The Great Unraveling

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Here in the warm, fertile South, things grow. Our county fairs are famous for tomatoes, pumpkins, and melons of mammoth proportions. My grandma’s house in the Florida panhandle sported a sleeping porch that was all but taken over by philodendron vines that crept and spread, covering each wall. One night spent out there beneath the green ceiling and your subconscious would swim with humid jungle scenery, spurred by the nocturnal buzz and chirp of frogs and cicadas.

You’d think, surrounded by such constant, urgent growth, I’d be more attuned to change, that it would be less of a personal affront. And yet.

A few years ago, in the space of a few months, my oldest got married and moved out of state, my youngest launched and started college, my husband and I sold the business we’d run for 20+ years, we turned 50, and my elderly father moved nearby. Shortly after the dust settled, we found ourselves slow blinking at each other over coffee one morning. We’d reached our day of reckoning.

It’s been a solid two years of what I call The Great Unraveling.

When my son was young, he’d wake up in the night complaining that his legs ached. For weeks, he’d limp around the house, gingerly favoring this knee or that ankle. Growing pains, the pediatrician told us, and I’d laughed.

“Wait. That’s actually a thing?”

“Yep,” he’d assured me. “It’ll eventually stop. His insides are just stretching to keep up with his outsides.”

Sure enough, his pant size finally leveled out and I quit doling out a fortune for hardly worn jeans. He stopped at 6’2″, and it still startles me every time I have to crane my neck to look in the eyes of the young man I used to walk hand-in-hand with across parking lots.

In the Great Unraveling, it felt like that. Achy and unstable. We’d done too much all at once and our insides were not keeping up with the outside. All of it was what we’d worked toward and hoped for, yet we were as disoriented as if we’d leapt from a whirling merry-go-round, staggering around like drunks with arms akimbo. And, for the love, where were all these tears coming from, spilling forth unbidden from some infinite inner spring?

Lou Holtz, the Notre Dame football coach, is credited with saying if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Well, Lou, sometimes growing feels like you’re dying. Moving away from what’s known and comfortable to uncharted and untamed territory can trigger staggering grief. Even the ancient cartographers knew: there be dragons.

A curious emotional cauldron bubbled within, a witch’s brew of joy and excitement for my kids’ futures, and a deep and marrow-filling sorrow at their departure. The same was true for my own self: eager anticipation for how my marriage might deepen and grow, given the extra hours we’d have now that it was just us again, paired with the struggle of renegotiating roles, schedules, and what a given day might look like now that we shared the same work space, absent of children.

What was next for me? Now that my days were untethered from my kids’ schedules and needs, now that our professional and financial lives looked different, what might I discover, pursue, try? Quite a bit, it turns out. I wrote a novel, began a second, started mentoring younger families with kids and hosting a thriving group of newly married couples. I had plenty of time to read, write, think, and connect with others. I found lots more time for the garden, creativity, and plain old leisure, which I’d almost forgotten about.

Undertakings, you might call them, all these new activities. It’s a curious word since an undertaker is typically one who deals with the dead. I suppose that’s who I’d become, in this new space, mourning what had passed, offering comfort to who and what remained, and ushering in what was to come next.

“What’ve you been up to, mom?” I imagined my children asking.

“I’ve become an undertaker.”

“Okaayy. Is dad home?”

The only one who likes change is a wet baby, Mark Twain famously said. That’s true, while it’s happening. It’s on the other side of change where we find ourselves marveling at why it took us so long to get here in the first place. Who knew we’d love sushi? Or enjoy taking walks with a friend? Or actually settle into not having to know what the kids were doing or who they were with and could trust them to get the oil changed and get a haircut? Because they were changing, too, growing madly into new versions of themselves and shucking their childish skins like a heavy coat on a warm day.

I never would have thought, at first, that I’d be savoring this new, delicious way of being and discovering, just the way I’d relished the loud and busy days of before. Maybe it was the cynic or pessimist in me who’d questioned whether anything could match what we already had, who kept posing the question “what now?” in an irritable, can’t-be-bothered tone instead of an eager “what’s next?”

It occurred to me that just as the pediatrician used to mark my kids’ milestones and percentiles, I might measure my own growth this way. What can I do this year that I couldn’t six months ago? Am I trying something new? Conquering fear to take a brave risk? Bursting into tears less often? Baby steps.

Somewhere along the way, babies quit opening their mouths like trusting little birds when we aim the spoon their direction. They develop suspicion and guard against what they’ve learned might be yucky or what could be good but what’s probably strained peas. They turn their heads with clamped lips and refuse to try.

