Neither here nor there

Embracing the liminal

It’s been a busy week here. On Monday, we did birthday dinner with our daughter. On Tuesday, I gave a talk at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati (thanks for all the amazing folks who came out), had dinner with family and spent the night (also acquiring some of the best bagels around at Bruegger’s). Tomorrow, we leave for North Carolina for a week.

It’s not a good time to start anything new, but also not quite the end of anything. We haven’t hit the road yet, but we’re already leaning into the trip, getting ready. We’re neither here nor there, in a space of liminality, to be fancy about it. Stuck in the in-between.

Liminality can feel really uncomfortable. We want to know. We want to be one thing or the other. But that’s not always the way the world works. Sometimes, it’s not clear what comes next. That’s true externally—you have no idea what the universe has in store for you. But also internally. You’re not really sure what your next step should be.

When you’re in a period of liminality, it’s usually because there’s a big transition coming. In my case, the start of a trip. Then the beginning of the semester. The end of the summer. The beginning of my husband’s phased-out retirement. Maybe the beginning of the end of my own teaching career, though that, too, is uncertain.

We like to imagine our journey through life as like crossing a state border. “Welcome to Kentucky,” the Google maps voice announces. You were in one state and now you’re in another. Simple as that.

The Ohio River

But even that transition is more complicated. To get from Kentucky to Indiana, you have to cross the Ohio. It’s a wide river. The Madison-Milton bridge is 3,184.2 feet long. By the time Google maps welcomed us to Indiana yesterday, we were already halfway down Second St. Is there an exact moment when you cease to be in Kentucky and are in Indiana instead?

It’s a subject with a long history of debate. In 1792, when Kentucky became a state, the border was defined as the high water mark on the Ohio and Indiana sides of the river. But that high water mark changed with the dam and lock system, so that Indiana declared the boundary was in the middle of the river while Kentucky laid claim to parts of Clarksville and Evansville, two Hoosier cities. In the 70s, the U.S. Geological survey settled the dispute, but I still have no idea where in the Ohio I go from Kentucky to Indiana.

Anyway, if you let go of the need for certainty, it’s sort of cool to think that when you’re walking across the bridge, you are neither here nor there. Not a Hoosier or a Kentuckian, for a moment. In Madison, where I can see Kentucky from my bathroom window, it’s always felt a little liminal.

When you’re in a liminal period in life, you might as well embrace the feeling. Enjoy it the way people so enjoy walking across a bridge. Sink into the not knowing. Let go of the illusion we maintain most of the time that we have control over anything. Knowing what comes next wouldn’t really help you prepare for it, anyway. The only way to get ready is to surrender to unpredictability.

Which, even as I write those words, makes me cringe. But I’m trying, hanging out in the in-between and looking for the lessons it has to teach.