Let It Be Inconvenient

Are you willing? Is it The Middle of Life or something else?

I have been deep talking with myself about the importance of inconvenience.

The gift of it.

Even when it grates on me.

Caveat: I’m speaking from the bustling middle of life. I realize not everyone is there.

What is your relationship to inconvenience?

My parents live 10 minutes way. Two days ago, they called to ask if they zip over to bring a very ripe tomato (oh the love!) to 8-year-old Bo Neve who had emerged from a scary and bizarre sickness the day before. My original plan (oh the hopeful plans of a mother!) was to set Bo up with a book and some crackers and tuck away 2-3 hours of ‘important’ work that had been shelved in order to hold her chest and the vomit bowl and beam love into her eyes and call doctors, on top of an earlier week where work evaporated when she was home for five days from school with a different sickness. [She’s actually a supremely healthy kiddo; I have to say that for her benefit]

“We’d love to come say hi,” my mom said on the other line.

Normally, that’s great but I hovered in the kitchen listening to her and felt the heat rise up my chest. Throat clenching. Jaw tightening. The familiar sensations of overwhelm and becoming a trapped and frothing wildcat about to launch a protective boundary of NO. Internal monologue: But it’s one of my busiest stretches of work—when will I finish these emails? Everything else keeps taking over. What about exercise? What about x, y, z, and b? Quickly followed by the felt-sense: I’m going to die. It’s dramatic, I know. But like you, like most people, when I experience the reality of being stretched by 100 different responsibilities at the same time, the tidal wave threat is so familiar (and the consequences during postpartum for me were actually dire) that my animal body sees a big sign of Danger, Death Ahead. Even when the “threat” is my awesome parents coming over to spontaneously hang for a few hours in a moment when I’m pressed.

I don’t want to minimize the necessity of boundaries around personal time. They are critical and, these days, after years of putting up boundary after boundary in all parts of my life, I’m loosely loosening them. Probably because I have more inner latitude on board now. Probably because my body is stable and nourished at long last. I’m curious about the difference between inner and external boundaries.

I also want to bring choice in. We always have choice. I’ve been playing with using the phrase “I’m choosing to” instead of “I have to.”

Of course, there was the obvious solution of my parents coming to play with Bo while I sequestered myself to a different room to work. However, a deep nudge starting nudging. Stop, Molly. Breathe, Molly. You are okay and it will be okay and it will all work out. In the wake of those thoughts emerged what I actually wanted to do: sit down, chill out and chat with my parents who are a true delight to be around (they have more life-force than I do) and who I haven’t seen since we were all cohabitating a small space in Austin scrubbing kitchen cabinets and supporting my brother and his daughter after his wife’s death. These moments are fleeting. I feel time nibbling away at the edges of my time with my parents. Why would I prioritize 2-hours of work over sitting with them?

They lounged. We chatted. It filled me up like a good soup. I did work until midnight that night, on my computer. Not my normal. Not great for hormones or sleep. That did set up a few days of really poor sleep. But it’s also okay. I’m finding my way back and I’m still okay.

There is some balance here between container-creation and letting the moment flow.

I would love to hear from anyone on grace you’ve found with it.

In equal measure, my eldest Eula asked if we could order some clothes when I was in the very middle of calling health insurance and dentists while unpacking from our trip. “No sweetie, I truly cannot task-switch like that and I want to sit down with tea and take time to order clothes together, instead of squeezing it in.” She didn’t like it. She doesn’t like it because she has to adjust to this new way I’ve been integrating the last year. She kept insisting. I held my ground. Oh well. I’m a better mother to her when I don’t cave, try to please, let myself be yanked around and then get annoyed. That is real too.

I recently found a very sloppy sketch of mine. Venn diagram.

Sketch on the back of a list. Trying to locate my tugging places visually. The top one says “modern” as in modern human.

I want a different word for inconvenience. It’s such an appropriate word for a modern world built on convenience. Isn’t that truth the eye-opener of so many with the recent boycott? We’ve realized how our lives have been made convenient with a click. It’s inconvenient to drive to a store (or three of them) to search for earplugs instead of buying them from Amazon.

But I welcome that life. I even welcome the discomfort of adjusting back to that life.

Inconvenient is such a western, modern, capitalistic word.

What are new words?

It’s an opening. It’s a pivot. It’s a pause. It’s presence with whatever is unfolding right now. It’s being willing to bear the consequences for something not getting done. It’s trust in a serpent kind of path.

I’m done with squeezing anything in.

I am very open to hearing people’s thoughts on The Middle of Life. Is it inherently full and overwhelming? Is that caused by modernity? Is it that systems and societal structure are failing the individual? Is it wearing many different hats and not having a clear division of labor within a family?

Calling all elders.