For a good part of the Great Unraveling, I turned my head and refused. I wasn’t about to get a mouthful of peas when what I wanted, what I yearned for was pears and ice cream. I was, in other words, a big baby. I pouted, sulked, withdrew, and cried. I moped, slouched, sighed, and frowned.

All the emotional turbines churned, and maybe there’s a place for that. Maybe we have to sit with that a minute (or a week or month or more) and bear witness to all the feelings that arise with gravity-shifting change. I observed all the big emotions as they unwound themselves and noticed them gently. I didn’t accuse, belittle, or dismiss any of them. Being unspooled is a vulnerable place to be, and vulnerability needs to be met with kindness, above all. Fellow travelers in the same boat are excellent companions for this, by the way.

But the unspooling leaves you with work to be done. It leaves you with a heap that must be rewound and reworked into something new. Made of some of the same material, no doubt, and colored with what came before, but an entirely different creation. Not pears and ice cream, but not exactly strained peas either.

Crossing these thresholds of the “what was” and “what’s next” requires some of the toughest growth there is. Our limbs and hearts ache with it as we resist, or at best, struggle to keep up. Liminal spaces like these are sacred, holy ground. They are where the unraveling occurs and where we discover what anchors us, what tethers remain, and what we’re capable of, still. The author and theologian Richard Rohr, warns us, despite the pain and discomfort, to find these sorts of spaces regularly. Actually seek them out on purpose. He urges us to “get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible” because if we don’t find such thresholds in our lives, “we start idolizing normalcy.”

And, boy, if 2020 taught me anything, it was how much I was infatuated with normalcy. How, in the end, we’re all pretty much avoiding the peas and stomping our feet about the ice cream we’d expected.

I think perhaps, for me, this particular Great Unraveling is nearing an end, for now. As I spend time with my aging father, I can easily see others on the horizon, and I resolve to approach them with less resistance and more purpose next time around. The decades unfold and the only constant is, of course, change. We help one another over the thresholds, saying watch your step and, with a sweep of the arms, welcome, welcome.

Party of Two: Settling in to An Empty Nest

Party of Two: Settling in to An Empty Nest

In the primitive playgrounds of my childhood, my father pushed the hot metal merry-go-round at breakneck speeds, my brother and I shrieking and holding on for dear life. We learned to hold tight to the nearest pole, arms and legs wrapped like baby monkeys around our feeble anchor. Had we let go, we would’ve been flung into the whirling scenery, small human projectiles.  When the spinning stopped, the background kept going, and we staggered like diminutive drunks, our arms akimbo attempting to balance.

That’s the best feeling I can conjure for what it’s been like for the past few months. In the space of one summer, we had two graduations (one from college, one from high school), a wedding, an out-of-state move, and finally, packed our last fledgling off to college. When that merry-go-round stopped spinning and the busyness subsided, we blinked at each other in the quiet, clutching hands for stability. Our nest of four had suddenly become a party of two.

The old spots I used to rely on to prevent dizziness in the spin of parenthood were missing, and for several weeks a sense of disorientation and unease was  unshakable. We knew the house would be quieter, but we didn’t anticipate the other changes that made us feel shifty and uncomfortable, like wearing a sweater a few sizes too big.

The contents of the pantry and fridge changed. No one drank the milk each morning (or early afternoon) with cereal, so we no longer keep the familiar half-gallon on hand. In fact, entire aisles at the grocery store are now obsolete. Obviously the diapers and baby products were abandoned long ago, but off the list went the requisite teenage boy snacks. We notched up the a/c upstairs, the bedrooms uninhabited. We only need to climb the steps when we need a suitcase from the bonus closet, so might as well save on the electric bill. It takes longer to amass a full load of laundry, and the dog needs extra walks because the boy who could always be counted on to play tug-of-war or chase isn’t blowing off steam in the afternoons after school.

We still liked each other, the spouse and I. We had to say that out loud every now and then as we renegotiated and adjusted our routines and rhythms. Our dance steps were a little off–we stepped on each other’s toes as our expectations of ourselves and each other shifted. Our conga line had become a tango, and the tempo had changed. Admittedly, there was a bit of tip-toeing around, eyeing each other sideways and trying to gauge moods and emotional availability. This is the same thing that happened when they were newborns. Children up-end your life both coming and going, it seems.

