On endings, middles and beginnings
June, my birthday month, marks the end of the school year, the middle of the year and the start of summer. So naturally, I am in my feelings.
I was 26 years old when, for the first time in my adult life, the fall-to-summer calendar of the American school year didn’t mark the passage of time.
After I finished college, my first job was on the very campus where I’d been a student: a two-year stint as a young professional during which I tried my hand at full-time adulting, still very much feeling and looking like the co-ed I’d recently been. That was followed by two years of graduate school. Then a summer internship, then a full-time job I began in September and then when June came around again . . . nothing.
Well, not nothing. More like nothing to look forward to, nothing like the peaks and valleys of longing that only come when the bright promise of summer break looms on the horizon. Yes, New Year’s Eve can be fun, but by January 2, you’re back to the grind, and if you’re of a certain age, you know you’re in for just another year of adult life. There is a kind of magic at the end of the school year to which little compares once you are out of that loop. The magic of anticipating unscheduled time, of suddenly being a grade older, of knowing the annoyances of the past year will be left behind, and of knowing academic or professional growth lies ahead. It is the magic of transition.
Something ends, something begins, circumstances are different all of a sudden, and then in a couple of months they will be different again. And there you are in the middle of it all, in the middle of your life. You are a work-in-progress, and progress is the operative word. A word that can be easily taken for granted.
One of the disadvantages of having thrived as a student is that as a professional, I had to learn the hard way the only real lesson there is to learn in the work place: your effort no longer dictates your advancement. Any number of factors can determine whether you get the job or promotion you want and only some of them have to do with you. Worse, the ones that do aren’t any more sensible for being about you. The point is that the assumption that your trajectory will remain upward is no sure thing.
And when I say “you” here, what I mean is me. Because mine certainly didn’t. The longer I have gone without career growth, in fact, the more my career feels like it is calcifying into a dead-end job. Having changed careers, adjusting professional expectations is something I have already done once. I’ve probably done it multiple times, actually, in small ways that I didn’t even notice myself because what’s there to notice? There are no grades or annual transitions, just one big blob of time encompassing tiny, imperceptible evolutions that can only be seen when you look back and wonder, how did I get from there to here?
Here? Here. Where I still feel like I am in the middle of it all, in the middle of my life. Middle age, as a matter of fact. Am I work-in-progress, though? That’s what “middle” suggests, but lately, I have felt like I’m done. Not “done” as in “I am finished doing something.” More like, a cake that is done baking. Now, it’s time for me to cool and rest, be frosted, decorated and enjoyed.
This is a terrible metaphor.
Let me go back to where I started.
That fall of the year I turned 26, it felt scary to know that, however unlikely, there was a universe in which I could stay in the job I was in until I retired. Going forward, change would be the exception, not the rule. As it happened, one year later I would be in a different job in a different city. But that fact would remain true: change—specifically, the kind of change that signals growth—was no longer guaranteed or on a schedule. For some people, this might have been good news. I am a nerd, though, and, as I said, naturally inclined to be a student. I missed schooling and its cadences as soon as they were gone from my life. I missed how smart I felt. I missed the pride I took in learning one subject well enough to move on to the next.
I’m good at my job and take some pride it in, but all doing it has earned me is more of the same. All I have achieved is arrival at the very place I once feared: There is a universe in which I could stay in the job I am in until I retire. I’m pretty sure I live in it. That’s what I mean when I say I am done like a cake. I’m not finished working, but I’m out of the oven of careerism, on the cooling rack of life, contemplating what’s next.
This is a terrible metaphor, but it feels good to think about growth outside of the context of work, to think about the whole self, to think of a future of frosting and enjoyment. It’s almost like a beginning.
Just like Cross1, the school year came back to me.
At age 40, I was that weepy mom dropping off her first kid at her first day of kindergarten. Once again, I was ruled by August hair cuts and doctor appointments and school-supply buying, winter and spring breaks, and the crescendo of end-of-year teacher meetings and class parties that launches summer.
