There are ripples on the water, a soft breeze blowing against my face as we sail. The jib unfurls and my body unwinds in response, as if from a coil decades in the making. Watching the horizon gives my mind room to breathe again and the relief is unexpected, like not noticing still air until there’s a wind. I had been living on high alert for so long that I didn’t recognize how tightly I held myself until I let go.
Motherhood plugged me in, enhancing already heightened senses, much to the disappointment of my children. When they were little they (and all of their friends) thought I had eyes in the back of my head. Maybe I did. We evolve. I can still hear a pin drop one flight down behind closed doors, tell immediately when someone is lying, or smell a whiff of weed from a mile away. I learned to function on no sleep and handle crises like an ER doctor, calmly staunching myriad wounds (physical and emotional) while planning the next meal. Probably similar to a crew sailing into a storm, I thought, feeling intensity mount as we prepared to tack. My hysterics came later, when everybody was safe, or at least as safe as I could make them. But the general fear of catastrophe, like a biological warning bell, has been clanging in my body until recently.
It wasn’t so simple to power down as soon as my nest emptied, children flown away. I buzzed and flickered for a few years, like a slow computer working on old code. As we tacked the sail flapped ineffectually for a moment, an echo of my thoughts. But then wind filled the canvas sheet and we shot across the water. I could feel my own evolution as suddenly, as if old attachments had snapped free and floated behind me like the wake from the sailboat, soon disappearing into the vastness of the sea. Middle age is full of transitions, and my view is shifting from a microscopic lens of motherhood to a more telescopic one. The sun has sunk into an orange smear on the horizon. I lift my gaze up to the stars.
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