The Girl I Was

BY DEVON PIKE

It’s so warm that I can’t remember what cold feels like when I start to pack the car and so I make mistakes, make myself late. I let the dog distract me. I consider planting the bulbs in the planters, but I get that one right, leave them to Monday. My neighbors may judge me, but the truth is no one is coming to grade me on my planters. The bulbs can wait. My future can’t.

It’s Thursday now, leaving day, even though I can’t quite seem to leave. Leave my home, my dog, my community, the life I’ve been leading until today. Can’t leave my child either, even though she has already left me and is happily at school, excited for the weekend beyond. “I love you, Mom! Have a great time! See you Monday!” she called over her shoulder when I dropped her off this morning, carelessly or carefreely or carefully – I’m not sure which. It could be any of them; might be all of them actually.

I’ve been waiting for this weekend, this moment, a chance to draw a line in the sand, turn left instead of right. To change my life instead of letting it continue to change me, gently or not so gently wearing down my edges like the shells I collect on Bayley Beach to paint with gold foil later; it pushes at me, shaping and reshaping me. Some days, I look so much like everybody else, I no longer recognize myself. It’s time.

It’s been time for a long while. When I graduated from Brown University during the recession of 1993 with a literature degree and a job offer in the executive training program at Filene’s Department Stores, I knew which one I had to choose. It wasn’t my dream – I wanted to write – but it was many other people’s dream, and that was good enough for a 21-year-old with $100 in her bank account. I went to work. I told myself I needed life experience to write about anyway, that I would come back to it. 

I imagined myself as a young mother, writing about my glamorous life in fashion – my dog at my feet, kids playing happily in the backyard. But there were other things in the way, of course: the marrying, the mothering, the accomplishing, the eggshell walking. Divorcing, falling apart, falling back together only to be torn apart again, surviving anyway. These things take time. Questioning myself, that took time too, and rising again, leading, succeeding. Caretaking, losing, grieving, regretting, resigning, surrendering. These all had to happen first. The mothering part was especially beautiful—breathtaking, in fact. I wouldn’t do it differently, even if I could.

But now I am here, and the moment is here. And I am ready to meet it, and also not ready at all —unprepared, after a career of realizing others’ dreams to finally claim my own. Everything on the other side of this moment is totally unknown, and today I am still just choosing it. Anything is possible. But tomorrow, after I have packed the car and left the dog and my child, let the bulbs stay on the porch, I will have chosen, and it will all be different then. It will be different because I will be different. Today I am a work in progress; tomorrow I will be a new work, in a new progress.

They call it a writing retreat, this moment I’ve been waiting for, the thing I have chosen to change me. It felt right when I signed up back in November, and again when I sent the deposit in January, and before that in September when I left my job to make space for all this possibility, but here we are in March and I am questioning my choices. Why choose retreat, when what I want is to move forward? I love a treat, of course—who doesn’t? I like the idea of returning, reclaiming who I thought I could be, but all the re’s are starting to feel wrong. Can we ever really return to anything? How can I recover the girl I was, when I have changed so much in the process of getting back to myself? 

On Monday, when the retreating is done, when the hyacinth bulb dirt is under her fingernails, who will she be then, the girl I was? What will she have learned? I’m curious. What will it feel like to be her and no longer me? 

And so I resume the packing, this last thing in my way. I’m savoring it—the tail end of my now, of all that is familiar. It’s easy to excuse another book, less so another outfit, but I pack it anyway. There are things I need and things I want, things I might want at some point, and others I’m not sure about yet. More still that I don’t want at all but I bring them anyway because the me I am either returning to or approaching, she has desires too. Maybe the pink sneakers will be important to her, or this floral notebook, or my mother’s engagement ring in its silver box. It’s hard to know what tools it takes to build a future from your past.