Chapter Forty Fr33 or Re-birth in the Middle

Some babies are born at the edge of time, right at the point between the close of one day and the breaking of the next. I love to imagine the joyful drama, the hopeful suspense that abounds as a little one makes his or her way into this world at 11:59 p.m. In a world where we can schedule and plan births, and where gender reveals are the trendy way to celebrate a child before momma ever cradles them in the nook of her arms, before daddy presses soft lips to their forehead, being born on the cusp of a new day can be welcome drama. It is a reminder that we are not in control of time; that some things are beyond the reach of careful human prediction and execution.

As fond as I am of suspense, and as much respect and awe as I have for the uncertainty that attends being born as one day closes and another begins, no such drama attended my birth. I was born smack dab in the middle of the day – three minutes past noon to be exact – on the second day of summer in 1976. My entry into the storyline of human history wasn’t grand…wasn’t eventful. As with the birth of other colored girls on the South Side of Chicago, and in other cities, towns and villages that birth, nurture and shape colored girls throughout the world, my birthday was not cause for fanfare beside that afforded it by the first-time parents who held me cooing with love-filled eyes. 12:03 p.m., June 22, 1976 was the moment their lives changed and mine began.

Though I am awed by the prospect of being born on the precipice, there is something to be said about the certainty of coming into being in the middle. There is something to be said for being born, starting new life not on the edge, not on the outer boundaries, not on the cusp, but in the middle. There is something comforting about knowing you inhaled the first breaths of life in a sure place. It grounds you. It makes each breath thereafter a little easier. Something about being born in the middle feels safe. It gives you assurance. It makes you comfortable. But comfort can be deceptive...overrated even. Beginning life in what feels like a sure space will trick you into thinking that every re-birth thereafter will happen in a sure place. That every re-invention, reformation and reshaping will be comfortable. But truth be told, as we live life, as we move from one phase of this human journey to the next, we find ourselves living a good deal of the time in unsure spaces. We find ourselves being routinely reacquainted with the uncomfortable. We often find ourselves between the “no longer” and the “not yet.” We live most of our lives in the middle.

June 22, 2019 marked the first day of my 43rdrotation around the sun. Despite my resistance to the label, I think I have surrendered to the notion that I am now “middle-aged.” As my birthday came and went I thought a lot about the middle. I thought about the joy of a baby being born in the middle of a summer day. And then I realized that being born in the middle and living life in the middle are not the same. Unlike the certainty that being born at 12:03 p.m. on the second day of summer affords a newborn baby, living life in the middle is an exercise in uncertainty. The middle, the meantime, the waiting room, the space between the “no longer” and the “not yet”, the long Saturdays between the crucifixions and the resurrections in our lives are places where we spend most of our time after we breathe the first breaths of life.

Unlike the day when I entered the timeline of human history - the day when my story merged with the greater human narrative, the day when I became a miracle enfleshed in chubby newborn thighs, held lovingly and securely by my mother, cooed at adoringly by my father – my rebirths from girl to young woman to grown, free ass woman have been filled with uncertainty. Sometimes painful, they have been littered with losses and betrayals. They have been submerged in joy, laughter, dancing. They have been blessed with the gift of motherhood; the moment my arms became a safe space for a brown boy placed there as soon as possible after his birth at 11:23 a.m. on a Tuesday in October six years ago. Looking attentively into my eyes, swaddled and covered in certainty and the comfort of an inexplicable but very palpable love from a mother who held him in her arms and a father who cooed lovingly at him, while kissing him softly on the forehead. My re-births, my “middles” have been spaces of awe and despair, led me up mountaintops and through valleys, cut me deeply and healed me softly.

My middle, this 43rdchapter, is an uncomfortable place. I am being re-born – again. This re-birth, this delivery from the “no longer” onto the road to the “not yet” is a strange place. But perhaps comfort is overrated. Perhaps familiarity and normalcy are too highly prized. It is the unfamiliar that has introduced me to me. The strange and out of the ordinary that have shown me true joy. I have found on this road the courage to steady myself on my feet, learning to walk, holding God’s hand. I have found within myself the brazen audacity to use “no” as a complete sentence, to dance to the off key notes of my own songs. To wrap myself in unspeakable joy. To declare, without apology or hesitancy that I, just as I am, am enough. To relish the truth of my sufficiency, but to be excited by knowing that the depth of my beauty and power have not been realized.

The middle – an uncomfortable place that affords us not certainty, but the opportunity to be born again… and again…and again. The middle is not a sure place. It’s not a certain place. It is a launching pad for freedom. Here’s to re-births and middles. Here’s to chapter #FortyFr33.