“We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?” — Doctor Who

I count myself incredibly fortunate that fantasy is my favorite creative genre because it has allowed me to see this past month of my life–as I am of course the protagonist of my own story–as the denouement of Book II of The Diane Chronicles (a terrible working title) rather than the end of a ridiculously long and insane chapter.

A fantasy series is a really cool thing. The first book is always rather self-contained, as the author often doesn’t know if there will be a market for any further books. Book II, though, usually presupposes a Book III (if not also a IV, V, VI and VII) and that allows the writer to build a bit more suspense, perhaps even end on a cliffhanger.

While I don’t know how long Book III of my life will be, I do know that Book II is ending on a cliffhanger–a huge “what’s next?”

Book I of my life kind of presupposed, in an almost hubristic way, a certain life-trajectory that felt standard for middle-class Americans born in the 70’s: grade school, high school, college, career, spouse, family. All my friends were on that same path, and to a greater or lesser extent we all met those milestones within a few years of each other. Yes, I did have a friend who died after middle school in a terrible accident; I had other friends who struggled with physical, mental, and/or emotional illness–I struggled with depression and anxiety myself. And as Book I progressed I made friends of all different ages and saw my older friends raising teenagers, dealing with the illness and death of parents, and then after my own marriage dealt with the loss of my mother-in-law to pancreatic cancer. But while all these things were sometimes unbearably hard, there was still that trajectory: career, home, family..

I’m pretty sure Book II began with the birth of my first child. I call these “the survival years,” because from the birth of child #1 we were responsible for her survival, and then her sibling’s, and then our parents, and of course our own. My friends and I had followed our trajectory and arrived on our road, but unlike before there was no common timeline. Most of us had significant others if not spouses, most had careers, and most had kids–either biological, adopted, or through marriage. But some of us established these things in our 20’s, some in our 30’s, some our 40’s–some spanning decades with career changes, marital upheaval, parental illness and/or death, and often multiple childen. We struggled with holding together a marriage or a career (or both) while also caring for a family. We had to figure out if we were going to leave our careers to be stay-at-home parents, if we were going to work full-time and enter into the child-care struggle, or try to straddle both worlds and work part-time. One of my two favorite pediatricians told my husband and I that this stage–Book II–could be seen as the “summer” of our lives: the work is hard, constant, and unrelenting, but with perseverance can bear great fruit in the “autumn” our lives (which I now think of as Book III).

And while I can’t say I always made the best decisions in this “summer” season, I can say I persevered. It really would take me hundreds of pages to detail the events I powered through, day after day, week after week (as, I’m sure, did we all) but the highlights: I left a tenure-track job at university to take care of my children full-time (which many colleagues thought was a huge mistake and others fully applauded). I tried to work part-time, but it added too much complication for too little compensation so I volunteered–a lot–to keep myself sane and keep my mind sharp. I published some articles. I wrote some stories. I taught a bit on and off. I spent most of my time serving my daughters’ school communities: I was a homeroom mom pretty much from when the littlest was in preschool until the littlest was a senior in high school–15 years–and sometimes was homeroom mom for both girls’s classes simultaneously. At some point I became head homeroom mom, or communications mom. I ran two Girl Scout troops, a Little Flowers group, and then I landed in my favorite volunteer role–Vacation Bible School coordinator. The girls and I spent almost all of our free time together–the three musketeers, with Daddy as our occasional fourth because he was working so hard to provide a fantastic life for us with trips to Disney, vacations everywhere from Bahamian cruises to Scotland, and private Catholic school educations for two from pre-K through 12th grade.

Looking back on Book II, I wouldn’t say that I made perfect decisions. I wouldn’t even say I made objectively good decisions. Therapy has taught me to say “I made the best choices I could with the resources and knowledge I had at the time.” Other friends made different decisions, and they did the best they could, too. There is not one perfect way to live Book II. There is the way that is perfectly imperfect for each individual person or family, and none of them are without their joys or their trials.

For in Book II there were many times of joy and many times of trial. I have written about the joys. I have not revealed as much about the trials. This is not because, as some would accuse, I only want to present a highlight reel of my life–I hope everyone knows me better than that. It’s because most of the trials were not my stories to tell. They were stories of what my husband experienced in his work; what my children experienced in their childhood and adolescence (through which no one emerges unscathed); what my mother and father-in-law experienced in their aging. To write those painful stories would violate the privacy of the people I love most in the world, and I cannot do that.

What I can do is reveal the lessons I learned as I felt the powerlessness of standing by as others fought hard battles. These lessons were perfectly imperfect for me, and may not help anyone else, but it’s the denouement of Book II, so here they are: I learned to turn to God–a lot–and try to relinquish my need to believe in my ability to control things. I had to learn to trust in people–and a Power–other than myself. I had to, from that famous saying, cultivate “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I had to learn to ask for help, and to forgive myself my imperfections even as I worked to overcome them.

I came to understand that God does not cause bad things to happen, but because He has granted us free will He must permit them. There is no evil, however, that can happen to us that He cannot turn to good if we turn to and trust in Him, and there is no evil He can turn to good if we turn away from Him. God is a gentleman; He will not force Himself on us or on our lives. But if we choose Him–which is the reason He gave us free will to begin with–He can turn every our every pain into joy.

I learned less Catholic-belief-type lessons, as well. I realized that the role of parent is an incredible evolution–from she upon whom the child is utterly dependent, to she who cares for immediate and long-term needs, to she who must teach independence, to she who must do the seemingly eternal cha-cha of stepping in and then stepping away. By the girls pre-teen years I had become less of a family CEO than a family facilitator, and as the kids grew older I likened myself to a 24-7 paramedic who was only needed to handle a crisis for each person about once a month, which usually came up at a time when I had been lulled into a false sense of security which prompted me to make my own plans. This is why volunteering was so perfect for me. No one gets angry with a volunteer who has to drop an obligation to tend to a struggling child, husband, or elderly parent–especially when volunteering with other parents in a school.

