What My Children's Art Taught Me About Aging

by Amy Ruhlin



When my kids were young, I displayed their works of art all over the house. I taped them to their bedroom doors, framed and hung them on my kitchen walls and held them by a magnet to the refrigerator door. Youthful innocence, hope and truth greeted me around every corner of our home. They sometimes even called out to me by name: "For: Mom," in black or red crayon at the top of the paper. Somehow, seeing my children's art everyday made me feel forever young.

I had my favorites. Once, at an art festival, my daughter painted a face with a square head. It floated in the sky, surrounded by heart-shaped clouds.

"Why is it square?" I asked her. "It was supposed to be a house," she said. "But I messed up, so I just turned it into a happy face!"

When she started school, she drew a picture of a school bus. It was blue instead of yellow, and above it she wrote, "It does not take you to school, it takes you to the candy store, and the bus driver pays for all of the candy." I laughed each time I saw it, and I applauded her audacity, at least in her imagination, to change things up, to rebel with a crayon.

In the third grade, she brought home a drawing from art class: a beautiful creature with a large, yellow head; orange, droopy ears; and a green body. In each hand, it held a brown maraca. "What is this?" I asked her." "It's a kachina doll, mommy. It shows you that there is life in everything, and I think it's supposed to protect you." I hung it on her bedroom wall and whenever I was having a bad day, I'd lie on her bed and stare at it, and I swear it made me feel better.

My son painted apple and orange trees. Red and orange balls danced on the ground and lined the top of popsicle-shaped trees and I have never, ever seen happier fruit since.

When they started high school, I knew it was time to take the artwork down. Otherwise, I just looked pathetic: an old mom clinging to old memories. But all I could muster was to move them upstairs, to my office, where I could secretly look at them. After all, I was trying to be strong, to move on, to reinvent myself and to prove that I could let go and begin the process of aging gracefully. Once the kids started college, I finally moved their art to the attic, and even managed to throw some of it away.

A friend recently asked me, "What keeps you open?"  "What do you mean, open?" I asked her. 
"You know," she said, "like when your kids were young, they kept you open." I thought about that for a long time, and I wondered if I'd somehow begun to close up since they left. I wondered if I was
turning into a cranky, old woman.

I asked my husband. "Am I becoming a cranky, old woman?" He knew better than to answer, but the truth is, that, at times, I am. Especially when I catch myself saying things like, "Kids today! They don't know what real music is!" Or, "Been there, done that!" It's so easy, at least in my case, for cynicism and distrust to creep their way in, without the magic of little kids in the house.

So, I decided to make a conscious effort not to let that happen. For a while, I thought about dragging the kid's art back out of the attic. But, I don't think that will be necessary, though I admit, I sometimes wander around up there just to look at it.

Yesterday, I watched a cardinal fly from tree to tree in our backyard. I found myself gasping at how red and alive he was. Then, in the evening, when I looked up at the sky, the crescent moon was outlined so perfectly against the blue glow of early evening, that it nearly made me cry.

My children's art, or rather, what it pointed to, is actually still all around me. I just need to remember to stay open as I age, so that I can see it. I think that may be the real fountain of youth, the one true thing that keeps that cranky, old woman at bay.  

I Thought We Were In This Together

by Amy Ruhlin

My husband has grown a beard. I've known him for 30 years and he has not once, not ever, tried to grow any type of facial hair at all.

Our 20-year-old daughter became concerned when she saw it. She said that surely he would shave soon; it is so unlike him to grow a beard.

And then she asked me if this could be his midlife crisis.

"Why, yes," I told her, trying to contain my excitement, "actually, I think it is."

"Well," she said, "if this is the extent of it, then that is good news."

I know that she said this with great relief, even though she said it by text, because she witnessed my own midlife adjustment. She was often in the room as the hormones shifted, the tears spilled and the mood changed.

I agreed with my daughter that her Dad's beard was benign midlife angst. But I was also secretly thrilled. For years, I had been hoping that he would exhibit some mild hysteria so that I didn't look so bad.

