I am a woman of about sixty years old. Somewhere between late and never. No longer is she the career woman, mother, housewife and girlfriend who does it all, fulfills every demand, and then some, just with her left hand.
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Now I am a wife, mother, grandmother and my mother’s mother. But I still have to meet all the demands placed on me.
It is a strange place. On the outskirts, yet middle of the road. Where beautiful flowers grow in the desert.
A strange place where one person thinks of harassing another.
Thoughts flare up, but expel themselves halfway through. There is not much scope left for surprise. I have contemplated the unthinkable.
One thought is beginning to nag a little – that the remaining leg of the journey is the shortest. It has caught up, but still refuses to join. Heaviness. And sometimes waves gently. Like seaweed.
It feels like I’m straining to crane my neck a little, so I only look out and up, not down. Something like a turtle. I choose a satisfied sigh. I just have to send away my morning blues with that all-important cup of coffee, then go for a long walk, and after that. . . I have a good book on the go. I’ve stopped working out because I’m planning to do all the things I’ve never been able to do, but always wanted to do.
This strange hopeful promise that was never to be fulfilled. It is impossible to keep because it is limited to the past. It’s been a long time now. It’s destined to taste like a mere dream, while the world is still burning around you.
Be careful not to think about your dream for so long that, like a precious royal mummy, it will turn to dust when it finally sees the light of day.
On the other hand, it is also possible that by giving up a dream you may simply gain something from it. Big dreams have a tendency to change shape when they turn into mundane limited reality.
But seeing that none of this is clear as day, you end up partnering with the fog. The dream must be suppressed, even though a faint trace of this truth is still attached to it.
Must be pinned down and taken for a test drive, it doesn’t matter if it’s going straight to the edge of a cliff.
While there is still life to be lived, it has been pinned down. this is the plan
And you? As evening falls, you sit near the window and wait. Dream of floating on moonlit waves and feel its ripples in your blood. You watch it slide towards the pier, looking down at it, unable to pull it in because the window is set too high. Slowly it moves away again, with the heart strings that were supposed to hold it going behind like wet pieces.
Now that the hustle and bustle has subsided, now that everything is within arm’s reach, it is very quiet. Too quiet. That huge fire has been extinguished. No drives left. Nothing but smoke. A vast empty hall has taken up the space that was previously so full you could barely breathe.
A fresh uneasiness emerges. A pressing feeling that it is urgent.
This is not an old desire for peace and tranquility, but an impulse to raise voice against such things.
You arranged the journey to the summit in sweeping systematic turns through the landscape.
But now you go and ruin it all by creating a quick shortcut. No precautions. Like a sheep path across the mountain. The way man has always trampled the paths of desire directly through the ingenious designs of the architect is because he has forgotten to include human nature in his work. Nature with her blind eyes and greedy fingers.
Sometimes the desire seems sweet and the search a little sad. Maybe everything will balance out in the end.
*
the phone rings.
“Mom, can you take care of the kids tomorrow?” my daughter asks. “Inset day is going on in the nursery.”
And there’s Spiderman and the Hulk roaming around, swords in hand, a shy Snow White with her feet on the wrong side, and Pocahontas hugging a teddy. You played your role in creating all these little children to sustain humanity.
Life is made of moments. Yes I know. This has been said before also. It is a matter of time. But clothing shouldn’t really have anything to do with disdain. Worn, wrinkled hands are beautiful when you think about all the caresses they’ve given you. The burden he has borne. The stitches they have woven. They were sometimes inactive only in the evening.
Worn stairs are beautiful. Life has started cascading down the stairs and has taken its present form. The stairs bear testimony to the feet flying up and down, the whispering flood of life that has carried us forward till today.
A shabby woolen jumper with spider webbed elbows and frayed edges touches something inside you, and you hold it to your chest for a while, before you think about the body that wore it thin.
Do I need to say anything more?
As years pass, only moments remain in the memory. Like stars on a frosty-bright night. Only darkness remains between them. A pristine pond of oblivion. Everything you struggled to bring to life, all the things that seemed so important, ultimately don’t matter. Just faded into a dark background of being forgotten. Waste of space.
But moment. Some but a few seconds long. Someone said something. Or did. Something like this happened. They flicker away. No one, nothing can take them out.
An incomparable sky for which only you have a telescope.
When you look closely at each star, you see a common denominator:
All these moments are in the company of others.
You also see that they are not where you thought you made the right turn. No, they were published in places where you had little or no influence.
There are other moments too. Strange bits of forgotten context that don’t make any sense, but stay with you even though you never understand why.
Like the pictures that will expose all the faces.
*
One star. Moment and eternity. The night is long in the delivery room. I feel pain for the young women suffering labor pains in bed. To know what it’s like. It’s strange to be so close without feeling the pain in my body. Feeling grateful that I got the chance to experience it myself.
