Change of Life

In her response to the tearful week I spent after Colette's prom, the therapist, who usually aims to restructure my thinking, surprised me: "You'll have to embrace your sadness," she said, "in order to go through this transformation." I left the office with the understanding that some significant process of change must occur within me over the coming year, in order that I may be able to let go of Colette, to release her to the wider world.


In the meantime, our town flooded. Life changed. For two long days, water poured down over the ground in great torrents, turning streets into rivers and yards into lakes. Whole neighborhoods were swallowed, leaving houses under water and families jumping out of top-floor windows into boats there to rescue them.

In parts of town, the flooding was catastrophic. Everything familiar was suddenly altered. The terrain was no longer the one we knew; the signs that made sense before lost meaning. For several days, our town lost its bearings. For those who lost their homes, the displacement was traumatic and continues. Each of us, as we've assessed the damage through photos and videos, firsthand experience and conversations with friends, has been pushed to regroup and to reach out to one another in new ways.

The water is drying up, and recovery efforts are in progress. Wet carpet has been ripped up and lugged to the sidewalks, and all across town industrial-size fans are airing out basements. Many of us are fortunate enough to be back to our normal routines, sharing a renewed sense of the fortitude of our community and the power of experience to transform people.


Today I can barely keep my eyes open and my head up simply because of a night spent tossing in my bed with hot flashes and insomnia. I seem to be entering pre-menopause in earnest now, and I wonder about this change too. How will I fare through this natural, but protracted and unpredictable, process?

I am letting go of my child-bearing years, seeing the end of my biological fertility, and I intend to emerge in the next stage of life as a strong and changed being. I have borne my children, and soon they will leave to explore the world outside our home. I will transform as I release them. Not only they, but I too will come into a new orientation with the world.

As I enter this bumpy phase, there are moments when I see clearly the perfect beauty of things around me just as they are now. There exists a wisdom outside and within me, amidst the topsy-turvy signposts, if I can pause and locate it. The poem Adele wrote to me for Mother's Day gives me exactly what I need: "Just take a breath," it says, "I love you to death."