i am sixteen, going on seventeen (a retrospective)
The sun is going down on the last day of my sixteenth year. I am looking back, poking through the rag-bag of memory, and trying to understand what it is that this year has given me.
I am ritualistic by nature. A day is not a thing that happens: it's an event. Things must be prepared. And things mean things. Birthdays and new years and memorial holidays, in my world, do not exist so that we can have a day off work: they have myriad reasons and purposes that ought to be observed. (Well, some do. I am very particular about Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays -- but mostly I don't think about Martin Luther King Day at all!) So I have been going through my little rituals, making certain my bedroom is clean, that I've got the right clothing, the right music and reading material and trying to work out something for breakfast. (I suppose a casual observer would find me superstitious, but the preparations have nothing to do with luck -- I do not believe, for example, that my bedroom will be messy all year long if it isn't clean the moment I drift from one age into another and anyway clean or no on my birthday it is usually and inevitably something of an abomination most of the year -- and everything to do with having the exact right atmosphere, marking a day that I hope can be as right and comfortable and lovely as possible. I like for things to look and feel a certain way -- I want to be my happiest, if I can. Which is all a bit silly, I suppose. But I am nothing if not a bit silly!)
The other way I keep birthdays is by making something out of them -- milestones, I suppose. I would hate to reach the end of one of my years and realise that nothing had changed, that I had not done anything worth note or become much of a better person: that the last twelve months hadn't meant anything.
But what do these twelve months mean? I am still sorting this out.
They were not entirely good twelve months -- and yet in spots they glisten and shimmer more than most. I don't know that I've ever had such an exquisite space of time to live in as my holiday in Virginia Beach: I remember it as a series of colours and shapes, splashes on a canvas, bits of a collage. The night I stood, wet from swimming, on the roof of the hotel and watched the city, a wonder in purple and gold, move, almost silently, below me, as the wind skimmed the damp from my skin. The feeling of wide-open-ness the little consignment shop I went to with Alyssa gave me -- all of these strange things full of possibilities and histories crowded into a tiny room or two! (I still wonder about that beaded hat I bought. Is it a replica, or did some twenties flapper really wear it? And how old is my beret, and who owned it before me, and what did they think of it?) Alyssa and I in our pyjamas, watching Pride & Prejudice in the early morning with oven-hot biscuits in our hands (there are few films that have managed to send me into such a state of overwhelmed enchantment), and taking photographs in the field, by the train tracks, by the pond, in the woods, sharing our writing and talking over each other's fine points of plot, and generally communing, enjoying each other. Some part of me grew then, I think.
Another part of me grew in Mississippi: it was my first solitary adventure, I think. My parents have been somehow involved in nearly everything I've ever done -- and this is not a bad thing, because I am quite young and I do love my parents and don't mind experiencing most things with them. (Anyway I've always needed them for transportation!) I had to do things on my own -- and even though I was miserable half the time I was there, I felt like I was doing something. Something that was something. (Although I would have felt better if I'd had jobs to do that I was actually good at: rewiring houses and pulling up floorboards are not areas in which I shine! My favourite day was when we taught VBS to a group of children in a trailer park -- and then we played games with them and did their hair and just loved on them. They were so hungry for love.) Of course there were Adult Chaperones, so it wasn't a complete 'here I am in the wide wide world' experience, but it was something that was entirely mine. The people I was with weren't people I shared the experience with, if this makes any sense. (Which is a pity. I wish they had been that sort, but we never could have been kindred spirits. Some of them wouldn't even take our work seriously, which hurt and frustrated and saddened me.) And I saw things -- concrete slabs where houses had been, food-starved love-starved children, something that had once been a bridge and is now a mess of concrete and steel tumbled over the water -- which I will not soon forget.
My sixteenth birthday (well, the day after) started with Dad leaving his church position. Sort of a neat cut, that -- I had a complete other life to start over with. It certainly feels like that now -- I hardly see the same places. My haunts are new ones. I live in a new house, a new part of town, go to a new church (two new churches, really). I think and behave and understand and exist in different ways; I move in new patterns. I like this, I think, except the new things aren't always as good as they ought to be. Sometimes they are not even better. But there are more years, aren't there? (I am feeling uncharacteristically optimistic tonight!)
I feel as if I keep growing wings this year. I have read books that nestled inside of me and begun changing my inner workings. I have had experiences that are not shared with anyone else -- I've trundled about town on my bicycle and learnt not to wear skirts on it and gotten lost and gotten un-lost again and I've learnt to do a lot of things I was nervous about before (talk to strangers, for example -- asking for directions is no longer terrifying!). I feel more independent, and less dependent, which I like. (Everyone needs some amount of dependency, of course -- it is not good for man to be alone! -- but I feel a lot better not having to ask my parents to do so much for me. I can provide my own transportation, most of the time; soon, I hope, I can pay my way through things.)
