All my many years, it was only during the course of my pregnancies that I had an experience of not being the center of my life. So many years invested—before and after—working to establish my value, to make a name for myself. But over the course of those 9 months, I shared my lungs, my blood and my heart in order to gestate new life. While it was completely different than anything else I’d ever known, I grew used to it—came to enjoy the freedom of selflessness, knowing that all I had to do to make meaning of life was simply to be.
How ironic that now that I am old–after all these years striving to be Someone–I am once again not the point. These days, I go to open a can and it defies me, waiting for someone else to do the job. A loved one’s knee is bruised, and other lips get there before mine. I reach out to my most recent editor only to be greeted by a new, young voice who doesn’t know who I am or where she went. You see it on the news, at the gym, in the subway: an entire generation of offspring grows stronger and stronger with every kick.
It is as if old age were the last month of a lifelong gestation. There is barely enough room for us in life, our very bodies having become something impersonal: an institutionalized carrier of a future that will not be ours.
And yet, once again, I am growing used to it—enjoying the freedom of knowing anew that all I have to do to justify my existence is simply to be.
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