21 Things .02

"Here and Now"

I don't know if its just me but I find birthdays bittersweet. Its like being handed clothes too big and expected to wear them until they fit. Problem is that just as they begin to feel comfortable its time to exchange them for new ones.  
Then I find myself reminiscing about the me that was, and though they're usually pleasant almost unconscious thoughts I'll suddenly feel a twinge of grief because they're the past, never to happen again. As such I'm finding that transitioning into adulthood involves a certain level of mourning.

Recently memories have flashed before me, surprising me with their vividness and the fact that there are no pictures to prompt them. 
I see my eight-year-old self on a date with my dad to the theatre to see a play (either Suessical the Musical or The Sound of Music). Without a whisper of a self-conscious thought I jump out of the car all dressed up for the occasion feeling pretty, confident and jittery with excitement.  
Then I see me on the playground during Grade 1 recess, leading a game of cowboys vs. wild horses (my imagination had been sparked by the movie Spirit) and helping to settle a conflict between my classmates.
And I wonder: where did that confident, outspoken little girl go?

~

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury is one of those unassuming little books that contains priceless treasures. I read it over three months ago and the characters and themes continue to impact me. At its heart its a story about the mingling of age and time; a celebration of what it means to live. In one chapter an elderly lady is hording memorabilia from her past and trying in desperation to prove to the neighbouring children that she was once young herself. They refuse to believe her, and only after her most cherished photograph of her younger self is stolen does she realizes that,

"No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now."

I think that's what it means to grow old gracefully. Staying young at heart but not fighting the current.  As Scott F. Fitzgerald famously concludes in The Great Gatsby, people are like "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." 
But while Fitzgerald's words are poetic and true, they leave me with a sense of hopelessness. I know I'm not old but I already find myself beating against the current and I don't want to get in the habit of living like that. How tiring!
I'm learning that childhood innocence and vivacity are beautiful things but that there is also beauty in the wisdom and experience that comes with age. 

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a (woman), I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." - 1 Corinthians 13:11-12