“How alive your heart to feel such sorrow!” – from Catherine Newman’s bestselling book, Sandwich
So last month, I was out to lunch with two friends and our one friend gave each of us a different book that she had finished reading. She told us to read them and then to swap them. So the other day, my generous book-giving friend mentioned in a casual text to me that our other friend had finished her book. I hadn’t even started mine. So, in a frenzied mix of competiveness and a dutiful sense of consideration, I finished my book, front to back, all on Monday. That book was Sandwich by Catherine Newman, and it was essentially a heart-bearing, brutally honest account of a woman in the exact stage of life me and my friends are in – empty nest, menopause, having the people whom we love on both ends of our lives, slowly and methodically fading out of our lives, in different ways. Being in the “sandwich” stage of life, our adult children are moving out and on, and our elders are slowing, aging and sometimes even passing on. Newman mentioned something about us being at a “fulcrum” stage of our lives. Sandwich was a great, relatable read, mostly in how it touched on the big emotions and the almost feeling of disbelief, which this stage of our lives brings to the table. For me, the book was mainly a reflection of the poignancy of life and the beauty of love and living fully. Here is my favorite excerpt from the book:
“Here’s what foragers know: Most of what grows is neither delicious nor toxic. There’s a whole world between what we call the choice edibles- the hazelnuts and porcini and black raspberries- and say, the destroying angel mushrooms that will shut down all your organ systems after a single nibble. You can eat the grass, the lichen, and the inner bark of most trees, a thousand kinds of leaves. Not that you would, but you could. So much of privileged adulthood seems to take place here, in the space between the soaring highs and the killing disasters. It’s just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subtlety, its decency and dailiness.”
So after finishing the book, I felt a little more fragile than usual. My feelings were closer to the surface and at that moment, I remembered that I had to get six pictures of various stages of my middle son’s life to his future mother-in-law for their upcoming wedding shower. That entailed me and my husband opening up one of two enormous plastic tubs, with dusty lids, in the garage, full of photographs. Photos I haven’t viewed in years. Photos full of my children in baby clothes, and sports uniforms, and prom attire and cuddling with various pets. Photos full of vacations taken, birthdays celebrated, and sweet everyday moments which we were lucky enough to catch on camera, because something deep in us, wanting a sweet token of that simple moment for posterity. The box was full of pictures of people who are still in our lives at all different stages of their lives, and also of people who, for various reasons, are no longer in our lives. There were literally piles and piles of pictures of the life of our family, at every single stage of it. And so yeah, Monday got to me. Monday got me good.
Besides nostaglia, and meloncholy, and wishing that certain things had turned out differently, but also primarily feeling awe and gratefulness for how well most of those “raising the kids” years had gone, I also sensed myself feeling deep compassion for young mother me in all of those pictures. She was much prettier and thinner and obviously more engaged and earnest than I ever gave her credit for being. I was so damn tough on her a lot of the times. I wish I could reach back in time and offer her a glimpse of the grace I feel for her now. I guess the best thing I can do, is offer up that same grace to myself, now, in this meaningful stage of my life, so that when I am elderly and peering through the stacks (or reels) of photos and mementos, I can recognize myself as exactly who I am – a faithful forager, doing my best to enjoy and to savor my “just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subltety, its decency and dailiness.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.