My husband is a rock. He is calm and patient and kind and level-headed. And although I love and appreciate these qualities, they made him seem like a saint as he sailed through midlife while I turned into Medusa.

He and I have been together for the majority of our adult lives.

We carved out our careers and moved into full adulthood together in our twenties.

We created a family and built a home together in our thirties.

We entered our forties together and after a few years, I fell apart. But he did not and it didn't seem fair. I thought we were in this together.

I began to toss and turn at night and wake up in sweat while he peacefully snored beside me.

I began to face the reality that I had to let go of my babies because somehow, they grew up.  It was not easy letting go and I struggled. And since my husband was just as involved in raising our children as I was, I assumed that he was struggling too.

"Aren't you sad that the kids aren't little anymore?" I would ask.

"Not all all," he would say. "Those were great times but now they are older and these are good times too."

I was sure he was in denial , so I found old photos of the kids when they were small and adorable and held them up close to his face.

"Look," I'd plead, "doesn't it just kill you that those days are gone?"  But he would only smile and say, "Nah, those were fun days but now we've just moved on to different days. You know, circle of life and all that stuff." He was taking it all in stride and it was maddening.

I began to count the number of grey hairs on my head and I noticed that my husband didn't have any. Not one. As I increased the number of highlights in my hair, he combed through the same thick, dark hair he's had since he was 21.

I didn't like this solo trip. But things are looking up now that we are in our fifties.

My husband has grown a beard.  A crazy, woolly, middle-aged , grey beard.

Thank you, honey. I'm so glad we are in this together.

The Comfort Of A Christmas Tree

by Amy Ruhlin


In the late afternoons and into the early evenings as the sun lowers and the sky darkens, my children move towards our lighted Christmas tree. They sit as close to it as they possibly can, with their laptops and their iPods and their earphones; they are, after all, 17 and 20. They are constantly plugged into the world with its breathtaking beauty and unspeakable horror. My daughter looks up from her laptop and says that it is time for gun control after the Newtown tragedy. Then she tells me that our tree is really pretty. My son takes his earphones off and asks me if I have heard the news. I say yes and then he tells me that he does not want to watch it on TV and he puts his earphones back on and listens to the soaring of his music. He knows what he cannot bear to see. They are, both of them, on the cusp of adulthood, swimming upstream, doing their best to understand that both light and dark inhabit our world.

Our tree is full of angels. I have collected them over the years. There is one made out of newly picked cotton, another forged out of metal, one that is hand carved from oak. There are angels everywhere, in different shapes and sizes, all of them made from different materials. The tree is fully alive. It drinks so much water that we have to refill the stand each morning.

I argued against putting up a live tree this year. We've had one for many years and I didn't feel like dragging the ornaments out of the attic. Here at midlife, I become weary and I crave change. "The kids are older," I said. "Let's just go with a nice poinsettia perched in the corner." But my kids knew better. They encouraged me to buy a live tree.

Our children, all children who are moving into adulthood, are brave. They take in horrific news, and like us, they try to cope with grief and to seek solutions. They are aware of the world that awaits them as adults and yet they keep moving towards light. Here at midlife, they bring me comfort and give me hope.

The Best Christmas Gifts I Have Received

by Amy Ruhlin                 

This will be my 51^st Christmas.  When I look back on all of the gifts that I have received over the years there are a few that are my all-time favorites:

A 2 day TV rental -   My  husband and I were living in a second floor apartment. We were in our early twenties. I was in graduate school and he had just started his first job out of college making very little money. We had managed to furnish our apartment with a used sofa, a kitchen table, a queen size mattress and a small black and white TV.  One evening near Christmas I told him how much I was looking forward to the holiday television specials; how I had loved them as a child and how I felt a little sad that we would be watching them in black and white. A few days later around 5:30 in the evening I heard him walking up the stairs coming home from work, just as I always did.  But his steps sounded different, they were slow and labored. I opened the front door to take a look and all I could see was a large TV moving towards me up the stairs. My husband had it perched on his shoulders and it looked like it would break his back. “What are you doing?” I asked. I knew we couldn’t afford to buy a new television. "I rented you a color TV. We have enough money to keep it for two days,” he said.   I opened my mouth to speak but could not find the words.

