As a teenager I insisted upon having my own Christmas tree. This meant that I took a pair of scissors out to our backyard and used them to gnaw at the sappy branch of an evergreen on the side of the house. Upstairs in my bedroom, I put the lone branch upright in a small jar and draped it precariously with M&M shaped Christmas lights. Then I turned out my bedroom lights and sat on the floor and looked at my small but bright tree, while listening to Tracy Chapman sing “O Holy Night” on the Very Special Christmas Volume 3 compilation from 1997.
There was a meme recently asking what your younger self would think if they met your current self. It’s one of those popular questions of self reflection. When I think about that lonely teenager stubbornly cutting off a branch of an evergreen, I think she’d be curious about me, but also surprised by me. Youth courts ambition, and so many of the benchmarks I set for myself over the years have become moot (publish a book by the time you’re 21! 25! 30! 35? This year? Maybe? By forty? Or fifty?). When I was a teenager I knew the shape of my heart by couldn’t decipher what the shape meant or how it would fit in the world. I couldn’t fathom what a happy marriage looked like, or what someone in their 30s did, or the many, many ways to measure success. And the more important question has become what would my current self think of my younger self, if I were to cross paths with her today? I’ve spent years and years filled with judgement and comparison - picturing my younger self nudges me towards letting all of that self-hatred go.
I told someone recently that I’m limping towards the end of this year. There’s always a trigger in December to reflect on the past 12 months, to count achievements or announcements, but my triumph this year is that I’m alive. That those of us who are alive are alive. For me, this has been a year of staying still, staying uncertain, and staying with myself. It’s the year I couldn’t distract myself from the sturdy shape of my heart and all that’s present in its topography.
Last weekend, Emily and I got a Christmas tree, the biggest tree we’ve ever been able to get. We strung it with lights and unpacked our few ornaments - a frosted bejeweled donut, two glass rainbows, a mint green typewriter with glittering keys, a kitschy bell with the Eiffel Tower on it from that time we went to Paris - and hung everything up. When it was done, we turned off the living room lights and sat on the couch and listened to Tracy Chapman sing “O Holy Night” from A Very Special Christmas Volume 3 from 1997 and looked at our tree. It was quiet. It was not where we were last December, not in our plans or our home or our grief or our love. Of course I thought of my younger self. The future is always on its way.
xo,
c