Around the time I turned 40, I read an article in The Atlantic by Howell Raines, in which he wrote “At sixty-one, I’m young enough to invent an entirely new chapter in my life rather than perpetually re-reading the old ones.” I felt, then, like I was inventing entirely new books, not just chapters. I wrote that quote in the Wonder Woman journal where I capture all the gems I stumble across; I wrote it in calligraphy on an index card and taped it to the wall above my desk.
Fast-forward a dozen years, and I realize that the new book was just a reboot of the old one: the lead character might be on a new adventure, but she still ends up being devoured by wolves. During that dozen years: For better or worse, my marriage ended. The career in teaching I’d worked so hard to create turned out to be -- oh, how I hate to admit it! -- far less satisfying than the secretarial career I abandoned due to societal pressure, especially from my fellow women, to be more than “just a secretary.” (”You’re so intelligent and capable, you should be more than just a secretary!” As if secretaries are, by definition, stupid and incapable; as if each of us, regardless of our profession, are defined as individuals solely by the paid work we do.) I am, in fact, a secretary again, with a female boss so insecure about her own qualifications and ability that she is threatened by everything I do; each time I take the initiative to do something that no one has bothered to do (but that desperately needs to be done), she punishes me for it ... then buries my contribution and takes credit for it herself. I’ve been searching for a new job for the past two years, but I have discovered, much to my horrified surprise, that I am now “old” and that age discrimination in hiring practices, while illegal, still very much exists. The financial juggling act I’ve been performing so heroically in the seven years since my divorce has finally come to a comically cataclysmic end; all the eggs and rakes and pins and balls and chainsaws I’ve kept in the air for so long have come crashing down on me, and my new best friend is my bankruptcy lawyer. If there is kindness in the universe, I will at least get to keep my car at the end of this humiliating -- not humbling, but humiliating -- process. However, I am beginning to mistrust this whole “benevolent universe” nonsense. I see the anger and hatred and need in the world (in my country, in my state, in my town, in the grocery store where I shopped this morning), I see my own life falling apart, one rusted bolt at a time, and I think: “If there is a God, I think she might be on a long vacation right now.” And I hear the wolves howling in the near distance.
To invent a new chapter requires a clean sheet of paper. Right now, I’m looking at a page so full of scribbles and doodles and desperate equations, so soaked with the anxious sweat of my palms, that it won’t take a new impression. And it appears to be the last page in the pad, the last sheet in the ream.
At 53, I’m old enough to know that there can be comfort in re-reading those old chapters of my life, just as there is comfort in re-reading a favorite book or playing the same old-favorite CD over and over and over again. So I’m crawling inside myself, like a kid up past her bedtime, burrowed under the blankets with a flashlight. Perhaps I’ll find a blank page or two somewhere along the way.
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