After twenty plus years of mentally juggling four lives, my attention was my own once more, and it was strangely unsettling. “Give me a week,” I announced. “Of sitting in this before you need me for anything.” I wanted to feel the house’s stillness, mull things over in my mind about our next chapter, and yes, be sad over losing the way things had been for so long. So I did, and I was. But my curiosity about what lay around the corner and my pride and excitement for the paths our kids were on burned away the fog of melancholy soon enough. They’d launched, and the two of us back at headquarters were still full of pluck and vinegar.

A Scrabble tile rack with a handful of letters sits on our bookshelf. I use it to spell out one-word attitude reminders like “joy,” “kindness,” and “love.” For the longest time, I’d place a word for the week and come back to find it had been rearranged into some garbled nonsense or, more often, an “alternate” word choice. Kindness became “dinkness,” for example. This, of course, was my son’s doing: his idea of subversive hilarity. What even IS that? I’d cry in mock outrage. We’d go back and forth at it, each of us changing the word and seeing how long it would take for the other to discover the sabotage.

When we moved this eager sapling boy into his dorm earlier this year, he got the last word. I was too busy checking off lists as we packed to notice the Scrabble defacement. It was days later, when my eyes wandered to the shelf as I waited for my coffee to brew, that I had to laugh. He came home briefly the other day and I caught him smirking in the kitchen.

“What?”

“You’re not very observant, mom.” He glanced at the shelf.  I smiled up into his triumphant blue eyes.

“Oh, I noticed it. I just thought I should leave it there.” I got a rare hug. Perhaps he felt, too, how the familiar house had changed in his absence, how the buzz of activity had lulled to a low hum.

In the days to come, as we enjoy our new routine and menus and discover this new rhythm in our roomier nest, that tile rack will remain unchanged. It’s a good reminder to us to keep laughing, even when it stings a little, and to treat one another gently. No matter how strong we are, there are times when we can all use a little human dinkness.

 

Good For You

Good For You

I’ve never seen a fat honey bee. This, despite their diet of some of the sweetest stuff out there. Those ladies are going 90 miles an hour round-the-clock, though, so that could have something to do with their trim figures.

As a kid, I ate whatever I could get my hands on in our family of five siblings, which amounted to whatever my mother served, like it or not. She was no short-order cook. On Saturdays, my brother and I had a few hours of cartoons before the house came alive, and I’d make us a breakfast of what I liked to call cinnamon toast. The recipe was easy:  toasted bread slathered with butter and a sparse sprinkle of cinnamon, each slice coated with no less than a solid 1/4  cup of sugar. This was a Saturday morning given for months until my older sister discovered our sly concoction and told on us. My non-rotten teeth are begrudgingly grateful to her for the staged intervention.

But it didn’t matter. I was a knobby-kneed skinny kid, all elbows and hip bones. Even my hair was thin and fine, able to hold limitless static electricity but not a single barrette. My father used to pretend he’d lost sight of me in the living room.  “There you are! You must have turned sideways and disappeared,” he’d say. “You must have to move around in the shower just to get wet.”  Hardy-har-har. “I need an after-dinner toothpick–c’mere, Bon!”

A few(ish) years ago, I slammed into the proverbial metabolism wall called Welcome to Your Forties. After two kids and a love of carbs, my metabolism waved its white flag. Once, a friend’s precocious four-year-old, who’d clearly watched too many drug commercials, saw me take an aspirin and said, “Are those the purple pills? Because you’re not supposed to take the purple ones if you’re nursing or pregnant, and you look like you could be pregnant.” My youngest was six at the time.  Years, not months.

For awhile I went to a gym semi-regularly but wound up so sore I could hardly lift my arms to steer the car. Then I threw my back out and decided to love me anyway, extra belt notches and all. I never played sports. I used to dread the annual presidential fitness test in gym class. Sit ups? Arm hang? Running?  Ugh. Growing up, I rode horses, which does involve exertion, but truth be told–who’s really doing all the heavy lifting in that sport? The one with two extra legs and a penchant for carrots.

A few years ago we helped chaperone our son’s Spanish trip to Peru, where we visited Machu Picchu. Climbing hundreds of feet into the clouds at high altitude didn’t actually kill me, but there were points in the hike when I thought it might. At the gym, I’d met an amazing lady in her mid 70’s who was a master swimmer in her younger years. She had just hiked Machu Picchu herself, on a three-day climb, so how hard could it be? Pretty darn difficult, it turns out, for a panda-shaped person such as myself. The lithe teens in the group scampered up the trail like minks, while we parents eyed each other in solidarity, wheezing in the thin air.

