Growing pains.
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From the years of 8-14, there would be a few days a year that my legs would throb for seemingly no reason. It wasn’t a sports injury, I didn’t clock myself on a desk, but the pain would be so bad the only response I could muster was red-hot tears. Once my Mom cycled through the appropriate Mom Check-List, the diagnosis was always the same: Growing pains. And then she’d send me to bed where I would sleep for 100 years and wake up miraculously pain-free. The looks I get from my own children when I deliver the same prognosis to their random (and very real) leg pains has to be comically similar to how I most certainly responded to my own Mom, “Well that’s just dumb.”
Growing pains are dumb. How can the pain be so excruciating and entirely invisible? The only proof you get that it happened is a couple of inches added to your medical chart at the next doctor’s visit and a closet full of high-water jeans. Oh how I long for these growth markers now.
How do you measure growth as an adult when there’s no measuring stick? I have so many questions! Is it that suddenly Aerosoles look cute? Is it that you start looking to Crones for style inspo? That you notice a blood blister on your forearm and suddenly all of your skin is starting to look transparent and frail? That you have a relentless desire to pitch a solo tent by a stream in the woods for one very long weekend? That you just want to make art without nary a thought of monetization but for something else that could be called legacy?
I love it when I get to use the word “zeitgeist” and I don’t think it really applies here, but it’s fascinating nonetheless. I was halfway through with this essay when I got my brilliant friend, Holly Whitaker’s Substack over the weekend wrestling with similar themes. She brought up a few ideas that I hadn’t thought of, like wanting to experience growth’s edge until it hurts and then we’re all, “Whoa, parameters please, this is not what I signed up for.” But if you’re here and you’re reading this, you have definitely signed up.
I’ve realized that if I’d given myself the talking to and was believing my own BS that I should be over it by now, I’d be knee-deep in my hustle. And if I was knee-deep in my hustle right now, I wouldn’t have time for growing pains, not my own nor each of the particular pains my children are experiencing currently, the ones that can’t be measured or summed up or drawn out with a silver lining.
But silver lining or no, these are the stories that are worth reporting. When I’m longing for the banality of day-to-day, I remember that there isn’t a lot of fodder for endless journaling there. Growth is the grist for my mill. There is beauty in simplicity but simplicity doesn’t birth my art. Note to self.
The friends I’ve lost (lost = died) since the start of the pandemic, I keep their tabs open on my phone. They greet me every time I open my browser and as gently as they can, they prod me, “Babe, you are neither important nor unimportant. Just live the fuck out of your life because news flash, whether you think you deserve it or not isn’t the point. You are here.”
My days have been both banal and rich. I’m still trying to correct my posture, figure out how to organize my photos, finally make some art out of that box of old love letters I’ve moved around for 30 years. I’m telling my people how much I love them, sometimes succinctly but often not. I got out the yardstick and I’m pretty sure I’ve grown three inches.
A tiny bit of housekeeping to say that I am slowly but steadily working on upcycled Spring frocks. To that effort, I’ve made some additional markdowns in my Marketplace. Check them out if you will!
