Three by forty

MANILA, Philippines – I turned 40 last month. I am officially, incontrovertibly, cannot be denied, in midlife. In our former lives as human beings, we simply lived life chronologically. (For example, my 76-year-old mother doesn’t even remember undergoing menopause.) Sometime in the past few years, a series of symptoms have been assigned a new term: midlife. The symptoms range from the sudden need to be crazy or do something unexpected to inexplicable feelings of disappointment or sadness. Sometimes the symptoms lead people to do scary things (or brave things depending on the outcome) such as quit jobs or quit marriages.

I had been prepared for midlife. I need to be clear and tell you that what I mean by prepared was that I knew it was going to come. In fact, I began to feel its way into my life around 35 when I decided to take a direction I had abandoned years ago and suddenly became a real writer. Before that, I was many other things, and writing was a hobby, a refuge, a prayer really — something done in secret and only for one’s self. The catalyst seemed to be my father’s death and the grip he had over me and the fear he inspired in me suddenly died with him. One does not pursue a new thing and expect nothing to change. Everything changed in my 35th year and even then I knew midlife had come upon me.

I could also tell by the consistency of my visit to three rooms: the doctor’s room, the confessional room and, just recently, the therapy room. I don’t really want to dwell on my doctor’s visits and my therapy visits because even I have limits on what I’d like to share with an audience. Suffice it to say that midlife begins in the brain, blood and bones and nothing in my rearing ever prepared me for these changes so be sure to have a doctor and a therapist who are willing and able to not only heal you but also place the way you feel in a larger context. In short, look for a poet-doctor! Ha!

I do think though that the confession room is an interesting place to talk about with you. I think it’s interesting because it’s become taboo to speak of religion this way so I’d like to try and tell you about my experience of finding some kind of harmony between my secular, modern self and my religious, faithful self.

I sat in the confession room for the second time this year and told my trusted adviser how I felt. My history with confession has not been very positive. How I feel about confession is colored by having been graded in school for the firmness of how I made the prayer position or the timing of my kneeling and standing together with other classmates. I think that the idea of confession is hard to teach to young children so teachers focus on the ritual of it. They probably think or hope that, at some point, ritual and meaning will naturally blend together and it will make sense! But really, what did I truly know of sin and its effects on my young soul? In class, when we were asked to make a list of sins all I could come up with was my lack of spirit in doing the dishes that day. Spirit is everything to our family and you either did things with spirit or you did not do them. But I knew I was bluffing and didn’t really understand the point of the exercise.

But I have found my way back to the Church and keep finding myself in church again and again. When completely lost, the church is still the first place I think of to seek refuge. When I enter my place of work, the first place I visit is the small chapel right near where I park. I have nothing to say and say nothing but sit there. There is consolation from the comfortable silence and even animosity. More than looking at the cross, I look at the garden view outside the chapel. I sit in the anachronism. I am inside here but I do not see “him” here but rather see “him” outside. And yet I am here. My grade school teacher would be happy. I am merely repeating ritual. She would not be so happy if she knew what I was saying in my head: I am angry with God.

These were my first words as I sat in front of my confessor. I like this modernized version of confession. There is no crosshatched window between us so I see his face. He is an excellent friend and just as frail as other human beings so I am comfortable exploring how I might have sinned. His definition of sin is something I can understand and accept. Sin is what keeps me away from becoming a full being. It is what keeps me destructive rather than creative. It is what makes me unable to see the resonances between the choices I make. Because of sin, and my refusal to accept sin, I cannot see the bigger picture and ultimately am denied the gift of knowing that the bigger picture is painted with love.

He asked me why I am angry. I told him about my birthday when I turned 19. It is okay to be random in confession. I’m not quite sure why I began with this memory. I did not have a debut for political reasons (this was during the Marcos years) so when 19 came, friends orchestrated my receiving a total of 19 roses throughout the day from different people. The roses were yellow, and if I’m not mistaken, the people handing them over were strangers. This happened to be the same day my husband-to-be had walked me to class and I can’t imagine how he must have felt watching strangers give me roses. And in true fictional fashion, the day ended with me singing Bette Midler’s The Rose for these friends. I think I call upon this memory because it’s the last time life was simple. It’s a simple, uncomplicated memory. Even in memory, it comes back in full color!

He smiled at me and I knew what he was thinking: “Of course it was simple, you were 19.” What does one really know at 19? I smiled at myself because I finally got the joke. I realized that I’m a spoiled brat. I’m angry with God because I’ve grown up and am being asked to grow up some more. Recently in popular culture, movies where characters go back in time to adolescence are movies that want people to explore the idea of choice and knowledge and how hindsight is truly 20/20 but also how ironic that one can only get perfect vision at the end of the experience. In a simpler way the question is this: would I still want the naiveté of my youth or will I embrace the wisdom of my age?

To put it more clearly, I was at a wedding last weekend and I sat there amazed that I had gotten married a good 15 years ago. I imagined being asked to give a message to the newlyweds and I realized there was nothing I could say to warn them of the years ahead. How could I possibly tell them what it really means to compromise and sacrifice without frightening them? When was it a good time to tell them that love and life are episodes of hard work? How was I to describe to the bride the difficulty of having children — physically? What words to use to explain to the groom that he cannot rely on his usual communication skills to make marriage work well? When is the time to tell them that being married with children is like having open-heart surgery every day? They would be merely words to that couple with no meaning without the lived experience. You don’t get those years in a sound bite, you earn those years whether you do it with doggedness or drudgery or exhilaration. Perhaps midlife is a wanting to go back to a kind of naiveté or ignorance when one could still be moved by surprise and yellow roses. It is a much more pronounced feeling of nostalgia because it is a physical need to want the past to come back forever.

For now the confessional room only teaches me that the narrative of my life does make sense and that I am much too involved to see the larger arc of my story. The goal would be to see more, of course, but for now, this may be enough. I can begin to feel the presence of God in the room with me. I am still angry at his design. Surely there must be an easier way to grow up and why does he insist on this way? But I am glad that he is up for the challenge and that we are conversing, even if only through a third party.

My confessor ends by saying that midlife is about realizing that the old ways of being will no longer work and that I must find a new way of being. The relationship between my body, my spirit and my soul in the three rooms I inhabit these days is trying to find peaceful co-existence with the certainty that Death is the next frontier. No one ever writes back from Beyond and so we imagine the worst and give in to our fears. Being young is overhyped, but being old? What stories do we have to help us navigate this stage? Strangely enough, I suddenly remember the story of Elizabeth, who gave birth when it was no longer physically possible. I try to imagine how it must have felt for her to be asked to change so late in the day. She accepted this terrible change that would bring about a son, John, whose head would be chopped off someday. But she embraced it and it was faith that made her do so. The story tells me one is never too old to be up for a challenge. It is a story that tells me that I have no control over the future and the certainty of death but that saying yes every day to the horror and beauty of life is in itself a gift.

And so I return to ritual and my faith and place my hands in prayer position and concede that midlife is a conversation that is not quite yet done. –Rica Bolipata-Santos (The Philippine Star)

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You may reach me at Rica.Santos@gmail.com.