Who I Was

This year is starting out with a great deal of bustle for my family.  Both my mother’s parents and my father’s mother have moved out of the homes they’ve been living in for years.  I’ll spare you the emotional turmoil that goes along with this, not that it’s been advertised.  On the surface, at least, what this means is that Mom and Dad have been running back and forth between both houses, beginning the enormous chore of cleaning out the houses and divvying up the spoils between children and grandchildren.  I’ve done moderately well.  I didn’t ask for much—my mom is still keeping an eye out for a few of my cherished childhood books and games, and she’s already delivered a box full of kitchenware.  From my Grammy, my dad’s mom, I received a beautiful music box I always loved, a toaster (for practicality, not sentiment—her toaster was only ever a toaster to me), and a stack of photos. 

It’s this last that holds the most meaning to me, though I never actually thought to ask for them.  I’m sure most people have their own family photos almost memorized, but not all of these were familiar to me.  Flipping through them, I thought, who is this girl?  I don’t remember her as well.  This was back when I wore purple patterned leggings under a red shirt with bows and overlarge sneakers.  This was before I started caring about looking pretty for pictures (and most of the time I didn’t anyway, but I like it better than what happens now.  Get away from me with that camera).  It was like discovering parts of my childhood that I had lost, a time when I did backflips and climbed trees and had no idea what to do with my hair.

Growing up is a funny business.  How did that girl become me, who is sarcastic and hermit-like and solitary, whose idea of fun is a day at the computer, who is secretly afraid of the world?  How did I turn out this way?  What was the turning point?  And did anyone notice the change, or does it make perfect sense to everyone else that I was who I was and now I am who I am?

This is the impossibility of what I do.  I’m supposed to be a writer, capable of putting into words feelings and ideas that others can’t articulate.  Yet even the complexity of myself is something that I can hardly work out.  If a single life is so huge that you can get lost—so many memories, so many thoughts and events and things that change you—what about a story, which is the intersection of many lives?  What about a world?

I think that for everyone, no matter what they choose to do with their lives, it’s a process of figuring out who they are.  I only hope that as I go along my way, that fearless little girl with the messy hair walks with me, lending me courage when I need it most.