Summer Stories 2025: Stop, Go

I’m having a midlife crisis and you know what that means. It means I’m giving and receiving hickeys. It means I’m painting my toenails green and using darker shades of blush in all my hollows until I look like a relief sculpture. Until I’m collar bones and cutting cheeks and looming brows. I like to feel sharp. I’m on the defensive. The best defense is a good offense. I don’t intend to offend.

I drink sweet black coffee, have unprotected sex with younger men in the back of my too large car. I have long dinners in dark rooms with smart women. I wear shirts that ride up my back. Let my bra strap hang over my shoulders. I roll up my sleeves and scratch my rough elbows. I’m made of moving parts and I no longer hold it against myself.

And it’s all because I’ve seen how life goes. How time passes, and I’ve learned it’s not so bad. This going along thing. This one day to the next thing. I’ve seen what’s at stake and it’s less than you might think. It’s more fun and less precious than you might think. I’m not precious.

I got a dog. He sleeps on my couch. I play drinking games and I’m good at them. My body doesn’t process dairy anymore and not only do I not get enough fiber, but I can’t fathom a way to do so. I look at myself in mirrors. I don’t blink. When accused of vanity, I say, that’s OK. When I’m accused of other things, I argue back.

If I’m sick, I don’t go to work. I don’t say sorry about that. I say sorry more, in general. I’m not sorry more, I just say it when I am. I used to not say it. I thought it was like admitting defeat. I don’t think that anymore and, conversely, I feel less defeated.

Most days are not good, but I am. We are.

I saw a child help another child cross Division on a non-lighted crosswalk at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday. They didn’t seem to know each other. I found a T-shirt of a band I used to like in a thrift store for $50. I saw a teenager wearing that shirt several weeks later. The band, I think, must be worth more to her than to me. Some bits of the past accrue value. I like to think the same goes for myself. I’m happy to say so in a social setting.

The band on the shirt was the kind who wore tight pants and black hair over half their faces. The first time I heard them I was in the garage of a boy who wanted to touch me but I didn’t let him. He was very understanding. If it came up again, I’d let him, though I spend less time in garages and it won’t come up again.

I have one apartment with five windows, which all face other apartments. One of my neighbors props his window open with a prescription pill bottle. I take this as an invitation. “Hey,” I yell. “Hey.” I tell him my name is Cecilia. “CeCe,” he says. “No,” I yell back. I go by my full name. I don’t cut myself down. I won’t take it easy on you. I need every syllable I can get. I yell my full name out of wide windows.

I prop my own window open with textbooks filled with history I feel pressured to understand. On the pages it seems flat though, and I have found better ways of knowing the world.

I drive with my windows down. I like public radio, public television, public parks and the public. I don’t like a man in a uniform, or a woman either. I’ve grown to resent uniformity in all its different uniforms. It seems to bring out the worst in people. Perhaps nurses are the exception.

I finger comb my hair. I started a separate savings account for Botox injections but spent it on hair dye instead. This week I’m red, next week I’m green. Stop, go. I use retinol unless I forget, wear sunscreen unless I forget. I let myself forget things that don’t interest me. I wash the uninteresting down the bathroom sink with my too long hair and my too much toothpaste. I always use too much toothpaste. I buy in bulk to save time.

I’m learning Spanish on my phone. I will never be fluent. I only want to learn enough to seduce a Spanish speaker, maybe a college Spanish professor. I have lots of little goals like this. I want to change the tire of a stranger, buy a big sandwich and share it with the person who made it, trick a tropical plant into growing in my apartment, find a pair of sandals that will get me far.

What I’m saying is this: this vapid time, these moveable, fidgeting, frightening things, this too fast change of every piece of our world, these big harmful hurting changes can bring secondary changes. Every drop makes a ripple, every ripple reaches farther than the drop. Water warps paper, warps wood, warps the textbooks in my window. History refusing to stay flat, stay contained. Me too. I’m bigger now that I’m warped. I’ve got rounded edges, sharp corners, and I’m nothing like I used to be but exactly the same. I’m having a mid-life crisis, I know it, and it’s a pleasure, an honor, a happy fact, to know that tomorrow will be different than today.