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Illustration by Alex Siklos
Today, I cried at the gym. Right there, in front of the mirror, while I was tackling my mid-life girth. Halfway through a set of sit-ups, I burst into tears. I failed to control the weeping that came seemingly from nowhere. I felt embarrassed. I looked to see if anyone had noticed, wiped my face and focused on the obnoxiously loud electronic dance music blasting from the speakers. “Come on, pull yourself together woman,” I told myself.
Later in the day, driving my youngest child to an activity, I felt another surge of uncontrollable emotion. I concentrated on the rock ballad that played on the radio. My daughter turned up the volume and we took turns humming the familiar tune, picking out a few known phrases, singing awkwardly together when my tears returned. It was not a sudden rupture like earlier at the gym, but rather silent, slow, hot tears. They pooled in the bottom of my eyelids as I held fast to the steering wheel. I centred my breath but more tears spilled onto my cheeks and down my neck staining my shirt.
I am not known to be overly emotional. But here I was unable to contain this surge of sentiment and the fear of the finality about this phase of motherhood: my third and last child is graduating from high school and moving on to her next chapter.
I lean into this visceral feeling of mixed-up emotions to make sense of all this love and loss and pride and fear. It’s a juxtaposition of wanting to grasp hold of your child forever while at the same time wanting to lift them high and encourage them to fly. I could just rationalize my emotional state with the scientific explanation of the realignment of hormones. I understand that on a cellular level, this elevated sense of emotion is textbook, but all I can think about is how this phase of life is completely overwhelming.
My identity as a mother is being reformed at the exact same time as my children are learning to move on to find new adventures. Blended into this emotional response is also the sense of empathy I feel for my mother who must have felt something similar when I moved out.
“Are you okay, Mum?” asked my youngest.
I cleared my throat and rubbed the tears away.
“Look at the haze! Isn’t it bad today?” I say, changing the subject.
She knew I wasn’t okay. I just didn’t have the words to tell her how I was feeling. Without speaking, we could sense the days ticking by before she graduates from high school. What she did not know was that I was already longing for her return before she has even left, and that despite experiencing this twice before with her brother and sister, it wasn’t getting any easier. Each day until she does leave, I am practising the moment when I finally have to peel away from her as she begins her new life far away at university.
I recall meeting a woman once who told me that she had experienced postpartum elation with her third child instead of postpartum blues. That really stuck with me as I have experienced this with my youngest all these years (well, other than those trying days when she was in her terrible threes). She’s our third and last child, our baby, and will be hard to let go.
Mixed into this emotional tsunami is the grief I hold for the young woman that was once me, unencumbered by self-doubt and midlife indecision. I grieve for the future I once had, for all the identities I tried on that didn’t stick – the artsy girl, the nomadic hippie, the grey-suited corporate career woman, the earnest academic. All of these people are me and were me.
I lament that my once girlish figure is now muted by a magnified midsection that hides the curvature of my hips, but I also embrace the thought that midriffs have a purpose in all of this transition. The middle bits stick around, like a phantom weight that never leaves, like that ever-present feeling of a child on our hips, of bony elbows and knees pressing into our bellies. Time is stamped on my body, a body that recalls the feeling of a little hand reaching up for mine, a clandestine hug around the waist before a safe release into the world.
I take stock of time passing and pay attention to every precious memory. These moments are both the ones we long for and are most afraid of. These feelings of love and grief grab me by the throat and split open my heart. All of this makes me burst into tears one minute and burst into song in another.
It’s okay, I’ll be all right, we will all be fine. I’ll cry, and get back to the gym.
Suzanne Scott lives in Vancouver.