Benediction

And some Sunday Suggestions

Photo by moren hsu on Unsplash

“I want you to know something really important.”

I gathered my daughter, who recently turned 13 and seems hell bent on getting taller every time I look at her, into my arms on Tuesday morning and offered her a kind of benediction, some words that have often given me comfort over the years.

“You will never have to be in 7th grade again.”

My daughter hugged me back, muttered something about how that’s good because the 7th grade boy population of her school is highly lacking¹, and cheerfully left for her last day of school.

As far as I know, my daughter’s 7th grade experience was certainly better than mine. I say as far as I know because while she is often willing to give me the “hot goss”, her approach to talk about her own feelings is best described as “no thank you”.

While I suspect there has been some moments of friend drama over the course of the year, I don’t think she’s going to end up being quite as much of a hater about the middle school years as I am. She’s a different kid than I was - more confident, more comfortable in her own skin, less driven by a need to be a people pleaser. Her sense of self-worth seems entirely unconnected to whether or not some scrawny 13 year old boy wants to be her boyfriend, and thank all the forces of good in the universe for that.

(Shout-out to all the good middle school teachers out there who choose to spend their professional lives with 12-14 year olds. It could never be me.)

But even still, there is some sense of relief on her part, an internal knowing that junior high/middle school is a period of life that is meant to be survived and definitely not the peak of anyone’s existence.

Next year, I’ll have one kid in his last year of high school and one in her last year of middle school. As much as I’d rather be stoically Minnesotan about it, I suspect I’m going to have lots of feelings about these transitions. It is a giant parenting cliche, but the time really does go so fast and I just like these kids so much that there is a sometimes a desire to want hold on with both hands, like I can stretch out the time with them somehow.

But thinking about their current life stages also makes me excited for them because, if my own life is any indication, the best parts of their lives are still ahead of them.

It occurred to me this week that, so far, I’ve liked every decade of my life more than the one before it. Every decade has had it’s challenges and there have been bleak times along the way, because happiness and contentment isn’t always a linear experience. That said, the older I get, the more I like myself. I’m more confident (in myself, my relationships, my place in the world) in my 40s than I’ve ever been.

Sometimes, on the days I want to borrow trouble, I wonder if there will be a decade where this streak ends. Is it all fun and games until I turn 60 or 70 or 80? According to research, there’s no real answer to this question. Some studies find that happiness peaks at 70 and declines from there. Others found a happiness peak at 23 (hell no) or 35. Some find that the most stressful years are 43-48 while others point to the senior years as a time of declining health and increased risk for feeling lonely so those are the hardest years.

Of course, it is impossible to really predict because there are so many individual, social, community, and political factors that can change the trajectory of anyone’s happiness. My vision of a quality life in my senior years sure depends on there being a functional democracy and economy which doesn’t feel like something we can just take for granted anymore.

But there is this: I am here and I’m happy and I’ll never, ever have to go to 7th grade again.

***

Some things I was into this week when I wasn’t busy wondering how happy I’ll be when I’m an old lady:

• A dreamy house

• Another dreamy house… anyone want to go halfsies on a house in Sweden?

• What does a midlife crisis look like for the millennial generation?

• Maybe you need a good Father’s Day cry? Moving, even if you aren’t a hockey fan.

• And an effort to solve the mystery of why Dads love to watch TV standing up

• Okay, so this will be a solid recommendation for some people and will completely gross out others, but if you’ve ever been curious about what it would be like to eat a packing peanut AND you love things that are pickle flavored, these might be your jam:

  

  I’m a medium level fan of pickle flavored things, so I would probably describe these as more interesting than delicious.

• We LOVE watermelon in my house and I find this guide very helpful in choosing the best ones

Source: https://www.eagleeyeproduce.com/perfectwatermelon/

• A lovely tribute to the late Brian Wilson

***

Note: I wrote this post before the news broke about the assassination of Minnesota’s Representative Hortman and her husband as well as the shooting of Senator Hoffman. There’s a lot we don’t know yet about this situation (as of this writing) but I can say this: Rep. Hortman was a smart, determined, and well respected public servant and Minnesota was lucky to have her years of service. Her loss is an unthinkable tragedy for her family and those who loved her, as is the death of her husband, and I'm really, really uninterested in the thoughts and prayers of anyone who voted for Trump at this moment. It’s hard to not feel like incidents like this are what can happen when the ugliest, meanest, smallest people are in power and explicitly cast those who disagree with them as the enemy.

1. As always, I asked my daughter for permission to write about her and offered her the chance to see what I had written before I posted it. I mentioned this bit and ask if she was okay with me saying that and she said “oh, you can quote me on that. I stand by that 100%”