Turning 60 and the Story I tell of Myself

"It seems to me that I am a character from a work of fiction. This is a serious intuition; it goes deep. For our imaginings about ourselves, whether written down or not, are a composition. Consciousness is like a law of form. My cat, Tiny, does not dream up any stories about himself." --Czeslaw Milosz, A Year of the Hunter, journal entry of Sept. 19, 1987

In 1987, when Czeslaw Milosz wrote those words, I was two months from realizing that I was pregnant with our first child, I was suffering from depression, and I was teaching full-time at Texas A&M University, my alma mater, as a lecturer. Tom and I had just moved back to Texas after four years in Louisiana, where I taught in the English Department while Tom finished his PhD in forestry.  I was to discover that drastic changes in my life tended to induce anxiety as I worked to establish myself in whatever new place to which we had located. Over time and after many moves, I have created for myself a fiction--well, not so much a fiction as a story of myself as someone who can adapt easily to new situations.

And so I can adapt, but it's not easy, and it's not without emotional trauma. Now I am adapting to turning 60 at the end of the year, far away from my children and from friends with whom I have kept in touch with over the years. Six years have passed since my last job as a part-time tutor in a learning center at a community college; ten years have passed since my last part-time teaching appointment at a community college; fourteen years have passed since my last full-time teaching appointment, one in which I had achieved a promotion to assistant professor (non-tenure track) and a stint as the director of a summer program for Japanese citizens. Seven years have passed since I last published a poem and about that many since I last wrote one.

In those intervening years, I have struggled to re-invent myself outside of my professional life. It was easiest to postpone that re-assessment while the kids were at home. Once they left on their own adult adventures, the story I told of myself seemed to falter into broken sentences, missed metaphors, faulty plotline. What story can I tell now? One that will get me past 60 and into old age?

When one moves to a new place far away from the old places after one's professional life is over and done with, one discovers no one is interested in that old life. If you remain in the place where you established that professional life or where you have lived for many years, your storyline remains intact; you cannot understand the futility of continuing the story in a totally new place past middle age, beyond your professional life and all the myriad experiences that created the tapestry of your backstory. Really. No one is interested in that story.

We recently had neighbors over one evening for snacks and drinks on our patio, and I mentioned that I missed the culture of cities where I had lived. We had been talking of this place where we live now, a four-hour drive to any major city, in the heart of Apache County, Arizona. Our neighbors are retirees, with a winter home elsewhere and a summer home here in the foothills of the White Mountains. They were telling us of how much they love the peace and quiet of this area, and I mentioned that I miss the culture of cities where I had lived, particularly that of Decatur, near Atlanta, GA. I missed being able to go to a movie on a whim, knowing that I would be able to see the latest production; I missed being able to go to a bookstore when I was bored, to go to a coffee shop and to watch the people passing. I missed the music venues, the festivals, the diversity, the restaurants, the walkable community where we had once lived.

One of our neighbors asked, "Where did you grow up that you now miss those things?"

"I grew up in the country," I said.

"So what makes you miss the stuff you just described?"

I was taken aback and realized...these are people who don't know my story of growing up in the country yearning for something bigger, of going to university and being the first college graduate on the maternal side of my family, of getting married at a young age, of being awarded a graduate degree after two years of teaching freshman composition, of teaching at major universities and regional colleges, of writing and publishing poetry and personal essays in small regional publications, of trying a bit of journalism in a northern Minnesota town, of raising a family while teaching and moving around the country as Tom found new jobs, of getting a full-time teaching position at a university that allowed me to grow intellectually and professionally, of directing a summer program at that university for students of all ages from Japan, of participating in poetry workshops directed by well-known poets, of creating and displaying an art car, of traveling--to England, to Japan, to Mexico, to various states of the U.S.--of making friends and leaving friends along the way.....

That's a too-brief summary of the old life. What story do I tell of myself now? 

This is the story my blog tells: Anita is interested in politics and the effects of our political choices, writes about her cats and their presence in her life, is sustained emotionally and physically by gardening, likes to make things,  is introspective, and seems to like taking photos of pollinators.

But this is only a small part of the story I tell myself. We all have hidden depths we rarely reveal outside the observable fiction of ourselves.