Where Are You From

Where am I from? I’m from the middle. The middle of the United States, the middle of the family, the middle of the celestial picture. I balance on the fulcrum as child number four with five more following. I hold the Gemini aerialist’s pole as I cross the sky, easy now in a way I never was in that small town where Daddy was a big cheese and I was tumbling lost. The early years of being in the middle are behind on the stretched wire of my life adventure. Sixty-seven now, thirteen when I got out of Dodge and found wider sky and the great lake Michigan to expand my vista.

I stayed in the middle of two best friends at boarding school, friends I never learned til later were connected only through me, not friends with one another. At the cusp of adulthood I fell through fever and checked out of life, but I came back. My miraculous recovery from encephalitis felt like a fall from the wire with a reverse boost back up from the Great Mother’s gravity. After that I stopped trying to be normal, and began to embrace my middle origins.

I’m from the middle. I got on a bus to change cultures and found myself in a village in the middle of Mexico for two college summers. Then I catapulted all the way to an adulthood of sorts by taking off for Brazil, and a one night stand that brought a precious starchild onto my tightrope for the next twenty years. This sweet boy positioned me between all cultural and family expectations on the one hand, and on the other, what was demanded by my fierce mothering love. I wavered and bounced on the wire and constantly rebalanced during all the amazing and utterly life-changing years of raising David.

I’m from the middle. It seemed natural for me to be devoted to my boy and at the same time devote myself to a stunning procession of wonderful lesbian partners, with whom I made a middle way between mothering and adventuring in the world. I worked at more jobs than I can count but the one that most fed my growing boy was the one in the middle, the mail carrier job. Each morning I endured indoor harassment as a pioneer in the former male domain, and each afternoon when ‘casing’ the mail was complete, I enjoyed the outdoor freedom of delivery.

Though the middle way may sound moderate, I experience its excitement. To survive and thrive as a middle girl has demanded from me continuous course correction. Can you see me teetering as I nevertheless move forward? Two marriages so far, one to a priest and one to a woman. The second lasted thirteen years and put me right in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet, a farm in western Wisconsin with a dearly crooked river running through the middle of it. Today I’m solo on the wire, my badge of middle courage sticking out of my shirt pocket. I have dreams for a lasting marriage to my current sweetheart, a dream that feels like the next right braiding of middle girl choices.

From the middle I can see in all directions. Now that my hair is grey—well, currently purple— I’m thoroughly enjoying my spiritual dance in the very middle of Twelve-Stepping, Buddhist practice and the ongoing Pagan ceremonies that have always anchored my wires. The artist in me magnetizes things to the middle, too. It pulls in forms and tries on genres, attracts unconventional friends and draws in far-flung interests. After decades of exuberantly performing and publishing my poetry, and then years of quietly completing four young adult novels, I’m back in balance on the wire, blogging my fool head off. And I have taken up running and lifting weights to counterbalance the current explosion of poetry setting my brain on fire. Just maybe, I’m more graceful now in the middle, holding my hands more steady on my long aerialist’s pole.

Where am I from? I’m from the middle, a free spirit surprised to find temperance to my taste. When Death comes to tap me on the shoulder, I intend to grin and go along with intense curiosity and jubilant elation. After all, the earth plane itself is in the middle— between where I really come from, and where I am going.

The Excited Writer