Growing Down to Myself

I am growing down. Not like my favorite character from The Phantom Tollbooth, Alec the little boy who started off at the height he would eventually be and got “taller” as his feet got closer to the ground… although now that I think about it, I wonder if it was somewhat prescient of me to fall in love with such a minor character when I was so young. No, by “growing down” I mean that I can feel myself actually returning to a younger version of myself in many regards.

I have rediscovered my passionate love of reading, for one. I know this is going to be hard for many of you to believe, but I was actually a really lonely, kind of socially awkward kid and teenager. I loved people, much as I do now, but that “heart on my sleeve” thing that you all find so endearing now led to me being emotionally butchered to the point where I eventually just started sort of keeping to myself a lot. I would still occasionally sit on the curb at the end of the cul-de-sac where we lived and just wait for someone to notice me, to come play with me… but, of course, that kind of odd behavior was exactly the sort of thing that drove the neighborhood kids away (at best). So I read. Constantly. I had my nose buried in a book at all hours of the day, and I would often find- as I do again now- that coming out of that deeply engaged state of reading, of exiting the world of whatever novel I was immersed in, was a bit like resurfacing when you’ve worked to touch the bottom of the pool and need to get up quickly since you’re almost out of air. But there’s a difference now. When I was younger, I would definitely lose myself in the books, in the stories, in the characters whose lives were all figured out and neatly packaged between the pages. Now, I find that I am taking these aspects of the stories into myself and finding where they fit in with who I am and who I am becoming. Through Clare, the tragic heroine of The Time Traveler’s Wife, I see my capacity to believe in love even in the face of insurmountable odds. Elv, one of Alice Hoffman’s Story Sisters, is- like I was- able to find through becoming a mother a depth of sanity and groundedness she’d never even believed she could embrace. Even in my sporadic rereading of The Fountainhead I see in Howard Roarke’s fiery passion for architecture and perfection my own soul-deep love of teaching.

And writing. Oh my G’d, how I loved to write when I was a kid! I think until I started blogging again, I really had forgotten how wonderful it feels to let out of your head and your heart the thoughts and ideas and dreams that just swirl around endlessly. The first thing I remember enjoying writing were our weekly Spelling stories in third grade. I know, right? It’s hard to imagine loving such a pedestrian, tedious assignment. But I made it my own: I took the spelling words and easily and, I have to say, pretty effectively crafted them into tales of fun and adventure involving my classmates. My class had 16 or so kids in it, we had 20 words per week (give or take), and I delighted in making sure that each classmate and each word got the full attention s/he/it deserved.  It was kind of a turning point for me, in a way; my classmates, eager for their 15 seconds of fame, would badger me about what was going to happen that week, what adventures would we go on. In this way, I gained a modicum of greater social acceptance and an early notion that perhaps the way I could get people to love me was just to pay attention to them and recognize them for who they were (Not such a tall task for a girl who really was (and is) genuinely fascinated with those who surround her). But spelling stories became a thing of the past as we moved through school, and I took to writing stories about whomever I fancied myself in love with at the time. I will never forget the summer when I had to leave the theater arts program I so adored in order to – horror of horrors!- be dragged kicking and screaming to Mexico with my family (I think this was after my sophomore year of high school, but I’m having some trouble recalling the time line). I defiantly sat in my hotel room and wrote and wrote and poured out the longing in my teenaged heart (hmm… I’m thinking this was probably about Bill Wright, or Mr. Wrong as my girlfriends so aptly called him)…until I got back, went to camp, and fell for some other guy and dumped my original protagonist for this newcomer. The writing was good for me; the writing itself…probably not so much.

So I now find myself again embracing these two aspects of the younger Wendy and reclaiming the thoughtful, dreamy, hopeful quality with which reading and writing imbued me at an early age. But it is now combined with the wisdom and experiences of the life I’ve lived, and this gives me a perspective which my youth simply did not allow. As an adult, I am able to contemplate, to filter, to accept that which is worth pulling in and keeping close and to politely let go of that which belongs just to the book I’m reading or the words I’m crafting. As I said in an email to a friend last night, “...not quite sure what to make of myself these days, but I think I like who I am becoming." It seems trite, but I truly believe these words are valid: Life is a journey, not a destination. Here's to the journey to becoming me.