I have started, lately, to become increasingly curious about others who are in this midlife stage. Maybe it’s coming from the nostalgia that lingers during graduation season; maybe it’s watching my child grow; maybe it’s the – unwarranted, unnecessary, and unwelcome – emails I’ve started getting from AARP. Whatever it is, I find myself thinking a lot about my life, the things that have and have not happened; the things I always thought would do; the things I wonder still about.
Yesterday, I canceled a trip to Paris. It is, I think, the right thing to do for a few reasons; I just couldn’t wrap my head around taking my toddler on a journey that was going to be more than 17 hours long in airports and in airplanes due to a schedule change and increased layover. It didn’t seem worth it for him to have his life so turned upside down. We will take an easier, closer trip instead next month.
In deciding, though, I wondered if I’ve lost something of myself. Was I ever a person who would have been ready to scoop him up, time change be damned, and take him halfway across the world for a trip he won’t remember, or was I fooling myself all along? I want to be that person. I want this child to have a mother who adventures with him.
But I also want him to have a mother who thinks of him. I felt selfish for the longing I’ve carried for the Parisian streets, the scent of chocolate and cigarettes and raw meat from the boucherie mixing together in a heady cacophony of smells. I felt selfish for wanting to have these memories with him, right at this moment where he asks, “Why, Mama?” all the time, when he is an expert at pretending anything and everything. I felt selfish for wanting to go to French playgrounds and have him navigate social interactions in different languages. I felt selfish for wanting to, wine in hand, look out at sunset over Sacre Coeur from the balcony of the apartment we’d rented, the one I’d so carefully checked to make sure had supplies for him.
Ah, yes, and there it is: of course I was thinking of him all along.
I find motherhood so humbling, in many ways, but particularly in this one: I am so full of questions, and uncertainty, all the time. Would it have been wonderful to have him in Paris? Probably. Would it have been, at times, nightmarish? Probably. I’ll never know how they might have balanced out. Somehow, not being able to read the future seems like a bit of a personal failing.
I’ll take him before too long, I tell myself. Yet part of me worries: what if that opportunity doesn’t come? I’ve canceled a few trips in the past: one to Lyon in 2019, because I felt like it was the right decision to stay home that summer and work on my marriage; and a dream trip with my sister and dear friend that Covid canceled for me in 2020.
So now it’s been four years since I’ve been to Europe, and still I’m not going. I ache for the version of me I’ve always longed to be, even as I celebrate exactly where I am. And I wonder about this question of middle age right alongside all of this. What does it mean to be young; what does it mean to be old. What does it mean to be right in the middle, still figuring everything out, dreaming all the while?
The Wandering Introvert 