{twenty years ago}
Today I head back. With a hurried swoop-scoot, my car will effort the tracked miles from home to a place that once was. Carrying a mixed bag possessing a pair of long legged boys, my favorite stand-by heels and me. The drive is always healing. Manifesting a swell of feelings long forgotten. Ones that ache my soul sideways and turn my smile sweet just the same.
20 years ago. I still stumble still over this rapidness we call time. Life reads us not through different chapters. Nah. Different books. Maybe I'll think of it as a series. The kind for the dedicated & loyal reader. Where one book is necessary before the next can be enjoyed. The fallen character can rise again to face her giants not just in book 2, but just as mightily in book 7. Yes, this growing up we call life deserves books. Hard bound covers from front to back.
18 years old. Its spine sits dusty and unmoved on my shelf. The pages I would imagine are scribbled over. Words crossed through & saturated with red ink. Re-written. Over & over. And then. There in the middle nothing but empty pages. Space. Alone & a little awkward around all those words. I remember that space. I remember finding others whose knew those empty pages too. But then with a hurried-nobody notice-see, my 18 year old left hand began scribbling nonsense just so I could read a little more like everyone else's fiction.
This morning I took this novel of my life down off the shelf. With an early morning cup of joe & my worn out threadbare robe, I skimmed those pages where best was so very much sought after. And I read the heart strings of a young woman unsure. I saw the passion untapped there & raw in these chapters. I noted she was bright & funny. And silly. And sad. My eyes listened to her scribbles and I was sure to press my fingerprints onto her ink. Touching the curled pages of handwriting too hard & efforted.
I smiled & I cried. And mostly, I remembered. That giant fighting is worthy of story. A series even. An entire bookshelf of pages filled with adventure and connections. With huge spaces of sadness and tragedy. And with laughter. Lots. Growing. Moving more into the untapped places where passion becomes a page turner the dedicated & loyal reader cannot put down.
Yes, I'm out the door in just a bit. My favorite pair of heels are all I have planned. They're packed beside the hope I have to listen & laugh. And smile. And check in on how everyone else's series is coming along.
Book 2. It's just as important as book 7. Words are worth it. The ones never written just as much as the ones that sit sweetly in pages filled. Class of 1994, it is time. Ready or not, here my long legged boys and I come.
.mac :)