Today my daughter turned 17. Of course, having played Janis Ian's Between the Lines album as a teenager myself so often that the grooves were very deep, today I kept hearing the lyrics to At Seventeen in my head.
I can still sing along with every song on that album. It wasn't just youthful angst and longing to belong, it has a soulful poetry that spans generations. Water Colors, Tea and Sympathy, In the Winter, Between the Lines, Bright Lights and Promises, The Come On, From Me to You, When the Party's Over, At Seventeen, Light a Light, and Lover's Lullaby.
What I find interesting, these 35 years later, is how the lyrics, melodies and rhythms still pull at my emotional core and I'm 17 all over again. However, I believe I bought the album was I was 13 or 14. I shut my eyes and I'm in one of three rooms listening to the scratchy album with a nickel on the head of my players light arm. I feel the longing for love and adventures and wondering what prices will have to be paid to achieve them. I feel the hardened cynic that hadn't yet lived out from under family's roof, yet felt world weary. I really didn't believe that I was going to live beyond my 20th birthday, and I think that was a common underground attitude. The world seemed to be moving fast and in unpredictable ways. Plus, my generation continued experimenting where the 60's generation left off. Defining and pushing the limits of everything. I think that is how we got labeled the "me" generation for a while. We felt it was more like the "us" generation, but perhaps that made the surrounding generations see us as me-me-me.
What is interesting me tonight, re-listening to the entire album is how regret is a theme in each song. The night before I turned 20, I stayed up. All night. I'd just moved back to Maine, to an apartment in Portland, and away from the boat in St. Croix. I was experiencing physical heart ache from my decision to leave Ron, and our way of life, so that I could attend college. When I decided to leave the boat to go to school, I had the naive idea that we could remain a couple with a whole ocean between us. But I hadn't received his letter suggesting it'd be best for both of us to see others yet. That would arrive in September. This was a warm July night and I had just painted the pine floors an antique barn red, so the windows were wide open. I was full of regret and longing. Perhaps knowing that he or I would be writing that letter as a consequence of my choice to go to college. I remember writing all night.
When midnight came I was dumbstruck. I could not believe I'd turned 20. I'd done many things that could have gone horribly wrong and they hadn't killed me. Hurricanes. Daredevil stunts. Drinking and drugs. Much more. I remember having an internal conversation, that may or may not have ended up on the pages of my journal that night (I'll have to rummage through my boxes in the storage dormers). The conversation went something like this:
I'm alive. I made it to 20. Now I'm going to live as though I'm going to grow old. Very old.
Now some people might argue that I was already living a life of no regrets. But actually I was surviving by dancing as fast as I could. My first steps towards longevity and a life of no regrets was deciding to live and not just survive. I'd started drinking when I was around 12 years old. Hid it on the roof outside my bedroom window after taking it from the parents cabinet. I would stop when I when I was 23. I now believe I was self medicating the depression that becomes full blown when your teenage hormones hit and your total DNA package takes effect. I then tried to manage it, depression, with exercise and controlling trigger foods (only sugar on Saturdays for years). Long story short, it was a good thing anti-depressants became widely available and I began using them in my late 20's. Some friends were not so lucky and I lost them to either reckless behavior or suicide.
As I started to touch on last night, I've still not been lucky in love. In my 30's, I believe the human animal side of me knew my biological shelf life and when I met the father of my children it struck the gong. This was a combination of survival and living. Had my first child at 35 and second at 38. I literally went from nursing my son (my 39th year) to menopause (ending 46th year). I don't regret any of it. Quite the opposite. If we listen to Our Inner Ape (as Frans De Waal writes about it so well), we can evolve productively. My children are the best decision I've ever made. They also helped me to grow up and fully join the human race.
Many middle aged folks have regrets. That is why they can have a crisis. Mortality sets in for a variety of reasons: loss of a parent or sibling, a health scare, or wondering "is this all there is?". I feel lucky. I've had adventures, and plan to have more. I've lost a sibling and she taught me to live more fully. I've been really ill, but nothing incurable.
So I didn't learn the truth at 17. I started to wake up at 20. At 23, I called it my "know nothing year", as I started to do more traveling, I began to get a better sense of who I truly was and what I really wasn't. Where ever you go, there you are. The last, almost 30 years, have been about developing my skills on all fronts. The tools that will allow me to grow old gracefully, should my luck and fortune prevail.
Tonight I have a 17 year old daughter who is so much more sure footed and bold than I was then. And also not in a rush to grow up, like I was, nor fearing the world will just stop one day (although the systemic interruptions are much more real today). Tonight, I'm still the girl without a lover, but not without love and light and promise.
No longer living between the lines. Now writing and living the lines.
Good night, sweet reader, G'night.
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