Looking In the Rearview Mirror

 

"The past is worth only what it makes of us."   ~ Danielle Steele in Zoya. 

A couple of weeks ago, some of the weekly tasks we were meant to do in one of the studies I'm doing involved Time Jumps.  One required me to write a letter from 80-year-old Terri to present day Terri.  Not such a huge jump, just a matter of 14 years or so, which fact I found rather startling.

(I did think of the irony that likely most of the participants of this study are likely much younger than I am and had to imagine a massive time jump of 50 years or so... I've always been a late bloomer. I don't mind blooming late.  All the best flowers in the garden bloom in the last month or so before frost and some are only more brilliant after that!) 

Another day the task was to write another letter, but this one involved a real stretch of time.  From my current age to 8-year-old me.

Frankly I found that one a hard letter to write.  I once wrote (see that post here) if I could go back to 19-year-old me and tell her how her life would turn out, I could share some real encouragement.    But the letter from sixty-six to age eight was more difficult and I'll tell you why.  At 19, I'd experienced hurt and disillusionment and had a knowledge of how painful human relationships could be.  But an 8-year-old does not know that.  They don't look at how things 'should' be just yet.  An 8-year-old is innocent of that knowledge.  

Oh, I had a dawning awareness of how things were in my household.  I understood that I wasn't 'enough' but I didn't yet know how far that judgement would carry, or the depths of hurt I'd know in the years ahead, or how it would end up affecting so many of my important life decisions.  I did not understand that sometimes the people who are supposed to love us, don't, won't.  An 8-year-old's feelings are based on the strength of her own feelings for others, not what she's getting back from others.  She hasn't yet learned love based on reciprocity.  At least that is true for me.

As I tried to write to this child, I wondered, how much do I tell her? How much does she really need to know just now?  I found myself wanting to not hurt or scare her.  So, I told her what I loved about her.  In that moment, I realized that I'd never expressed love for that little girl before.  I'd always kept my distance from her. 

Suddenly I recalled how much she loved her brothers and how she'd fight as fiercely for them when they were being hurt as she'd fight them when their teasing went beyond the norm.   I saw the little girl shivering in the cold who couldn't bear that her dolls were exposed to the cold outside of the quilts she snuggled under, so she crept out of bed and piled all 12 of them under the covers with her.  I saw the little girl who wanted to please her parents and took on big responsibilities that overwhelmed her.  I saw the little girl who was so determined to play the piano that she took the basic notes her father taught her and began to play on her own.  And the little girl who so wanted to read that she pestered adults to help her until she could figure things out on her own.  I saw the little girl who loved to sing and did.  Church songs, pop songs, children's songs, it didn't matter she sang them all.  I saw the little girl that wanted to help.  

So, I told her all those things and how they made me love her all the more.

But I wept for that little girl, too, as I was writing.  I wept for my knowledge of what was ahead of her.  I cried for all the pain that would come in the few years ahead.  

When I was emotionally wrung out, I went back to read the task over and see what else I needed to do.  

I found I'd done it wrong.  

I wasn't meant to write a letter to 8-year-old me.  She was supposed to write a letter to 66-year-old me...

So, I took another sheet of paper, and I did the task as written.  I let her write a letter to me.   

I heard about her dolls and paper dolls and the growing responsibilities placed on her shoulders too soon. She made no complaints.  I heard her love of her parents and saw her grave loyalty, her absolute refusal to believe anything but the very best of the people who were supposed to be responsible for her.  Because that too was part of her innocence and I needed to hear that.

I saw that this little girl was already begun to see that she was not enough. She knew.  

No, I might not have followed the instructions correctly at first, but I didn't do this exercise all wrong.  I'd done just what I was meant to do.  I was meant to go back and love that little girl, that child who was perhaps teetering on the edge of the knowledge that she wasn't loved but didn't know it yet.  I was meant to recognize her innocence and to do what I could to preserve it. 

God preserve her innocence from here to eternity.  Grant her that much, oh Lord!

P.S.  I posted for the first time over on Substack.  That is another new venture and the writing there will be different from what you'll see here.  You can read it here and if you like it, subscribe.  I have free subscriptions on that site just now.