A Christmas ornament made of Popsicle sticks -   My  daughter  was five years old and spending the day at a friend’s house. She was there for a long time, longer than she usually stayed for a visit and so I began to worry.  A young mother’s worries: Was she okay?  Maybe she is missing me. What are they doing? Should I telephone the friend’s mother?  Finally, in the late afternoon she came home, safely bundled up  in her puffy blue coat. “Look mommy,” she said. "I worked hard on this all day.” She placed a Christmas ornament in my hand. My first handmade ornament from a child. She had spent the entire day cutting, gluing and aligning little sticks together to create a miniature wooden sled. She had used her best handwriting to print “To mom” in red and to sign her name in green. The beauty of that little sled stunned me. The time and care that she had taken to create it nearly broke my heart.
 

A recycled Sprite bottle -  When my son was in preschool he made me an ornament out of  a plastic 2 liter Sprite bottle. The teacher had sliced off the bottom portion and my son added the glitter.  Because of  it's shape and transparency the ornament looked like an exqusite sea creature. When he brought it home we placed it on the tree directly in front of a light. At the sight of this my son's face lit up and he said, “It glows!”  My face lit up too.

A little girl's selfless devotion given with popsicle sticks; a small boy's sense of wonder at the sight of light filtered through green plastic; a young man’s extraordinary kindness offered up as a cheap rental. On my 51^st Christmas, these are the gifts that I remember as the best presents I’ve ever received.

Will We Be Happy In Our Empty Nest?

by Amy Ruhlin
                            

It’s a cool morning with the first hint of fall in the air so I drink my coffee outside on our back patio. I look at our overgrown rose bushes and thinning mulch beds but what I see is my children when they were young. I see them helping us plant shrubs in our new lawn and spread pine straw around our flower beds. I see them hiding Easter eggs behind the maple tree. I see them holding my husband’s toolbox as we hammered nails into the towering pines to build their tree house; it is still there but the wood is beginning to rot. I see the empty space along the row of cedars where the swing set once stood, then the trampoline.

I walk around the corner of the house, along our stone path made of hand painted rocks and I see the step that my daughter made , the stone with the words “Love Blooms Here” spelled out in glass beads. The 16 years that we have spent living in this house are palpable here in our backyard; there was magic here. I cherish the memories but I also feel my grief. As I walk back into the house I notice that a few leaves on the Dogwood tree have turned from faded green to bright orange.

 I notice a stack of envelopes on the kitchen table; they are addressed to my son and they are full of letters and fliers from colleges. I see the envelope that is stamped with the word “Accepted.” In eight short months our son will graduate from high school and the empty nest will become a reality for my husband and me. We are planning to sell the house, to leave the suburbs, to create a new life for ourselves. We talk it up but I secretly wonder if we can really do it, if we will be happy, if our lives will have the same zest, the same magic as we’ve known  all of these years raising our children in this house.

I walk upstairs and I notice the worn carpet. It is matted down from where my daughter sat on the floor of her bedroom for years playing with her dolls, giving them their own voices, making them come to life. It is worn from where she and her brother sat for many summers in the hallway building rock houses, giving each rock a name, their young voices making stone come alive.

I think about the phone call I got early this morning from the carpet store. Our order is in: 159 square yards of new carpet to be installed in the entire upstairs; the old carpet will be ripped out and carried away, the new carpet will help to sell the house.

I sit down at my computer and I see a quote that someone has just sent me. I notice that it is by Roald Dahl, our favorite children’s author; we often read his books together as a family. I read the quote:

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

It is a quote that I know my 20-year-old daughter likes so I copy and paste and send it to her. A few minutes later she sends me a response: a single small black heart created by typing two different keys; to me, this is magic.

