On looking backwards through time
30 June 2010 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3rdragonI am unpacked and my room is (mostly) clean. It only took a month-plus (admittedly a month that a) included a week and a half of me doing nothing because I'd just gotten my wisdom teeth out and b) was fairly hot, off and on, so moving boxes of stuff and working in my room was unfeasible). But I have now successfully absorbed an entire* dorm room worth of stuff into my already-full-of-stuff Philadelphia-home room**.
I moved into that room, we moved into this house, partway through my junior year of high school. I lived in it for a year and a half, and then aside from summers and breaks (which mostly hasn't been long enough to do any serious alterations to the room), I haven't much been back to it. I think this is the first time I've ever lived in it full-time, not shuttling back and forth between houses, or between school and houses.
All of which is to say that cleaning it has been a bit of a time-travel experience. There's only six years of history in that room, so it doesn't have the same baggage that, say, my dad-house room does, and is more of a snapshot of a moment of time in my life, rather than a general overview of a person I used to be.
Sometimes I feel like I'm mostly the same person I was in high school, and sometimes I feel like I'm completely different. I don't constantly carry a book with me now; it's more likely to be knitting, and sometimes I don't bring anything to do at all. I've learned to be chill enough about timing and scheduling that I'm sometimes late to things, rather than perpetually ten minutes early if at all possible***. Perhaps most telling, I'm less happy in my own company. In high school, I needed time by myself, away from other people. I still need time not interacting with large groups of people, but if I don't touch base with friends, I get lonely. I think I'm better at throwing things out†, at traveling light, but still having a supply of useful handy stuff††.
But cleaning my room means looking at, interacting with, the person I was in high school.
"Seven extra copies of the worksheet on "Nepenthe" that you and L.V. presented in 11th grade, High School Miriam? Seven? You didn't even exceptionally like the poem. Wouldn't one have been enough, if you needed to keep it? And that would have been six pieces of paper you didn't have to haul around."
"Dear, you lived in this room for HOW long with only one hook on the back of the door? That is not enough hooks! How did you manage?"
"Okay, I'll agree with you on keeping the cello parts to the orchestra music, even if they're kind of useless on their own, and putting in the programs for the concerts was actually a nice touch; it lets me know what we played each year, and who was in orchestra. But really, the pencils? Did it not occur to you to take the pencils out of the orchestra folder before shoving the whole thing in the second closet? They would have fit a whole lot better, and they're good pencils."
"Two moves? You hauled that box of craft supplies and assorted junk through two moves? Okay, maybe you were still going to use it the first time, when you were in middle school, but surely after it sat in the bottom of the Haines Street closet for three and a half years, you could decide that you weren't going to do anything with most of that stuff and throw it out?"†††
"Why do you have all this clothing that you do not like and never wore?"
"Also, these shoes? This is a really nice pair of shoes. Why did you not notice this? And on the subject of shoes, what's with three different worn-out pairs of the same pair of sandals? Yes, shoes you can get dirty are handy, but you can only wear one pair at a time; just pick the nicest one and trash the others."
"Are these notes? You actually studied these and got good grades on tests? How on earth did you ever learn anything, dear?"
. . . and so on. She never answers, but High School Miriam was like that, quieter, more reticent, less likely to put herself out there, more often lost in a book. It's not as if I expected her too, so I just monologue at the physical traces of her time in this house.
And yet, and yet . . . Going through old notes from high school, I find bits of written work, and the voice that speaks to me out of those pages is my own, in fiction, but especially non-fiction, telling stories I still tell, stories that I had forgotten I'd ever written down. "Grandpa R. and the Airplane." "Why I Am Not Afraid of Phones." Fragments of truth shining between lines in "Dirt and Other Middle-School Menaces."
On Monday I went to the Arboretum with . . . we'll call her Tegan. Roberto told violaclaire that she should be friends with the people who ate at the Table Under the Stairs, and she took me. I liked them all; they made my first two years of high school so much better. But it was Tegan I was closest to, Tegan who wandered off for club meetings least frequently, Tegan violaclaire and I talked with most, Tegan who had the same lunchbag as me, the one with the gradient multicolored cats. Tegan is two years older than I am, or at least two grades, and she graduated at the end of my sophomore year. We'd never really talked outside of school, and after that, we didn't talk. She went to college, and I didn't hear from her again. I have historically been bad at keeping in touch with people. Junior year I moved to this house, which is a block away from her house, but I'd never been there, so even though I was aware that she lived in this general vicinity, I wasn't moved to renew the connection. I sometimes run into J's mother at contra dancing, and heard a little about her, and some of the other members of the Table, but never Tegan. A friend of my mother's knows Tegan's aunt, and sometime this past semester my mother encouraged me to reach out to her. We emailed when I was home for break, but she was in Florence, Italy, which rather prevented any sort of get-together. But last week I got around to emailing her again, and we hung out Monday afternoon. And . . . I should have done that a long time ago. I'd forgotten how much we have in common, or perhaps never truly realized, forgotten how much I enjoy her company. Never considered how similar she is to some of my Smith friends.
