The Middle

a journey through middle age

I at no time wanted to be in the middle of anything. Instead, I traversed the outskirts where conversations were more intimate – stories longer. Yet, I find myself amid this strange and humble season. Midlife is an odd and wondrous place in which to reside. Our bodies feel the pull of gravity densely. The weathering of one’s form is resonant in the ever-increasing aches and pains that are a part of each day. As a woman, perimenopause (oh, Perry!) creeps into the crevices, making the transition from youth to maturity as emotional and disjointed as puberty. I wonder if all this fuss leads to enlightenment.

Nostalgia comforts me as I identify with a seemingly more straightforward time—a slowing that feels non-existent in this frenetic day and age. Days bleed a bit too quickly into each other. If I’m afforded 80 years, there is more life behind me than ahead. What to do with this time afforded? How precious and sacred is a life fully lived? Still, I have no desire to go back.

I chuckle to myself. I never thought I would be in this space of life. It has been hard fought, shaken, stirred, and poured out. As some call it, the wrong side of forty feels like breathwork. You draw in deep, hold, and release slowly. It is a powerful and heady thing. I am confounded and settled into this rich, deep life I’ve cultivated. At times, adulthood still feels like a foreign concept. Yet the sage in me is awakening. I am no longer surprised by the despair around one corner or the joy that greets me around the next bend. The extraordinary is found in the ordinary.

Dappled light leaks through the kitchen window, illuminating the crusted edges of the dirty dishes in the sink. No bed is made in the home. My sweet children have left their shoes in the middle of the room, with balls of dirty socks in the corners awaiting collection and placement in the appropriate dirty clothes basket. Dog hair clings to surfaces as our sweet boy sunbathes at the front door—protector of all enclosed.

My husband brought up another project and discarded various tools on the kitchen counter, his unofficial catch-all. The house plants look forlorn, begging for a sip of water. I’m noticing dust motes in corners untouched by broom or mop. A delicious Mythologie candle is burning, juxtaposing this menagerie of undone chores.

This is being. The ebb and flow. The never-ending house chores. The unending love, grace, and hope found within the hearth and home. There is so much more life to live. In a way, this middle is a restart. It is only the beginning, and I can move forward, uncertain of what my physical body may do, knowing I can lean into grace and gratitude. I’m in the depths of a wondrous adventure. I’m full to the brim. The hard-packed earth is softening, and tender shoots are rising.

This isn’t a sunset. It is a sunrise where I can see more clearly than ever before. As winter stutters and spring pushes through soil drenched and fertile with the groaning of this world, cascades of joyful sunlight illumine violet petals. Hope renewed. A promise. Fortitude. Symbiotic harmony shouts in unison, the notes plunging deep within, cheering the deepest caverns and darkest dales of the human soul. Life is breaking through, bringing with it a whole otherworldly blessing. And I stand in the middle of it all, my heart full of elation for the life behind and the life yet to be lived.