Crow's feet, grey hairs, and Joy

some birthday month thoughts

Yesterday I asked Jo what color she thought Mama’s hair was. She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before declaring, quite confidently, “Grey.” Excuse me!

I’m not even sure what color my hair is these days. It’s not grey, though I’ve found grey hairs. I say dirty blonde, though it often looks brown. When people see Jo’s shock of white-blonde hair they ask incredulously, “Where’d the blonde come from?!” I used to be surprised by this question - Me, of course. I’m blonde! This is just one of many instances when I have failed to adjust the image I have of myself, one I probably established in my early 20s, to who I actually am today.

I don’t really care about hair color - though I went through an odd hair dying phase in college - highlights, brunette, red, back to natural ombre blonde. But this year, the year I turn 32, I’ve had a more distinct sense of aging than I have in any year prior. I know, I know, this is still quite young, but the sense of limitless possibility has started to recede. There is an end point on the horizon. Career changes or moves or anything else at this age are filled with heaviness - they have implications. There are children to consider, there is a timeline to think about. There is retirement to plan for and school choices to consider. And perhaps because the internet introduces me to many young cancer patients or because my own mother died of cancer before her time, I make no assumptions of old age - though I pray and hope for it very, very much. None of this is bad, it just is.¹

When I look in the mirror or at some recent photos I see I have crow’s feet.² Not just the hint of where wrinkles will someday be, but full blown crow’s feet, here to stay. This doesn’t upset me, but it does surprise me. Because when I read a novel I’m still picturing myself as the heroine and heroines are young - I’m Jo March writing her book, I’m Lucy Pevensie wandering into the wardrobe… aren’t I? And then I realize, no, those are my daughters. These are their stories now.

There's a whole essay to be written about how the brave young girls of our favorite stories become such lackluster mothers, all adventure and curiosity gone in favor of a stately bearing, a fresh apron, and some wise anecdotes - and how wrong this is - but for now I’m here to say that mothers and grandmothers and friends and aunts and old people and young people are all capable of new starts and heroic stories. They are also - as all of us who ‘grow up’ realize with real shock - largely as clueless about the big questions as their children.

So at the end of this month, on the feast of St. Jerome,³ when I turn 32 and I reflect on this year and the years proceeding I have the now cliched feeling of gratitude. I have many of the same worries and problems many people do, and some unique ones thanks to particular circumstances, privileges or disadvantages or simply the way things have gone. I have many particularly beautiful things to be grateful for - for my children and my husband and the view out my window right now, of rolling green hills and grey skies. I can’t have any regrets because I wouldn’t change one hair on my children’s heads - anything that I would change in my own life would change their existence⁴ so there’s nothing to be said but, Thank God, and “There but for the Grace of God go I.”⁵

I have done some nice things in my career that I could note, recognitions or successes, but they really mean very little to me when I think of what has mattered to me in these 32 years of life. In any case I made a very bizarre career decision four years ago when I left my station job, where I was being profiled and promoted, to… what? I didn’t quite know. We were hoping for kids and I was hoping for a change. I was hoping to maybe write again or create again. Nothing kills creativity like a cubicle. On any long, difficult day at home with the babies I think back to that small office square and the deadening of my mind and the despair as I clicked, clicked, clicked for 8+ hours a day and again - Thank God. So career is what it is - and I have hopes for things, and of course practical things we all think about, like money, that ugly reality, and everything else. But again, this is not what I care about.

Here are the things I am proud of and that I love from these 3+ decades of life:

carrying and birthing two children, nursing babies night and day, the delight and complete joy of old friends, the travels around the world, wild Highlands and city vistas, mornings on horseback following hounds, candlelit Masses at dawn, loving as much as I could even when I did it so imperfectly, asking my future husband to study together thirteen years ago, of marrying him six years later, holding my grandmother’s hand when she was dying, that out of body feeling upon closing a really good book, wandering art museums and bookshops, hearing the BSO perform Dvorak’s New World Symphony, long walks when the grass is still wet. These and a thousand other small moments are the stuff of life, of my life, that could make me weep with the profound gift of it all.

As I drove home from dropping the toddler off for a morning at Nature School, the wind crept up and the rain drizzled and the cool air blew my hair, and I said out loud to the baby, “Lucy I’m so excited, life is so exciting!” I really truly said this and I really truly meant it.

Having been thrown into the pits of anxiety in the past, I know this is an undeserved feeling, and an inconsistent one, so I will again just say it is a gift, and hold it all very gently, very loosely. Giveth and taketh away.

We can only hope, or despair, in any given moment. To vacillate between extremes is human, but what I hope for in this next year of life is something divine, a steady posture of the heart,

It is all Gift.

To celebrate my birthday I’m offering 10% off all year-long paid subscriptions through the end of the month! If you aren’t in a position to upgrade would you consider sharing Born of Wonder? I’m about 10 subscribers shy of 800 and how great would it be to reach 800 as a birthday gift? About 6% of you are paying subscribers and help keep this whole thing going - I’m grateful for each and every one of you. There’s a lot to read out there, a lot of ways you could spend your time, and that you choose to spend some of it here is a privilege I don’t take lightly.

1. My friend

Gina

wrote about this (the lives we didn’t choose, and maybe can no longer choose) so well in a recent piece - The ghost ships that surround us.

2. “They squint in exasperation, crumple in disgust, and deepen with joy. They’re teeny — less than a centimeter wide — but they can be a source of endless frustration or a point of pride. They’re the result of a muscle twitch that’s as uncontrollable as it is fleeting, but whether they’ve sent us to the dermatologist in a panic or reminded us of our mother’s laugh, they’re part of who we are. They go by unpronounceable names (orbicularis oculi contractions) and cryptic ones (Duchenne markers). But the most common, the most weighted, is crow’s-feet. And they’re more complicated, more nuanced, than we ever thought."

3. Patron saint of librarians - lucky me!

4. The movie About Time deals with this concept really well and movingly, I think.

5. St. Augustine