Just last year we visited our daughter in Florence when she was studying abroad.  Being the resident expert, she planned some of our itinerary, which is how we wound up booked to climb 436 steps to the top of the Duomo. “Are our children trying to kill us?” we asked each other.  If we were on the African savanna, the lions would have painted bright red targets on our backs as the easy weed-outs.

So this year, just shy of a new decade, I started a new venture. No sugar, caffeine, gluten, or processed foods. It’s like 365 days of Lent.  I’m “eating clean.”  This begs the question of what “eating dirty” might look like. I have my own ideas about that.  Image result for eating dirty

It isn’t terrible. It’s no “cinnamon toast,” either, but it’s sustainable and I think I can actually keep it up.  It comes with a new vocabulary and some forays into new foods.  I’ve actually eaten (and liked!) spiraled beets, hummus, hemp hearts, and chia seeds.  It started with a detox, where every day began with a cup of hot water, lemon, and a teaspoon of ACV (apple cider vinegar), or what I like to call the vomit of Satan.  Couldn’t do it, not even while slamming it and holding my nose. Also, I’m naturally suspicious of ingesting anything that has a “living mother” in it. In the same vein, the only kefir I can tolerate is Jack Bauer from 24Image result for kiefer sutherland

Each day the goal is to drink a gallon of water.  Do you know how much a gallon of water is? It is approximately this much:   Image result for ocean

This means I’m right back to sixteen years ago when I had a toddler in tow and had to stop at EVERY SINGLE public bathroom on my errand route. Sometimes twice. Only now I’ve had two kids and “things” have shifted, so there is no such thing as holding it. Jumpsuits or rompers are never, ever in my future.

Slowly, I started easy workouts at home with my new, fancy yoga mat.  Body, mind, spirit, right?  Exercise has never been my best friend, or let’s be honest, even a semi-close acquaintance. I will never run a whole or half anything, but to climb the Duomo without paramedics standing by would require practice.  I kept at it, progressing nicely, until one day I caught my cat looking at me with an expression both sarcastic and bewildered…

I don’t need that much ridicule in my life. Now I go to a nearby gym that I love. I’ve learned several new words there. For instance, burpees are not what you coax from your infant after a good feeding, apparently.  Suicides are not tragic endings (well, except in my case sometimes they are), and plank position is not that weird lying-flat fad from about 10 years ago.

As long as I’m intentional and deliberate, this new path is walk-able. I don’t know why we so fiercely resist doing things that are good for us. We’re like toddlers fighting naps. We’d rather sit and scream and rail using all manner of energy and emotion than just do it already for goodness’ sake. This goes for not just eating better or taking a walk, but also unplugging, reading, making progress towards goals, flossing. Women make this a professional gig, nurturing friends, family, children, even the bagger at the grocery store, leaving crumbs for ourselves. It is not good for us to exist on hurry, excuses, fear, depression, sugar, coffee, and wine. It will not end well.

A good-for-you life is an abundant one, one where we indulge in the good stuff so it overflows like the loaves and fishes. The really good stuff, not the fake, pretend mock-ups. Instead of posing the question “is this (behavior, activity, direction) bad enough I should stop?” ask instead “is this good enough to stay this way?” Lets in a whole different light, doesn’t it?

My conveyor belt at the grocery store yesterday contained spinach, celery, peppers, and blueberries. At the end I hefted a 25 pound bag of sugar onto it, and the cashier raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of sugar,” she said.  Sheesh. Had she known my nark sister when I was little?

“It’s for feeding the bees,” I replied, “Not me. All the rest of this is for me.”

“Good for you!” she enthused. Yes, yes it is.

 

 

 

Far & Away

Far & Away

Since the only consistent thing in life is change, it should be no surprise that once we adjusted to sending our child off to college, she glanced at the horizon and discovered she hadn’t ventured quite far enough from home yet.  One in ten undergraduates study abroad on trips that last anywhere from a couple of weeks to an entire academic year, and they don’t have to be foreign language or art  history majors to garner benefits.

I’ve seen the statistics.  Students who’ve studied abroad are twice as likely to land a job within a year of graduation.  They have 25% higher starting salaries and a sophisticated (and marketable) global approach to the world.  If they can hone or pick up a foreign language while they’re away, this increases job prospects further and makes them international citizens, able to transition more easily between cultures in our shrinking world.