In the early going, my daughters went directly from school to summer camps, such that, other than the activities they were taking part in, the days didn’t feel all that different when one ended and one began. We were all still getting up early. I was still making lunches and packing back packs with sunscreen, snacks and a change of clothes. As they have gotten older, though, no longer needing constant supervision—and as I have learned the benefits of not over-scheduling—summer vacation has started to feel like just that, summer vacation. A time to be spent sleeping in, reading all day, playing brain-numbing games for longer than anyone should2, begging to go to get ice cream, and spending hours thinking about what next school year will be like.
Being me, I was the kind of kid that set goals for summer about things I wanted to try or hobbies I was going to immerse myself in and letters I was going to write to friends.3 So, of course, I try to do the same with my daughters. I make lists of projects they can take on, like redecorating their rooms or learning a new craft or any number of suggestions to which they respond to with, “Sure mom,” in that patronizing tone only tweens girls are capable of. It’s nice to be back in that realm of summer as a season of possibility and growth, even if it isn’t for me and even if they, being kids, can’t quite understand how precious it is. You can’t understand that truth, not really, until it is behind you.
This summer, in particular, feels like one to cherish. My oldest just finished 7th grade and my youngest 4th grade. Next school year, the older one will be in her last year before high school, and the younger in her last year before middle school. Maybe I’m just being the sap I am when I say that this feels like our last chance to slow down before they both begin speeding into young adulthood, a destination they both seem anxious to reach. It’s not that I want to freeze time, or keep them as they are forever. I am genuinely looking forward to what comes next. I just want to do that a little bit longer.
Book Bites
What I am reading right now: Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan
What you need to know about the book: It’s historical fiction written by a Native American that tells the same story as Killers of the Flower Moon about the Osage murders early in the 20th century.
What you need to know about me: I appreciate well-written narrative journalism and had added Killers of the Flower Moon to my “to read” pile when I heard about it (Thank you, Leo DiCaprio), but when a friend told me of this novel, I knew immediately which I’d read first. Sometimes even true stories need fiction to be told in full.
What I just finished listening to: Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney.
What you need to know about the audio book: Since the book is written in the first person, it feels as if Frances is having a (heavily one-sided) conversation with you.
What you need to know about me: I had started listening to Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, but gave it up early on because I couldn’t stomach another book about how difficult motherhood is. It is difficult. I get it, and I’ve read several great books tackling that painful truth. This wasn’t the moment for me to take on another one, though. I loved reading Rooney’s Normal People and considered saving Conversations with Friends for reading, rather than listening, but when the audiobook came up on Libby, I couldn’t resist.
What I just started listening to: The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches and Meditations by Toni Morrison.
What you need to know about the audio book: It is not read by Toni Morrison by her authorial voice is so distinct, it feels like she is giving a lecture to an audience of one—you.
What you need to know about me: I believe have read more of Morrison’s scholarly work than her fiction. I love both, and she is the rare literary mind that is prolific in both. This collection is less scholarship and more social commentary and personal reflection, although it is so well-research and informed that it does sometimes come across like a series of academic papers. Some might find that boring or repetitive. Could never be me, as the kids say. Morrison is an American treasure.
What My Kids Are Reading Right Now
The 13-year-old finished The Outsiders to end the school year and loved it. I did too. She asked me to watch the movie with her, and young Rob Lowe’s appeals is, indeed, multi-generational.
The 10-year-old has been using her free time to tear through the Keeper of the Lost Cities series. But on her latest trip to the library, she checked out Moo by Sharon Creech and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo, of which she is a big fan.
Book Reviews and Recommendations
I’ve been on a tear this year because books are always the salve I seek in uncertain times. Here are a few worthwhile reads I picked up the first half of the year.
From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard to Reclaim My Legacy by Tamara Lanier
If you’re going to read one nonfiction book this year, let it be this one. My review:
I was brought to tears multiple times reading this account of an African-American family's fight to take control of the public narrative around long-famous images of their enslaved ancestors. Reparations and restitution are a necessary part of any meaningful conversation around racial reconciliation in the United States, and Lanier's deeply personal story makes it clear why. However hard activists fight for justice, the legacy of racism fights harder‚ even (especially?) institutions that claim to be fighting alongside you.
