“The past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time, it expands later and thus, we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” – Virginia Woolf
Writer’s note: I found this quote not because I am an avid reader of Virginia Woolf, but because I discovered it at the beginning of the book Educated by Tara Westover. When I read it, I wrote it down in my journal, knowing I would need to hold on to its wisdom.
When Taylor Swift dropped folklore back in late July, my daughter and I listened to those gorgeously reflective songs so often on repeat that it was like staying in a bubble bath until our skin turned to leather. I’m not sure I ever felt a collection of songs match my internal mood so well. Then again, I never knew what a mostly quarantined pandemic mood felt like. Swift took her quarantine time, and like the songwriting master that she is (even if you’re not a fan, I encourage you to give this one a listen), constructed an emotional anchor that my 52 year old self and 20 year old daughter could equally cling to as we struggled to hold on to whatever still made sense since Covid-19 changed everything. Besides the beautiful lyrics, the sound of those songs vibrated through my body and brain when finding words for feelings was as hard as finding that one piece we searched for in our 1000 piece puzzle.
My previous relationship to Swift’s music was that from the perspective of a mom of a 12-year-old girl back in 2011 when we went all the way to Nashville (a generous birthday present!) to catch her Speak Now tour. Even I was wide-eyed when she flew over the audience with her openhearted magical music, making the thousands of young girls who sang along to every word feel like she was their friend. What I felt then came strictly from watching my daughter’s joy; it was a simple thrill to see that someone with such magnetic talent and positivity was also a wonderful role model for our girls. There was no deeper internal dialog between me and Swift’s young songs about mean girls and heartbreak.
Nine years later she sings: “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace,” in the song My Tears Ricochet and I suddenly and completely fell into a whole new level of Taylor Swift fandom. She is all grown up now at 30 (the very young kind of grown up!). She always had insightful things to say or she wouldn’t be so successful, but now her relatability extends beyond the bright eyes of innocent youth. “And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves,” she continues, sharing the letting go of whatever hard-fought relationship she’s reflecting on. I wonder how many years the feelings of that particular breakup (or generalized sense of loss) noodled in her mind before she had the quarantine time to let the lyrics flow.
And here’s me listening, twisting the lyrics into my own process of healing: “I didn’t have it in myself to enter with grace,” I sing to myself. Enter my 50s that is. I discovered that this music not only matched my quarantine mood but let me look back more softly on a year when I could not fully understand my own feelings or needs. After a celebratory start, my husband John and I marking our collective 100 years with a joyous, music-filled bash to be remembered, I fell into an unsettled space. I held onto a sweet moment that should have been fleeting and clung to it as if it were my youth, or perhaps just the possibility of youth. The possibility that what lies ahead might be more exciting than all the experiences left behind. Like the feeling I had riding my bike when I was a kid, not just around the block but farther away from my childhood home, further into independence and opportunity, to an unknown place that would bring new adventure. When I was 10, the road most often took me to buy candy at a classic suburban neighborhood variety store less than a mile away. That was adventure enough. Where would it take me at 50, if I decided to hop on and ride away?
But I didn’t want to ride away. In fact, I needed to sit still and take the time to figure out what I was really feeling as the night sweats woke me and anxiety trapped irrational thoughts inside my head. Searching for understanding, I spiraled into uncertainty, kept secrets, obsessed over the smallest of interactions, worried about the wrong things and watched myself unravel. It feels so out of control at the time, but then it is in the past, like Virginia Woolf says, it becomes beautiful. The hard-felt emotions have time to expand and take you to a new place. I see now that I simply didn’t have it in myself to enter this new age with grace. I did too much the decade before, so I entered with a fall.
Taylor turned 31 yesterday. I turned 53 one week before. A generation apart, but I’ll pretend we’re kindred Sagittarian spirits, connected by our optimism and fun-loving attitude. She can look back on 30 and wallow in the fact that her album made history by setting a record of 80.6 million streams on Spotify on day one. Damn her. Still I give her gratitude, helping me look back on 50 with more self-acceptance, less apology (still hard for me) and greater emotional strength.
While we all continue to ride the harsh waves of 2020, we won’t really understand how we feel until more time has passed. We know for sure it doesn’t feel good. I am well aware of the presence of silver linings in my life, but as the year comes closer to a close I need to allow myself to be tired of them. As a parent of young adults, watching the losses they have endured pile up since March like laundry coming home from college, I want to tell my kids to scream “screw you silver linings!” and help them find the resilience to make it through.
This was the year my son graduated from high school with a well-orchestrated and sweetly personalized live-stream tribute to the Class of 2020. An impressive effort that made the best of the circumstances for sure, including video clips of kids dancing in their graduation caps and gowns, alone. It was the year he entered his first year of college with no roommate and no “first year sing,” one of those traditions that finds future life-long friends standing together on the steps of an academic hall looking out optimistically over what lies ahead. The year he had too few opportunities to make connections and find experiences outside the classroom, not to mention the Zoom screen. A year that is such a milestone, that we place too much emphasis on, and that fell far short of his expectations. I want to give him the biggest of bear hugs and feel him weep in my arms like when he lost his beloved stuffed koala.
And then there is my daughter. As a senior, we are entering the year that would have been the one when she performed on the mainstage of one of the most prestigious drama schools in the country, fantastically revealing every talented and trained particle of performance-powered energy she has inside her. She would become Sheila in the musical Hair. Now she will record a few songs to be viewed on our computer screens, her character development won’t have the opportunity to expand beyond how well her expressive eyes will bring us into the emotions of the turbulent 1960s. With a mother’s pride, I can predict it will still be fantastic, those eyes will bring us there, her voice will impress, and she will keep the sadness off camera.
I want my kids to know, and all the young people who deserve so much more, that they don’t need to do this all with grace. They can trip and fall. Unravel even. Try to know that after the dark downward spiral they will eventually look back on 2020 and understand more about themselves. Find what they need to heal. For the moment, I hope they find whatever songs match their challenged emotional states. For me, I’ll take in another verse from My Tears Ricochet – “We gather stones, never knowing what they’ll mean. Some to throw, some to make a diamond ring.” I wish I could hand them both a diamond.
Me and My 50s 