Photo by Karina Vorozheeva on Unsplash
December 24, 2024. As I write this, it is Christmas Eve, 2024. The year I got to announce my debut novel. The year I started a teaching career. And the year I lost my father, just about a month before my birthday.
I am working on pass pages–three more until I hit 300, then I can stop for the moment, if not the day. I have grading to do, ninth grade essays and tenth grade short stories. Later I will take my mother to church and help her wrap the last few packages. She’s moving slower these days and has dementia to boot. I wonder if she will remember that Dad is gone.
I am exhausted already, and the holidays have barely begun.
January 3, 2025. I survived the holidays. Nobody argued about politics, no one was too sanctimonious about religion (okay, so “no one” should probably read “only one” here), and no one had any emotional breakdowns (whereas here “no one” really means “me”). In between church and unwrapping gifts, family gatherings, light shows, and dance performance, I got as much grading done as I could and completed my pass pages, dedication, and acknowledgements. It feels good. I feel relieved. Accomplished.
And I have been an absolute slug since the first of the year. Longer than that, really. Since my family left.
New Year’s resolutions, goals, words are all arbitrary when you think about it. If I haven’t started to become the new, better me who exercises regularly and gets to sleep on time, a frugal queen who is an expert at classroom management and knows exactly which books she is going to draft, outline, and revise in 2025, well maybe my New Year’s won’t start until Sunday, the first new week of the year. Or Monday, when I head back to school. Tuesday, when I teach again. Maybe I can put off becoming that perfect Kim who was going to do everything right until the Lunar New Year, or even later.
My word for 2025, by the way, is “grace.” I just didn’t think I would need to use it so soon.
One of the more annoying discussions that periodically comes up on social media is age and writing. When are you too young to become a successful writer? When are you too old? As someone who got her literary agent at 49 and will debut at 56, my take on the matter has always been that debuting as a twenty-something and at forty+ each have their advantages and disadvantages. When you are young and especially if you’re photogenic, publishing likes to flash your pretty smile across media sites in hope that you’ll garner attention. When you are older, you may get less of this attention, but you’ve had the opportunity to gather some wisdom, hopefully, some self-knowledge. You know you don’t have to react to everything you read on social media; don’t need to counter every single bad take with one of your own.
I had these noble ambitions about sharing my story of how I became traditionally published after fifty, the sort of “rah rah, you can do it too” tales people love to cheer on, like a grandmother running her first marathon. But the truth is, I don’t feel so rah rah right now. I am happy, so amazingly happy that THE CHANGELING QUEEN is finally going to meet the world, but there is a trepidation to it, too, and a little guilt. To be published, after all, is to be perceived, and I’ve had fifty years or more of being frightened of that very thing. Being perceived means you can be judged. Being judged means you can be dismissed. And the older I get, the less energy I have to reinvent myself after dismissal. The less faith. The less time.
The guilt comes with being so happy, when one of the most important people in my life isn’t around to see it. And knowing that the older I get the fewer people will be around to see it, and there’s nothing I can change about that.
The truth is, what no one tells you about getting older is how much you accumulate, how much is hanging off you, heavily, like too many jackets on a coat rack. How you wander about burdened by expectations and emotions and responsibilities, and then unexpected loss hits, and you’re expected to carry that as well. You’re so afraid of dropping something you won’t rest until the weight of everything literally topples you over. Even then, you’ll cry out from your prostrate position, “I didn’t let go!”
That’s when we come back to grace again, by which I mean the grace you grant yourself. That says, “It’s okay to put some of this down, for now, or to ask someone for help carrying it.” And maybe, if we’re talking about guilt, you don’t have to pick it back up again. Because life is both infinitely long and infinitesimally short, and that is much too long for holding onto what doesn’t serve you anymore. So, my call here is, as best as you can, to set down your burdens, rest, and reassess before you pick them up again. Because whether we’ve a mile to go or a thousand, this journey isn’t done with us yet. We might as well enjoy the ride.
Kimberly D. Bea 