on aging

It is so rare that we feel up to the task of watching an entire movie. And I'm not even talking about the movie theatre. I'm talking about rustling up the focus and energy to select and then watch a real movie all in one go, snuggled up on the couch downstairs after the children are in bed.

But on Saturday we watched God Help the Girl, a film by Stuart Murdoch (the Belle and Sebastian guy). The music, the story, the sweetness and honesty - it was good. I'm not sure what I expected. There are so many bands, artists, and writers that I paid a lot of attention to in college and the years after - before parenthood - that I have not plugged into for a very long time. Some narcissistic part of me assumes they all just stopped writing songs and making dances when my attention waned. Around 2005, all over New York and Paris (and in this case, Glasgow) artists could be overheard saying, Oh, Meagan isn't listening to our new albums anymore? Ah well. What's the point? We may as well settle down and get jobs and have kids too.

I still listen to the old albums I loved. Belle and Sebastian has been a constant in my life since my senior year of college, and I associate If You're Feeling Sinister with falling in love with Mike, visits to New York, and a sense of yearning possibility. I can't hear Judy and the Dream of Horses without my chest swelling; I can't sing along without my throat constricting with the peripheral presence of tears. What are those tears about? Nostalgia, loss, the strangeness of time passing? I feel so connected to that moment: being twenty and in love and in a perfect city, newly mine, listening to Belle and Sebastian, unsure about what to do and who to be. Was it really seventeen years ago?

After we watched the movie - about beautiful young people in Glasgow and how their new friendships, pop music aspirations, and troubles all mix up in a moment before anything big has happened, before any particular direction has been established in their lives - and the credits played out and we were sitting in darkness, Mike asked me if I felt sad that we were no longer young. I heard myself answer yes, accompanied by a surprising sense of tranquility. No need to be defensive, no need to regret anything, just yes. Yes, it is sad that that time in our lives is over.

What was it like? For me, a mix of vague yet passionate ambition, persistent self-doubt, powerful experiences of friendship, an uncertain, faltering, yet determined desire for creative expression, spiritual longing, confusion, love. A yearning for authenticity; for all that seemed true, good, and beautiful. I lost my dad when I was eighteen. I fell in love with Mike and graduated from Swarthmore and moved to New York when I was twenty. I was always in such a rush to figure it out, to grow up, to grow out. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. As I considered options, depending on my mood, either the prospective path or my own flawed self seemed lacking.

It was stressful and wearying, worrying so much about myself and my relationships. It's such an inward time! After Frances was born, I remember a conscious sense of relief. In my focus on her, I got a break from myself. Finally. 

But. But but. Nine years later, I still spend most of my emotional energies worrying about my kids. Do I work too much? Do they have the support they need? Are they growing in all the ways that they should be? Am I helping them to become themselves, in all their strangeness and glory?

In the rush and pull of everyday life, it is so easy to neglect to look inward every now and then. It's easy to not give myself the time and quiet to think about the person I am - good gracious! - still becoming. Maybe some of the sadness, in missing my youth, is missing what in retrospect seems like luxurious amounts of self-reflection. How to make the space for discovering what is good and true and beautiful? 

The truth is that I prefer who and how I am now. Even with my gray streaks and residual perioral dermitis (sigh!), I know I would never choose to be twenty-three again. But it's good to be reminded of what I wanted and what I still want - to grow in love. And though there is a temptation to focus so fully on my children that I slip past and around whatever difficulty is stirring in my own heart, good people and music and movies remind me to resist that limited kind of relationship. Ultimately, I think, loving my children wholly leads me back to myself.

In a good way.