“Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life” Mary Oliver
Sometimes I struggle with being an older mom and sometimes I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mom. It took me forever to become one. Yet, today I feel restless.
The AARP return address was a clue this would be an interesting day. I grabbed the mail quickly as I drove to pick up my daughter at nursery school. This will be the last time I will be picking her up from nursery school as tomorrow is her graduation.
It is the first of her many future milestones. I’m feeling somewhat sentimental about the year. I am acutely aware of every change and growth. It is all so fleeting. Six months in a 3 year old’s life heralds changes beyond comprehension.
I am so aware of time.
As I wait in the parking lot for dismissal I look through the mail. The AARP is the last opened. Inside I find the card for the right of passage. The beginning of Senior discounts. It is my AARP card. That means one thing, I am turning 50. And yes, I am picking up my 3 year old.
I hate to admit it but the first thing I feel is shame. I should feel pretty darn good that I can keep up fairly well with a young child but deep inside I’m frightened of being old. I want to crawl into a cave and lick my wounds, share age stories with my friends, commiserate about it all and then get on with living again. Instead I feel alone and like hiding.
The accompanying AARP magazine spills with articles about people starting new adventures at 50. Life long dreams beckon them to higher senses of themselves; buying the house boat, going cross country or giving up the corporate world to join the peace corp. All of these people raised their families and have now plunged into another exciting aspect of life. The age “thing” is just a thing. It does not feel like a thing to me.
These AARP people are excited and free. I’m feeling envious and a longing for something stirs discomfort within me. I remember feeling that freedom. Embarking on a new career in my 30s, or traveling to Ashville North Carolina to attend a Women Who Run With the Wolves retreat were just a few of the times I felt on top of the world. It was during this retreat that I was introduced to the work of Mary Oliver. I relished her poetry and love of nature. I never looked at a grasshopper in the same way after reading Mary Oliver’s work. I remember feeling energized, free and powerful in making my life work.
Today my excitement is quite different and feels as if it has little to do with me in actuality. My days of joy comes from watching my daughter, a miracle, grow every day. It is her growth, as only the rapid growth of a child can make one face the importance of a moment. She has given me the gift of living in the present moment. Instead of the excitement, I notice the passage of time acutely. I am filled with sentimentality as I remember all of the firsts. A melancholy feeling emerges when I pass the playground we frequented when she was 2or hear the music from the show we watched together Jay Jay and the Jet Planes.
A world so many women experienced as I traveled to Kanuga to run with the wolves. I do not know how to blend my lives. The way I’ve lived my life is opposite from my peers.
I find myself standing on tip toes peering over the fence at these AARP people’s lives remembering. Ah, and yet I remember peering over this same fence at other women raising their families and longing.
How many times did friends or peers long for the quietness and freedom of my life without children? I did what these AARP are doing at 50. I jumped into the deep end and dove for my dream. And that dream was becoming a parent.
My restlessness does not come from envy but from missing out on telling my story. I’m happy to be an AARP person with a 3 year old. She is better than a house boat, at least most days.
And so with my one wild and precious life and God’s help, I became a mother.
