Still
the Same
“I
have one of those stabbing crystalline moments when it’s as if I’m outside
myself, observing. I see myself almost fifty and my daughter unrecognizably
grown, and I wonder: How did this happen? Where did all the time go? Where did
we go—those other selves? Then the moment passes and I’m back, staring again at
the bones, those tiny sticks of enduring.”
Sue
Monk Kidd (Traveling with Pomegranates, p.54; Viking, 2009)
Sue
Monk Kidd was looking at the bones of St. Philothei, in a reliquary on the
altar at the Palianis Nunnery on the Greek island of Crete. The nunnery hosts
the icon of the black Madonna, also known as the Virgin of the Myrtle dating
from the Byzantine period. When one travels to ancient sites where pilgrims
have been coming for centuries to light candles and pray for whatever is on their
hearts, their prayers are frequently answered. The very fact of all the
centuries of prayers, the intention of the pilgrims to be in sacred space, and
the beauty, grace and energy of the site, create the perfect conditions for one
to encounter the holy.
It is
in the solitude and serenity of such places that we ask big questions like “How
did this happen? Where did all the time go? Who am I now?” I met a new friend
this week—a woman who used to be a dancer and had traveled all over the world, performing
and teaching dance. She told me her life story over dinner, and then asked, “what
did you do?” Since we’re both retired now, it was a question in the past-tense,
as though post-retirement is a vacuum in which one does nothing. It was an
innocent question and one we ask routinely upon meeting someone new. It’s simply
a request for information so that one can know the other’s background and
history. But I’m somehow always taken aback by it—because there is never a succinct
answer. I always want to respond, “Which decade?”
Some of
us have one career, one focus, for which we dedicate the bulk of our working
life. That’s how people become experts in their field—they spend decades doing it
and, as with anything, the more you practice the better you become. But some of
us work at many things over a lifetime, following our interests, our passions,
our necessities. We may never become “expert” because we stick with it only
long enough to satisfy our interest. One is not better than the other, they are
simply different, and both are needed.
At some
point, though, each of us stops long enough to ask those questions—and we wonder
what we’ve done with our lives. We look at our grown—maybe even middle-aged—kids
and wonder how that happened. Where was I when that child was growing up,
becoming an adult, having children? I ask myself these questions all the time.
There
was a time when I felt guilty that I did not remember every detail of my
children’s lives. It seems like a “real” mother should be able to remember
every birthday, every soccer game, every sore throat. But I’ve decided it’s a
sign of a mother who also had a life of her own. Her own interests,
intellectual pursuits, body of work. That mother may not remember every ballet
recital, or drum lesson, but she was there, she as present, even if her mind
was mentally listing everything she needed to have ready for the next day’s board
meeting.
I have a friend who
cleans houses for a living. She has four young children. She frequently misses
work because one or more of them is sick. I can tell her that five years from
now, she will not remember which ones had which ailments on which days. In five
years, she will be a different person and so will they. We change. We grow. We
remember the big moments and forget the little ones. And—we are still good people
asking big questions and waiting for the sacred Ones to answer our prayers. You
can pack a lot into a lifetime—so it’s okay if you don’t remember all of it.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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