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The Alchemy of Becoming You
Permanence and arrival are only mirages
I was sandwiched between my two younger brothers in the backseat of the family car, driving on a barren North Dakota highway in the summertime. I recall us fighting about who was touching whom, or some such thing siblings fight about.
Probably to distract us, my dad said, “Hey, kids, do you see that puddle of water on the road ahead?”
We peered out the windshield. There was, clear as day, a puddle of water up ahead. It seemed to stretch across both lanes, with no easy path to navigate around it.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” we asked. “Will we have to drive in the ditch?”
My dad replied, “We’ll have to wait and find out!”
So we stared at that mirage on the road, holding our breath, waiting to catch up to it. Yet, no matter how long we drove, or how far we traveled, the puddle kept moving further and further down the road.
We never arrived.
I am now in my 6th decade of life on this planet. My husband and I are empty-nesters. Our two daughters are out in the world, becoming their own people, although sometimes they come home and it feels like nothing has changed. Other times, it feels like they have been gone for years and years, and the pictures lining our hallway are of a bygone era.
But my daughters could walk into the house today, magically transformed back into their teen selves, and while I might be surprised, I would immediately know these girls and how to relate to them. It would be effortless to slip back into the routines of a handful of years ago — dialing back the curse words, talking about colleges, reacclimating to the thumping of the bass as their cars pulled into the driveway.
Or if they were suddenly nine and seven and again and we were back at the pool where we spent so much of our time in those years. As if it were yesterday, I can remember their tiny, wet feet splashing on the concrete toward me, getting ready to either ask for ice cream or tell me that my favorite song, “Drops of Jupiter,” was playing.
I could even travel back to toddlerhood. My body would remember with ease how to pick my children up and put them on my decidedly smaller hips, or snap…
