On the Eve of My Twentieth Birthday
I was born an old (no, elderly) soul.
Lullabies would draw tears from my baby eyes down my baby face, as my baby brain comprehended the love (oh, the love!) my mommy had in singing her baby to sleep.
They’d play a tape for me each night.
“When you wish upon a star…” would make me cry in silent sentiment—the love, the tenderness, Mommy and Daddy and Jiminy Cricket sending me off to Dreamland!—and then put me out like the light that erased all my worries, that sent the monsters scurrying under my bed and back into my closet.
But my baby eyes and face and brain grew. They grew and grew and I wanted them to grow more and more. The light no longer dispelled imaginary beasts but intangible fears—grown-up things.
Now I am nearly twenty. Two decades old. I am old enough to have a baby of my own. Oh, but the thought only makes me blush! That would mean sending a rusty stake through the heart of my childhood, of Mommy and Daddy’s little baby. No! No! No footprints in that pure-driven snow! It’s already been disturbed by curse words, muddied with filthy jokes, dented by feelings I tried to delay…No, no, no!
That was one of my first words, “no.” One of the first sentences I babbled before my second birthday, with my baby mouth and a baby brain that wanted to be a grown-up. “No, dont! I do it all by myself!” I’m more independent then than I am now, for I can’t do all this by myself.
I’m up crying at 3AM like a newborn, but no one is here. I’m too big to hold, anyhow; there’s too much of me to cradle. The baby has grown, but she still sees the shadows dart about her room. The only difference is that there’s no one there to turn on the light. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
No, no, there is!
The grown baby is staring at a monster. He threatens to bring her years of trial, and baby wants to run and run and run…run on those legs and feet that were once microscopic stumps on her embryonic body, inside Mommy. That grew and grew and kicked inside her. That propelled baby on the floor to crawl, then stood her up to make her walk proudly.
Baby is a baby no more. In fact, she’s hardly even a girl. She is a woman.
Oh, what a big, scary, grown-up word!
How swiftly time has moved, and how little time it’s actually been in the grand scheme of things. What I’d give to return to that blissful state of perpetual wonderment, where everything was beautiful and harmless. Joy was pervasive and contagious, and worries were of things fictitious. I wish I could spend just one last night in each of my childhood bedrooms…
…The one in Maryland which held my wicker crib and changing table, which moved to Texas, in which I had dream about finding my Dad in an attic full of skeletons adorned with Bolo ties. Back to Maryland, where the room grew tinier as I grew taller and made necessary accommodations for my imaginary friend, Invisible. That’s where I played with Colorforms and felt-boards and accumulated holographic Campbell’s Soup labels for no good reason. Where I’d listen (and “read” the corresponding books) to the cassettes of scary stories illustrated by Victoria Chess.
Then to the top floor of our Monterey house, which consisted of a tiny pink-tiled bathroom and a big open room. I slept in an alcove beneath a window, boasting a dreamy view of the bay (and a means for talking to the sea lions). The opposite wall supported bookshelves and toy chests and my rocking horse, Smoke. Around the corner was my dresser and fish tank, from which Brownie jumped one night. It’s where we wheeled the “little TV” when I was sick; where I listened to it whir the same groaning melody with each tape I ejected and inserted. My pop-out Anastasia poster hung facing the happy Noah’s Ark picture from my nursery. This bedroom was where I tried to write my first journal at age six and developed a love for tie-dye and papier-mâché necklaces.
And then the first house in Virginia, with the great tree out front. I conquered my fear of falling asleep alone and developed a dependency on white noise. I had my first play dates with friends I still treasure and others with whom I’ve lost all contact. At seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven I looked back at all my “baby things” and began to get embarrassed by my parents. I endured the rough beginnings of my “awkward phase” a great deal earlier than all my peers. I did a lot of growing there.
I’m sitting in the bedroom that’s been mine for eight years, that’s taken me from twelve to twenty, from junior high to college, through growing pains of every variety. And I can’t believe how much has changed. Twenty years is a long time. Yet I still see my shadow the same way I did when I was three, and I still like to examine my hands, although which much less awe than what captivated my infant self. My days of dolls and diapers are far behind me; now I’m teetering on the verge of paychecks, landlords and cocktails. Ten years ago I was a portly, greasy-haired fourth grader with no eyebrows and buck teeth. Nine-year-old me would never have imagined who she might be ten years from then, in the same way that nineteen-year-old me cannot fathom where she’ll be at thirty. Aging is becoming a big deal for me, as I notice the lines in my face deepen. I see my fifty-eight-year-old mother grow increasingly frustrated with her changing body and note the same attitude in myself. And I’ve realized that all my personal beliefs and motives, even my conscience, are based on how precious my innocence is to me, the last thread attaching me to the warmth and comfort of pure goodness. I don’t ever want to lose that. It’s become almost like a separate entity living inside me, and I can’t imagine where I’d be without it.
Getting older is scary, and I feel like it will erase all the wonderful memories of the past. Of my childhood.
Because my childhood is my past.
What a terrifying thought.
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