Can I get a witness?

Brief thoughts on middle age

I do not write to sort out my life. Not in the same way. My children write their own stories and tuck them into envelopes and at times I might glance a line or two. They are no longer the toddler with their calf muscle hovering precariously close to the tip of a blade of grass.

They have a vocabulary all their own. Yet the same trying out of identities persists. They are no longer dressed in kingly regalia or princess gowns. Nevertheless the trying-on persists. It is more subtle in this iteration. More lace than sequins.

But ultimately these are their stories and not exactly mine to tell. I am witness.

That word has stuck in the back of my mind and felt like something I can’t quite get stuck from my teeth.

In this middle spot of life, all that is possible isn’t always isn’t just on the horizon. Instead, it’s at least lurking in the rearview mirror.

Photo by Marco ten Hoff on Unsplash

It’s an odd space to be in — when you fancy yourself a writer, a thinker, a woman who has moderated every movement to attend to others — to a place, to a people, to children who will very shortly leave.

I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

I suppose the common verb of mid-life then is “witness.” It’s a word I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It’s both active and passive. It exhibits a sort of stability, restraint — that you are (perhaps) no longer playing the lead role.

At times, I hate the word “witness.” I love action verbs that feel like they’re all knees and elbows. Witness can feel passive, and I suppose, that part of adulthood that requires restraint was never a natural virtue for me. But yet, here we are.

Witness, though, is an act of love that requires deep sight. It is an attendant virtue.

As Liz Bruenig reported in the Atlantic*, witness is never without agency, cost, and fully involved presence.

In my youth, all of life was laid before me: a quilt spread with a sumptuous feast (with, of course, requisite fasting seasons). The world was future. I am, it seems, built for that temporal posture (with a healthy dose of backward-looking nostalgia on occasion). When the world is no longer future — we can go full throttle on the shouting matches on social media (anything, it seems, to rouse ire, passion, something), on the mid-life or late-career meltdown, or we can choose witness instead.

Witness involves a more temperate set of virtues. Ones built on legacy. Ones that look regret in the face. One that steps aside and lets others forge a very different path than one’s own.

***

I want to end this with a lesson, but there is perhaps no obvious one. This — this witness — is simply what this season requires.

So as my own children get drivers’ licenses and begin college applications, as I watch my Facebook feeds with the shining smiles of young men and women whom I knew as toothy faced toddlers pop up — I ask: is witness enough?

Surely in my mover-and-shaker days, I would have scoffed at the word. But now the word feels like, “I’m here.” “I’ve got your back.” “I have the know-how to sort this out.” “This devastation doesn’t surprise me.”

We always look ahead. We always look behind. That, indeed, is our small scratchings on the page. They might not be remembered. Nevertheless, we — we are witnesses.

---

*I had the privilege of interviewing Liz for Christianity Today. It’ll be in our Sept/Oct print issue.