"Oh, I am so twenty-something. I have a cool job. A starter job, and the money’s only so-so..."

But they picked me because I have this edge, this inexplicable something and I can do it. Just give it to me let me show you who I am. I say, “I can do that blindfolded,” and of course, I have no idea how to do it, but I’m young and agile and way smart and I figure out how to do it while the rest of them are worrying about what size paper clips to order, and I learn what I don’t know how to do and I sail off into the sunset of what’s next.

"And then I’m thirty-something, like a finely tuned cello playing that one haunting, but smooth refrain that makes everyone right with my me-ness."

I’ve proved myself and I’m delivering. My boss gets retired, she’s like 50-something and keeps having issues with her knees. She’s not a loser, not for a second, but she’s grappling and falling off the side of the mountain. I don’t let go of her hand, but I get to the top of the peak and pull her up and clearly we have to do something. Her knees are Jell-O. She lets go of my hand. Tears and thank yous and goodbyes. She takes the trail this time, and I lose track of the pin-prick blue of her as she makes her way down. Home.

"I am All That, and then I get pregnant..."

And I have to pause and reconcile everything for a minute, but just for a minute because, well, I can do it. I remember that. I can do it all, I know I can. I’ve always done that. And then I smell my baby’s skin. It’s like butter and the history of mankind and nothing makes sense except love and and that aspen leaf just new on the branch, and how fall smells like burnt orange. All light, all sensation. One.

"And I wake up. In the minivan..."

It looks like a Mercedes wagon I tell myself, but it’s a minivan. And suddenly I’m forty and something’s ticking. I’m forty two and something’s rocking, like a psychic earthquake I’m reeling from playdates and unfinished fruit cups in the lunch and that painting I put aside at 29 because I ran out of cerulean blue. I think I'm finished. Utterly finished. And so I start an adventure. A little business to get me back on my feet and into the land of the living once again, and he tells me he’s leaving. He wants more and I remind him of less. I let him go like a helium balloon that takes forever to disappear, and I wonder what I’ve done with my life. I see myself grappling on that familiar cliff. Along the sandy edge of the cliff stand these gorgeous white-haired wise women smiling from the corners of their mouths.

"What are they saying? What am I hearing?"

"It's not your story that's so compelling," they say. "It's who you are apart from the story." I look out over the vast landscape of the future, and trace the shape of my footprints with my finger. I am clearly not finished.

In Joy,

Lisa

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