My mom was about 26 in that photo, old enough to be my daughter, if I'd had children. But it does make one think about generations and what-ifs, not to mention:
If every woman becomes her mother, does she eventually become her grandmother? Or does she become a composite of her foremothers at a certain point in her human development?
One of my blogger friends turned 30 three days after I turned 50. She described her domestication from intense college student to settled and satisfied wife and mother, becoming comfortable with finding bargains, gaining some baby weight, and (literally) juggling baby and computer keyboard. One of her friends mentioned feeling comfortable in her skin.
There are times I’ve been comfortable in my skin. And times when I’ve felt my skin itchy and tight, as if the relative humidity is in single digits and there’s not enough moisturizer in the world to soothe me. Those are the times when, like a reptile, it’s time to shed the old skin and step out into a new era, vulnerable to change. And predators.
When I was almost 18, it was time to leave my childhood friends, and to some degree, my family, and move 360 miles away to university. I was a little homesick for a week or two, but quickly adjusted to the enervating experience. As a musician, I went from big fish in small pond, to guppy in a lake. But I found my own jobs, fought my own battles, changed my major from music education to communications/print media, matured in my thinking, learned who and how to trust, and discovered some techniques for dealing with people that I still use today. On my visits to my parents’ home, I saw my 40-year-old mother as a woman with a college-age daughter over whom she was losing control and influence. (What my mother didn’t realize was how much influence she would regain as I aged.)
After university, I moved to Los Angeles to work with college friends. I was severely injured in a fall at age 23, and moved back to Phoenix to restart my life. My parents moved my furniture back from California, and were thrilled to have me back under their roof for a year and a half until I finished physical therapy and could move out again.
When I was 26, I loved a man with all my heart for several years, but he didn’t return the sentiment. After my parents, this man has had more influence on my thoughts and actions than any other human being. He taught me critical thinking (ironically, in a roundabout way), and that has affected every area of religion, politics, my writing, and relationships with others. At the same time, my world opened up with the introduction of new friends and activities, a change of career, and a general blossoming of opportunities. This was a similar age to my mother’s in that picture. In real time, my mother was 47 when I was 26.
I became very involved in church activities and became the Arizona singles ministry leader for my denomination. At the same time, I was teaching music at a Christian high school and elementary school, as well as taking students in my home. Over about 10 years, I worked for several churches as keyboardist and choir director. I edited and designed brochures, newsletters, and magazines for several organizations.
Then, in a short period, I was forced to shed my skin again. I was replaced at the Christian high school by a crony of the principal, and lost more than half my music students. Another cluster of students had to quit because of the recession that followed the Gulf War. A couple of female friends turned on me and I lost their fellowship. My financial-mainstay freelance editing job of six years was given to someone else after the president of the organization lied to me and about me to others. My spiritual and intellectual mentor moved to Australia. My mother, who’d nearly died one year before, became even more ill and passed away 11 days after Christmas. A car pulled in front of me and my car was totaled, and I re-injured my bad knee. Any one of those things is a risk factor for fatal illness!
The Lord was looking out for me, and although finances were tight, I was never in danger of failure. I had wonderful friends (in fact, we’re still friends after more than 20 years). I had a townhouse mortgage and a decent vehicle. Some of my lost teaching income was made up by a part-time job as church secretary at my family’s church. But the deeper one is involved in an organization based on deeply-held beliefs and values, the harder it is to compartmentalize one’s worship and one’s job. I’d be driving down the freeway on my way to church (for service and worship), and feeling road rage. Then some people in that toxic congregation got power-mad and made some assumptions about me that were untrue. So my skin got tight and itchy again!
At that point, a couple of friends and I spent an afternoon and evening in fellowship and prayer – about me – and my life changed again. I applied for positions in communications in California, and was asked to interview. One freelance writing job led to an interview nearby, and that became a job offer.
Uprooting my life, home, four elderly cats, and leaving my students and families, and the (nice) church where I worked as music director was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Getting established in a community where I knew no one was very lonely – and expensive! After two years in a rental house, I was able to buy a nice house in a beautiful neighborhood. Eventually, there was recognition, trust, and friendship. A nearby university, my alma mater, headhunted me, and I changed jobs.
But 19 months later, despite high ratings for the quantity and quality of my work, I got a new boss who decided to replace me with his brother-in-law. The weasel used his subordinate to “resign” me while he was out of the country. And I became jobless for seven months. Wow, there goes another skin, if not another cat’s life!
While I was vulnerable and tender again, I learned something very deep. I trusted a few Christian friends (of several denominations) with my deepest feelings and asked them to pray for me. They actually thanked me for the confidence and trust I’d placed in them; and said that they were privileged to be used by God to help me.
Although I had some emergency savings, some vacation pay, and a little unemployment, it was only enough to live on for three months, tops. But I always had enough money to pay bills, mortgage, and offerings at church during those seven months. God has a different math and accounting system than humans can figure out.
I was offered a job as writer and editor for an international Christian organization, and was given latitude to do quite a lot with it – until the administration changed over my head again. Do it this way, we love your work, but change it, no change it back, take this out, put this in, you can’t do that unless it goes through many layers of administration, we’re reorganizing the corporate structure and changing your title (to a lower level), etc. There was a wide variety of projects, though, from producing a bimonthly magazine to writing and editing books, video scripts, display ad design, and many other media assignments.
And at the church where I’ve been highly involved in music and other activities, there are some very real problems with people and finances. Based on studying the fundamental beliefs of my denomination, I’ve decided that there are several that I cannot support. My friends, my culture, and (until recently) my job are tied up in that denomination, and I remain there for reasons of fellowship and relationships. Perhaps God wants me to remain in my local church so I can continue to influence and inspire. But my skin is feeling tight and itchy and uncomfortable. In fact, my hands and feet feel like sandpaper on silk.
So turning 50, I’ve decided, isn’t about feeling comfortable in one’s skin, but being flexible instead of spastic. It’s recognizing that life comes in fits and starts. A birthday is just another turn of the flywheel, or another season in the endless cycle of seasons. That’s what maturity feels like.
Maybe this is what I’d tell my 26-year-old mother, the pretty woman whose gentle hand
protectively covers the little hands of her children.
...Keep on keeping on.
...If you feel strongly about justice, then don’t worry about being “nice,” just stand up and do what needs doing.
...Don’t procrastinate: the job only gets harder, the longer you wait.
...Don’t go out without nice clothes and makeup because you can’t make a first impression a second time.
...Work hard and do your best for your own sake. You always represent your family, so be honorable at all times.
...Your name has a meaning, so live up to it.
...Treat your pets and garden tenderly.
...No one can resist having their hair ruffled and back tickled until they go to sleep.
...Love nature and not man-made amusements.
...If there’s no word for what you want to say, invent one.
...Don’t waste your brainpower with stupid entertainment – there’s little enough time to learn valuable, useful information.
...The difference between knowledge and wisdom is application and experience.
But those are things I learned from my mother. So how could I teach them to her? How did she learn them? Is there something to the “inherited memory” belief? (The concept seems paranormal or occult to me.) Is there such a thing as native intelligence? Was she a genius, or did she maximize average intellect?
Knowing her as I do, and as a daughter turns into her mother in so many ways, I believe that her interests in humanities and her study of relationships and genealogy gave her a sense of who she was, her place in the universe, her standing with God, and a real pride in all the thousands of lives that synthesized into the chromosomes of one being named
Judith Anson Robinson. 