The baby’s heart beats at night, like the heartbeat of a tiny giant breaking rocks deep in the mines of Morea. When the contraction is at its peak, it becomes slightly weaker. Then it regains strength.
Boom. Boom. . . Drum from the Earth’s Core. The difference between everything and nothing. The heartbeat of a stranger. We don’t know who it is: boy or girl. Servant or master.
Heart beat. contraction. Everything is measured by instruments placed on the stomach.
Boom. Boom. . . A bit ominous. It definitely makes the moment more dramatic.
There were no such sounds or devices when I was a child. From time to time the midwife would place a long wooden tube on my stomach and listen. Do not Speak. I lay there alone and frightened in the grasp of the fierce force of nature. He clenched and let go. Caught hold of and let go. As if strength itself is heartless.
The night is very suitable for this mysterious wonder that is birth. no noise. Silence to focus on contractions. Nothing except this monumental transformation. You get silence for joining the struggle. participate. With or without control. Remain silent with your hand on your stomach and prepare to welcome someone you already know, but have never seen. Someone who already knows who you are, and who knows your voice.
And you end up feeling inspired toward something greater than yourself.
It is as if I am now sitting behind a window, looking out at a storm where trembling trees are being uprooted from the ground at regular intervals and disappearing into the darkness.
Boom. Boom. . . Every time the heartbeat subsides we look worriedly at the midwife, father and me.
That full-grown man, so tiny in the heart-shaped locket hanging from my necklace.
A few months ago, I said goodbye to my father when life took a premature turn. And now I’m going to have my first grandchild.
It’s dawn outside. A summer morning peeps through the window of the delivery room. The blood red sun leaves the horizon. The sea is smooth as a mirror, and the world is calm, pure and new.
And a strangeness suddenly overcomes me. I feel surrounded by a powerful force. The little baby’s first cry somehow completes the cycle. This terrible, wonderful cycle is going on around us here on Earth. To set the terms. Taking us down on one side and picking us up again on the other side. Round and round without any haste: birth, life, death. Life in the middle, completely self-absorbed. So meaningless.
Very precious.
My tangled grief has loosened up, and I understand. Take this new little life in your arms and feel a close connection with previous generations and old traditions. Feel the age-old desire to see and give thanks to a newborn baby in the red morning sunlight. Holding that little bundle in my arms, I feel all the love that has been given to me. Want nothing more passionately than to pay it forward. Feel this lightness in my arms. Look at that little face, where I see the features of the whole family. Look at the clenched little fists, the perfect nails.
See this new miracle.
Being a grandmother is different from being a mother. Apart from that subconscious feeling of completeness, you also notice the fleeting thought of nascent dissolution. Like making scaffolding when a building is ready. An entire life is lying in between. You see the child with different eyes. Imagine this at every age. Look, time runs away with it. Feel the wisdom and sadness. Pray that God keeps his soul safe throughout his life.
The mother brings the baby back and places it in the cradle. His hair is wet with sweat. There is a gleam of strength and vulnerability in her eyes, but also a fading terror, a trace of the ordeal she has just escaped.
The man looks at her, but she doesn’t look at him yet. She is staring at the child. The little one’s face turns red, and when she finally looks up, a small curious smile appears, and I take a step back, sensing that their relationship is changing. To become something else. More. And less. Never the same. Then she turns her attention back to the baby: This is it.
Until death. No hesitation.
And he straightens his back.
*
Blood. Sweat. tears. These lifelong female lives are fluid. Flowing and flowing. Until all sources run dry. Until the last drop is frozen and the last pearl is also removed. The last tear drawn from the once overflowing beaker.
*
“Hello are you there?”
I am starting to feel a little scared of the phone. Mother calls. Problems keep arising. Help me with this or that! She was always so independent. Even through her many years as a widow.
A stroke should not be trivialized. Especially when it steals your abilities. Everything is changed. His brain is fine, but his right hand is dead, and walking is more challenging. There are no knitting needles outside. The steady stream of beautiful hand-woven garments has been disrupted. No more warm pancakes or freshly baked bread for our trips.
She does not lose courage. Acts as if nothing has happened. Learns to write with her left hand. This ensures that the lids are not put on too tightly, so that he can open them again. She tries as best she can by herself. Struggles with these new circumstances. We try to help him, because no other help is available and there is no possibility of getting a place in the house. You can go there only to die, or if you’ve already checked, because you’ve lost your memory, and you’ve lost your way in a land called Limbo. No one can reach you there, except perhaps those who already live there and are hybrids of the living and the dead.
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From March is on the other side By Solrun Michelson, translated by Marita Thomson. Used by permission of the publisher Transit Books. Copyright © 2015 by Solrun Michelson, translation copyright © 2026 by Marita Thomson.
