurt or disappointment that feels inevitably baked into this commercialized day for corporations to capitalize off this phenomenon. In addition to always trying to show my own mother how much she means to me, I have employed various strategies for my own little family to try to avoid the corporately induced Mother’s Day disappointment. Some years, I’ve told Collin exactly what I’ve wanted for Mother’s day—from the breakfast we eat to the presents I get to the activities that we do. Other years, I have allocated a certain dollar amount to myself and used it for exactly what I want on that day in lieu of people getting me flowers, chocolates, gifts, or celebration. And my personal favorite/worst strategy ever—I’ve canceled Mother’s Day and formally denounced it for weeks leading up to the day only to then start sobbing two nights beforehand saying that I can’t believe no one care’s about Mother’s Day. Alas, Mother’s Day is a racket, but it’s hard not to interpret what happens or not on that day as feedback. 

Now, don’t get me wrong—Collin (and my kids, to some extent) try exceedingly hard to demonstrate gratitude for my work and role in our family on Mother’s Day. This emotional roller coaster of an experience is entirely my own internal journey based on my own conflicting desires—to be low maintenance and secure enough to not need a lot of fanfare on the one hand and on the other hand, harboring the secret, lingering hope that I will wake up with a path of rose petals that leads to a massage therapist waiting for me with a mimosa and chocolates and perhaps somewhere in the distance a marching band playing John Philips Sousa’s Stars and Stripes forever (I’ve just always really liked that song) as my family parades down the street with banners and signs that say “how can we ever thank you, mom?” And “you’re the best!” And “I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me” and so on and so forth. And I look out the window for a brief moment and smile and wave and tear up and they march on by while I return to my massage. It’s a very niche Mother’s Day celebration fantasy that I have. 

I think another underlying thing that’s difficult about this day can be more generally true as well. If you’re doing something well—whether it’s working for or leading a company, parenting, being a home educator, juggling multiple jobs at once, performing well in school, running a homestead, trail running or staying fit at all—if you’re doing any one or more of life’s roles/responsibilities well—you may be making it look easy. Or at the very least, you appear very competent. And when either of these things are the case, people don’t always know how hard you are working and potentially how much you are struggling. So maybe someone needs to hear that who is reading this—you’re doing an amazing job, and you deserve a marching band to parade down the street celebrating your hard work and achievement. You’re making it look easy, but it’s NOT.

So, anyway, it’s almost my birthday, and I’ve got to say I love my age. Because I learned (the very hard way via many adolescent years spent in less than amazing health) how to truly take care of my health, I feel better than ever. I’m in good shape, I know how to eat, I feel comfortable in my own skin. I can do physically demanding things without injury. In all ways, I’m physically more fit than I was in my teens. But because I’m not in my teens or twenties or even thirties, and I’m actually (almost) 43—fewer people see me when I’m out and about in society. I know some people struggle with this as they miss the good ol’ days of cat calls and ogling and special treatment for being young and attractive. Not me. Oh my gosh, I absolutely LOVE being invisible to all the horny people (now I’ve got the Beatles All the Lonely People aka “Eleanor Rigby” stuck in my head, but instead all the horny people. I actually hate that adjective, but I’m not able to conjure a suitable synonym right now. And yes, Paul, where DO they all come from? Send them back to wherever that is, because I don’t want it. Never have. So, I’m super grateful that’s over.) 

I’ll never forget one day when I snapped on a guy who cat called me and said something about my butt. I was 17, and I was just leaving a job interview. He picked the wrong female on the wrong day. I had reached the breaking point for this kind of BS, and I was ready to confront it head on. I turned around and marched toward him demanding angrily, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?!!!” And he said it again, though, at close range with eye contact he clearly felt a little less uninhibited. I then proceeded to tell him how I did not ask his opinion on my body and that I did not want to be objectified. He told me that he was “complimenting” me to which I then responded with a detailed monologue articulating how that was NOT a compliment to me because it was unsolicited attention, objectification, and there was a power differential when a male and a female are alone in a parking lot together (usually. In this case, I flipped that). He then told me he wanted me to stop talking and leave him alone (I was following him while giving him this lecture as he was trying to walk away). And I said, “Oh, you mean, you don’t WANT THIS ATTENTION FROM ME???? How does it FEEL?!!!”

So, yeah, my forties are pretty great. I’m in good shape, the creepy peeps don’t notice, and also it’s pretty sweet to be done agonizing about what my life is going to be like the way I did in my twenties. I so much prefer to just be fully in my life. I mean, that’s basically what mid-life is, right? I think having the perspective that life is half-gone, is the wrong way to look at it. Life isn’t half gone—it’s changed form. I spent it, sure. But the memories and experiences have become a part of me. So, I like to think that mid-life actually means we are fully immersed in our life and gloriously surrounded by the life we have lived and the life we have yet to live. The life we have spent has become who we are. And from here, we have all that same amount of future to look forward to experiencing. (Did I mention that I have severe positive bias? Possibly to a reckless level, but read on! It’s inspiring!)

One great change that has occurred in this half of my life is that I love spending time with myself (which is rare, but I love whenever it happens). I used to always prefer to be with people if I had the choice. Something shifted for me a couple years ago—I’m not sure if 4 years on top of a mountain reset my bar for the amount of peace and quiet I need or if I’m just changing as I age. Whatever the cause of this shift from extrovert to introvert (or at least ambivert), I find joy in my own intellectual curiosity and intelligence, and I’m comfortable with who I am. I have not only made peace with the mysterious, unknown qualities of the Universe, but I also find it exciting and fun to explore, question, and ponder. It reminds me of this quote:

“Give this person the inner work of their intellect, and they will be happier than the richest person.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (gender pronouns changed by moi)

Hence, I love writing, taking walks, being in nature and with my thoughts, working on projects, even cleaning—I love my internal world. And that is a gift. And it didn’t come without a lot of work and struggle. And still, at times, I can get to low places psychologically. Because while I do have a positive bias as a personality trait, I am also intense. So I experience the full gamut of emotions in all their peaks and valleys. The longer I’m alive and the better I integrate the different elements of my identity, however, the more clearly and quickly I know my way back to myself when I feel fathoms deep in the sadness. (Song recommendation for this paragraph: Girl in Red, Serotonin.)

I think I’ll wrap it up for you all now as I have been in a bit of a creative drought ever since we didn’t sell our house and move to the farm. I’m actually feeling, whether you could tell from the tone of this post or not, a bit like the Girl in Red song above right now. That is why this post is much more of just a personal piece than an ideas piece. I like my ideas pieces better, but until I get some personal peace the personal pieces might be all I can write. But that’s okay because writing always leads me a little further on the journey home to some measure of personal peace.

Wishing you all well for your summer endings and autumn beginnings.

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