Midway in Our Life’s Journey

Books for the Midpoint of Life

Mark and I have been talking lately about books that have to do with middle age—books that present people in the midpoint of life. He has been rereading The Lord of the Rings, and one of the many things Peter Jackson failed to do in the movie was to impress upon us that Frodo is in mid-life. He is not a young hobbit anymore but is at a time of life when he should be settled down. It is the same for Bilbo in The Hobbit; he is fifty and very respectable in that he does not go on adventures. But both hobbits do, and come out different and not able to go back to how they were before. In one sense, The Lord of the Rings series are books about a mid-life crisis. One could say the same for Aragorn—he is not a young man and according to Dúnedain years he is middle aged—but the crisis of his life is the whole thrust of the trilogy. He must lean into what he was called to do, born to do, and he does it well. I am wondering now, as middle age begins to come upon me: is midlife more about stepping into change, fulfilling our vocations, than those years of early adulthood? 

Gustave Doré's illustration to Dante's Inferno. Plate I: Canto I, Opening lines. (1857). Public Domain.

In the Middle Way

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt 
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure 
(T.S. Eliot, East Coker, V.1-4)

My last living grandparent died this past autumn, an appropriate season for death. He went during the early stages of the leaves changing, before the brilliant colors filled the trees. I flew to Cleveland alone for the funeral and to spend a few days with my family, reconnecting with cousins that I had not seen in years. I think the last time I spent time in Cleveland, hanging out with cousins and without Mark with me, was sometime in early college. Mark started coming to Cleveland the summer we were nineteen, and after we were married and had our honeymoon baby, I always had my children with me on visits. In my relationship with these cousins, I often feel like I went from being one of the kids to being an adult that they could not relate to in just a couple of years. It was almost healing for me to go out for lunch with them at a cute French café and have the conversations of thirty-something adults. I appreciated knowing that after nearly twenty years of me adulting with Mark that they still loved me as the close cousin of their childhood. On the day of the funeral, we had the opportunity to tour the renovations of the house my grandfather built, the new owners graciously letting us come over. Wandering from room to room, the memories flooded back. And then we went back to the creek, where we had played for hours as kids, the creek that we always tried to trek down all the way to Lake Erie (1/2 mile away). It was so good to be there with them, and as my cousins dropped me off at the airport, it felt, in one sense, like a chapter of my life was being tidied up and packed away.

While I am not yet forty, in many ways I feel like I am in the middle of my life. Maybe not quite what one would call “middle-aged,” but I recognize the signs that I am in a middle stage. I first felt it when I realized that I was grandparent-less—it hit me the night Grandpa died. I stood in my pajamas at the foot of my bed in the yellow lamplight, and I felt a hole in my life. “I am an orphan now,” I said to Mark when he came in from his shower. I don’t think he quite related to me, because his grandparents are still all living in their 90s. My mother’s parents have been alive my whole adult life until they both passed away in the last two years. They loved to see our family as we would stop by once or twice a year. I received regular updates on their wellbeing during my weekly phone calls with my mom and heard the details of how their seven children cared for each of their parents until their deaths. Since they are gone to their eternal rest, I am changed. 

At the Still Point

My middle life seems here to stay (for now), and, while I spent much of my youth wishing time away, I am now finding myself clinging to the present, hoping to keep it from slipping through my fingers. 

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. 
(T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, II.62-65)

The generations before me are past, but within me, and the rising generation is still under my care. This is a brief moment that will be gone before I realize it has left me, and I just want to pause with it and be here in the now. I will have three teenage daughters by the end of this calendar year, and my son is turning ten this year (double digits!). While friends my age are still having babies, I have not been able to have more than those four. And my children are in general so delightful—people I love to be with and talk to—who have read books I love, care about the faith we live, and while growing in independence, still need me to care for them. 

Mark has been away this week teaching some religious sisters St. Thomas’ proofs for the existence of God and other philosophical topics. I left the house in a state of somewhat chaos to go to my book club the other night, reasoning with my friend who picked me up that it was probably better for the children to clean the kitchen and get to bed without my anxious supervision. When I came home a couple of hours later, the house was clean and quiet. I slipped into my son’s room to give him a kiss and found him sleeping soundly, but no one had straightened his sheet before he climbed into bed. So, I pulled the comforter down and dug around for his sheet—in the process, his eyes fluttered and he saw me there. He smiled a peaceful smile and my motherly heart ached for just a moment—I leaned over to him again and received his sweet, boy hug. Moments like that are the ones I want to hold on to and they are precisely the moments that won’t stay. Life feels more transient these days—and the sudden and tragic early deaths of my peers hit me more deeply (we heard about another this week): we are all passing.

