Endings

When given the opportunity to take on a new, challenging task, you stare deep into the future and imagine how it will change your life while it is going. There will be times when you don't know enough. How will you learn? There will be times when you aren't strong enough. How will you grow? You cannot guess at all the challenges, but you can envision the struggle, and you can decide whether the struggle is worth it. 

And if the struggle is worth it, you step in, and you wade through, and you lose face when you are stupid, and you lose sleep when you are worried, and you grow in ways you did not imagine, for years and years....

And then the task ends. 

The end. 

Walk away. We're finished here. 

What? Just like that? 

But what about all those years!?

In 2016, newly arrived in Australia, a supervisor suggested I apply for a research fellowship. I thought it was a stretch, but I took it on. And won it! Starting in mid-2017, I received four years of funding and opportunities to grow my research in ways it had not grown before. I worked hard for four years, learned a lot, took on students and postdocs and really became more of a research leader. 

And quietly in July, the fellowship ended. The end! Walk away. 

What? But what about all the lingering ideas?

In 2017, I was asked to step in as Chair of the national Women in Mathematics group in Australia. What, me? Surely I don't know enough about advocacy, media engagement, leadership, for that? But I was assured that I knew enough, and someone was needed, and I would be enough, and pretty please? So I stepped in. I had to learn. I became a face for equity. I did what I could to help, through unexpected crises. I learned to do fancy management buzzwords, like "pivot" in a pandemic. I survived.

And then, quietly, the position ends. All that fear, all that work, and I'll step down in January. The end. Walk away. Someone else can lose sleep over it now. 

What? Just like that?

Here's a really big one. In 2003, I chose to get pregnant. There was no way to see the monumental shifts this would create in life. The sleepless nights. The worries over childcare. Tears over scraped knees, fights with friends, the elation at the child's successes! The devastation at the failures. Carving out spaces for another new human over three different continents. 

And quietly, Tuesday is his last day of high school. 

 Just like that!

All grown up, and a more brilliant human than I ever could have imagined, and ever could have foreseen. 

Somehow, the endings are not as evident from the beginnings as I suppose they should be. When facing the huge task, it never really seemed we would every get here, to the end. And yet here we are.

What?