A semester in Italy sounded glamorous and exotic.  She packed and repacked, trying to meet the luggage requirements (how can you fit three months’ worth of clothes, snacks and toiletries in one 50 pound bag?), and finally we waved goodbye at the airport.  If you haven’t yet had a child travel far and away, here’s a glimpse into what it’s like.

  1.  At least once before they leave, you will suggest an evening in for a movie night. This is a good time to watch Taken, and to rewind and give in-depth and animated analysis of the part where the naive American girls give out personal information to a perfect stranger at the airport.  Point out that while you don’t personally know Liam Neeson, you do have his speech memorized and are completely willing to make good on his threat.   While it probably won’t, things can happen (Paris, Brussels, Nice), so make sure everyone has emergency numbers, passport copies in multiple locations, and international medical coverage.

2.  Staying in one place while abroad is not enough for millennials with tiny attention spans.  Hopping a train or cheap flight to a neighboring country is common, usually fairly cost-effective, and an easy way to make the most of an extended study abroad trip.  Traveling in small groups works well and offers more security.  With any more than six opinions and preferences, more time is spent trying to herd cats than actually see a new city.  Whoever came up with the name “hostel” for cheap student lodging is just spiteful.  Why pick something that to English ears sounds patently unfriendly and scary?  Might I suggest changing it to cubby?

3.  You will be amazed at the child who consistently couldn’t manage to make curfew.  Suddenly he transforms into a person able to juggle international train schedules, Google maps, and changing time zones to be certain he makes it to Bono’s concert in Berlin or a street carnivale in Spain.

4.  Aren’t they supposed to be taking classes?   Yes, there is classroom time, but much of the education is outside a textbook.  The field trips, cross cultural experiences, and interactions with each other and local people are where real learning occurs.  Immersed in a different language, the brain actually creates neural pathways to adjust.  Having to live in another culture’s rhythms and pace teaches them to let down their social boundaries and stretches them to see others differently.  Often, they come home with friends across the map.

5.  Study abroad is a life-long lesson in managing expectations.  The trip that seems so glamorous on this side of the ocean won’t always live up to the visions in their head.  They won’t love every teacher, meal, museum, or travel companion.  It won’t be sunny and 80 degrees every day. Public transportation frequently goes on strike.  Outside American culture, the rest of the world operates on a more flexible time table. The word of the day is flexibility.  A tall order for some, this is a chance to embrace the unexpected, learn a different flow and become more tolerant, agreeable, and open to change.

6.  It will cost approximately the GNP of a small country to Fed Ex forgotten or emergency items to your student abroad, with no guarantee they will arrive.  Double check the packing list.  Pre-fill medications and have back-up credit cards.  If they’re traveling across borders while abroad, be mindful of different regulations for what’s allowed in carry-on’s or backpacks.

7.  Technology can be friend or foe.  Shop around for international data plans, and be sure to get something so your student is reachable without WiFi in case of emergency.  FaceTime or Skype is wonderful when you just need to put eyes on them.  It might take the whole semester, but eventually they will remember that the time difference means that while they may be riding elephants in the Thailand afternoon, you are in a deep, sound sleep in the wee hours.  Or at least you were.

8.  You aren’t going to want to know everything before it happens.  You should’ve already adjusted to this truth of college life, but sometimes it’s better not to know until  afterwards.  My friend’s daughter bungee jumped off a 440 foot platform in New Zealand while studying abroad, and to this day her mother cannot watch the video.   It’s the age of Vimeo and GoPro, and your millennial is going to want some choice post-able footage of their time away.  Squeeze your eyes shut, stick your fingers in your ears and loudly chant:  LALALALALA.

9.  They’ll learn a measure of independence.  While you may be footing at least some of the bill, they’re having to manage logistics, relationships, and emotions from far away.  They have likely done this already just in their regular university situation, but being thousands of miles overseas forces the issue somewhat. They learn to work it out, tough it out, or cry it out on their own.  They realize they are capable.

10.  The student you dropped off at the airport likely will not be the same one who greets you several months later.  He will seem wholly different somehow in a way you cannot at first pinpoint.  She will be morphed by confidence and distance, transformed by her experiences, more worldly and seasoned person.  You will burst with pride at his accomplishments and feel his joy as he describes moments with breathless excitement.  Except the part about paragliding over the Alps.  Then you will clutch your chest and demand to know what she was thinking.

A final note:  once they arrive safely at home, don’t forget to Tweet Liam Neeson and tell him you will no longer have him on speed dial.

