A time before

Somewhere in a corner of our hearts we are always 20  -- Lilac Girls

 

When I read this I immediately rankled. This can’t be true, can it? If it is true, it means that we go through our later years feeling as though the best times of our lives are behind us, that we yearn and long for a time of naïveté, a time of before.

I’m in a sad time of my life right now- I’ve just lost my father to cancer. Do I yearn for a time before? A family photo when everyone was healthy? A time when I wasn’t constantly worried about getting the phone call? An outing, while he still had the energy to walk and to laugh? When he still had a sparkle in his eye?

Yeah, I yearn for that time. I yearn for missed opportunities and book store dates and family dinners.

I’m trying to remember me at 20... where was I? What was important to me? Did I know I was having experiences that would make older me look back at and think, "Ah, those were the best times"?

I married Colin the year I was 20. I had a fun-but-going-nowhere job as a dispatcher. I drank too much alcohol. I had amazing friends that I saw regularly. I would have classified myself as happy, if someone had asked me back then.

But looking back I now know that I was just on the verge of life. Real life. Money problems and job instability and a dead husband and depression and a deep and upsetting lack of surety about my future.

Now, today, I’m steeped in real life. I’ve lost three family members in the space of 3 weeks. Mortality is making itself a nearly-tangible presence in my head. I have concerns- the tax bill and mortgage rates and my loved ones and health care. Real life concerns, things that me at 20 had no idea about.

Do I yearn for that time? That time of blissful ignorance, before real life kicked me in my soul? Not even a little bit.

Give me pain and death and sadness. Give me rage and unbridled passion. Give me everything the world has to offer- the dirty, raw parts and the parts so filled with beauty that it sets an unbearable aching in my heart.

Me at 20? She taught me things. She gave me experiences that would shape the person I’m about to become. She knew stuff, important stuff that helped her then, and helps me now. But you can keep her, in the past where she belongs. Because in that secret little corner of my heart, I am exactly who I am right now.