Posts Tagged ‘women and midlife’
Cindy on June 9th, 2010
All my hurts my garden spade can heal.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Titled “The Art of Midlife Gardening,” this essay was published in Victoria magazine in the March/April issue this year. With the editor’s permission, I’m sharing the piece with you while I’m off this week…
Last spring, members of our local Master Gardener Society invited me to speak at one of their meetings. I was honored, at first, but as soon as the date of the talk rolled around, I started getting nervous.
And with good reason.
Master Gardeners aren’t just fooling around with bulbs and blossoms. These folks earn a minimum of 40 hours of instruction in horticulture science. Meeting for at least 11 weeks, they take classes in caring for indoor and outdoor plants, establishing lawns, growing vegetables and fruit trees, designing gardens, and more. I bow to their expertise.
Barely getting my hands dirty, I’ve written a few magazine pieces and newspaper columns on my romance with plants and flowers. I’ve shared back-yard memories of sweet peas and apple trees and my grandfather’s ferns. But set me loose with a shovel, and I’m just an eager amateur who’s murdered rose bushes and planted azaleas in the wrong spot.
Regardless, the kindly president of our Master Gardener Society assured me that his group of green thumbs would be open to anything I had to say about writing and gardening. They would humor me — and even offer some tips on deadheading my tulips. Somewhat relieved as I prepared for the talk, it occurred to me that gardens have taught me many valuable lessons. At this stage of my life, especially, gardening is rich with metaphor.
Five years ago, when my husband and I turned 50, our only child left home for college. That same year, we also lost several stately maple trees to disease. The removal of those trees wreaked havoc on our back yard: The lawn was totally destroyed and the surrounding beds were trampled. Not a single root or shoot was left of the delicate woodland shade perennials – trillium, Solomon’s seal, or bleeding heart – that I’d collected over the years.
As every gardener knows, the natural world serves to remind us that change and upheaval are part of the master plan. Likewise, our bulldozed back yard reflected my emotional state as I adjusted to the changes in my menopausal body and my newly emptied nest. For a while there, I felt uprooted in my own household. Yet it also occurred to me that when a new space opens up – by choice or by accident – you have an opportunity to try something else; something you couldn’t do before.
A Japanese garden had been at the top of my wish list for several years, but until all those dead trees were removed, I’d never had the right spot for my dream garden. And so, with the help of a landscaping team, I created a path and some raised beds for my meditation garden, which now includes a small wooden bridge and a dry river of beach stones my husband and I collected from Lake Michigan. The garden has become an outdoor sanctuary, a peaceful escape from my writing deadlines and the clutter inside our home. It’s also living proof to me that middle age can be a signpost to a new life — not just the end of our greener years.
At the end of my talk, I reminded the Master Gardeners that I often struggle with acute writer’s block, or fallow time. I would guess that anyone who’s been doing the same work for so many years does too. Fallow time is the desert where ideas shrivel and evaporate, if they sprout at all. Fallow time is the waiting season, the creative slump, when blue moods hover like pending thunderstorms. During fallow time, we can turn to the garden for another lesson.
Michigan winters are incredibly long and dull. For those of us who battle the blues, it’s easy to believe that spring might forget us on its way north. But just when things can’t get any gloomier, usually in early April, along comes a balmy 60-degree day — a day drenched in the scent of moist earth, tulip bulbs, and new grass waking up. Suddenly, a glimmer of hope breaks through, melting all those months of doubt and dejection. The frozen river thaws. Possibility stirs. And that when I know it’s time to grab my tools, dig in, and begin again. — Cindy La Ferle
–Reprinted with permission from Victoria magazine. All garden photos copyrighted by Cindy La Ferle. Please click on each photo for a larger view. –
Cindy on September 18th, 2009
There’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Somebody once said that high school is “the mouse race that prepares you for the rat race,” and I suppose there’s a glimmer of truth in that. Like a pair of cruel shoes, my high school days were among the most painful in my life.
