How do we measure a year, asks the song from the musical Rent. As I approach another birthday this month, I look back at not only this past year but all the many marks of time preceding it. As we continue to live on, year after year, life is seen in a much bigger picture. To me, life is marked in phases and stages. It would be hard to explain how someone raised in a Dallas suburb ended up living in East Texas for many years and then traveled the world for education and pleasure. But that is the wonderful thing about life: We never know what we’ll end up doing. So, here’s to our personal adventure called Life!
Mine began humbly enough. For three and a half years, I was the center of my parents’ undivided attention. One of my earliest memories is our family of three moving into a new three-bedroom brick home. I helped by carrying a mop and bucket in the house. I remember the floor, though carpeted, felt hard as cement, which was its foundation. My next early childhood memory was the day my brother was born. In the hospital waiting room, while my dad was not watching, I managed to walk away until I was almost in the very room where my mother was giving birth. I was stopped and pushed back to the waiting area by a nurse in white stockings and attire as they wore in those days. Perhaps I heard my mother’s voice in labor and was searching to help her.
Next thing I knew, a party was held at our house with everyone coming to see the new baby. The tiny creature was on top of my parents’ big bed. He still had that skinny stem on his belly. Feeling left out, I remained in the hallway then found myself carving my name on the wall. What would Freud say? For a few years, my name remained there until Dad paneled over it. In those early sibling years, my brother and I shared the same bedroom. But I saw myself as much, much older and ready for some independence: riding my big trike up and down sidewalks along the neighborhood street. I asked to move into the guestroom, changing it into my own bedroom. Some girls around my age moved into the house next door, and that’s where I liked to socialize and grow ever more independent. We played Barbie’s a lot.
The next memorable milestone for me was my first day of school. I had wanted to go to kindergarten, which was not required back then, but my parents could not afford it. Instead because of my birth date in the fall, I had to wait an entire year before starting first grade. I remember feeling the whole year was a complete waste of my time. (What kinda kid was I anyway?) My mother was a teacher at an elementary school where she arranged for me to attend. On the first day of school, she walked me down a long corridor of lockers, then outside to the new modern wing for first and second grades, bent down and pointed at the glass doors and told me that was where I was to go to first grade. My teacher came outside the door and the two ladies exchanged pleasantries as I walked inside by myself with enthusiasm and satisfaction and the real taste of freedom. I had waited my whole life for this day!
But soon I would discover a few things about life and myself. First, there are kids older than me, and they were tougher, too. I was intimidated by them and yet could not wait to reach their big impressive ages. Second, there were kids in my grade who were preordained to be popular. And I was not one of them. Looking back it seems somehow kids take one look at each other and just know upon meeting who’s well liked and who’s not. What were we judging this on: the most stylish clothes and hairstyles, shoes, sophistication, charm school, parents with prestige and money? How would we even know such things instinctively? Who knows the psychology of a first-grader? In time I would gladly accept my place as a product of middle-class blue-collar heritage. Within a couple of years, I would learn to utilize that work ethic and make a name for myself in accomplishments that mattered to me: creative writing and performing on stage.
I won’t continue to bore with memories of junior high, high school, college and beyond, but suffice it to say, that thing about popularity is universal. How a class of kids can be mesmerized by another person their own age is fascinating, and accurate. You’d think the littlest ones among us would be the most sincere, able to discern the value of every peer and adult. But kids are highly impressionable, more likely to chase after a person who seemingly glows on the inside and out. Now with decades-old hindsight, I suppose seeing the way the world was made me more sarcastic and cynical toward my classmates, the cliques common in every school. I never belonged to one. Independence meant everything to me. Besides, I liked sitting on the sidelines in observation and making the occasional sardonic quip to entertain the like-minded.
If we live long enough to mature with grace through many decades (crossing two centuries for me), then we come to realize the popular ones were just like the rest of us. I wasn’t left out as much as I placed myself out of the white hot spotlight of school fame. But I was critical of them, and I’ve lived to regret the way I was back then. No doubt for some, popularity was a trap, attention and expectations never pursued. What’s left behind for all of us are memories and pictures of beautiful kids with sparkling eyes, fabulous smiles, radiant glow and presumed successful life in all endeavors. But the reality was and is every person has equal sorrow, hardship and loss along with love, accomplishment and success. We of a certain age come to realize this about each other: Life may be hard but still can be and should be a joy. If we live long enough, life gives us wisdom to understand ourselves and appreciate each other, then and now.