If I Could Talk to a Younger Me
This post is for me, but maybe someone will find this, feel the same way. I’m doing a scrapbook of sorts. I’ve got a book with a leather cover, filled with archival quality paper. I write something and carefully glue pictures in. Is this because my father had dementia? That I am cementing my memories and images into place so that they will live on? My childhood was happy. It took place in the Detroit when the elms were alive, when they created magical tunnels of leaves, magestic and grounding us in their glory. I don’t remember when the elms died. I remember them as living beings, a backdrop to a sunny childhood with many siblings, neighborhoods crowded with children playing outside.
My Dad did the same, he had a picture-perfect memory of his childhood, a snapshot of life on a rural Ontario farm. Community. Lake. Music. Snow. And always, always the sense of belonging somewhere.
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Why do I want to stop here? Because my Dad suffered a trauma, grief upon grief. He was a strange and quirky child, and the person who understood him, defended him and celebrated him, died when he was just nine years old. His father. This, and ten years later the murder of his close friend, bracketed his adolescence in early death, then violent death. Being the child of this man, this loving man who held so much inside was a long lament in some ways. We did learn to trust the world and the magic of an early childhood filled with snow and hot chocolate and camping trips to the lake. I go back to it often. But after I passed the threshold into early adolescence, I was alone emotionally. This was difficult for me. I froze at puberty, when my deformity from my birth defect was becoming more and more prevalent. One of my sisters got into drugs and “the life” but hard. I think my parents brought us as far as they could, but in some ways I know we are still frozen in time, where all the beautiful things live.
I know I have to grow beyond. Go back to the time in life when I was alone, had noone to talk to. Talk about the thing I hated the most, my own physical being. Now I am approaching my 6th decade here on this planet, doing my best to nurture, but this one place that has been guarded for so long, it’s time to grow up.
Where is the grief? I think in knowing that my child self could have grown up with love and support decades ago, but I froze. So many childhoods are interrupted. I tried so many things, but now I must go back in time to that time. I hate this paragraph even as I write this. I could pull out a platitude. Oh what would you say to a younger you?
If I Could Talk to a Younger Me Song by Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck
Feel the fear inside your chest
Watch it ebb and flow
Darkest hour dies at the dawn
First clearings yours to reap and sow
If I could talk to a younger me
I'd tell me to go slow
This time on Earth it moves so fast
And when it's gone, it's gone
When it's gone, it's gone
If I could talk to a younger me
I'd tell me to be bold
Follow your heart like a bird set free
Dreams can't be bought or sold
Feel the fear inside your chest
Watch it ebb and flow
Darkest hour dies at the dawn
First clearings yours to reap and sow
Feel love inside your chest
Watch it overflow
True love asks for nothing back
Take this world, it's yours to grow
If I could talk to a younger me
I'd tell me to go slow
This time on Earth it moves so fast
And when it's gone, it's gone
When it's gone, it's gone