Last year I remember that I said I thought I finally 'found myself'. I have discovered otherwise since: I keep growing out of my skin and having to find a new one. I stumble over bits and pieces of life the way I still stumble over furniture because I'm still unsure as to what my body is doing and how it fits into spaces. I don't like this; it is awkward and confusing and disconcerting and I keep learning about how inadequate I am as a human being. Every time I seem to solve one problem, I discover a new one -- or an old one is magnified. I suppose this is how life goes always. We do want a perfection we can never quite attain in this life, in this world. I find that the more I learn, the less I feel that I know: the more I learn, the more I discover just now much there is to learn.
I have been learning more about people: good things and bad things. There's this funny juxtaposition of thought in my head -- that it's unwise to depend on people too much, and the other side of the equation that is humanity's need to be codependent. There is a delicate balance between the two. I am learning it. I am learning about life and about death. Leandra, my miracle baby sister, came home from the hospital nearly the same time that Roscoe, beloved feline companion of thirteen years, finally breathed his last. Life is beautiful and death is horrible and I want to 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' -- but there is a promise of new life after death, that we don't spin around on Earth for no particular reason, that we mean something. This is a thing I learn to cling to. I want to believe in purposes.
Funny, now. I am thinking about the last year and the bits that are brightest in my memory are not, in fact, the bits that involve betrayal or dissatisfaction or my great stretches of gloominess. I remember little things: running outside on a sharp October afternoon, skipping through a windfall of fiery leaves that lie on the pavement like a garment; hearing Leandra cry for the first time; an eclipse of the moon glimpsed over the cityscape of Pittsburgh as we drove through it; wee Bartholomew curled against my chest for an entire night; my sudden Christmas epiphany; cycling to the library for the first time, singing Bob Dylan at the top of my lungs; the day I read Two-Part Invention and took a walk afterwards; the day I listened to Little Earthquakes lying on my bed watching the trees sway and taking a long bath afterwards and being utterly, completely silent; thunderstorms and brainstorms, reading delicious literature with a cup of cocoa on the windowsill and talking on the phone or instant messaging into absurd hours of the morning, sitting on my roof watching the sun set in a great liquid mass of gold; the bird that soared onto my windowsill and strutted up and down it like a promenading dandy. These are things I love and live for; I wonder, sometimes, if God gives me the small moments like gifts to be treasured. They reflect eternity, I think.
This is all getting out of order. I'm not entirely sure what I am saying -- but then, when am I? Here's to another year, here's to growing out of old things and into better ones. Here's to the life-long struggle of being what we were supposed to be. Here's to life, and love, and why. (And me being terribly sentimental and not half pretentious, but then what are holidays for?)
I am ritualistic by nature. A day is not a thing that happens: it's an event. Things must be prepared. And things mean things. Birthdays and new years and memorial holidays, in my world, do not exist so that we can have a day off work: they have myriad reasons and purposes that ought to be observed. (Well, some do. I am very particular about Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays -- but mostly I don't think about Martin Luther King Day at all!) So I have been going through my little rituals, making certain my bedroom is clean, that I've got the right clothing, the right music and reading material and trying to work out something for breakfast. (I suppose a casual observer would find me superstitious, but the preparations have nothing to do with luck -- I do not believe, for example, that my bedroom will be messy all year long if it isn't clean the moment I drift from one age into another and anyway clean or no on my birthday it is usually and inevitably something of an abomination most of the year -- and everything to do with having the exact right atmosphere, marking a day that I hope can be as right and comfortable and lovely as possible. I like for things to look and feel a certain way -- I want to be my happiest, if I can. Which is all a bit silly, I suppose. But I am nothing if not a bit silly!)
The other way I keep birthdays is by making something out of them -- milestones, I suppose. I would hate to reach the end of one of my years and realise that nothing had changed, that I had not done anything worth note or become much of a better person: that the last twelve months hadn't meant anything.
But what do these twelve months mean? I am still sorting this out.
They were not entirely good twelve months -- and yet in spots they glisten and shimmer more than most. I don't know that I've ever had such an exquisite space of time to live in as my holiday in Virginia Beach: I remember it as a series of colours and shapes, splashes on a canvas, bits of a collage. The night I stood, wet from swimming, on the roof of the hotel and watched the city, a wonder in purple and gold, move, almost silently, below me, as the wind skimmed the damp from my skin. The feeling of wide-open-ness the little consignment shop I went to with Alyssa gave me -- all of these strange things full of possibilities and histories crowded into a tiny room or two! (I still wonder about that beaded hat I bought. Is it a replica, or did some twenties flapper really wear it? And how old is my beret, and who owned it before me, and what did they think of it?) Alyssa and I in our pyjamas, watching Pride & Prejudice in the early morning with oven-hot biscuits in our hands (there are few films that have managed to send me into such a state of overwhelmed enchantment), and taking photographs in the field, by the train tracks, by the pond, in the woods, sharing our writing and talking over each other's fine points of plot, and generally communing, enjoying each other. Some part of me grew then, I think.
