Creating a Person

And no, I don't mean what you're thinking.

I have reached the end of an era. We were talking about it on the BroadCast this evening (yes, I am writing this at the end of a busy day. I might even pour myself a nightcap¹ while I’m writing) and I thought I’d make today’s essay about life’s big changes.

For me, that means that I am moving from active motherhood, to passive motherhood. What sparked my title, and the thoughts here, was the comment about how your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25, and a comment I’d seen elsewhere today about the way a young brain thinks… or doesn’t think. We don’t know who we are, until we finish developing.

The author at age 18

I will say, if I am talking about the course my life has taken, that I lost my mind at 19, and did something with my life that was in no way, shape, nor form the plan I’d had for myself since I was about 6 years old. I’d always wanted to become a scientist, and really wanted my PhD in Botany. Instead, I found myself married, and the mother of four, before I knew what I was doing. I was, in short, running on fumes² and hormones. I can’t rightly say that I regret it, and anyway that’s another post.

What my point was, is that I got pregnant at 21³, and then had my first child when I was 22. Older than my Mom, who had me at 19, but still, barely an adult with a fully formed brain. Which means, in a way, I went from childhood, to motherhood where I was caring for children and trying to make sure they had a childhood. Now, I’m on the brink of something else. Something new. Something a little bit…

I was pulling peas in the garden earlier today. It’s hot enough they had stopped blooming some time ago, and the plants were beginning to die. That’s how peas work, and the fact that they did so well this spring here in Texas was a delight. Now, they were past their prime, had borne their fruit, and it was time to take them out and plant the next crop. As I was carefully taking pea plants off the trellis that will now be moved to the tomatoes (I have itty bitty Roma tomatoes, and some cherry tomatoes setting fruit!), I was contemplating the cycle of life. Peas grow, bloom, bear pea pods full of nummy seeds (delicious if you pick them while still immature and tender), which are intended to become the next generation of pea plants. Their job in life done, the glorious profusion of leaves and flowers simply withers, spent. That is all they existed to do.

Humans are more than peas. Once our fruit in the shape of tall young things full of vim and vigor walks away from us, their eyes fixed on the future, we don’t wither and die on the vine. We simply shift gears and drive on. There is a space for elders in our communities, to come back to the BroadCast episode both tonight and planned, for the crone to follow the matron in natural progression. While the culture I see around me doesn’t always value them like they should, the elders are a source of wisdom, of comfort, of encouragement.

What lies ahead of me is an untold number of years in which I get to be passively a mother, available to be those above things for my children and perhaps in a few years, their children. I also can be anything I’d like, within reason. Going after that PhD? Probably not. Becoming a certified Master Naturalist, and maintaining that with forty hours a year of volunteering so I can go out to get my Botany geek on every so often? Absolutely! I’ll never be able to retire, but I will have more time to write. I’ll have time to be in the field doing research as a citizen scientist⁴ even if it didn’t become my career.

And now, I get to be the Crazy Cat Lady, with Toast at my side. Or on my keyboard, more likely.

I won’t be any less busy with no child in the house to occupy my mind. I will have more time to think. I am hoping to be able to find the financial ability to travel more. I’d really like that. And perhaps, just maybe, somewhere along the way I’ll find the time to figure myself out, after all these years. I’m retiring as Mama. I’m picking up Cedar, and turning that concept over and over in my mind. Who is this person? What is she here for? Why should she matter?

It’s a bit exciting, that concept. I get to create a person, and this time that person is me.

The author, age 46, on a Master Naturalist field trip. We were being taught how to conduct an electrofishing survey.

1. I did, in fact, have a Rum & Diet Dr. Pepper.

2. I was coming off of a very rough couple of years that had me emotionally fried to a crisp.

3. Let me assure you, pregnancy brain is very real, and you are never quite the same afterwards.

4. The footnotes are not for science. The footnotes are for Jimmie. You know why.