Lanier writes with passion about her family, her search for documentation about her lineage and, eventually, her fight against one of the country's most well known institutions as it continually ignored and gaslighted her about the provenance of a series of daguerreotypes known to be the earliest images of enslaved people in the United States. She documents carefully her landmark case against Harvard while keeping the narrative rooted in her personal journey. I learned so much about the long reach of cultural appropriation and what is taken from you when your image and your story are wrested from you without your consent. This book is perfect for our current "anti-woke" moment and a reminder that the history of enslavement and of racism in this country is not an pedagogical abstraction. It is a story of people and families.
Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
Sullivan writes what I would describe as the thinking woman’s beach reads. My review:
Although I didn't love the other book I have read by this author (Saints for All Occasions, and specifically, I didn't love the way it ended), I loved her writing and pledged to read more. She has plenty of others, but this one called to me, focusing as it does on a new mother who has given up her New York City life and the college student she hires to babysit her son while she tries to get herself back into her working life. I relate to both of these experiences, and for the most part Sullivan didn't disappoint. Her writing remains crisp and incisive, and her characters flawed in realistic ways and so well drawn they feel like people I've met. If I have a quibble it is that the action slowed at times when I was expecting bigger confrontations, and just as I was settling into the idea that this was merely the author's way of pointing out that life doesn't slow down for the messes we make, the epilogue jumps forward and ties things up in a pat way that didn't feel entirely necessary.
I enjoy Sullivan and will continue to pick up her books. Eventually, I'll get to one that ends in a way that fully satisfies me.
Holes by Louis Sachar
Another fun book/movie combination to enjoy with your kids. My review:
Picked this up at my 10-year-old's recommendation and happy to have done so. The plot is the kind of outlandish that only children's books can get away with, but it is grounded by well-drawn young characters who feel like real kids. Funny, thoughtful and surprising.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
I was late to this party. If you are too, don’t worry, you will still enjoy it. My review:
I've been wanting to read a book like this—an incisive dissection of a flawed relationship between flawed people—for ages. Likewise, I had similarly been waiting to read this specific book for ages, having heard all the praises with the fear that, as sometimes happens, the work wouldn't live up to the hype for me. Happy to say, though, that I loved just about every word, just as I loved both Marianne and Connell, both separately and together. Rooney's language manages to be poetic and transporting as much as it is mundane and grounded in real life. As with the best kinds of books, I wanted to start it over as soon as it ended.
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko
I am officially a card-carrying member of the Lisa Ko Fan Club. This book threw me for a loop, but sometimes you need that as a reader. My review:
I picked this up without reading about it because I love Ko's previous work, The Leavers. The story of three childhood friends, how the grow up and evolve through their varying interests and the changing world around them is an interesting look at friendship and self-discovery that—for me, at least—takes a bit of discombobulating turn in the last third of the book when the story jumps into a future in which the forces very much functioning to curb our humanity today reach an imagined future that is extreme in its interpretation of today's current environment, though (frighteningly) not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
There is no shift in tone, per se, but suddenly what felt whispered in previous chapters regarding the author's intent is loud and clear. Memory Piece is as much about what, how and who we remember as it is about how we choose to remember ourselves and what feels worthy of memory—and the idea that the very act of remembering is resistance. Once again, Ko has drawn characters that are fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. I don't know whether my own memories of the 90s and the spans of time she covers in the first two-thirds of the book grounded so much of the storytelling that the rest felt like too sudden a departure, but it wasn't until the very end where it all started to make some sense. Ko is quickly becoming a favorite writer of mine. And if I didn't give this one five starts, it's only because I feel like there is still more and better to come.
Cross Sugarman is a character in Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, one of my favorite books. The best line in it is, “Cross came back to me.” Lee, the narrator, shares those words with the reader unexpectedly but with purpose, like she’d been waiting to surprise us with them the whole book.
For me, this was Tetris, solitaire and Minesweeper. My kids play Minecraft, Roblox and a whole bunch of other things on their phone/iPads that I do not understand.
I miss writing letters. I’m old.