Do you remember slide projectors? If the answer is yes, you must be of a certain age, and that means I can speak freely to you without explaining too much. That means you will understand this thing that we call “middle age,” but that to me feels anything but centered. The slide projector is what keeps coming to mind. What I keep feeling inside my body. A carousel containing thin slices of life, all gathered together in a perfect, satisfying circle, each image slid into its own protected slot but also, easy to remove, to rearrange (or to spill out on the floor).
When the slides are organized in the carousel, they spin inside the machine, which makes a certain click and thunk with every turn. Then light shines through so that a tiny, otherwise nearly impossible to see, slice of life is projected on the wall (perhaps undulating slightly if a white sheet has been hung to catch the images, and there is a slight breeze). Then, click and thunk, another image flies up. Again and again, the click, the thunk of the machine turning, and the light shines through, again and again, until we come back to the start. And we can go backwards too! A slightly different clicking sound, and the image we just saw a moment ago returns.
I can hear these sounds, and feel the gears of the machine turning, and feel the heat waves coming off of the light of the projector inside a tiny version of my body. I don’t remember any specific slide shows. Not who was showing off their trip or party or adventures, not what the subjects of the photos were, but the sensation, the sounds, the smell even, as the machine got hotter and hotter, and the body I can feel these sensations in is about six years old. Rounder and smaller than ten, but bigger and stronger than four.
And lately, in this place we call middle age, I’ve been feeling the slide projector is inside me, is me. That all of the slices of myself, all the selves I have been and still am, and am no longer, are all present in every moment, spinning very slowly in a carousel, all separate, and also all simultaneously available in any given moment.
Click and thunk and I am a little kid, rambunctious and unselfconscious with a protruding belly, and a vibrancy that isn’t yet powered by anger.
Click and thunk, and I am a hungry teenager, belly sucked in, full of uncertainty and rage, holding everything too tight.
Click and thunk, and I'm 31, proudly displaying my round gut that is growing every day and has permission to be on display (like a little kid, like an old man) because I’m pregnant.
Click and thunk, and I am 33, a new professional and a parent, all the chaos inside me contained. Sleep deprived and gaunt again, up at all hours catching other people’s babies or nursing my own with bookbinding stitch drawn painstakingly along all my edges (each stitch tight and precise, and necessary for survival).
Click and thunk, and I am 45, a more seasoned professional and a more seasoned parent. But now the edges are fraying and the contents escaping the bindings that have loosened and unwound, objects from my insides strewn behind me as I walk along, leaving a trail of photographs and thread and bones and tissue and dirty socks and unwashed dishes and ink stains and blood stains and soil and leaves and stones (the kind that might get stuck in your shoe). And my belly is round again. Rambunctious and vibrant. Like a little kid, like an old man, I find I can not be contained.
I am all these versions of myself and none of them at once. I am integrated and whole and have understanding and insight and clarity. I am fragmented and baffled and uncertain and hollow.
I am full of joy. The trees are at my favourite stage just now. After budding but before fully opened leaves, the trees look like they are decorated with pale green lights, a mist and spray of green, garlanding winter branches. This moment of beauty is ephemeral but I try to catch it every year. Click, and this liminal space of growth-but-not-grown is captured each spring inside me and held onto until next year, guarded as a hope for all the months when the green is gone, and
cherished as a memory when the green is full and undeniable and powerful.
I am full of grief. Just now, the trash is strewn everywhere and humans wander the streets with dirty quilts wrapped around their bodies, feet in torn socks, making contact with the hard pavement. Far away, the war is raging and infants and their mothers are starving. Next week a holiday for reflecting on freedom begins, but I find I can’t bring myself to make a feast this year. I can not imagine preparing a plate of foods that serve as symbols for freedom (and grief and joy) when the destruction is so total, when the starvation is so desperate.
Usually at this time of year I gather beets and apples and eggs and bones and greens. Usually I write this year’s stories of triumph and struggle. But this year, all I can find inside myself is silence. I don’t even have a scream to share. I can not ask anyone to gather at my table to eat and reflect when there is nothing I can do (not really) to stop the horror. I will take the money I would normally spend on chickens (two kinds: one for roasting, one for broth), on matzah, on apples, on honey and wine and fennel and dandelion, and I will send that money to Palestine. But nothing feels like enough.
I look out the narrow attic window as I write this and can see one tall building and three tall trees, and suddenly the wind picks up and hail is falling fast, hitting the roof just below me with a dull sound. Thunk, thunk, thunk, except when it hits the window, and there is the occasional click and snap against the glass. As quickly as it starts, it stops, and now the birds have gone wild with their singing. Sharing all the news about the short, hard storm.
We call this middle age but I do not feel centred. I feel like a slow-moving carousel, thunking into place, spinning quite clumsily. I feel like I am changing in every moment, and my sense of self is both the most whole (a perfect circle) and the most fragmented (made up of many layers that can be removed and replaced and rearranged, or spilled out on the floor) that I have ever been.
The edge of menopause is much wilder than menarche. Much more uncertain. I was certain then. (I was often wrong, but I was certain). Now I know that I know nothing and yet I am also highly skilled, which is a constant paradox. I can draw blood out of veins and deliver babies to their mothers and stitch up wounds and count heartbeats. I can use an instrument we call a wand (!) and by moving it in a certain way, I can make the invisible visible. I can see inside bodies, inside
bodies.
And yesterday I discovered that I can remove dying tissue from a stuck place. Afterward, the click and thunk of a sterile speculum and sterile sponge forceps dropped into a large, metal kidney basin next to a square, stainless steel sink. A small bloom of blood rising to the surface of the disinfectant solution as I walk away.
I know the smell of birth and the smell of death and the smell of whatever is in between those things. But that smell, the one in between, I only smelled it yesterday for the first time and yet, I recognized it, and I knew what it was. It wasn’t foul, but it was strong. It wasn’t birth or death, it was unique, and it lingered in the room all day, reminding me that nothing is certain.
Jenna Bly RM (they/them) is a midwife in Canada. "We are a group of midwives who take care of recent newcomers and people experiencing homelessness. Every war and wave of political violence shows up in our clinic room. In the past six years of our practice, we have taken care of women from Yemen, Uganda, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Burma, Iran and the list goes on. We also provide abortion care and most of our clients are international students who have come to Canada for the promise our country offers, only to find they aren't covered for reproductive health services by their student insurance. We are modern medical care providers. We work mostly in hospital. But we are still witches."
