Life As a Verb

The one thing no one ever tells you when you get in line to be born or decide to have children or get married is that the moment you get used to who you are and who your kids are and who your partner is or who your family and friends are, it all changes. Now you have to get to know an entirely new set of people. There’s a vague sense of a noun gathered in your name and the face in the mirror, but the real truth is that you are a constantly changing and flowing verb, conjugated time and time again with each passing of time. Just when you learn to love one version of it all, it changes. Sometimes dramatically so and irrevocably so. 

 

How often have we wished we could freeze this moment, keep our kids a perpetually fresh and curious and funny six-year old that can also set the table and watch a few of the same movies with us. How often have we wished that we ourselves could return to that 28-year old traveling around the world or 36 year old sharing the magic of Bali with his wife and two daughters or that 52 year old teaching in the first Special Course at the Orff Institut in Salzburg. Truth be told, I’d be quite happy to stay this 72-year old in peak mental, physical and emotional condition. But linear time has other plans.

 

Of course, there are many periods in our lives when we’re grateful for the changes. Certainly as kids, always anticipating with delight the next stage of growing up. Except for a few wistful glances 8^th  graders in my school would give watching the preschoolers running around in their underwear getting squirted by their teachers with a hose on  a hot day, we eagerly awaited each next step in growing independence. As parents enduring the rolled eyes of the child who once looked up in loving adoration, we are eager for the years to pass by just a bit faster. And in our own lives when life’s insistent foot on our necks drove us to despair, depression, divorce, what have you, we wanted a new incarnation of ourselves. 

 

All of this on my mind with my granddaughter Zadie’s 12^th birthday. I confess to some nostalgia for her earlier versions, cozying up with a book or laughing over silly things or watching an old Hitchcock film without a whimper of complaint about it being old and in—gasp!— black and white. Zadie hit puberty way too early at nine years old, so her pre-adolescence has been with us for a while and the explosive moments we’ve had when I shut off Eminem while driving in the car have not been pretty. She’s always been an explosive child, but now the detonation happens faster and with more force. I find myself eager for her to be 15 with the beginning of a new maturity. Though with some sense of anxiety about “be careful what you wish for!”

 

I fully understand—well, maybe not understand, but accept— Nature’s insistence that kids on the road to independence need to “go through” a phase of separation from parents/adults, obsession with peer popularity, short grunts when asked questions about their day, a reduction of can-do confidence and increasing self-doubt. I also recognize that these thorny paths are different for boys and girls (and yet more complex for trans). In his book The Sibling Society, Robert Bly notes:

 

“Before adolescence the wild part of a girl, the feisty, opinion-filled part, can remain connected with the more socialized “favorite girl” part. But around 5^th grade, trouble begins. After fifth grade, girls often split up with their old best friends. The question of popularity arises. If a girl is seen as a drag or a nerd, her girlfriends may abandon her for the friendship of more popular girls. Even worse, she may abandon herself. It’s very difficult for a girl, particularly in our culture, to keep the two parts of herself in balance. The pressure will be to suppress the wild part and become utterly engrossed in attractiveness, femininity, passivity and popularity.”

 

All well and good. Well, not exactly good, but real. But it gets worse. Bly then quotes Mary Pipher from her book Reviving Ophelia:

 

“In America in the 1990’s, the demands of the time are so overwhelming that even the strongest girls keel over in adolescence–Sexual and physical assault on girls are at an all-time high. Now girls are more vulnerable and fearful, more likely to have been traumatized and less free to roam about alone. This combination of old stresses and new is poison for our young women.”

 

Ah, the 1990’s! Talk about wanting to freeze time. Compared to today, that was a Golden Age before social media multiplied everything by a thousand. The stress and fear and vulnerability is more poisonous than ever and I fear for that innocent granddaughter I once knew. The Portland Schools are on strike at the moment and it’s not happy for kids, parents or teachers, but how disturbing that part of me feels, “Well, at least she’ll have a little vacation from the stresses of being in Middle School.” Not a good situation.

 

Finally, I got to talk to Zadie on Facetime (the price we pay for increased electronic connectivity— is it worth it?) and I read out loud to her the letter I posted yesterday. And am so happy to report that she listened with rapt attention and not a single roll of an eye. She reminded me that inside of this roiling, swirling, confusing verb of her present 12-year old self, her tender and wild self is still alive and well, even if it needs to hide in the corner for a bit. She sincerely seemed to appreciate the love I already felt for her on her first day of life and hopefully took it in to feel its forever embrace. 

 

One more look at the subject coming up from my daughter’s perspective, with her usual superior writing style, sense of humor and hitting all the nails square on the head.