Letter
I miss you, you know.
I think of you a lot these days, think of you trudging up the hill toward school beneath that canopy of horse chestnuts and ailanthus trees, cocksure and happy. You were very small then and you carted home as many books as the little library would allow, on space, on animals and history, on tech, on whatever subject captured your interest for long enough to check the book out.
I remember your optimism, your enthusiasm for the world you hoped to enter, and to be honest I also remember your self-absorption. You wore it well, back then. Back then it was a cute thing, an endearing thing, lost in a book more often than not. The world seemed huge and promising. Everyone expected you to live up to some unspecified greatness. I think you were lucky that way: a lot of kids could have gained from the little ego boosts you got from school, from your friends.
You were insatiably curious, and I loved that about you. Still do.
It got a lot more complicated after that, didn’t it? You got lost somehow. I certainly lost touch with you. I can only imagine what you might have thought back then as opportunities seemed to wink out one by one, as disappointment set in and ratcheted itself tighter around you. I imagine it turned you on yourself. I imagine you started to feel as though that best thing about you, that curiosity about the world, was old. Uncool. We all turn jaded, yes, we all succumb to adolescent loathing, but it seems in you that jaded loathing was mainly directed at yourself.
I look back now and feel oddly bad that I couldn’t help you more. I know you’ll tell me it wasn’t my responsibility. You’re right. I had my hands full back then, and you probably wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. But these days I wonder what I ought to have said to you back then. It’s a useless exercise, a second-guessing, but I wonder. All the aphorisms about studying hard, about listening to the grownups? You got enough of those. You actually listened to the grownups far too well, took on their fears and apprehensions far too readily. What you needed was that little devil on your shoulder: “Don’t listen to them.” “You know better than they do what’s good for you.” “Walk into the woods without telling anyone where you’re going, and keep walking until you get too tired to come back.” “Get these scissors down the hall as fast as you can.” Who in their right mind would give a kid advice like that? It’s a good thing I don’t have one of my own.
But that’s the advice I’d give to you back then, if I had that time machine finished. Think of the glorious risks you might have taken. Think of the stories you’d have.
Too late and irrelevant, all of it. What’s the use of going down that path? We are all who we are. My point is that I miss you. I miss your curiosity about the world, enough that I often try to emulate it. (I’m doing okay at it, too.) I miss your way of looking at the world, your naïve creativity.
I miss your happiness most of all, I think. That was awe-inspiring.
Get in touch, will you? I’d love to hear from you.