But now, my volunteer days are coming to a close and I can see some of the fruit they have borne. In May, my oldest daughter performed onstage at one of our biggest local theaters. She played Mary, the Mother of Jesus in a program called Roar of the Rosary. Watching my daughter play Mary, after having been perhaps excessively involved in her Catholic school education for 15 years, was a culmination of a sort. She had played Mary in Vacation Bible School for years. Mary is the name she took for her Confirmation. She and I consecrated ourselves to Mary in 2012. We have turned to Mary countless times in our lives for intercession and guidance. And there she was, bringing Mary out into the world.

Later in May, my younger daughter was on the same stage for her graduation. I was invited, as faculty at her school, to award her her diploma. I actually donned my doctoral robes for the first time since leaving my tenure-track position in 2003 and waited backstage for that moment, another culmination of now seventeen years of service in my daughters’ Catholic education. I could write a thousand words about that night, but I think this picture shows it all. As I gave her this hug, two lines ran through my mind. The Biblical: “Well done, good and faithful servant” and the the fantasy ine said by Galadriel from Lord of the Rings: “I will Diminish, and go into the West, and remain [myself].”

In shepherding these beautiful humans into their young adulthood, I do feel I have passed a sort of test. We all survived. We mostly even thrived. And while future success is not guaranteed–I can now sometimes see past the hubris of my youth to know that our future trajectory can, at any time, be derailed by circumstances wholly out of our control–I can say we’ve done okay so far.

I’ve also shepherded my husband through his career, as he is now almost fully retired. I started dating him when he was in medical school, through internship, residency, and a career in anesthesiology. He now stays home more days than he works, and has established a househusband routine. He has returned to being the man he was when we met–fun-loving, funny, and energetic. He has taken up reading again–something he had no time to do for years–and wants nothing more than to take me everywhere in the world I want to travel. He is still studying languages, manages almost all of the shopping (he loves knowing where the best grocery prices are), and does a whole lot more than his share of the cooking and cleaning. He putters around the house, fixing little things and generally told me that his life is now “like waking up on Christmas morning, and the present under the tree is ‘you don’t have to go to work!’ and then waking up the next morning to the same present, over and over again!” His job gave our family a tremendous amount of financial security, but took a lot out of him. We’ll never know if it was truly worth it, but again, therapy says, “We made the best decisions we could with the information and resources we had at the time.”

After graduation we took the youngest up to college orientation, which was definitely one of those paramedic-parenting experiences. We were exhausted afterwards, but fortunately had booked a Disney cruise for ourselves–the first one we had gone on without bringing the children. Neither had been interested in going when we booked, so we called it the “empty nester” cruise. We had a great time, but it was bittersweet. We spent a lot of hours reading, talking, and napping in the spa, our room, and by the adult pool, but when we were in central areas all I could see was a montage of the past 20 years. In the parents with the four- and two-year-olds I saw us on our our first Disney cruise–struggling with what I called “the same kind of work I do at home but in a new venue with less resources.” In the the parents with the eight- and six-year old girls I saw us making trips to the bibbedy-bobbedy boutique so our girls could get styled as princesses before taking pictures with every single Disney princess on the ship. In the parents with ten- and twelve-year olds I saw us taking the girls on shore excursions, playing in the pool, going to movies and shows, and doing onboard crafts like towel-folding and origami–what I call “The Wonder Years.” In the parents with fourteen- and sixteen-year olds I saw my husband and I spending some time in adult-only areas while the girls did their own things together, and coming together for sometimes silent, awkward dinners because they wanted to remain on their own. Then, in the parents with the over-sixteen crew we saw the struggle of letting go of children who wanted to be elsewhere doing their own thing with their own friends.

Immediately upon our return home I ran my final Vacation Bible School at my church. I had been involved in the program for over 15 years. I started as a volunteer in the Pre-K room when my oldest daughter decided she wanted to be in the program–she was entering Kindergarten. Now she’s about to be a Junior in college. My younger daughter was not yet old enough to attend VBS, but they had a nursery available for children of volunteers. She was two, and by the time VBS week was up she was potty trained. THAT was a TOTAL win! Two years later a dear friend and I were asked to lead the program and we agreed. Working with her on running the program–and then writing our own programs–has been the best part of every summer. But now, my daughters are completely out of VBS age. Her two oldest are, as well, and her youngest has other things to do. So we decided that this was our last year. We wrote a program on Catholic Prayer called “Praying with the Saints.” The planning was beautiful, and spiritual, and stressful, and chaotic, and insane like it is every year, but the week itself was amazing. And at the end of the week the entire VBS group gave us flowers and a prayer chain with something written on it from every student and every volunteer. It’s this beautiful physical representation of the lives we’ve touched through the years, and it brings me to tears every time I think of it. Hundreds of kids, every year, for 15 years. Again, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and again, “I will Diminish, and go into the West, and remain [myself].”

But will I, really? Will Book III be a time of Diminishing, or growing? My daughter, the budding psychologist, tells me that this stage of human development branches into two–generosity or stagnation. With retirement and freedom from life’s “summer” responsibilities, a person can either become generous with their time, talent, and treasure, or get stuck in a rut in which there is no expansion, no growth. While there are no guarantees, I can tell you that my future trajectory will not be stagnation. If anything the paths ahead seem more expansive than ever. Work, travel, writing–the real freedom to follow my bliss–shines like a beacon ahead. I do not dread the fall; I march on to Book III with some anxiety, but more excitement to see what the next volume holds.