The chance to age

My siblings and I, April 2025. Photo by Becca Martin.

I have a friend who once got flak on the internet for going grey. She wrote back that aging is a privilege, so why would she deny proof of it?

That has stuck with me so much, because I have wished to be dead a few times as an adult.

I don’t blame my past self for wanting to die, but Lord I wish I could point her to today and say, “Look how much better it got after that.”

I have had a good foundation for continuing to live. I inherited the sturdy genes of my ancestors and was raised by parents who made sure we knew how to work hard enough that leisure felt right. My mom was a complicated little mom, but she fed us like kings and made sure we brushed and flossed, and paid for my voice lessons and swim lessons and tap lessons. Mom taught me how iron my clothes and pay for good quality shoes and to agitate for something better.

When I was a kid my siblings and I fought like cats (except for Steve, I love you Steve) but we also were watching each other constantly, which also like cats. My sister taught me how to bake and appreciate indie movies, and later, she taught me how to tell the truth. My brothers taught me how to throw a punch, be kind, be funny, negotiate for a better job, prioritize family time, and be joyfully weird. As kids and young adults, my siblings and I were stratified by gender, age and rank. Now we’ve lived long enough as adults to be close friends.

We spent a weekend together, just siblings and my mom, for her 80th birthday, and it was like being plucked out of reality. We didn’t stop being adults, with our professional mix of trade expertise, project management and military what-not. (My brother said I can’t call him a full-bird colonel, which is a shame. Apparently he has one too few birds?) That weekend we took a little hop back in time to being kids under one roof, eating and singing and laughing and cooking and doing the dishes.

The difference now is that our family scaffolding has collapsed. I mean, it already did that once when Dad died, which was devastating. But it’s almost like we’ve rebuilt our family and torn it down so many times that now it’s less about how high we can reach and more about how much stress we can tolerate across. Today, we’ve become fully load-bearing. We’re a group of adults who have lived long enough to change our minds and hold our relationships sacred.

I can’t tell you how many times I cried sitting around with my siblings during that weekend, but it was several times a day. I laughed so hard I had to change my pants at least twice, and spent hours humming harmonies along with my favorite singers. That entire weekend was this rose-tinged reminder that my mom and siblings make up a crew of eight—eight!—living people in my life who set the stage for me to continue to live.

My family—including cousins—make up my first group of people who help me live. I also include a whole host of in-laws in this number.

The second group is my friends. Aging with my childhood friends gives me such joy because we tend to like each even other more as the years move on. We couldn’t see that some of us would stop being nemeses, or that we would have a group video chat named after an inside joke, or that we would default to our old nicknames for each other after years apart, or that our kids would hit it off. We’re nearing our parents’ ages when we were in school, and now we are in on the big secret: being an adult means making it up as you go. Befriending my old teachers and church leaders has led to its own fabulous new age of discovery, like watching the highlight reel from your childhood from a different angle.

My college friends I hold onto with tooth and nail because those were the people who saw the fledging adult me—deeply weird, sunny, volatile and absurd—and loved her. They didn’t even know that LJ (that’s my nickname from my teen years on) was just the outermost layer of a set of little matryoshka dolls. The more dolls you opened, the angrier and sadder they got, and the clearer you could hear the constant shrieking coming from the center. I was not well, but my Russian nesting doll system did a pretty good job of hiding that. In college, my friends and I built years of inside jokes and cheap food and shenanigans that made me laugh until I cried.

My mom friends (children optional; I just mean friends I made while mothering) were there to witness the opening of each layer of the Russian nesting dolls, my own version of opening the seventh seal in Revelations. With every child I birthed and every year that passed, I lost another layer until finally the endlessly screaming tiny center dolly came into view. Some of these friends were the professional therapists who helped calm the center of that matryoshka and sheath her back up in layers for her protection, not just to mute the sound. I had to repeat that process several times, and I’m still not done.

Those women (and some men) who sat at the hospital bedside of me and my children, who wired money or washed my dishes or or knitted beside me or tucked my other children into bed were on suicide watch with me. They just didn’t know it. I didn’t know it myself, at the time. The nadir came after the birth of my fourth child, and I continued to bottom out periodically until my whoops fifth baby was probably about two years old.

Today my mom friends aren’t on crisis watch with me anymore, but these fabulous people help me tackle the real concerns of school pickup, pool playdates and parenting. We grouse about rogue hair removal, and thoughtfully consider which Hollywood crushes would actually make good partners at our stage of life. (These ladies can tell you exactly how I feel about Jack Black.) We go for treats together and pick each other up from the car repair place. It’s busy season so we don’t hang out as much, but we elbow aside commitments to float in neighborhood pools after dark, park at Sonic for an hour, go for waffles, order in tacos, knit and watch TV, or send a notice to the group text when you’ve reached Armageddon Day on your period.

The third group of people who help me live are Adam and my children. This part of this essay is the one that hurts the most because I have the kind of marriage they make Hallmark movies about. My husband makes my heart glow like the the star-lady in the movie version of Stardust, and that is probably the least nauseating description I can give you of how I feel. Adam hung the moon, as far as I’m concerned.

I have also put that man through Hell. My giving him the third degree over every dollar he spent while justifying burning cash on dumb sh*t. My periods of poor hygiene that coincided with a bad mental dip. My inability to hear his advice unless it comes from someone else, my rages that poison the air of our home. My high-vibration stress, my half-finished projects, my lost documents, my burned pots and terrible home haircuts. I am extremely human with this man, and he has treated me the same through it all. Adam is the one who insisted I get professional help as the seventh seal began to crack open. Adam knows the tiny shrieking baby doll and has held her close to his own heart for years. Even seventeen years into this, I still bare my teeth at him occasionally when he sees the real me. I don’t like being seen.

