Going Forward

It is a particularly cool summer afternoon after a very hot and humid holiday week.  It feels perfect for retrospect and writing because as you know writers write when they have something to say, and when it's time to talk, you might want to sit a spell and listen.

Have you ever stopped to consider that life is lived in expectation of the future?  I might have always known this and maybe this isn't the first time I have slammed into this realization like a wall.  Nonetheless, I am sitting here with an overwhelming fear of what is next.

If I have lived my entire life going toward something, what starts to happen when the future is the now and nothing seems to lie ahead...?

I grew up.

I got married.

I had babies.

I graduated from college.

I moved from place to place.

I mostly raised my babies.

What then is the next large yet future event?  Death? Yikes.

Death hardly seems like an appropriate topic on such a mild, sun soaked afternoon.

The middle years are tough.  Struggling for purpose, struggling to understand place, letting go, trying to retain beauty, and all the while hoping you appear successful.  Can I share a small secret?  I feel like I am fading.  A life probably doesn't shine from start to finish - there are moments of brilliance and glory and there are patches and pieces of hum.  I am in the right place at the right time; I still feel that way; but, I long to see down the road just a fair piece.

Are my big moments all gone?  Are pictures and frozen snapshots of time all that remain of a life lived in pursuit of the next?

I don't want to find myself emptynesting and lost.  And, yet, I know that is absolutely, exactly what I will be.  I will be sad, empty, joyful, exhausted. And lost.  (One can only hope I will also feel a measure of success in the launching of my children.)

The middle years are so busy that parents, particularly mother's, neglect to plan for what happens next.  Will I just be staying in the same job? Will I move?  Will I dust off a goal or two? I'm afraid as I sit here in an empty house with let-down-post-holiday-gathering blues.  Is this what the future looks like?

I can't see down the road a fair piece. But I already have a feeling that the path is not straight and as perfect as I could write it to be. It will rise and drop sharply. It will be filled with pain.  It will be covered with rain and clouds and strewn with the most beautiful red, yellow and pink memories.   I will struggle to find my identity as it winds.  I will need more love and understanding than has heretofore been necessary, for living vicariously through life events will become a thing of the past.

You hope when you reach the middle that you have made some friends that will carry you through this part of the journey.  Good, solid friends.  The ones that know the stories.

I hope they're here. 

Because I'm afraid of the middle.