Life is lifing so lifingly

Life has been coming at me like a bullet train lately, so please bear with this post, which is bound to be rambly.

Let’s start: after (x) years, my eldest graduated from college in early July. It would be funny to rib them about the extension, but truly their college experience was wild: freshman year during the first COVID lockdowns — which extended to sophomore year; finally moving to their dorm to start face to face classes and then losing their dad a few weeks later; catching up on all the courses they had, ehem, issues with during the lockdown study-from-home years; getting a great thesis advisor and topic but needing to pivot (and pivot) because well government funding, always so dependable. But they stuck to their guns, stayed with their difficult course and finished and can I also sayyyyy they already have a job? Related to the pivoting thesis? I am so happy and proud. To be able to land work right after graduation and for it to be in the field you’re actually interested in isn’t the norm for many of us — I myself had to wait 4 months for the stars to align, and some of my friends waited a year or more.

Grad is a celebration, but five days before it — right on the day their department had a pre-graduation ceremony — their grandma, my mother-in-law, passed away. Bittersweet, because she passed a couple of hours before we were supposed to visit her so that she could see the graduate in their finery. She had lived a long life and was in decline for the past seven years, but it’s still sad to say goodbye to someone you love.

And so life began lifing: simultaneously celebrating the milestone of a young life while planning how to remember the end of a long and full one. The family decided to focus on the graduation for that weekend, and our friends and family came together for a meaningful, last-minute dinner full of remembrances, laughter and joy. After a week came my MIL’s memorial, and I thought I had recovered from all the graduation hullaballoo, but my body said: welcome to middle age! Now you need 10 business days to feel normal after your routine is disrupted!

At the memorial I spent time with people who came to grieve and reminisce with us. And it was here that I met the most fascinating person, one of my in-laws’ closest friends. We had a long conversation and it’s really stuck with me. You could even say… it was inspiring.

This person was a gentleman in his 70s who had advanced degrees and taught in one of the sciences. But you see, he also loved the arts. Before his retirement he was thinking about taking some workshops at the fine arts department of a nearby university, but they were expensive. So he thought: if I actually enrolled in the course it’ll come out cheaper! I don’t really even need to finish it; I just want to take a few subjects. So, he took the talent test, passed and enrolled.

But that first semester was rough. He was still working full-time and lived far from the school, so he eventually had to drop out. The fine arts dream seemed to be just that — a dream.

Then he retired.

He re-enrolled. He now had the time to take all the classes. Classmates would mistake him for a professor; guards, thinking he was a nosy parent, would shoo him away from the classrooms. But he kept on, and he loved what he was doing. He told me about a class where the professor would play music and told them to just paint what the sound evoked in them. He told me about his thesis, a 6×10 foot painting. He laughed as he recalled negotiating to get his undergrad subjects credited for the course and how he still had to take two GE classes for his last semester. And he told me about graduating at nearly 70 years old — not the oldest graduate the department produced, but very nearly.

In turn, I told him about my own Fine Arts dream in high school, how I spent all my free time in our art club, drawing and perfecting anatomy, and faces, and movement. I practiced so much before the talent test at my chosen college. And how my heart was broken because what followed was radio silence. I didn’t get my acceptance letter at the same time as my friends who applied to the same university did. Although I passed the exams for my alma mater, I felt adrift, because this thing I was working so hard for didn’t happen.

A week before I was to leave for college, my mom showed me the acceptance letter. It had fallen into the gutter, she said; she had just found it. “It turned out you passed the Fine Arts test — but it’s too late now.” And so I made the best of what I could at the college I ended up in, and from here found my way into a very good career. Still, I had always wondered, what if?

(THIS IS NOT THE END OF IT. Because guess what I learned just last year? Guess what my mother admitted after all this time? The Fine Arts acceptance letter? Not found in the gutter a week before I left for college. NOPE. MOTHER DELIBERATELY HID IT FROM ME. WAH. I just had to laugh, because I’m in my 40s now and no longer that crying 16-year-old thinking I wasn’t good enough all along. Mom just said “You should thank me! Look where you graduated from! Look where you are now! That would not have happened if you took Fine Arts.” AS I SAY I JUST HAVE TO LAUGH TO KEEP FROM SCREAMING.)

So anyway! Why am I dumping all these thoughts here now? I don’t know really. I guess to process them, but I feel like this one is for you all to read, too, because I want to know what you think. After everything that’s happened in the past few weeks — my kid’s graduation, my MIL passing away, that Fine Arts conversation and how it uncovered my long-repressed (and dashed) artistic hopes — here’s what I’m taking away from all of that:

1. Life is unpredictable. It really is. I used to think that a failure to plan is planning to fail, with the mistaken belief that most variables in life can be managed. And then four years ago, the unthinkable happened. We can make plans up the wazoo, and yeah, it’s good to work towards a goal. But we must also be willing to surrender to where life takes us. To be surprised. To let go. To acknowledge a higher power, because God knows it ain’t us.
2. One of my favorite influencers said that her greatest success happened at the same time as her greatest heartbreak. I can say the same for me as well. Rarely is life so neat — it’s messy and things bleed into each other, triumphs and tragedies at the same time — things that an editor would take a look at and tell you “You don’t really need this in there; it’s muddying up the plot.” So again, what do? We just have to roll with the punches. Complaining about the messy plotline won’t get us anywhere with the Great Editor in the Sky. We cry when we need to and we take joy where we can.
3. Mortality. Hoo-boy. A big one. In the end what unites us all is that whoever we are, we will all grieve for someone, and we will all be grieved. (At least I hope so. If we’re the type of person people are happy to see kick the can, that’s a whole other problem to deal with.) I’ve been thinking of what I need to do to ease my transition for me loved ones. And how to prepare as well for before Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil. Again with the plans…! Who knows how this will all shake out. But it’s in my head, at least.
4. Cliche, but it truly is never too late. My life has slowly gotten back to a good rhythm ever since the big hinge event four years ago… except for creation. I just feel like I have nothing to give in that department; that the business of caring for myself and for others while working has depleted me, and no spite or inspiration can get me out of my creative rut. Well, at least until I met my MIL’s friend. Then I realized…maybe all I need to do is give it time. Not to force it. To wait until I feel like I have something to say (or to draw or to paint) again. There is no timeline, and it’s not a race. And who knows, maybe I’ll follow his lead and take that Fine Arts degree myself!