Finally, in the backyard, some of the colors are starting to shift. Around the periphery are trees turning yellow all at once, as if on command. It’s happening slowly, but I’ve been paying a lot of attention this year, annoyed that the main trees that cover the yard remain stubbornly green. Those trees stay green until they are suddenly brown and dropping in one giant crash that makes a huge mess.
Out there somewhere, I know trees are turning orange and red and gold. Some trees are already bare, their leaves swept away by the wind. But outside my window, change is slow.
This happens every year. The colors start to change, and I am overly deliberate with my attention. Even the smallest shifts are perceptible if we look closely and often enough. It’s happening all the time, this shifting, and we mostly don’t pay it any mind.
I don’t think that’s unusual; I think it’s human nature.
A few days after my birthday, I went for a walk to think about myself a decade ago, when I was twenty-nine. It’s easy to look back and think those were the days, but I know that twenty-nine-year-old was struggling. She had a baby and a husband who worked a lot. She had lofty illusions about family and an armload of anger. She wanted to go home.
But that’s just it—she knew what she wanted. She knew and she went for it, again and again. She had plenty of wins and plenty of losses because she was willing to try. How do I get her back? Lately, that’s always the question.
Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe it’s the right one. Thinking about myself ten years ago—or twenty or thirty—feels urgent these days, all these selves living inside me, informing who I am now and who I’m becoming. I often wonder what they’d think of me now, closing in on forty and still wondering who I am.
This week, we took our daughter out of public school to school her at home. It was an easy decision and a hard decision. Every time I’ve walked to the edge and tried to convince myself we’re going the wrong way, I look around and think, We’re already doing this. I am her mother and her tutor and her main companion and her guiding light. If homeschooling is going to bring our family more peace, I’m all for it.
But this is only for her. Our son will stay in school because, in third grade, he’s able to go five full days a week: a blessing. He’s doing okay: a relief that something’s working.
The year-ago me would be incredulous at this situation. That version, at thirty-eight, had pulled back from everything but was still trying to prove herself. Instead of living up to the measuring sticks of social media and blogging, she’d workout every day and take her studying seriously. She’d overschedule herself and find that even she couldn’t live up to her impossibly high standards.
Mostly, she wasn’t having fun.
But she believed she needed time away from the kids, lots of time alone to do as she pleased, even if she was miserable. Even if she had no clue what she wanted or where she was going. That didn’t matter. She was in motion and needed the inertia. She didn’t see the difference between motion and action, that moving in place gets you nowhere.
Did that year-ago me pay attention to the changing leaves? Did she check every day to see if the yellowish green was the same as the day before? My guess is that she glanced quickly out the window and pretended. She pretended to pay attention and gave herself a pat on the back as she scurried out the door.
These are the things we do.
Then days become months become years and we have no clue how we got to where we are. And we find ourselves marching around the block trying to summon an old version of who we were.
Meanwhile, she’s right here and so are you.
The leaves are changing but not willing themselves to change. They’re in no hurry and they aren’t competing. But slowly, day by day, something’s happening. A shift, barely discernible. Maybe you need a magnifying glass or a microscope, which draws you even closer, and you see: it’s happening.
Something, something is changing.
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