Just drive

Once upon a time I thought I had it all figured out, the important stuff, anyway. I had my five-year plan and my plan for today, next week, next month. I had my schedules, and alerts set in my phone so I wouldn’t forget. I had ideas, too, ideas about how things would go, how people would feel, what they’d want and need, and how I could be all those things for all those people. I felt sure I could do it. 

Then I got a little older and realized plans are almost funny. They’d be truly funny if it didn’t break your heart when they went up in flames and you tried in vain to gather them out of the air and rebuild your house of smoke and mirrors. When you watch your careful dreams winding their way up and out your chimney and into the ethers, you don’t laugh about it, or at least I didn’t. Maybe the seagulls laugh, though, maybe they caw to one another as they fly overhead, “There goes another one who thought she had it figured out! Caw, caw, caw.”

Ashley Turner Photography

By now, at least, I’m no longer shocked when things I think I know about myself turn out not to be true. That’s not quite it - they were true for a time, they were true when I felt them or said them - it’s that they weren’t lasting. In yogic philosophy there’s the word “viveka” which means discernment. It’s the quest to figure out what is real in this world, and what is unreal - what is fleeting and what is eternal. I must have known I needed to pay attention to it because I had it tattooed on my arm. No feeling is final - I heard that in an Al-Anon meeting when I was about seventeen. Those are good words to remember when you feel the seams of your life starting to split and you get scared. They’re good words for people who are really hurting, who might believe how they feel in this moment is how they’ll always feel, which is intolerable. No feeling is final, you might say, it won’t always be this way, and if you say it just the right way, maybe it will help, maybe it will give them just enough reason to hang on. But those are good words to remember on the flip side, too, when you’re joyful or hopeful or sure this time, you’ve gotten it right. This time is the time you were waiting for, this time is the reason the other times didn’t work out. This time is meant for you. Until it isn’t.

I don’t know if it’s a mid-life crisis or a mid-life awakening, but so many people I know reach this milestone - this mid-way, holy shit I may have more years behind me than in front of me reckoning - and they come to a full stop. They look at the road ahead and wonder, is it too late to change direction? What if I want to change everything? Who decides when it’s too late? How many lives do you think you get? If it isn’t the right road, you have to own that, otherwise you’re wasting your one wild and precious life. I’m going to assume you know that’s Mary Oliver (but I said it just in case).

I got into a conversation about religion with my brother last week. We are not of the same mind on this stuff. For the purposes of right now, it doesn’t matter where we differ, all that matters is that I said, “What if you’re wrong, though? What if it turns out you live your whole life this way, exhale for the final time, and discover everything you thought was wrong?” And he said, “How do we know anything is real? How do I know I’m standing here, and that my brain isn’t in a jar somewhere and I just think I’m here? You’re getting on a plane, but you don’t know for sure that it’s going to make it to your destination, because you can’t know. But you’re getting on the plane anyway, right?” 

Back when we knew we weren’t in the matrix.

Last weekend I went to Austin, Texas, just because I wanted to. Maybe that sounds like nothing to you, like it was as simple as booking the flights and reserving a hotel. But I haven’t done anything just because I wanted to for eighteen years. Once I had kids, their needs came before mine and frankly, if I wasn't ready for that I wouldn’t have had kids. I wanted kids more than anything else in this world, and they did not come to me easily. I tried to get pregnant for over a year. I went to acupuncture, boiled the stinky tea, smelled up the house, peed on the sticks, took my temperature, tracked everything, ate fertility-rich foods, lost my mind. It was all very sexy. For someone who spent twelve years dancing en pointe, telling my body what to do and demanding that it comply, and then another several years on my yoga mat trying to unlearn a lot of that, having my body not do the one thing society tells you is the most natural thing in the world, felt like the biggest failure of all. And then I felt like a failure as a yoga teacher because I couldn’t practice non-attachment around the whole experience, so I beat myself up about that, too. 

When that trying-and-failing formula didn’t work month after month, when I’d get my period and sob silently in the bathroom and then pick myself up and say, “Okay, next month will be the month” and then it wasn’t, I started to get a little more intense about things. It didn’t help when my acupuncturist shrugged and told me all her other clients were pregnant so it must be me, and it didn’t help when I stopped boiling the tea and tried to relax about the whole process. So then I went to a well-known (in certain very Los Angeles circles), since-deceased Maori giant named Papa Joe and let him massage my uterus from the outside. He did that by digging his elbow into my low belly, then raking it across my skin so deeply and painfully I thought for sure I’d have internal bleeding. He did this from every direction, multiple times while his very kind female assistants held me down and told me not to fight it. Someone strummed a guitar in the corner. Tears spilled continually from the corners of my eyes. It was, perhaps, the most L.A. thing I’ve ever done. Also the most painful, second only to childbirth itself. Papa Joe said my uterus was unfriendly and too muscled from all the yoga. Nothing can grow there, he’d said, and I felt mortified. I’d created an unfriendly uterus? I thought my then-husband would drop me at the asylum the next day and wipe his hands of the whole mess when I told him what I’d done, or when he saw the bruises that were sure to form. Finally I went to a western fertility doctor, Dr. Marrs, and he told me very athletic women are often dealing with low estrogen, and he put me on a round of clomid and I was pregnant two weeks later. I like to do things the hard way first, I guess.

Veronica Puleo Photography. Rainbow by mother nature and crazy timing.

