Threshold Moments

The Chaos, Promise, and Absorption of Initiations

Friday afternoons aren’t a good time to be driving over the Bay Bridge even in good weather. So last Friday, the stormy drive from San Francisco to the East Bay was a slog. A procession of red taillights, gray skies overhead. I confessed to my colleague in my passenger’s seat that the holidays make me sad. It surprised me to hear myself say so because I don’t think this has always been true. Did I just feel sad in that moment? Or is it that I’m having a hard holiday season this year? My only kid is getting older and I have a small family. I’m impacted by the darkness, and don’t enjoy gloom. More than sadness, I suppose, is an absence of joy. As we crossed the span, I diagnosed myself as a normal middle-aged woman.

Fast forward to last night. I went to a holiday party where a group of women started talking about Miranda July’s new novel, All Fours. This is practically a cliché, and I realized too late that if I was going to show up to a party in Berkeley with women my age that I should have prepared by reading All Fours. One of the women said she found July’s protagonist too self-absorbed, and speculated that perhaps depressive people are self-absorbed. She delivered this in the kindest way, not as a dig at depressive people at all. It’s so easy to be self-absorbed, after all. So easy to find ourselves existing in the one note of our particular issue, or problem, or state of mind.

I saw myself in her comment. I have been absorbed this fall and winter, and if you’ve absorbed by something—fully in it—aren’t you self-absorbed by extension? You don’t necessarily realize it when you’re in it, but you can recognize the contours of this state of existence by its singularity. When your mind drifts, you think of only one thing. When people ask how you’re doing, your answer points in one direction. It occurred to me that beginnings and endings do this to us—new parenthood or new creative endeavors, divorce or death or other identify-shifting losses. These are initiations‚ whether positive or negative, and they absorb the person swirling around in their eddies.

I’m in such a swirl, and it helps to put some context around what is. Transition. Initiation. Absorption. The question for any of us is how long we stay in these places. Are they way stations, or do we pull up and take residence here at these thresholds? After all, there’s promise and growth waiting for us on the other side, but it takes courage to step through. I will never forget when I interviewed V (formerly Eve Ensler) onstage in Berkeley, and how she talked about people who identify with the wound, who pull up their RVs to the wound and make a pretty home there and never leave. I have a few of these people in my life.

The word threshold combines “thresh,” the physical action of “threshing” (trampling) and the concept of “holding,” suggesting an entry point. Those of us in threshold moments are in fact trampling around, which is chaotic and by extension all-consuming. We’re called not to park here, but instead to cross over. The other side—the initiation, the new beginning—is waiting for us.

Some of us have experienced many initiations, more than our share. Others of us are parked at those doorways, needing to cross. I relate to the thrashing, however internal it might be. I’m conscious of wanting to shift and channel that energy toward the open door awaiting me, and I wonder how true this might be for you. And, as a person who receives the stories of others for a living, I’m always thinking about major life moments, aware that this is the stuff our stories are made of. Our initiations are the things that drive our memoirs and shape who we are. If you have a threshold moment or insight to share, past or present, to help me through mine, I welcome it in the comments, and thank you.