In This Skin

I took up tennis at 52. Totally nonathletic, totally unskilled and in the worst shape of my life, in the middle of a pandemic, I took up tennis. It's been a journey. A bumpy one, at best. But after three years, about the time I turned 55 this fall, I started league play on my Country Club C team. 

I will lead with, I actually love tennis. I love the feeling of having a small skill set and improving on it. I love that I didn't give up. I love the ladies I have met. I love the outfits. I love that I found something totally unexpected to lead me in to this next phase of life. I love that next year I might actually win some games. It's been a gift. It might also be a cult, but that is a blog for another day.

As I started my 50's I found myself dropping two of the biggest things that had defined me for years, my career and mother to children under eighteen living in our home. I also picked up something that works hard to define me, despite my persistence in refusing to let it, a second round of breast cancer. 

The movement of all these things left me at loose ends. It left me grappling with what my life would look like without the things that had defined me for 30 years. It left me uneasy about handling the cancer that wanted to define me. It left me slow to be comfortable in my own skin. 

I want to say, perhaps controversially, that I wasn't sad when our girls started to leave home and find their own lives, all four of them at a fairly long distance away from us. I was ready. I work hard to lean into the ages and stages of their childhoods and now adulthoods. We raised them to be independent and I am proud as I watch them live their lives. They are good people and I enjoy them. I have enjoyed the return to my own independence as they establish theirs. All that being said, recently while visiting an adult child in New York I stood above the subway station crying as she descended the steps to go home after our lunch, even though I would be seeing her the next day for breakfast. 

Our adult girls are good. All four of them. One with a career she loves, one with a starter career she is trying to change, one with a good job that supports her while she finds a career and one in college thinking about careers. With my career over, I find myself listening and guiding as they navigate their career journeys. It can be a full time job. 

I am aging. Despite a little twice a year botox, consistent weekly exercise for the first time in my life (thank you tennis, and end of career, and no children at home), a lot of facial creams (which I should have started much earlier in my life) and so much more. Despite all the things, I am aging. To do so gracefully means leaning  into some facts. I am going to have wrinkles in places I don't want them. I am not going to wear a tight white top to play tennis. There are shoe styles I can no longer wear. I'm not popping out of bed, it's a slow creaky process. There is most often a nice crown of gray in the part of my hairline. 

We bought a new house. Across the street from our old house. The new house is one story. We had just started talking about wanting to get a one story place, in ten years, when the house across the street went up for sale and I said to my husband, "I think we should buy that house." He rolled his eyes and said, "This isn't the right time for that." Less then a week later we were in escrow to buy the house. 

The one story house  is fabulous. The persimmon tree and two orange trees that came with the house are a learning curve I am still navigating. Our first persimmon season left me learning about persimmons (people have strong opinions), trying to hand out persimmons to the persimmon lovers of the world as quickly as I could, and then just as quickly trying to clean up the persimmons when their  very short season was over.  Persimmons don't stay firm for  long. Their skins get soft. When not picked the  persimmons fall to the ground and because their skins are now soft, they splat all over upon falling. We had an orange slushy lawn for awhile. There was also a panicky Saturday afternoon between windy storm fronts with my husband up on a ladder and me running around catching the persimmons before the splatting in the next storm. We will do better next season. 

The oranges are easier. They have a longer season and tougher skins? Shells? Covers? Peels? When they fall, no splatting. I bought an electric juicer and big ice cube molds and I squeeze their juice into frozen cubes for mimosas, or "Kimosas" as my husband has named them. They are a big hit at parties. Next year I will add something less alcoholic to their usage. Orange chicken? Orange muffins? Next year I will also be hiring someone to pick both the persimmons and oranges.

It is a goal of mine in this coming year to spend more time alone and be comfortable doing so. To lean into the idea that time alone is valuable and enjoyable and doesn't need to leave me anxious. So, I flew across the country to dog sit. My oldest and her husband had an extended vacation planned. Their dog is really important to them. I have flexible time and had some airline miles. So I went. For 7 days it was me and the big dog. I made dinner just for me. I went to the grocery store and just got things just for me. I planned my day and took no one else's plans into consideration. One of my other daughters said, "Well, that is my life everyday." It made me happy for her. It made me proud that she had that capability in her mid 20's, as I was leaning in to it at 55.

It is now 5 years post cancer. The second time. Seventeen from the first. Several five year check up appointments lie ahead of me. I won't lie I have rescheduled them several times. Both because life responsibilities shifted and created scheduling conflicts and because I am anxious. It is a low key kind of anxiousness that lives deeper down inside me, but raises it's ugly head when there are reminders of where I have been and how cancer has played a role in my life. With the diagnosis there is surgery, there is medication and then there is...the after. The after leaves me fighting to get my body back as my own. To become comfortable (or for me just ignore and downplay) with the discomfort that comes from my medication. To get used to, at this point maybe a fourth, set of implants. The after leaves me fighting to keep dark thoughts to a minimum. The five year check ups are supposed to be comforting, a signal that cancer is over for you and life can move forward. Only, it feels less comforting when you have been there before. The after always leaves me fighting to get back into my own skin. 

So, I am 55. There is no career. There is tennis. I am a mother to adult children. I'm cancer free (allegedly). Leaning in to alone time has been both unsettling and settling, but the tipping point has me more to the settled side than not. 

I am more comfortable in my own skin. It's a work in progress. But it's going, it's happening. I started my 50's in the skin of the persimmons. It was just a lot of hard splatting on the lawn. Anxious and unable to settle in to who I was at that moment in time. As my mid fifties are poised to leave me, and I head toward my later fifties, can I move into the skin of the orange? They have a tougher shell? Peel? Cover? I think it is peel, but we will say skin. I have a tougher skin. I am more excepting of who I am and where I am in life. There is an easier embracing of what I can and cannot do or fix. There is an acceptance of who I am and what my life is. There is less splatting on the lawn and more resilience to land safe and roll out of the way before the lawn mower gets me. 

Lean in to being comfortable in this skin. The skin you are in now. The only skin you have. Lean into whatever defines you, or did define you, or tries to define you. Find your peace in this skin.