Welcome to Midway! Let’s Explore the Middle Ground.

For years, without thinking, I’ve told my creative writing students to begin their stories in media res: in the middle of things. But life is more complicated than literature, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of middles.

What does it mean to be midway? In life? In a task? In a process?

These questions stem from both the personal and the political. And by political, I mean the most recent presidential election.

But first the personal.

I myself am midway. At midlife. Middle-aged. Fifty-four.

I have mixed feelings about this stage of life, just as I do about that land we call the middle ground.

Sometimes, as a concept, the middle ground seems like paradise. Think happy medium, golden mean, sweet spot. The center. Feeling centered. Balance and possibility. Imagine embracing mixed feelings, ambiguity, complexity, and paradox. Win-win. Both/and. Collaboration. Getting things done.

But in practice—as a point in time, as part of a process—the middle can be a big confusing place. A place where it’s easy to get lost. To sell out. The middle often makes me want to flee. To quit. The middle makes me crave everything that it is not. A fresh start. Closure. Clarity. The said and done.

Once, I almost left the love of my life because I temporarily lost my own ability to dwell in the middle. Right now, I’m lucky enough to be blissfully married to a transgender man, Benjamin Thiel, but when he was transitioning nearly twenty years ago, I had trouble coping with the in-between time. As he and I write a memoir about those years of our marriage, I realize that I mistook a middle for an ending.

I want to get better at middles. I want to celebrate middles.

I embody a lot of middles. Besides being middle-aged, I’m Midwestern and middle class.

And white. So I’m not in the middle when it comes to privilege. But I do seek a middle ground when it comes to checking my privilege. How much time should I devote to reflecting on my privilege and its impact, and how much time should I devote to using my privilege to help create a more equitable world?

Can I say I’m mid-career? Probably not. I’m a full professor at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I’ve taught since 1994. But I often teach the chronological middle of the British canon, eighteenth-century and Victorian literature, and I teach and write that most middle class of genres: the novel. I also teach LGBTQ literature and Shakespeare (who, yes, portrays extreme emotion via verbal extravagance, but who otherwise exemplifies a middle way—blending comedy and tragedy, dwelling in uncertainty, and wielding what Virginia Woolf called his androgynous mind).

Speaking of androgyny, I love it—my own and that of others.

As far as my sexual orientation goes, I’m again in the middle. Somewhere to the queer of center on the Kinsey scale. How I label myself is a long story and therefore merits a separate post. Or two.

My Generation, Generation X, is a middle generation, sandwiched in between the two largest American generations, the Boomers and the Millennials. (I so wish that the generations would quit stereotyping each other. What a force we’d be if we melded our strengths!)

My feminism also occupies a middle ground. My feminist consciousness developed as Second Wave Feminism gave way to the Third Wave.

We can’t forget about the Meyers-Briggs! I’m an INFJ. But I’m almost dead center between introversion and extroversion: a true ambivert. I’m also near the center when it comes to my need for structure. As a slight “J” (Judging type), I prefer to get things decided, but almost as much of the time I’m a “P” (Perceiving type), wanting to stay open to new information and options.

Since I’m waxing ridiculously autobiographical, what about astrology? I don’t really believe in it, but those of you who do should know that I am on the cusp of Aries and Taurus. As Tarot.com puts it, “impulsive Aries lends energy and pushes forward toward goals, while practical Taurus takes care of all the details.” True enough when I’m at my best.

Then there is my creative life. As a writer, I’ve long been interested in finding the middle ground.

When I was a senior in college, I wrote and directed a one-act comedy called In Its Own House, inspired by Freud’s words, “The ego is not master in its own house.” I took this to mean that most of us are sadly ruled by either our id or our superego. In my play, Peggy struggled to negotiate between her two quarreling roomies, Ida and Sue.

I sought a different sort of middle ground in the first novel I wrote, a mystery titled Death by Discount (Alyson, 2004). Its main character, like a younger me, tries to make peace with the small red town where she grew up as she forges her life in a university town that is blue, blue, blue.

And that brings us to the political.

Since the most recent presidential election, I have missed President Obama’s attempts at bi-partisanship. Of course, I miss President Obama, period. I used to admire compromise and cooperation. But now, such actions often seem undesirable or even impossible. I think about novelist Tayari Jones’ article “There’s Nothing Virtuous About Finding Common Ground.” I hold close this statement from Robert Jones Jr. @SonofBaldwin: “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

This blog will sometimes wrestle with such disagreement. I’ll explore a range of questions about seeking the middle ground in our current political climate:

• How do we interact with people who do not share our core values? Do we ever attempt to work with them for positive change? When and how?
• How do we co-exist—let alone build a better world—with people who want to build walls and tear other people down?
• In our blue-red nation, is it possible to compromise without selling out?
• How should we consume the news? How can we be informed and engaged citizens without making ourselves crazy?
• How do we find balance in our lives alongside those who would knock us off balance?

I’ll also blog about many other topics that inspire me to explore the middle ground:

• writing
• teaching
• midlife
• time
• mixed feelings
• LGBTQ issues
• other social justice issues
• reading (Is there anything better than being midway in a good book?)

What about you? What do your middles feel like? Where do you seek the middle ground?