Stories end as they begin and usually both contain nothing.
I bought a house 18 years ago and it was empty. I am selling it now and am in a rush to make it empty. It is what happens in between the nothingness that matters.
The dinners, the tears, the laughter, the fights, the homework, the snow day fires, the yelling, the hugging, the worry, the hope, the angst, the love, the life- it is the life that is lived in the middle that creates a story. Nothing comes before and nothing comes after. It is the juicy middle that we live for.
I raised kids. At first no kids, childless- now, no kids- childless. In the middle was birth and diapers and crying and learning to walk and starting to talk and starting school and god awful teenage years and good grades and bad grades and graduations and moving out and moving on and then nothing. Children become adults and are children no more. Start with no kids; end with no kids. It is the way of things.
Single and then married and then divorced or widowed and then single. Life is a circle. The older I become the more I respect the idea of existing in the middle.
Yet, here I sit. Desperately trying to liquidate my assets so that I can again start with nothing. I am wise enough now to know that I will also end with nothing. But having lived just long enough, I am prepared to indulge in the fat middle that creates a meaningful life. All of the juice overflowing and dribbling down my chin, an ice-cream cone melting down my face on a hot Summer day.
I am ready not for the end & not for the beginning- but for the middle of my next story.
Carpe Diem,
Dewberry
