No Going Back

We talk about there being “no going back” as if it is a novel sensation. We say, “there will be no going back after we take this step.” And we are right. Whether the step is in front of a truck or a flawlessly executed foray across the street to pick up dog poop, it is immutable, as irrevocable as time itself, as thoroughly gone as the minute in which it happened.

So when I say that this summer feels like one of this pivotal periods - when we will all - and each of us individually -  have changed in subtle and permanently altering ways - I’m not sure why it shakes me up so much.  Fear, I suppose. The kind of fear that female comics play into when they talk about hormonal shifts. When I got my period they said I was becoming .. .a woman…. Now that I am entering menopause, they won’t say what I am becoming…Judging from the facial hair, I think I’m becoming my father..  If we are under-taking a substantial shift from that sweet, imperfect family of the spring, what is it we are becoming?

Survivors, for one. Thirteen is having her “Are you there, God?” summer in solid Judy Blume fashion, and appears, remarkably, to find it funny right now. She has words for the moments, and sees humor in the vaguely grotesque nature of evolution that occurs in a tent, at horse camp, coupled with head lice that no one can see. (Blessed is the sharing of brushes at grade 8 graduation… ) Eleven gets her bed stripped each morning at camp, her clothes washed, her hair doused in eco-poison, and feels “fine” about it. “No big deal” and her cabin mates are not, it seems, treating her like an uncannily beautiful version of the plague. But she is not the one with bed bugs, that’s Thirteen, in Paris. But I digress. Forty-six feels buying power, without the complementary pull of salary, and me (Forty Five)? I’m doing battle with demons I’d long considered outside the gate, who have clearly made their way in and found comfortable chairs in the living room of my brain.

Which is not to say that this is the summer of Job. (The irony is rich, coupled as the capital and un-capital versions of that word seem to be at the moment). It is the summer of independence. Eleven neither needs nor wants a daily letter at camp. She knows who she is, and she knows what she wants. (world peace, an end to hunger, and a world of buddhist vegetarians in her image. duh). Thirteen has pledged to return to her horse camp for a month next summer, even if there is struggle. She has found that she can distinguish struggle from pain, and has determined that she should have more tolerance for both, it seems. Forty-five toyed with medicating the demons (hoping they would drown) but has decided to try to beat them instead. She knows they are there now, however, and so do you. She’ll keep you posted.

This is a summer of shift, of departures, of growth, of grief that is speakable. This is the summer of becoming and leaving, Forty-five knows better than to believe that Thirteen and Eleven are leaving her - they are merely, and remarkably, growing away. Surely she is growing too. But what is she becoming? Something she has never been before, because there is no going back to what she used to be, even if she wanted to go.