Adam also made me a mom, in more ways than one. He taught me how to mother gently. This was such a struggle in the early years of parenting because I had my own sh*t to work through. You see, I resented my children for years because I assumed that without them, I would never have broken open. I see now that the tiny little baby center would’ve bided her time, kids or not, and eventually found her way out to scream in someone else’s ear.

I have thought back many times to the day I almost took my life, and how much I would’ve lost had I taken those steps. I would’ve missed parenting teens and tweens, which is so much more fun than raising toddlers. (No offense to my past toddlers, but I’ve suspected for years that I was made to parent teenagers.)

I would have missed movie nights on the trampoline and listening to new music.

I would’ve missed introducing my kids to Bohemian Rhapsody and watching them run circles in the kitchen, screaming in glee because the Holy Spirit of Freddie Mercury had fallen upon them.

I would’ve missed the conversation where my daughter told me that her favorite word in the whole world was “acre” and I laughed so hard I almost had to pull over because she prefaced it by saying that even seeing the word made her feel like it was Christmas Eve.

I would’ve missed hearing my second daughter belly laugh from the other room from a joke her sister told her, or watched how effortlessly she runs.

I would’ve missed seeing my son sprout to alarming heights and watch him goof around with friends and finally know the joy of annoying your own teenager.

I would’ve missed the piles of love notes from my third daughter and watching her turn cartwheels in the grass.

And my whoops baby? She would’ve never gotten earthside had I not lived, and I wouldn’t have known the joy of watching her carry six stuffed animals around and pile them in my lap and say, “Mama, please hold my children.”

Which brings us to today.

God willing, I am done wanting to be dead.

I can’t predict when my candle will snuff out, but I suspect that I am about half used up. I am looking forward to my second act with hope and armed with the love and support of dozens** of wonderful human beings.

Here’s to another 40 years!

Special Thanks To the Following Dozens of Wonderful Human Beings

**Love to my closest childhood friends: my Harolds, Jose Luis, Julie, Kristi, Buck, Forrest, all the Cozzas, Jana and Jim, George, John, Jennifer, Kendyl, Jessica, Spencer, all the Holladay boys, Kara, Leslie, Amberly, Tressa, Camille, Blanche, Esther, Mary and Jessie. Love to the rest of my friends and teachers from Linden Elementary, from the Pinedale Ward, teachers and friends from Show Low Junior High and teachers/friends from SLHS (especially my marching band crew and the entire AcaDec team, you know who you are).

Love and twibbles to my BYU people: Haley and Bryce, Toni and Ben, Tamsen and Sam, Summer and Andy, Dave, Brooke, Thad, Krista, Alex, Rachel, Holly, Ben, Felipe, Tiffany, Elisa, Olivia, Stephanie, Eva, Christie, Cate, Dani, Kelli, Shelby, and gosh I know I’m missing some people, sorry. To the boys I dated: thank you for being excellent.

Love to my mom friends and everyone who chipped in during these parenting years, so far: Jana and Jim, Dina and the late Clifford, Noelle and Eric, Stefanie, Necia, Mindi, Sue, the late great Kathy, Phoebe, Kylara, Onnie, Patience, Rachel, Anoush, Sara, Melissa, Gretchen, Kate, Heather, Anna, Becky, Lauren, Dana, Afton, Kaarin, Alicia, Kylie, Annelie, Shari, Tiffany B, Brooke, Ruth, Adriane, Tawnya, Fernanda, Jessie, Marquette, Dani, Liz, Tracy, Jill, Kathryn, Haley, Susan, Pam and Dan, Kat, Kristen and Michael, Kira, Christene, Catherine and Josh, Kristal and Tomas, Julie and Michael, Jenn, Denise, Amanda, other Jessie, Katherine, Ilse, Elysce, Lauren, Tessa, Sadie, Melissa, Dawn, Angie, Jennie, Tina, Ari, Sam, Synthia, Shaun, Jordan, Jim and Sarah, Brenda, Maris, Chase, Ellen, Kimberly, Doreen, Grace, Marisa, Kinsey, Kirsten, JZ, Esau, Devyani, Mary Jane, Shev, Miss Rebecca, Miss Joy, Miss Teresa, Steven and Katie, and Miss Shirley. There are still people I’m forgetting to name, but I love you too.

To my cousins: you know who you are. I love you and I loaf you.

To my Stradling family who patiently loved me through the prickly years of early marriage and parenting: I am especially glad you got to see me grow up a bit. To the grandchildren: it’s been a privilege to watch you grow up, and I love y’all so much. Thank you for all the love, gifts, service, inside jokes, texts, home projects, Sunday dinners and medical advice. I’m so grateful that we’re family.

To my many Frost sisters-in-law, my brother-in-law, and the many excellent grandchildren: It’s an honor to be linked to you. Thank you for enriching my life and helping us weed out some of the bad sh*t we thought was normal. Also thank you for being hilarious and thoughtful and also largely much smarter and more organized than me.

To my siblings: I love you so muh.

To my Adam: thank you for lassoing the moon for me. I’m so grateful for your continued kindness, dear heart, and I’ll love you ‘til the sun shines green, the grass grows red and the oceans turn to yogurt.

To my children: you have blown open my world. Thank you for your forgiveness and love, and for being the best little weirdos I ever knew.