Aeneas fleeing from Troy, by Pompeo Batoni (c. 1750). Public Domain.

On my Shoulders

As I mentioned a few months ago, The Aeneid is a book about mid-life, with the classic image of Aeneas carrying his father on his back out of burning Troy while his son holds him by the hand—and his wife presumably following at a safe distance. 

‘Then come, dear father. Arms around my neck:
I’ll take you on my shoulders, no great weight.
Whatever happens, both will face one danger,
Find one safety. Iulus will come with me,
My wife at a good interval behind. 
(II, 921-925) 

Midlife need not necessarily be always a crisis point of losing one’s city to the Greeks, but it is often a change, a change when one has finally learned to be content with the present, to stop yearning for the next new thing, to be content in this moment of life. It is as if we know that the next stage is the final one, the decline, the end, when there is nothing and no one between us and our earthly end. (That is if our lives take a natural course.) And then the change we don’t want is thrust upon us—Aeneas loses his city and his wife but he is called onward by the gods: to keep living, to start something new. The difference between the newness of youth and the newness of middle age is that we have the foundation of our youth to support us. The character we formed for ourselves in our youth will support us through the trials of midlife. Like Aragorn, we now have the potential to become who we are meant to be. 

The buffer of my grandparents lives between mine and my own death has been peeled back. And now, I am witnessing, from across the Midwest, my mother’s slow, cruel decline which will end in her death from the terrible disease of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). I am seeing my father, who miraculously survived an aortic dissection eleven years ago but who has never gotten his full energy back, lay down what energy he has to care for her. I am so grateful to all the friends and relatives who live near them, who provide them with meals and help. If I dwell on it too much, it breaks my heart that I cannot be there to care for them both, though I help as much as I am able from afar.

There by God’s Grace

 Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
            From the straight road and woke to find myself
            Alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
 
what wood that was! I never saw so drear,
            so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
            Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
 
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!
            But since it came to good, I will recount
            all that I found revealed there by God’s grace. 
           
(Dante, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi. I.1-9.)

I do not think that I am personally straying from the general path God has laid out for me, besides my daily choices to turn away from Him in my many sins. But ridding myself of these sinful habits and following more closely to His will in every single moment has felt more and more urgent. The end seems much closer than it was before. Lord, manage my time, I have been praying most mornings. For I do not know how much time there is and what I have left to do.

Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, by Rembrandt (1606-1699). Public Domain.

So, what do we do with these middle-productive years of life? What is their purpose? It is so easy to get caught in the monotony of the day-to-day—to do the next big project without thinking, to do the same thing day after day, and then realize that we are restless. And we can’t all take to the sea with the one called Ishmael; we have real responsibilities here and now. Yet we must stave off these gloomy thoughts our soul:

It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people's hats off then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it almost all men in their degree some time or other cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

(Herman Melville, Moby Dick, p. 1)

When we find ourselves in the dark wood, life seeming transient, passing, and bleak, is it right to seek adventure outside the mundane? Is there something fallen in the desire to have a plan for our “second childhood,” when the responsibilities of raising young children are over? Why does it feel selfish to me to have the free time to do what I enjoy or to plan to go with Mark to a conference in Rome?   

I had a coffee and tea date with two other writer moms who seem to also be at the end of bearing children; we have all dabbled in writing and editing jobs alongside our callings as stay-at-home moms. They asked me what my career goals are for ten years from now, when my son will be finished with high school. It is time to start planning, they told me. At first, I paused, considering how I never thought of myself as someone with a career. I have just taken the work that has come my way, moving through life one week at a time, giving most of myself to the family. I threw out some ideas, such as finally getting my book that has been written for two years to a publisher, learning Hebrew, going back to school for a PhD, or learning to write a novel. I think I surprised them, as they want me to advance my professional career. But being successful in the professional world seems unimportant to me right now. 

Elwin Ransom, in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, has a similar realization at his life’s midpoint, as he is swept out of his professional career into outer space and the battle for God’s kingdom. Perhaps, what Aeneas, Ransom, Aragorn, Bilbo, Frodo, and maybe even Ishmael all have in common is finally learning to follow God’s will. I know that I have a call to be a writer, a call to be an editor, a call to share the truth, since I can do all these things with God’s help. And in doing these things, I might find myself having a career of sorts—for I also have a call to help feed my family. I am feeling rather St. Thérèsian: I just want to throw my lot in with Jesus, be nothing but His little instrument sustained by His grace. I am not sure I am going to make a plan beyond living in the moment, asking the Lord to manage my time, and trusting that the ship in the ocean of His grace is the only midlife adventure I need. If I am meant to do more, there will be time, and if there is not more time, then I want to spend my days preparing for eternity.