I look at the heart that she made and my own heart lifts. I believe our magic is not over. It is not something that ends when my children are grown, but rather, something that they help me to see. I believe that it will be there in my next act, in our empty nest. I believe that at the age of 50 and beyond, we can still see with glittering eyes.

Why Am I Still Driving A Mom Bus?

by Amy Ruhlin   


                                                           

It's a hot Monday morning in June and there is no breeze; the air is still and I can feel July approaching.  I've awoken late and I lie in bed thinking about metal and rubber, about machines that take us from point A to point B, about cars. My daughter has her own car and my son will soon have his own; why I am still driving a mom bus?

I think about my daughter's upcoming move into her first apartment. We need my car to carry a kitchen table and 4 chairs, a large mattress and a long desk. I think about other things I've carried in my car: car seats holding my babies, little giggly girls and small rowdy boys, sports equipment for hockey games, teenagers laughing and playing loud word games, and colorful beach chairs and packed coolers for family vacations. I stare at the ceiling and realize that I've become attached to driving inside of a large open space; a container for holding all of the things that I most dearly love but that is now most often empty.

I finally get up and go downstairs and walk into the kitchen. My kids sit at the table and stare at their laptops. I say good morning but they do not hear me; headphones cover their ears. I move closer to them but they do not see me; pixelated images fill their eyes. I stand there in my pajamas and I feel invisible. My role as a mother is shifting beneath my feet and I struggle with my balance. My kids are moving themselves from point A to point B and I need to figure out how to do the same.

I need some air so I get dressed and step out into the heat and take the dog for a walk. The day is hot and there is no movement; I find no relief and no solutions. The dog and I circle the neighborhood and we come back home. I check my phone and my husband has sent me a lifeline in the form of a text:

"Wanna go look at cars tonight?"

He has encouraged me for months to follow through with my idea of downsizing my car. I question my audacity of considering the possibility of not having a car that meets everyone’s needs.

I smile and text back, "Sure let’s eat dinner out too."

We test drive three cars. The first two are only different versions of what I have been driving for the past 20 years: a practical family car with plenty of cargo space. They are at least smaller , but they are not really what I need; they are not really what I am looking for.

"So, how do you feel when you drive them?" my husband asks.

"Bored", I reply.

We circle the car lot one last time and I see a model that I had not seen before. It is a smaller car with a hatchback:  enough room for a family of four but with a simple style and a European flair; it is no mom bus.

                                 

We take it out for a drive.  It's roomy and smooth and hugs the road.  It's fun.

We decide to go home and think about it. On the way, we stop at a restaurant and eat ribs and drink martinis.

"You looked so happy driving that car, just like I remember you when we were young. You looked like Amy,” my husband says.

Before I had children, I drove small cars with stick shifts. I wasn't afraid to take risks and I swore I would never live in the suburbs or drive a minivan.  Motherhood  makes liars of us all.

I'm afraid my new car will scream “midlife crisis” so I text my son,

"Do you think this car looks too young for me?"

"No.  How could something look too young? Looks awesome to me," he texts back.

It seems so silly; scraps of metal and rubber wheels have made me smile and given me hope. But here at the age of fify, it somehow seems fitting and like a step in the right direction.  It is a declaration of my independence.  It is a way back to myself, to the girl I used to be before I took on the role of mother, to the girl who has no problem navigating her way from point A to point B.

It's Tuesday morning and I'm out of bed early. I step outside and feel a cool breeze. For the first time in weeks, I think about my writing and the second half of my life awaiting me. I've gained some balance and  the tilt has shifted towards me.

 My children walk into my office and sit down on the sofa.  They are interested in what I am writing and they are excited about my new car. As I've moved back towards my own self, I have become more visible;  there is more of me for them to hear; there is more of me for them to see. There is more of me to give.

 We talk and laugh easily together for a good while and finally my daughter asks,

"So, your new car won't have room to carry all of my stuff to my new apartment?"

"Nope" I say. "We'll have to rent a U-Haul."