Middle Pages

I'm working something out. It is beginning to seem to me in middle age that I am, as a human being, more than the sum of all my choices and lessons learned,  more than the compilation of my life experiences: the kind of parent I was, the kind of daughter or wife or friend I was; more than a tally of the occasions on which I stood strong and those on which I buckled, and more even than the extent to which I have loved and been loved. In fact when I reach backwards to draw all those defining moments and traits into the present for itemizing, they are not as accessible as they ought to be.  It is not so easy to line them up as evidence of who I am.  They are fuzzy. They have lost some of their salience. Of course I remember what it was like to be the mother of a young child. Of course I remember the agony of divorce,  the tenderness of romance, the moral failings, the personal accomplishments ....but the memories will not cooperate with my efforts to stack them, sort them, and fashion