I attended a public high school in the early 1970s. In those days, especially if you lived in a small Midwestern town, conformity was key. So there I was, a flat-chested drama club nerd and closet poet in a school where accomplished jocks and curvy cheerleaders ruled. Social life typically revolved around Friday night football or basketball games — but I had to fake any interest in sports. Trying to fit in, I tried out for the drill team but was chosen as an alternate, which meant I had to make all the practices and learn the routines, but I didn’t get to perform at the games unless another member was ill.
Come to think of it, I felt like an imposter throughout most of high school.
My real definition of “teamwork” was shopping for props and costumes for the school plays. And I adored the drama teacher. Not surprisingly, a lot of kids snickered behind his back, secretly questioning his sexual orientation. I still credit him and my humanities teacher for making high school bearable and interesting.
But the English teacher took a serious dislike to me. Of course, it didn’t help that I sat with chatty classmates and talked too much in literature class. Regardless, this teacher doubted my budding writing skills, and wrongly accused me of plagiarizing a term paper on the subject of medieval chivalry — a subject I loved and read about voraciously. She nearly flunked me out of senior English, which pulled my GPA down a peg or two. Not to mention my pride.
In other words, in high school I received little encouragement for the things I truly loved and excelled in. To their credit, my parents had tried early on to send me to a private school that specialized in the arts. I had been courted and accepted by the arts school, but chickened out at the last minute.
Before I go on, I need to insert here that I met some of my very best friends in junior high and high school. I also began dating Doug, the sweet guy who’d later become my husband (and still is), in my sophomore year. You’d think I would consider those years The Best Ever. But they were not.
Twenty years after graduation, I remained so embittered by my high school experience that I wrote a downer of an essay for the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine. The essay chronicled the awful time I had at the high school reunion Doug and I attended in 1992. Unfortunately, the reunion took place a mere three weeks after the sudden death of my beloved father, and I was in no mood to party with anyone.
Reading between the lines now, I realize that the Free Press essay (which is reprinted in my book, Writing Home) really wasn’t about the 20-year reunion. Though I wrote about feeling awkward in a roomful of grown-up classmates, my unease had little to do with them — and everything to do with repressed grief and the ghosts of my own insecurities. More than anything, I think I was trying to explain how sorry I felt for the creative girl inside me who had struggled to emerge in high school.
So it might come as a surprise when I tell you that lately I’ve been reconnecting with former schoolmates on Facebook — and genuinely enjoying it.
It all began last year when I found Robert, the free-spirited guy who played opposite my lead in the all-school play in 1971. My favorite memory of Robert is the time he and I staged a protest after one of our dress rehearsals got canceled on short notice; we’d been told to move our entourage elsewhere, since the school auditorium was needed for an athletic event. Enraged, Robert and I led a small march (I think there were four of us) to the local school board, ranting all the way about how sick we were of playing second fiddle to the basketball team. On Facebook, I was thrilled and proud to discover that Robert had moved to Chicago, where he became an award-winning journalist and author with several fine books to his credit.
Of course, once you crack open a few pages on Facebook, it’s hard to stop.
Before long, I started hearing from other schoolmates. Earlier this summer, Colleen contacted me to ask why I had stopped writing my column in the local newspaper. I was flattered to learn she’d been reading it for years. When she “friended” me on Facebook, Colleen said she wondered if I would remember her. As she explained it, she’d been “a rebel” in high school, and we didn’t hang with the same crowd. But I did remember. And even though I was a drama nerd, I’d always secretly admired the “rebels.” Unlike the jocks, who were too frigging cool to dress up in costumes, some of the rebels had the guts to try out for the school plays.
