Circle of Life

I did a good job in the past couple years reaching back, reaching out, to key people in my past. I didn't realize how much that also meant re-opening closed chapters in my life, and finding there, not cringing regret and harsh recriminations for all the ways I failed to be my best self, but memories of the ways I tried to stretch in different directions. 

Being a parent, I've learned, provides many magical moments to confront past selves. Music is a doorway to the past; Umea has discovered Simon & Garfunkle, Kenny Rogers. She does not seem to mind my reminiscences of the past selves who loved the songs she's falling in love with. (And I realize I may be especially blessed with a kid who is not (yet?) focused on pushing away to differentiate herself.)

And clothes, too. When she steals a sweatshirt that's 20+ years old, I am remembering who bought it for me, or who I dated when I wore it first. How can she want to wear the same item? A rhyming across time. 

We went shoe shopping, and as she tried on Birkenstocks, I texted my best friend in high school, since in my memory, we walked everywhere in Birkenstocks. She said yes, her son, too, asked for his first pair of Birkenstocks the summer before, and yes, how strange and right and resonant. 

This also, of course, is true of books. Certainly when she was little, I crammed her little brain with my favorite childhood books -- Anne of Green Gables, first and foremost. And now she shares a few of my favorites in adulthood -- Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, most miraculously. 

I think you could have these same moments of resonance if you were really good about sharing your inner life with a close friend. (I'm thinking of a podcast [This American Life, Plan B, Act Two], where a young woman described trying to "download" her past into a new friend's brain - making her mixed-tapes of important songs, narrating past relationship stories onto tapes, providing a list of favorite books...)

But having kids, who are exploring themselves, partly through exploring what they have in common -- or not -- with their parents, is an especially organic unfolding of moments and moments and moments where the past opens up and offers a chance to see and feel how much I have in common with past selves -- or not.

And pairing that with friends who loved me when I was those past selves takes things deeper. It's partly triangulation -- do their memories, or their continued love, confirm my experience? My existence? Do I, can I, still love who they loved? Who they love? Are those the same? (Oh god, what is time? What is life? What is perspective across time?)

And I remember, I try to remember, there is nothing to be done. There is everything to feel, and accept, and learn. And celebrate. And feel gratitude. So much gratitude for this miracle of life unfolding -- out and in.