I never wanted to be a fighter. Swords get heavy, after all, and seldom match my outfit. There’s too much struggle, too much disappointment in war, too many enemies made. For the first half of my life I was happy to fly under the radar. Then a couple of things happened.
In school there was a group of students accused of cheating. One of them had been a friend of mine, but we’d grown apart. I felt personally betrayed by the rumours swirling around, the idea that people would take the easy way out while my ass warmed the same chair in the library every night. And if it were that simple, that honourable, it probably wouldn’t be worth writing about. But it’s always about more, isn’t it? In this case, my own struggle to maintain mediocrity in a class of fifty-something when I’d built my identity on being a star student up until then–that struggle eroded what little confidence I had. It undid me, really. Checking scores on the printout that was posted on the wall after every exam next to our secret codes, it became a test of self-worth. A measure of personal value. Oh, I was so deluded, but I was confused. Lonely. If I wasn’t “the smart one” then I didn’t know who I was.
So I became a crusader. I formed a bit of a militia, I testified in front of the honour council, I engaged in clandestine phone conversations and whispered meetings in said library. I plotted for justice. But justice wasn’t served. And as the well-founded accusations and testimony were eschewed in favour of conflict avoidance (and, possibly, some friendly negotiation between the accused students’ parents and the school), I looked around at the field. My focus was on all those who hadn’t bothered to show up for battle–they were now the betrayers. Why didn’t they care more? Wrong and right, black and white–these were ideals that must be preserved. Why weren’t they angry?
It should be noted that I spent the first half of my life (thus far) pretty angry.
Lately–this year, in fact, the one in which I’ve passed forty–I’ve noticed a shift. Social media has largely revealed it, this turn (descent?) into middle age, evidenced by photos of long-unseen contemporaries looking…old. Photos of their children exiting childhood and becoming teenagers. This march toward our parents’ ages, except they’ve evacuated those spots and left them to us to populate. We’re getting older, and it’s weird. It seems mean, too, how obvious it is. Surely I don’t look as worn as the others?
That was rhetorical.
And people are dying, good people whose lives represented decency, or at the very least represented my own youth, they’re leaving. More spaces vacated. More time gone. It feels like a crossing over, though I don’t remember a checkpoint.
But maybe…
When The Kid came along, and the doctor visits with him, I was called into a different kind of battle. Drafted, you might say, because I never enlisted for this particular fight (see also: The Society of I Didn’t Sign Up for this Shit). I became an advocate because I was made into one, planning sleep schedules while, deeper, bigger things brewed. Matters of identity, of diversity, of a different kind of justice. A justice that was no longer about me, but him.
The calls into battle have been sporadic since his earlier years, but they don’t disappear. Too bad, because I’d really love to trade the sword in for something more portable and trendy. But here we are, time after time, and the sword is really more ornamental than anything at this point, could be left at home really, because the battles we fight for our children are more nuanced than that, require more of a deft touch than that of a blade. They require school visits, speaking to classes of kids about how different is not only beautiful but everywhere, even within them. They require conversations sometimes whispered, but always fraught, because on this side of life, at our age, we know that things are rarely black and white. They are complicated. People aren’t characters. Everyone has a story, and it’s so annoying to have to honour that when it would be easier to write them off.
Some show up for battle and some don’t, and they have stories too. Personally, I’d rather stay home. I love my couch. I like books, not hard conversations with real people. And most serious meetings don’t have wine.
But I know if I had the kind of kid that made flying under the radar easy, I’d go back to not knowing who I was, to trying to forge an identity for myself, and that never worked out all that well for me. I am a mother, and I was issued a fighting spirit at the hospital, though the nurses never mentioned it. I have two boys who will learn from me what it looks like to stand up for what’s right, and the truth is, it looks so much different than I expected back in the honour council. It looks less like blind anger and power than tears and frustration. It looks like a head on the steering wheel and deep sighs and occasional wins mixed in with losses. It looks like no longer worrying so much about what people think, even when I desperately want them to like me. It looks like tolerating pain long before there’s a payoff. It looks like friendships made deeper by a common cause. It looks like second-guessing and anxiety.
It looks like two little boys in the backseat, listening intently as I tell them what it is NOT okay for people to do, even if those people are grownups. And it looks like them being so, so worth it all.