From beauty queens to band nerds, my classmates are a fascinating bunch now, and I’m proud of them. Their profiles and family photos reveal that they’ve crafted rich and interesting lives over the past 37 years. One is a psychotherapist; another is a fitness instructor; several work in education, finance, and medicine. Some even share my political opinions, and it’s been fun airing our views in private messages. Others, having been through their own share of medical crises, are at the ready to help with mine. Last week, when I mentioned in my Facebook status that I was struggling to find a neurologist for my mother, several friends sent recommendations — complete with addresses and phone numbers.
All said and done, midlife is a lot more fun than adolescence. It makes us kinder to each other. It sharpens our perspective and thickens our skin — wrinkles and sags be damned.
Like my classmates on Facebook, I’ve endured several crises and turning points, and these have shaped the woman I am. I’ve given birth to an amazing son, come to terms with the loss of my father, and, more recently, watched my only uncle die a slow death from pancreatic cancer. I’ve survived two hip replacement surgeries and learned to walk again. I’ve driven my elderly mother to emergency rooms, and watched my son graduate from college. I’ve happily celebrated nearly 30 years of a nurturing marriage.
But it’s been years since I’ve cared enough to keep score. Grades, trophies, contests, degrees, salaries, and other so-called measures of achievement or popularity no longer mean much to me. Best of all, I’ve finally made peace with my inner drama queen, who now finds expression through writing and the visual arts. I give her free reign now. – Cindy La Ferle
Painting at top: “The Lady of Shalott,” by John William Waterhouse; The Tate Gallery
Cindy on April 13th, 2009
There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another …. we find comfort somewhere.” – Jane Austen
Spring takes its own sweet time getting to Michigan. Azaleas and roses were in bloom during our visit to Pasadena earlier this month, but here in Royal Oak, our spring bulbs are just beginning to stir. (I’m reminded of teenagers who sleep in very late — long after everyone else has dressed and gone to work.)
Three years ago, we planted several plots of tulips and daffodils around the yard. Watching them open each spring is one of those corny simple pleasures I include on my gratitude list. Once they’re in full bloom, I witness their cheerful riot of Crayola red and yellow from my home office windows. At this point, though, there’s little to see but a few determined green leaves pushing through the soil. And one odd pink hyacinth.
I noticed the random hyacinth this morning after my son drove off to the airport to return to his assignment in Mexico. He’d spent Easter weekend with his dad and me, and we enjoyed our all-too-brief family visit. Ever since my son graduated from college last May, I’ve been floating in a liminal place where I’m learning how to be a long-distance mom while stretching my own wings. Like my son, I’m rediscovering where I fit in the world; where I’m needed most.
I didn’t plant that pink hyacinth — and have absolutely no idea how it found itself in the circle of daffodils at the base of our redbud tree. But I’m always open to new surprises. – Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on February 12th, 2009
“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” — James Taylor, American songwriter
Traveling in provincial France and Paris for our 25th anniversary, my husband and I had a rare chance to observe a lifestyle noticeably different from our own. The best souvenirs we brought back home weren’t the trinkets we’d collected from museum shops, but the sweet lessons we gleaned in French cafés. I’m sharing my “French lessons” in this Thursday’s Midpoint column in The Oakland Press.
– Click here for last week’s introductory “Midpoint” column. –
Cindy on September 17th, 2008
This essay ran last spring in Strut magazine. With all the talk about “lipstick” lately, it’s a good time to give it another spin….
There’s got to be something seriously wrong with a 50-something woman who keeps 36 tubes of lipstick in her bathroom drawer. That woman would be me. I’m a beauty product junkie on a perpetual quest for the perfect shade of lipstick. As every lipstick junkie knows, temptation is everywhere â at the local drugstore or in upscale department stores. And the names of the colors alone are as irresistible as a box of Godiva chocolates: Double Fudge ⦠Rum Raisin ⦠Molten Caramel ⦠Chocolate Ice. Other shades, with seductive names, such as Stiletto, Voodoo, French Kiss, or Red Hot Mama, promise a whole new life of high drama. Who can resist?