 

Bridge

Bridge

Waiting in traffic on drawbridges was a fact of life for me as a kid.   Unaware of the adult time pressures of schedules and to-do lists, I’d sit in the back of the car watching the stately sailboats gliding like royalty through the raised roadway that halted our progress.   Stuck at a standstill, I could get a closer look at the pelicans perched on the watchman’s tower.  Once the drawbridge was lowered, I was amazed that we could drive right over a stretch of road that had just a second ago been pointing toward the sky.

Somewhere along the way, that leisurely contentment on bridges gave way to more nervous crossings.  I’ve driven over the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges, clomped echoing steps over wooden covered bridges in New England and Madison County, Iowa, hiked across hanging suspension bridges on trails here and there, and cruised over the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers crossing over into neighboring states.  There were jaw-dropping views from the Bixby Bridge in Monterey, California, and white-knuckle moments across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland.  (This bridge is so scary, some people actually pay $50 a day for a service to drive them to work and back!)

Mostly, bridge crossings have been uneventful, but not always.  Our car broke down in the middle of the 5-mile long Mackinac Island Bridge in Michigan.

Royal Gorge Bridge

Royal Gorge Bridge

I lost power steering and acceleration and had to coast the last part of the way off the far side.  In Colorado, I rode in the back seat hyperventilating as we crossed the Royal Gorge Bridge, the world’s highest suspension bridge, dangling 1,100 feet above the Arkansas River.  It was so narrow that passing cars had scant inches between them as they crawled along, and pedestrians walking across had to plaster themselves flat against the railings to avoid being run over.  Then there was that one time in a haunted house with my brother where I wet my pants when we crossed a wooden bridge rigged to fall out from under us.

People build bridges, after all–fallible people.  Maybe the fact that I hold my breath across them and wince as they sway is more of a flagging trust in human capabilities than an innate fear of bridges themselves.   Many of our bridges are aging and need repairs, over 60,000 of them, in fact.  So there’s that.  The old London-Bridge-is-falling-down nursery rhyme doesn’t really help either.  Or those stories about trolls and such living underneath.

Bridges often are the only means to get from here to there, and the truth is, sometimes transitions are just hard.   And, oh, goody, life is chock full of these vulnerable, hold-your-breath, learn-to-trust moments.   I envy those people who can cartwheel across those bridges with no trepidation.   While new and exciting things might wait on the other side, leaving the familiar soil of this side, where my feet are on solid ground and the scenery is just fine, can cause excessive hand wringing.

I have a salt water aquarium in my living room. One night, just after its lights had turned off, I witnessed a hermit crab exchanging its shell for a bigger one.  It carefully measured the bigger shell with its antennae.  Using its claws to hoist itself up, in one swift move, it hauled itself out of its shell, scuttled across the sand to the new shell, and edged in backwards.  Voila!   But I was stunned!   All we usually see of these crabs is the legs and head, the parts that stick out from under their comfortable shell.  When it moved from one shell to the next, its body was revealed.  It was a gray comma-like stub, an unformed Voldemort creature.   How brave it was to scuttle out from its familiar house, unprotected and exposed!

All of us have our secret underbellies, like the crab, and it’s the worst thing we can think of to crawl out of our comfortable corners and move–grow–into something new.  Worse still is to admit to anyone else we might be afraid or unsure of ourselves.  Many of us may flinch and wince as we cross bridges of transition—into new careers, empty nests, or life without someone we love.  Sometimes, I admit, I cross those bridges trembling on my knees, clinging to the railing and afraid to look down.  It helps to have folks around who are no less fearless, but who have made those transitions already.   They beckon from the far side, offering encouragement and extending a hand.

Once we make it through our transitions, we can become bridges, of sorts, ourselves.  We can span gaps between generations coming along behind and those ahead of us.  We can be connectors between old ways of thinking and new.  We can extend our hands and assurances that this far side is different, yes, but not so frightening.  There are lots of us over here, and we get it.

Twain said that the only person who likes change is a wet baby.  Like it or not, change is a constant.  Sometimes it demands small alterations, and sometimes it requires of us a full metamorphosis.  It’s almost always a surprise and usually terribly inconvenient.

I’m grateful for those who have been on the far sides of my bridges so far.   A life that is static and fearful is no life at all.   I am learning, slowly, to embrace the change and growth that transitions bring.  Sometimes I still squeeze my eyes shut and take hesitant steps, but I have faith that grace will eventually get me where I’m supposed to be.   None of us can predict what’s coming down the pike next.   But, focusing on the far side, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.