A shawl of my own making

Yesterday was not a good day.

It wasn’t a bad day in an angry way; I didn’t curse anyone on my drive in, nor suffer from a low-boiling rage. So while my bad days usually have a murderous subtext to them, not so yesterday.

No, if I were to sum up my bad day in one word, it would have to be sorrow. Two words? Self-pity. I realize I’ve been sad lately, a sadness that covers me like a loose fitting shawl. Some days it sits atop me like a light layer; other days I wrap myself so tightly in it, I feel constricted and can barely think

I found out yesterday that a very dear coworker, one of my favorite people in life in general, was one of a group that our company let go. She was here for 21 years. I’m grieving her departure.

And my mother’s best friend—a woman whom I love greatly and have always considered my “second mom”—is turning 80. I wasn’t ready to see that door open, but there it is, marked by a little pinprick of light down a very long dark corridor.

But perhaps this sorrow started further back, a few months ago even, with my oldest son’s college application process. Or maybe it was the news he was going to Winter Formal; or maybe it goes much further, all the way back to each of my kids starting a new school year. Whatever it was, whatever kicked it all off, soon found me periodically saddened by the passage of time and that distinct longing the discovery there are no do-overs in life brings.

No do-overs.

No revisiting chubby arms and pouty lips and baby-fine hair. No more sweetly serious conversations about the physics behind Santa’s annual 24-hour world tour. I can’t go back. I logically knew this from the beginning, that once time passed, once it all started there would be no stopping it. Time marches on, as it always has, whether or not I agree.

But sometimes “knowing something” versus an “in your bones full-bodied understanding of a thing AND ACCEPTING IT” can be two very different things. Conceivably.

I did try to enjoy it—life, I mean, as it was happening. I did try to laugh and listen and remind myself to not get too distracted by the dirty laundry because I knew—I just knew one day I’d regret not being fully aware. Or adequately appreciative. Reading Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in college had a deep impact on me. Oftentimes I’d imagine being the regretful Emily, shouting pleadingly at my past self, wishing I’d lived in the moment more. And now here I am, seeing that time has floated by even while I thought I was paying attention, and I’m still swaddled in a crestfallen shawl of my own making.

I realize I'm not sad at all that I'm getting older-- that time is passing for me, personally. I'm sad that it's passing for everyone else.

You know, that-- or I'm just PMS.