âEven women who don’t wear makeup will wear lipstick,â begins Read My Lips: A Cultural History of Lipstick, by Meg Cohen Ragas and Karen Kozlowski (Chronicle Books). As the authors note, 92% of women wear lipstick as part of their beauty routines and buy an average of four tubes a year. âNothing can keep a girl from her lipstick,â they write, âwhich may explain why it’s one of the most commonly shoplifted items.â
I should add that I’ve paid for every single one of the 36 tubes I own. And while I’ve always enjoyed cosmetics, my lipstick fetish didn’t get out of hand until I hit middle age. After turning 45, I suddenly needed two things to face the second half of my life: contact lenses and the absolute-perfect shade of red lipstick. Of course, the clever magicians who conjure beauty products know full well that women of any vintage are suckers for marketing wizardry and gorgeous packaging. We want to believe that the potions inside those shiny little pots and tubes at the Clinique or Chanel counters have the power to turn heads. We want to believe that the mere flick of a lip-gloss wand can transform any desperate housewife into a goddess.
My lipstick lust is linked to childhood memories â to the beloved paternal grandmother who wore crimson lipstick to church and family parties. Her nickname was Ruby, for Robina, and I’m sure her preference for red wasn’t just a cosmetic coincidence. When my parents traveled, I spent many childhood weekends at Grandma Ruby’s home in Detroit. Escaping boredom (and the wrestling matches on my grandfather’s TV), I would often sneak upstairs to Ruby’s dressing table, where a tempting trove of makeup awaited my exploration.
More than anything, I coveted her elegant gold tubes of dark red lipstick. Their texture was dry and crayonlike â as most lipsticks were in the 1960s â making it nearly impossible to draw a perfect pout on my small mouth. But despite my amateur artistry, I was sure I resembled Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.
Years later, during college breaks and holidays, I worked in the cosmetics department of a major department store. Waiting on women of all ages and lifestyles, I discovered that lipstick is so much more than a beauty product. A newly divorced customer, for example, once told me that a new tube of lipstick was more therapeutic and much less expensive than a good hour with her psychologist. I also learned that the right shade of lipstick, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, is downright empowering â and almost as hard to come by. You have to keep experimenting until you fully approve of the woman gazing back at you in the mirror. For some of us, this can take a lifetime.
Still, the question remains: Should I consult a psychiatrist about those 36 tubes of lipstick in my drawer? After all, if Carl Jung was right, the most important work of midlife is to peel away our false layers and masks, to reveal the authentic self. I’ve always been intrigued by Jung’s theory, and I have no problem parting with a few of the false layers I’ve amassed over the years. I can easily unload my outdated clothing, blue eye shadow and all those anti-wrinkle serums that really don’t work. With a little more willpower, I can give up gossip and carbohydrates, too.
But no, I’m not parting with my tubes of Passion Fire and Chocolate Ice. I hope I never stop reinventing myself â or continuing my quest for the perfect shade of red. — Cindy La Ferle
Titled “The Art of Midlife Gardening,” this essay was published in Victoria magazine in the March/April issue this year. With the editor’s permission, I’m sharing the piece with you while I’m off this week…
Five years ago, when my husband and I turned 50, our only child left home for college. That same year, we also lost several stately maple trees to disease. The removal of those trees wreaked havoc on our back yard: The lawn was totally destroyed and the surrounding beds were trampled. Not a single root or shoot was left of the delicate woodland shade perennials – trillium, Solomon’s seal, or bleeding heart – that I’d collected over the years.
At the end of my talk, I reminded the Master Gardeners that I often struggle with acute writer’s block, or fallow time. I would guess that anyone who’s been doing the same work for so many years does too. Fallow time is the desert where ideas shrivel and evaporate, if they sprout at all. Fallow time is the waiting season, the creative slump, when blue moods hover like pending thunderstorms. During fallow time, we can turn to the garden for another lesson.
