Middle Aged

(no longer the future, not quite the past)

There were a couple of admonishments I heard quite often as a kid. The first (and most annoying because it's so obviously untrue) was "Don't be so melodramatic!". The second and almost as annoying (because it was indisputably true) was "Don't take everything so literally!". My insistence on using a literal interpretation for nearly all encounters with other human beings was steadfast. My dad once told me to vacuum the lawn and you didn't sit around and quibble about such things with my dad. You did it.

So I did it. What kind of nuance can one derive from such a demand? Is vacuuming the lawn a metaphor for some other kind of activity? Is it a euphemism for something else?

My dad was so nonplussed that I actually vacuumed the lawn that he let out the longest stream of swear words I'd ever heard before and explained to me how what he really meant was for me to vacuum the ROCKS that border the lawn.

Yeah. OK Dad. Because that makes so much more sense.

So semantics became an early passion for me. I really love it when people say what they mean and mean what they say. I do. I am also a writer and one of the most important tools a writer can develop is the ability to say something very distinct without having to come right out and literally say it.

I lead a double life.

It felt safer as a kid to take life literally than risk the truly turbulent unsafe waters of misunderstanding other people and the repercussions of getting it all wrong. In school I was so scared of being wrong that I would not allow myself to sense or articulate the symbolism in the books we were reading in class which is why so many of my teachers thought I was a complete dolt. Inside my mind all kinds of connections were being forged between words and life, life and the impossible task of telling it to others. I was alive with symbolism and seeing into people. I still see into people. I'm not afraid anymore to get it wrong. I have long since learned to trust myself. I understand people much better than they ever think I do.

Which clearly gives me an edge.

I am middle aged now. Yes, and if you're my age then you are also middle aged. (I'm 38 years old). I know that I am middle aged because unless I expect to live longer than the average life expectancy of 77.5 years, which I don't, then I'm just about smack dab in the middle of life. I may be lucky and live longer but considering that I smoked heavily for sixteen years, I'm thinking 77.5 might be a pretty good run. You're not supposed to talk about this because so many people (women especially) think that to be middle aged is some kind of awful sentence and is almost the same as being a corpse.

You can call middle age whatever you want. You can say that "seventy is the new middle age" if you want to. It won't be true, but you can tell yourself whatever keeps you off the bridge. I like the literal interpretation of middle age. I like it because it makes sense when you think about it. It isn't the same as being half dead. I love Wikipedia's definition of it: the period of life beyond young adulthood, but before the onset of old age.

What's so bad about that?

When I was a housewife women would constantly try to redefine that word for me. They did it because they were uncomfortable with the word "housewife". They constantly implied that calling myself a housewife was a crime against the great feminist sisterhood. And there I was thinking the great feminist sisterhood was all about giving women the choice to live the life they wanted to. I enjoyed calling myself a housewife. I enjoyed the literalness of it. I was a wife who took care of my house. I wasn't bored, abused, misused, unappreciated, suppressed, or a drudge. I had an excellent quality of life and a whole lot of happiness.

What's so bad about that?

I'm duplicitous. Can you tell when I'm leaning on semantics or when I've gone off the map to uncharted linguistic territory? When I debate about issues I am stubborn about semantics. I stick to my guns because words have meaning and the only way we can communicate with each other at all is that there is a certain level of agreement amongst us all about the meaning of words and the meaning of things. As I was reading about semantics I have to admit that I was thinking that some people need to get out of their academic bat-caves and live life a little more and argue over the meaning of the meaning of things a little less.

Then I sit down to write and I'm constantly stretching the boundaries of how words can be used and still be understood. I test the pliability of meaning and unravel the rules until they loop out behind me like the messy entrails of an eviscerated beast. When I'm writing I work myself out of the literal universe and into something more flexible and amorphous.

It feels like stripping off the skin of youth and growing into a new body. Like shaking off layers that have grown papery and fragile to reveal a foundation that is stronger. Writing feels like setting an old small mind in a baby's coffin to rest, loved but finished, and letting a newer mind open up into a larger space. One that is unafraid to find out that the universe is limitless.