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My partner, Kevin Brooks, tells wonderful personal stories. He recounts adventures from his childhood and from the lives of his family members. These stories are funny, poignant and more-or-less true. He urges me to tell the more-or-less true stories from my own life, but I resist. I tell him it's because I prefer the fiction and lies, myths and folktales I surround myself with on stage, but honestly? it's in part because the memories are hazy or seem just like little anecdotes and moreso because who I am now is rarely interested in looking back with nostalgia. But. But.
Who I used to be sneaks up on me and says, "Surprise! You thought I was gone, but here I am, I'm still part of you and I'm not going away! Aren't you glad?" Sometimes I cringe. ohgodithoughti'dgottenoverthat ther times I find myself welcoming in my OnceUponATime with open arms. Then I find myself telling stories.
This has happened recently in several different ways.
Social networking and the internet in general have forced me to allow the past in. Old friends, people I haven't seen or thought of in hundreds of years (so it seems) are now part of my regular life. This is a trite observation of course, I'm sure the same has happened to you. Some of these new-old relationships have become unexpected treasures that I never would have been given if I'd kept running forward. In these relationships we start out reminiscing but then find the present to be much more interesting.
While I'm enjoying the now-old relationships, what I find more striking is the gift of myself. It's as though I've recently become willing to let my old self back in, as though I've friended my own OnceUponATime. Two incidents in particular are bright examples.
A song came on the radio recently, you don't need to know what it was, and suddenly I remembered the boy I was madly in love with in seventh grade, the boy who didn't know I was alive. He was an older man; he was in eighth grade. My memory of him tells me he had dark hair and eyes and far too many pimples, but my 12-year -old self tells me he was sweet and quiet and had a voice that sent shivers down my spine. It doesn't matter that the lyrics now sound as corny as anything rejected by Hallmark; then it was the soundtrack to the school year and drifted down the halls whenever he walked by. I remember that 12 year old feeling with every molecule. That feeling still informs how I love, the deep physicality of the emotion, the way music shapes my heart. And I know that when I'm 80 I'll smile at the music I now think of as romantic.
My old self also came barreling home when I saw the movie Star Trek. Once upon a time I was a devoted sci-fi geek. Once upon a time I took in more sci-fi media that I now could name. Once upon a time I... well, I try not to think about those times too much these days. That kind of nostalgia might rot your teeth. But when I saw Star Trek every geeky molecule of my being came rushing to the surface at Warp 10 and I was incredibly happy. I leaned over to whisper in my friend's ear, "We're such nerds," and was relieved to see tears glistening in her eyes too. I saw that film not only with my friends but with generations of my own self. We had a wonderful time. When we left the theater I remembered and retained some of my young imagination and hope and determination that I could reach the stars. I'd forgotten some of it. It felt good to remember who I was, to realize I am almost who I wanted to be. So I'm nerd. So what.
Maybe Kevin is right and I should work some of these anecdotes into stories. For right now, though, I think it's enough that I'm walking side-by-side with my past selves, remembering who I used to be and letting them get used to who I have become.
(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer
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