Another part of me grew in Mississippi: it was my first solitary adventure, I think. My parents have been somehow involved in nearly everything I've ever done -- and this is not a bad thing, because I am quite young and I do love my parents and don't mind experiencing most things with them. (Anyway I've always needed them for transportation!) I had to do things on my own -- and even though I was miserable half the time I was there, I felt like I was doing something. Something that was something. (Although I would have felt better if I'd had jobs to do that I was actually good at: rewiring houses and pulling up floorboards are not areas in which I shine! My favourite day was when we taught VBS to a group of children in a trailer park -- and then we played games with them and did their hair and just loved on them. They were so hungry for love.) Of course there were Adult Chaperones, so it wasn't a complete 'here I am in the wide wide world' experience, but it was something that was entirely mine. The people I was with weren't people I shared the experience with, if this makes any sense. (Which is a pity. I wish they had been that sort, but we never could have been kindred spirits. Some of them wouldn't even take our work seriously, which hurt and frustrated and saddened me.) And I saw things -- concrete slabs where houses had been, food-starved love-starved children, something that had once been a bridge and is now a mess of concrete and steel tumbled over the water -- which I will not soon forget.
My sixteenth birthday (well, the day after) started with Dad leaving his church position. Sort of a neat cut, that -- I had a complete other life to start over with. It certainly feels like that now -- I hardly see the same places. My haunts are new ones. I live in a new house, a new part of town, go to a new church (two new churches, really). I think and behave and understand and exist in different ways; I move in new patterns. I like this, I think, except the new things aren't always as good as they ought to be. Sometimes they are not even better. But there are more years, aren't there? (I am feeling uncharacteristically optimistic tonight!)
I feel as if I keep growing wings this year. I have read books that nestled inside of me and begun changing my inner workings. I have had experiences that are not shared with anyone else -- I've trundled about town on my bicycle and learnt not to wear skirts on it and gotten lost and gotten un-lost again and I've learnt to do a lot of things I was nervous about before (talk to strangers, for example -- asking for directions is no longer terrifying!). I feel more independent, and less dependent, which I like. (Everyone needs some amount of dependency, of course -- it is not good for man to be alone! -- but I feel a lot better not having to ask my parents to do so much for me. I can provide my own transportation, most of the time; soon, I hope, I can pay my way through things.)
Last year I remember that I said I thought I finally 'found myself'. I have discovered otherwise since: I keep growing out of my skin and having to find a new one. I stumble over bits and pieces of life the way I still stumble over furniture because I'm still unsure as to what my body is doing and how it fits into spaces. I don't like this; it is awkward and confusing and disconcerting and I keep learning about how inadequate I am as a human being. Every time I seem to solve one problem, I discover a new one -- or an old one is magnified. I suppose this is how life goes always. We do want a perfection we can never quite attain in this life, in this world. I find that the more I learn, the less I feel that I know: the more I learn, the more I discover just now much there is to learn.
I have been learning more about people: good things and bad things. There's this funny juxtaposition of thought in my head -- that it's unwise to depend on people too much, and the other side of the equation that is humanity's need to be codependent. There is a delicate balance between the two. I am learning it. I am learning about life and about death. Leandra, my miracle baby sister, came home from the hospital nearly the same time that Roscoe, beloved feline companion of thirteen years, finally breathed his last. Life is beautiful and death is horrible and I want to 'rage, rage against the dying of the light' -- but there is a promise of new life after death, that we don't spin around on Earth for no particular reason, that we mean something. This is a thing I learn to cling to. I want to believe in purposes.
Funny, now. I am thinking about the last year and the bits that are brightest in my memory are not, in fact, the bits that involve betrayal or dissatisfaction or my great stretches of gloominess. I remember little things: running outside on a sharp October afternoon, skipping through a windfall of fiery leaves that lie on the pavement like a garment; hearing Leandra cry for the first time; an eclipse of the moon glimpsed over the cityscape of Pittsburgh as we drove through it; wee Bartholomew curled against my chest for an entire night; my sudden Christmas epiphany; cycling to the library for the first time, singing Bob Dylan at the top of my lungs; the day I read Two-Part Invention and took a walk afterwards; the day I listened to Little Earthquakes lying on my bed watching the trees sway and taking a long bath afterwards and being utterly, completely silent; thunderstorms and brainstorms, reading delicious literature with a cup of cocoa on the windowsill and talking on the phone or instant messaging into absurd hours of the morning, sitting on my roof watching the sun set in a great liquid mass of gold; the bird that soared onto my windowsill and strutted up and down it like a promenading dandy. These are things I love and live for; I wonder, sometimes, if God gives me the small moments like gifts to be treasured. They reflect eternity, I think.
This is all getting out of order. I'm not entirely sure what I am saying -- but then, when am I? Here's to another year, here's to growing out of old things and into better ones. Here's to the life-long struggle of being what we were supposed to be. Here's to life, and love, and why. (And me being terribly sentimental and not half pretentious, but then what are holidays for?)