I Am Every Age I Have Ever Been

Welcoming visits from the past

There is something so intimidatingly fresh about September. It comes from when I was young, stepping into a new grade and feeling so much older than I was. The mistakes and insecurities of the year before were wiped clean by the blurry in-between of summer, thinning all the good moments in preparation for more. Autumn always makes growing up feel more prominent.

I have been cleaning out my room this week, getting ready for my move back to university. I’ve found a lot of memorabilia from my early years: my Geometry math notes from freshman year of high school, a collection of old Bath and Body Works hand sanitizers, the American Girl A Smart Girl's Guide to Boys, snowglobes from the zoo. I look through these as if they belonged to someone else, someone who lived in this body before I did.

Even though I don’t remember my memories with these objects, my heart still beats with nostalgia. I imagine this is what reincarnation would feel like. If a bird dies and comes back a willow tree, would it still feel free when the wind blows? Regardless of whether I remember a particular time of my life (and these days I don’t tend to), I still feel them. They will always exist within me.

Liana Finck for The New Yorker

Sandra Cisneros wries in "Eleven":

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.

I am every age I have ever been. I recognize that now, but it took me a while. At 18, I pushed down 17 in search of 21. At 12, I ached for 16. I knew those ages weren’t there, but I just wanted to grow up quickly. I didn’t know what a gift slowing down was.

As I get older, I have begun to magically experience the remnants of my childhood, finally bubbling up after being pushed down for too long. I think it’s trying to catch up. I welcome it with no shame. I use stickers in my journal and find shapes in clouds and I eat my applesauce in squeezy tube form. I lean into that joy. Hello, inner child. I’m glad we’ve reconnected.

Of course, there are the bad sides, too. Sometimes I just want someone to pet my head, or give me a gold star sticker, or wipe my tears as I cry. There are lots of worries at 21, worries much bigger than the ones I had on the playground. But I have realized how much wonder still lives within me, and I’ve unlocked those doors so everything can spill through them. So next time I have to take an exam or log onto LinkedIn, I’ll find a window and look for the face in the moon, or imagine the trees waving to me. Then I’ll take a deep breath and move on.

Simon Van Booy wrote in “Little Birds”:

Each year is putting a new coat over all the old ones. Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out.

Every day I am learning what it means to be 21. I use my credit card and send emails and think about the future. But sometimes life will pause, and I can take a step backward. I’ll be driving down the road to my old high school, and the light will flicker from the trees at a particular angle, and I’ll feel 17 again. I’ll stay up until midnight in anticipation for a new album, and that’s 14, when lives I never had a piece of felt more important than my own. I’ll go home with wet hair after swimming all day and feel like I’m 10, on the afternoon bus after a long day of summer camp. Even now, I sometimes feel the leftovers of a quiet quarantine day from age 20.

I’m barely a quarter into my life, and I know that as the ages go by, the Russian dolls from the beginning will grow smaller. But I imagine myself decades from now, taking a moment to jump into a puddle or pet a dog, still welcoming visits from my inner child.

Mary Oliver wrote in her essay “Of Power and Time”:

To begin with, there is the child I was. Certainly I am not that child anymore! Yet, distantly, or sometimes not so distantly, I can hear that child’s voice — I can feel its hope, or its distress. It has not vanished. Powerful, egotistical, insinuating — its presence rises, in memory, or from the steamy river of dreams. It is not gone, not by a long shot. It is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave.

Further Reading

“Nostos” by Louise Glück

“Evening Sun” by Jane Kenyon

“Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” by Tracy K. Smith

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What I Enjoyed This Week

Recent Reads

• Writers and Lovers by Lily King. I think this has entered my top 3 books of the year. I started this book two weeks ago and took this long to finish it because I didn’t want it to end. It follows a 31-year-old writer named Casey, who works as a waitress as she tries to finish and sell her first novel. She deals with two love interests, crippling financial debt, and the recent sudden death of her mother. Her life is hard. Yet, still, King writes with such kind, soothing prose. There is a unique precision in her descriptions of feeling, memory, and observation that strikes a deep chord in me. Casey’s character feels less like fiction and more like truth. Her writing process is described with intimacy and intention. And I particularly loved King’s unromanticized portrayal of work in the service industry — fast-paced, stressful, but a community nonetheless. 5/5!

• “Imaginary Conversation” by Linda Pastan. This floored me when I read it, and it’s weaved its way into my list of favorites. You tell me to live each day / as if it were my last […] / But why the last? I ask. Why not / live each day as if it were the first— / all raw astonishment”. That line will live in my brain forever. This was written in the 30s, and under that context, it becomes even more poignant. Domestic culture favors productivity, and our current culture does too. It is equally productive to slow down.

• This very short tanka by Sonia Sanchez has been in my mind all week:

  autumn. a bonfire
  of leaves. morning peels us toward
  pomegranate festivals.
  and in the evening i bring
  you soup cooled by my laughter.

  I can just feel it. You know?

Other Wonderful Things

• Modern Love on Amazon Prime. I love the New York Times Modern Love column (and its matching podcast), and a few years ago it was turned into an anthology TV series. The second season came out recently. I am always so moved by the episodes. Because they’re real-life stories by real-life people, they tend to be quite mellow and realistic, which I enjoy much more than the big, blown-up fairy tales. And it’s not always romantic love, either — much of it includes platonic, familial, or self-love. It’s all great, but I especially recommend Anne Hathaway’s episode (3) from Season 1. I think about it all the time.

• As I’m writing this I’m drinking my favorite tea of all time and figured it was worth a mention — Mariage Frère’s Thé Des Impressionnistes. It’s a floral vanilla green tea. I first bought it on a very special trip to Paris when I was 15, and in an effort to salvage it I turned drinking it into a sacred ritual of sorts. It lasted four years, until I returned in 2019 to pick up a new one. I’ve changed a lot since I was 15, and there aren’t many things that have stuck around. But this did, so I still consider it sacred. If you’re in the US you can buy it here!

Thank you for reading as always.

<3

Tara

(Cover Photo: “The Ten Largest, No. 2, Childhood” by Hilma Af Klint (1907). From a series of 10 works depicting the cycle of life, focusing on color theory.)

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