“…you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table….”

~Anna Nalick, Breathe (2 am)

Life’s like an hour glass, glued to the table. There’s a truth bomb for you. The sand only goes one way. There’s no turning it over and starting again.

I spent the last few months dreading my 50th birthday. Now that it’s come and gone, I’m totally fine with it (as I knew I would be if I just let myself feel what I felt). In fact, I’m finding it kind of liberating. I feel a clarity I’ve never felt before. Instead of feeling morose about ‘the time I have left,’ I feel galvanized to spend the time doing the things that give me joy. Fewer shoulds and more musts.

This perspective came into even sharper focus today when I read about the death of a woman I knew in my early 20s. I was a graduate student at the University of Alberta and I got a Research Assistantship, which involved me serving as a librarian of sorts at the Women’s Resource Centre (WRC) on campus. At the time, it was a small feminist enclave housed in a small University-owned house not far from the Humanities building where I spent most of my time. I was very young (23 or so) and had only been out of the closet for about two years. In those days, being out was far more courageous an act than it is now (and I’m glad it’s no big thing now). Being out required judgment and caution. These were the days when coming out to someone was a significant decision. You sat them down and, after much stuttering and hesitation, ‘broke the news’ to them. It was like sharing you had a terminal disease. So silly when I think back on it. I was lucky; I never had a bad reaction from anyone, but many did.

At the time, being a lesbian in the English department was like a badge of honour. It was actually fashionable, particularly as feminist literary criticism emerged as the ‘thing to do.’ The Women’s Resource Centre was an epicentre for students and others studying or interested in feminism. It was like a satellite Common Womon Books, for those who remember that Edmonton establishment.

The WRC housed a respectable collection of important feminist/lesbian books, journals and magazines…donated, purchased or otherwise acquired. On the shelves, you’d find books by Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan, Lillian Faderman, Simone de Beauvoir and many others. Of course, you’d also find issues of MS, off our backs, and other significant periodicals (including some local writing anthologies like Fireweed). The Resource Centre provided other services, but I honestly can’t remember what they were.

The WRC was staffed by a handful of women…ranging from a very feminine, young straight woman to an older (or so she seemed to me then. She may have only been in her 40s) butch woman whose pendulous breasts had not had any support whatsoever since she set her bra on fire years before. It struck me that some women had come to the erroneous conclusion that the less effort they made to make themselves look in any way attractive (hell…even groomed!), the better feminists they were. What a load of crap. I thought so then; I think so now.

I digress.

The woman who ran the place was about 32 at the time and held a doctorate in, I think, Phys Ed. It’s hard for me to fathom now that she was only nine years older than I. She commanded a room and had a PhD. To me she was just…well…old! She was a fairly stereotypical lesbo-jock…except an academic version. She could be benevolent and funny one moment and utterly menacing the next. I didn’t like her. I wanted to, but she proved to be a very subtle bully and, in fact, said some things to me that would certainly (ironically) qualify as sexual harassment by any standard today.

photo taken by Laurel Halkier

I spent one summer working there. It was painful and I often felt marginalized and out of place there. How ironic is that? I was teased by this woman as well as the pendulous woman about the fact I chose to shave my legs and underarms and because I chose to wear make-up. I thought feminism was about women taking back their power??? I can say without hesitation that the only time in my adult life I felt uncomfortable and belittled for being a woman in the workplace was at the WRC.

Still, I was shocked today to read of the WRC leader’s death at only 59. She had gone on to lead what, by all accounts, was a successful academic career. She was felled by something called front0-temporal dementia, which is akin to, but still quite different from, Alzheimer Disease. It strikes me cruel when someone who has made their livelihood using their mind has their mind stolen from them. It sounds like a malevolent disease with terrible symptoms that must be incredibly hard on families. And it is invariably fatal.

I’m not going to laud this woman. I didn’t like her and she was unkind to me. Her short life doesn’t change my memory and experience of her. Still, my memory also reminds me she was a vital, bright, successful woman who was, in fact, on the vanguard for lesbian academics at the time. She lived out, proud and without apology. I respect her for that. When I conjure her face in my mind’s eye, I can’t help but think that none of us could have guessed this would be her fate. That, at 32, she had already lived more than half her life. She would only have 27 more years (fewer, when you take into account the ravages of the disease before one actually succumbs). But, let’s face it, none of us knows how long, how or when.

All this reminded me of something that’s become much clearer to me since I turned 50: Live your time well. I’m not talking about bucket lists and all that crud. I’m talking about living joyfully. Spend as much time as you can with the people who make you think, make you laugh and make you better. Do the things that make you purr. Most of us have to work, do laundry and clean house. Yeah, there’s that. But what about the rest of the time? Live your time well.

Reading about the death of this woman I knew so many years ago didn’t make me sad. I don’t know her anymore. But it did make me think. And that thinking led me to put on my shoes and go for a walk in the sunshine…and that was sublime.

“There’s a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout
’cause you’re just as far in as you’ll ever be out….”

Just breathe.