Month: July 2017

I think possibly the most important literature has always been children’s books. It’s through the eight compound eyes of Charlotte that we learn what true friendship looks like, and most of us know half of our pioneering history through Laura Ingalls Wilder (and the other half through repeatedly dying of dysentery on The Oregon Trail). Laura could paint a picture a grasshopper plague in a way I’ve certainly never forgotten. And Winnie-the-Pooh’s world gave us an entire 100-Acre Wood to play within while Alice let us know that impossible things are the best kind, especially before breakfast.

But even within that auspicious company, I would place The Velveteen Rabbit at the top of a life-lessons-covertly-taught-during-childhood list. As a young reader, you often don’t realize how impactful certain words or memories are. How some books, or movies, or experiences will stay with you much longer than you would ever guess.

Through adult life, I think the number of times a person Googles something from childhood is indicative of its impact. For me, it’s the Skin Horse’s wise soliloquy about Being Real, words I’ve rolled around in my head during countless times of trial and error, until now they’re polished and smooth, comfortable and comforting, even in their, sometimes painful, faultless precision.

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

I’ll finish reading, then breathe a little deeper, consciously relax my tight jaw and neck and shoulders.

Does it hurt? “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, because he was always truthful. “…It doesn’t happen all at once. You become.”

We become. There are times in all of our lives that we can feel those sage words reverberating within our hearts. Sometimes our guts. (But aren’t those two nearly always connected?)

We grow up. We get older. We go through good times and hard times, and days that we take for granted, and then wish we could take back to either to live again or to live a little different this time around. It hurts sometimes. Our hearts break, and when we rebuild them, like the Skin Horse says, we look a little different on the other side. It’s part and parcel of being human. We have to live in that growth, letting it hurt a little — or a lot — accepting that those things make us real.

Some days, being real makes jumping out of bed a little harder. There is an eddying current holding us back, a whirlpool vortex circling from our chests straight through to our hearts. Or a gray drizzle that won’t clear from our minds, so that we can see through it, but nothing seems clear. What if, in 1993, I had gone left instead of right? What would that look like today? What if I’d made braver decisions all along, or just once or twice? What if yesterday, I’d said no instead of yes? Yes instead of no? We’re held captive to the what-ifs, even though what-ifs are inevitable.

All of life is a risk and a choice. When we’re children, when so many of our foundations are being built, we don’t always understand that The Giving Tree may one day break our hearts. We just feel a little frustration with the Boy for being so selfish, and then we go make mud pies in the backyard. But as adults, we realize that if you pull a little at one string, it affects a dozen others. That sometimes when it looks like selfishness, like apathy, like heartlessness — instead it’s the impossible task of untangling the knotted tug-of-war in front of us.

We become real, and it hurts. We learn that single phone calls can change lives, that the actions of others will have every bit as much impact on us as what we decide for ourselves — that there are times we can only react, but that we are ultimately the ones responsible for our reactions. That hopefully our reactions are new and active choices, based on new calculations of new risks, and not just boomeranging repercussions.

This week, on the drive to day care, my oldest daughter said, “I wish scars stayed forever. Because otherwise, how can people really believe you when you tell your stories?”

My youngest scoffed. “But what if the scar was on your face?”

“Well, I wish you could choose,” the oldest responded.

Oh, my amazing, darling, wonderful children. If only we could choose. If only.

 

 In my stylized, nostalgia-filter version of the 1950s and 60s, around this time of the year, friends and neighbors would gather, perhaps somewhat reluctantly while feigning interest, and partake in buffets of shrimp cocktail, and French onion dip and things encased in jello. Whiskey cocktails drank while wearing wingtip shoes or red lipstick. And the lights would dim, and guests would oooh and ahhh over the Jones’ or the Smiths’ vacation photos, revolving through with the click, click, click of the rotating projector, the occasional slide upside down, so that everyone would lean their necks to the right in a choreographed pantomime to compensate.

Granted, my familiarity with the 1950s and 60s is mostly limited to Mad Men previews and movies like Mr. Holland’s Opus and Catch Me If You Can. So, I could be completely full of it. And I probably am. But based on the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same, my guess is that while we eat less jello as a rule, we have merely streamlined the party, gotten rid of the bulky projectors and created Facebook albums of our smiling adventures. Outside of these photos, toddlers melt down, and siblings refuse to give up their window seat despite all promises yesterday to the contrary, and spouses absently pass each other, unseeing, in the kitchen.

We live in a world where every photo we take can be immediately tweaked for vibrancy and hue, filters applied. Larger eyes and softer light, smoother skin, fewer wrinkles, backgrounds smudged or expunged altogether. It’s no wonder that we wonder sometimes get lost in the technicolor and forget that most of life is lived in the gray areas, that most people we meet are far more complex than our social media footprint, the smile in passing at the grocery store, or even the persona we legitimately cultivate and own for all but select few people who are our people.

Beyond the whiskey cocktails and whirring projectors of the 1950s, and past the witty Away Messages of our 1990s chat rooms, and right through the carefully edited images we post today, life has no filter. (#nofilter, if you will.) It’s hard to own, sometimes, when everyone else’s life is airbrushed for public consumption, the messy details of our own. In a culture of 5-year and 10-year plans and multi-tasking reverence and the expectation that we are public domain, it’s hard to admit that tomorrow is a bit foggy, that we’re feeling jagged and brittle, or overwhelmed, that my magic 8-ball always shakes to “Reply hazy. Ask again later.”

Charcoal. Granite. Graphite. Flint. It’s all gray. Sometimes a soft dove gray. Sometimes a heavy pewter. But it’s a spectrum, as we are, in constant flux.

Things I know for sure, in black and white: I’m out of daycare lunchbox drinks. There is laundry to do. School starts in 2 ½ weeks. Tennis shoes should be bought. This week should have several pool days.

And after that, we’ll see.

We’ll see. That classic line of adulthood, heard by children everywhere with an impatient sigh. But really, if we could admit that we’re just talking to ourselves, that we’re waiting for the Universe to answer a little more decisively, and in the meantime, day by day, we’ll buy Capri Suns and Nikes, wouldn’t we all sleep a little sounder?