Am I grown yet?

Whatever lives is born, grows, then stops growing and begins withering toward extinction. This is as true for animals as for plants, for souls as for bodies. Cessation of growth needn’t mean death. Many annuals in our garden remain lovely after blossoming, before succumbing to frost. Many humans sweeten for years past their prime: sourness and rigidity are not inevitable results. But for all animate beings which survive their normal span, development culminates and deterioration commences. This is not sad – to be born means to die. Most creatures don’t consider death, while others, humans conspicuously, avert their gaze.

I grew slowly – not my body or brain, which developed on schedule, but my soul, which started late, stumbled, stuttered, before settling into a comfortable stride. “Unbecoming to become,” I once wrote, and I was always becoming. I hid my incompletion, first from myself, then from others because it embarrassed me. It’s OK to be inchoate in college, but in middle age?

Curiosity tracked my changes, mostly in my private journals. I was never certain who I was or how I should be spending my precious time. Wherever I found myself was achingly not lots of other dreamy locations. I did not feel trapped in the wrong life – I tend to enjoy myself wherever I am – only disbarred from enticing alternatives. Woulda-shoulda-coulda, the merciless subjunctive taunted as the years ticked by.

Age fifty my life broke. I ran away from home, I would not be who I’d been. I was running from, not toward. I would become – who knew? – someone else.

My jailbreak was rash, irresponsible, and glorious. I’ve told that story elsewhere. I trusted myself to chance. Something would happen – because something must. Introspection intensified as my story became more suspenseful. Coming-of-age stories mostly describe adolescents or young adults. Mine was being written in my fifties.

Its ending couldn’t be happier, but you know that. Jane entered – and retirement – and Rome – and grandkids – and you guys – and now Henry coiled by my bed. There will always be other lives I have not sampled but none preferable. I wake each day to souls I love and the work which fulfills me most. No regrets, except too little time.

Unexpectedly (though perhaps predictably), my private journals lost interest in my account. Fewer entries, less angst, less suspense, my Bildungsroman was concluding in a gladsome glow. Still plenty to write about, a superabundance of views, observations, thoughts, but less and less about me. Yesterday I noticed I hadn’t checked in on myself for a fortnight – and hadn’t missed myself or lost touch. My soul was satisfied staying put, not pacing restively, quizzing myself like Hamlet. Such calm would have been inconceivable a few years back. Somehow, after my bumpy crossing, I’d drifted into port, where I bobbed.

I am not inert. My mind has never felt more stretched, my pen more importunate. The more one thinks, the more there is to think about. But I am not fearful of my whereabouts, anxious that the prisoner might bolt. My soul has grown up, my equanimity exclaims – at last!

And not a moment too soon! For the terrible turbulence of the times demands our intense attention. It behooves me to think about us, not me. Introspection is a luxury, a “self” the fruit of peace. Before we fret who we are, we must first survive.