Missed milestones or seized moments?

Is life just the experience of a whole series of milestones? Do you watch your life pass by in a flurry of celebrations, tragedies and achievements? Are you able to be fully present in these milestone moments if your parent is no longer there to experience them with you? Do they then become missed milestones?

It would be misleading to suggest that experiencing a 'milestone' like the beginning and end of your education, the birth of your own children and your wedding without them is quite the same as with them. But we have to seize the moment anyway. Or, rather, allow the moment seize us. Which can be any moment really, if we are open to the opportunity. And then perhaps that moment can become a milestone in its own right. You see, none of us are guaranteed any milestones or even moments beyond this one right now; this present moment. I mean this in a positive way, not negatively, but life can be taken at any time and we don't always get fair warning.

I watched the film Boyhood the other week. It follows a fictional family but it's unusual in the fact that the film spans a 'live' period of over ten years. The main protagonist goes through school and into college. He experiences his first girlfriend, his first job, his first dorm. The mum goes through various relationships, which begin with good intentions and end otherwise. It's a film full of milestones. When you follow people over a long period of time you observe them experiencing milestones. When these milestones are contracted into a film, it's like watching time lapse photography. Ethan Hawke, who plays the dad, commented himself that watching the changes in the young actors was like watching time lapse photography in progress.

I find time lapse portrait photography and the objective observation of passing time in a person both fascinating and painful. As a young adult, I was always intrigued by the idea of recording my face every week for the rest of my life, and editing it all together every now and then to witness life in motion. To see how my face changes. My hair. My style. The decoration in the room behind me. I felt like this would be an interesting project, although I didn't end up doing it because, hey, the distraction of life gets in the way of interesting projects sometimes.

Then when Mum died and in the years that followed, I couldn't think of anything worse than documenting or watching the passing of time on my face. To observe the day-to-day, year-to-year effects of life on my appearance. To witness the wrinkles and grey as they grow, the ebb and flow of my spirit in my eyes as I hurtle from tragedy to triumph. Mainly I just couldn't bear to see the mental impact of bereavement on the physical manifestation of my soul. This is why even as a film fan I avoided watching Boyhood for so many years. Like other more obviously upsetting films which are about 'death', this film about 'life' just got to me.

As I watched the film, I felt that it confirmed that life is a series of milestones, predetermined by society, and that these milestones are perhaps even more obvious once you've had children and over the years you watch them grow up. You realise you're pretty grown up yourself, I reckon. The boy, Mason Jr., prepares to leave for college, gathering a small amount of possessions into a box. His mum, having tried hard to hide her anxiety at him leaving, suddenly breaks down on account of his lack of emotion attached to such a huge milestone. Her son, leaving home, leaving her, beginning his life as a proper adult. 'I didn't realise you'd be so happy about going,' she says.

My mum didn't use those words exactly when I left for university the first time, but the sentiment was the same. As I gathered my last box and headed for the door, she too started to cry. I hadn't realised how big a day it was for her too. Her only baby, flying the nest, leaving her to her own life again. So freeing, but such a life change. She'd spent 20 years raising someone, then off they go off to be their own person. And so begins the next batch of milestones. I imagine the transition is harder for the single parent, like my mum and the mum in Boyhood (Olivia, played by Patricia Arquette). Like me losing Mum. When you're suddenly left with no-one at home, it can feel rather lonely.

And so in that impending loneliness, Olivia likens her life to a series of milestones and then furiously skips straight ahead to her own funeral. Flabbergasted, Mason Jr. jokes that she just missed out 'like, 40 years' of her life. I can understand why she did it though. For some time after Mum died, all I could think of in terms of the future was all of the milestones that she would miss out on. Although sadly my marriage did not last, I am so thankful that she got to walk me down the aisle, less than a year before she died. She helped me clean my first home. Watched me graduate a coupla times. Supported me through the most challenging time of my life, before dying in the middle of it all. (The irony is not lost on me).

But what of the milestones beyond? She would never meet my future children, her grandchildren. And so cynically I decided (up until recently) that I would not have children, because there was no point if she couldn't be around to see them and share in that next stage of life with us. My numerous switches in career. My switch to proper adulthood which I believe happened in the years after her death. I am such a different person now. I would be a better daughter. I would make more of an effort now I understand how fragile life is. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

But this is where 'moments' come in. Let's forget about 'milestones' for a minute and pretend that every moment can be a milestone. After all, a milestone is simply a moment that society has decided is monumental enough to turn into a big deal. Like birthdays and Christmas. They become imposed on us and then we feel shit when they're not 'perfect' or the 'right' people aren't there. Well, I think from this moment on, I'm on the lookout for all kinds of new milestones, and I'm taking Mum on that journey with me.

In fact, I think I'll make this very moment a milestone. As I write this sentence I'm currently travelling on a train from Valencia to Barcelona, hurtling from one friend's home to another. Glass of Rioja in hand, eyes flitting between my laptop and the passing Spanish countryside. I feel peaceful and alive, content with my slow but steady productivity on The Adult Orphan. I love travel, I love writing, I love my friends. What a beautiful moment this is. I cast my mind for a moment to my mum, say 'Hi' and sort've take a picture with my eyes and send it on a mental postcard to her, so she can share in this moment/milestone with me.

Here's to many more moments. I'm coming to seize ya.