I had an easy pregnancy, a very thorough birth plan I made everyone sign, and a childbirth we almost didn’t survive. It did not go according to my plan, but we did make it and that’s the part that matters. And two years later I did it again and had my daughter, without help from Dr. Marrs that time. My ex wasn’t up for another round of crazy and I can’t say I blame him. He was very much - if it happens, it happens. I didn’t think it would happen without help, so I bought a Chinese fertility charm and hung it from a hook in the bedroom. I’m sure that’s what did it. My kids were very wanted, is the point. And I knew that when I had kids it would change everything, and it did, in the best ways.

Of all the things I’ve done in my life, they are the most amazing by far. Give me the option of hanging out with them or doing anything else, and I’m choosing them every time. They’re teenagers now, though, and they have plans and things they need to do. My oldest is going to college in September. My youngest won’t be too far behind him, I now understand how quickly three years pass. I’m starting to realize before long I’ll have two kids in college, and then two kids out in the big, wide world. It hurts a little to type that, even though it’s the way of things. I’m excited for them, they’re amazing people and I can’t wait to see what they do out there. But I’m nostalgic for the days when we were all tangled up in each other, one kid on my hip, the other’s chubby little hand in mine, a bag full of snacks, wipes, toys, books, drinks, a change of clothes and a million other things “just in case” thrown over my shoulder. And a puppy because god knows the rest wasn’t enough. I did the single mom thing for the most intense years of their childhoods. My son was four when my ex and I split, my daughter was eighteen months old and I was still nursing. It was full-on and I wouldn’t change a thing. We laughed so much. We hugged and snuggled and read books at night for hours. We dressed up for no reason. We went to the beach and the playground, we went to museums and movies, we went on trips, we went nowhere and had adventures in the living room. Mixed into all that fun was the very serious responsibility of thinking about my kids all the time. Thinking about how they were doing or what they needed or what would be good for them. I had to be a grown-up and sometimes that meant not doing the thing I might have wanted to do just for me. I never experienced it as a sacrifice, just a choice. Just what you do when you decide to have kids. But I might have started to forget about who I was before I was a mom. I think I might have lost sight of that girl at some point. 

Ashley Turner Photography

She’s in there, of course. It wasn’t so long ago that I was a teenager thinking I was getting away with stuff, much cooler than my parents had ever been. Now I see pictures of my mom as a teenager and my god was she cool. These days I still laugh my ass off with my kids, it’s just my son is a lot taller than I am, and my daughter is about to surpass me. We hug and talk about anything and everything. I have perfected the nothing-you’re-saying-right-now-is-shocking-me face, and learned to process any of my anxieties or fears on my own time. Open lines of communication are more important to me than anything. There’s trust and security and loyalty and everything anyone could ask for - it’s just that we’re in a different chapter now. It’s the chapter after both my parents have died, and the chapter when my kids are looking toward the horizon. It’s the chapter of perimenopause and thank-god-for-my-girlfriends and MRIs and scans and is this pain in my chest a pulled muscle or a heart attack? It’s the chapter of, wow, here I am in the middle of my story and what I do right now is going to impact the second half of my life, however long it is. It makes you stop and think, let me tell you. It makes you want to be sure that whatever you’re doing, it’s pointing you toward a second half full of inspiration and urgency, because there isn’t any time to waste. You can’t take it for granted.

So I went to Austin just because I wanted to, and my kids told me to have the best time. That I didn’t need to worry about laundry or lunches, they would be fine and I should go and have fun. They gave me hugs for every day I’d be gone (7) because I had a few stops to make on the east coast first. A few people I needed and wanted to check on. I’m also in that chapter in life where you’d better go and see the people you love and make sure they know how much. It’s so easy to think you’ll have more time, until you start to get the memos that you’d be foolish to assume anything. 

Beloved: Dani, Otis and my Aunt Louise

I had an unbelievable time in Austin. The kind that reminds you hiking to a creek where there just happens to be a waterfall is like some kind of magic, and going to see live music, especially when it’s four gals having the time of their lives while absolutely killing it is everything you need in order to remember life is incredible and women are extraordinary, that wildflowers are miraculous, especially Indian blankets, and canoeing at sunset to see the bats is next-level perfection. That being in a new place where you don’t know anything is the best thing in the world for you, especially when there’s someone there who takes you for the best food and the best drinks, but even more importantly knows that real conversations and real connection are the best things in life. Except for dogs, they’re better than anything.

The phenomenal @laurenhough and Woody in Austin, you really should subscribe.

Sometimes you just have to get in the car and head toward the wild and unexpected thing without having a clue why you’re doing it other than some tiny voice inside of you that’s saying just drive. I remembered someone while I was there. The girl-woman I was before I was a mom. The one who likes to go out and laugh. The one who isn’t so freaking responsible all the time. It’s not like you get an award for being the Most Responsible, after all, and it’s not like you’d want that on your gravestone. My kids don’t need that from me anymore, not to a crazy degree, anyway. I have a hunch that what might be the most inspiring thing for them is to get to know the more wild side of me. Sometimes the intuitive, inexplicable thing is the best thing. I’d much rather have that on my gravestone, wouldn’t you? I think I’m in the chapter where I want my kids to see that it’s never too late to begin again, and that the best place to start is always right where you are.

If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about the magic of doing something wild, I’ll be here 4/19/24 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version which is now available on Apple, Spotify, Overcast and anywhere else you like to listen to your podcasts. And if you’d like to meet me in Portugal in June, there are still a few spots left and I’d love that so much.