My Big Little Life

I want to have done things but I'm tired

Sandy Beach with Breakers, Winslow Homer, 1869

I slipped the elder care leash for a minute and went to the beach, unknowingly bringing the plague and sharing it with the family. “It’s just allergies,” I chirped while feeling increasingly hot and unwell, trudging from cute beach house to crowded beach and back in a heatwave, like a sick and stupid 21st century American lemming in a big hat.

Covid, of course. My first time. They say you’ll lose taste and smell, but they don’t tell you about the eyes that feel artificially dilated, the ears that ring with rebuke, the lethargic unreality of a bad drug. They don’t mention the miasma of weakness and regret. I’m sick of my own company.

There’s a great picture from the ill-fated trip, me grinning and clutching my perfect, joy-filled grandson on the deck of a beach eatery. “This is when Nana gave you the plague,” we’ll tell him when he’s older. He’s fine, but I’m still a bit rearranged many days later.

Was it too much to ask for two fine days at the ocean?

My life has been full. I’ve done a lot but also not much, somehow. I’ve lived, largely, in service to others (my choice!) and have done a good enough job. Now I’m old, peeking out of the cozy confines of my hole and wondering what the rest of you are doing. I’m boring and a little bored. The nature of a very good life, I think, we’ve just been sold a big fat American lie about how AMAZING™ it’s supposed to be. It’s amazing. It’s also boring. These are both good things.

There’s always a story behind the headline. I was once in awe of a woman acquaintance, a writer and professor, with a big, gorgeous glossy-magazine life who turned out to be shallow and ridiculous. And one of the best women I’ve known does not seem particularly “together.” She’s honestly kind of a hot mess, but is brilliant, kind, creative, and generous. The lasting, important stuff. The covers don’t tell us about the book, as we are told but forget.

I see you, all these beautiful, accomplished women in the rough middle of your lives, getting on with the business of being quietly fabulous. I’d love to do big shiny things, but the little things are so enticing — and much easier. Except for the nagging comparison bullshit, I’m happy here in my skin and my life. I’m a frumpy-ish introvert, cruising along in my little domestic bubble, pecking away at chatty essays that a handful of kind, attentive people read, until: “MOM! I just met the most interesting woman — she’s published and favorably reviewed by Very Important Papers/has won awards/travels the world/speaks this many languages/wears the hell out of a Hepburn suit.” And I wilt a little in my Big Box sweatpants and know in the deepest recesses of knowing that I will never do any of those things. I don’t really want to! (Except maybe the writing bit. And a little travel, and maybe the suit). But I want to have done things. Does this make any sense?

Can we just aspire to contentment?

I raised four kids — smart, good, lovely people. In the words of Kelly Corrigan: “The way I see it, if you have four kids, you don’t really have to do anything else, ever.”

A dear departed friend also raised four brilliant kids, but was bitter about her own lack of achievement. “I will not be defined by my kids!” She was a fierce, funny, wild artist who threw the best parties and her character is etched in our memories. I fear when they remember me it will be, “she made a good cheesecake, did the dishes at every party, and was sort of nervous.” It’s not a terrible legacy — someone needs to do the dishes and cheesecake is always welcome, but it’s pretty tepid.

I’m so proud of my kids and don’t even mind being sort of defined by my part in their lives. But I fear turning into one of those dismissible old ladies whose only tales are about the kids. Their achievements are not mine — are they my only achievement? I mean, if so, that’s great but it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Don’t tell me to join a club or run for anything or get a job — I’m happy here in my rural “retirement”, lucky in every possible way. I’d like to rest on my laurels, I just can’t find them.

I thought this might be an essay but then realized it’s just a rant. A fine Covid whine. Yes, Covid is still a thing along with all the terror and the fascism and the heat. It’s getting harder to imagine Hepburn suits, harder to care about ambition, here at the ugly end of the world.  

Comparison is messing with my pursuit of joy. I’m proud of my quiet, simple life, but when confronted with people who are Very Cool™, it scrambles my brain a bit. Maybe I want that? Maybe I don’t have the map, the energy, or the ambition, though, and it would be much nicer to lie down a bit before the next elder care shift. Long ago, before I was trimming dad’s toenails and counting out his meds, he taught me the Taoist concept of Wu Wei: Be the water flowing around the rocks. I just didn’t count on so many rocks.

☯️ Lisa

---

Things to share:

• Finally ripped through The Guest by Emma Cline. I can’t remember the last time I read a book so voraciously. A fast, compelling tale that was perfect tense company to my drugged dis-ease. I’m still a little upset and would love a denouement. Might there be a film?

• Slowly picking my way through Knausgaard’s Summer, in love with the hypnotic way he enshrines the quotidian. Our little lives are ennobled in his hands.

• Indelicacy is a sly little slip of a novel by Amina Cain. A cleaning woman at a museum sets her social sights high and then chafes at the chains of privilege. Intense, lovely, and provocative. (Thanks to

  Hillary Kelly
  for the rec!)

• Call your representatives, even though they probably don’t represent you. It feels futile in these insane times, but I have to believe it’s worth something. Even in my pathetic plague state, I’m calling and writing my terrible rep. Drops in the ocean, but the ocean is made of drops.💧