So I guess what I'm saying is, "High School Miriam, sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all. I'm pretty sure that I'm happier being now-me than I was being you, which I suppose is a good thing, at least from this end. I'm glad that I/we/you got back into writing. I may sometimes wonder a bit about your decisions, but you managed to pick a college where I had a marvelous four years, and I will say that you definitely had good taste in friends.
--------------
*With the exception of a box of winter stuff and a box of pictures and blankets that are currently in the basement wrapped in plastic.
**Mom's house. One of these days I need to consolidate mom's house and dad's house into something somewhat neater, but dad's house is pretty intimidating because I've been hording into that room since I was eight or ten.
***I didn't say all of these were necessarily good changes. Or necessarily bad. And I am still capable of being on time to things.
†Or maybe I just haul around different junk. I definitely didn't used to have^ and entire large tub full of yarn.
^This is an expression that is very natural in my spoken English, and I never know how to write it. I think what I say is, "didn't yuse to have," but I have the impression that there's a d in there, somewhere . . . thoughts?
††Although now that I think about it, I was always pretty good at that last bit, at least for trips. I'm put in mind of the Senior Spanish Class trip to Costa Rica, when I think that I traveled with a smaller bag than anyone else in the class, somehow managed to condense it even more to fill my backpack with ceramics on the trip home . . . and people were still borrowing my sunscreen and aloe vera.
†††In the defense of High School Miriam, perhaps the end of field hockey season was not the best time to move, as far as organized packing goes. I do sometimes wonder how I managed to pack up the Haines Street room at all.
I moved into that room, we moved into this house, partway through my junior year of high school. I lived in it for a year and a half, and then aside from summers and breaks (which mostly hasn't been long enough to do any serious alterations to the room), I haven't much been back to it. I think this is the first time I've ever lived in it full-time, not shuttling back and forth between houses, or between school and houses.
All of which is to say that cleaning it has been a bit of a time-travel experience. There's only six years of history in that room, so it doesn't have the same baggage that, say, my dad-house room does, and is more of a snapshot of a moment of time in my life, rather than a general overview of a person I used to be.
Sometimes I feel like I'm mostly the same person I was in high school, and sometimes I feel like I'm completely different. I don't constantly carry a book with me now; it's more likely to be knitting, and sometimes I don't bring anything to do at all. I've learned to be chill enough about timing and scheduling that I'm sometimes late to things, rather than perpetually ten minutes early if at all possible***. Perhaps most telling, I'm less happy in my own company. In high school, I needed time by myself, away from other people. I still need time not interacting with large groups of people, but if I don't touch base with friends, I get lonely. I think I'm better at throwing things out†, at traveling light, but still having a supply of useful handy stuff††.
But cleaning my room means looking at, interacting with, the person I was in high school.
"Seven extra copies of the worksheet on "Nepenthe" that you and L.V. presented in 11th grade, High School Miriam? Seven? You didn't even exceptionally like the poem. Wouldn't one have been enough, if you needed to keep it? And that would have been six pieces of paper you didn't have to haul around."
"Dear, you lived in this room for HOW long with only one hook on the back of the door? That is not enough hooks! How did you manage?"
"Okay, I'll agree with you on keeping the cello parts to the orchestra music, even if they're kind of useless on their own, and putting in the programs for the concerts was actually a nice touch; it lets me know what we played each year, and who was in orchestra. But really, the pencils? Did it not occur to you to take the pencils out of the orchestra folder before shoving the whole thing in the second closet? They would have fit a whole lot better, and they're good pencils."
"Two moves? You hauled that box of craft supplies and assorted junk through two moves? Okay, maybe you were still going to use it the first time, when you were in middle school, but surely after it sat in the bottom of the Haines Street closet for three and a half years, you could decide that you weren't going to do anything with most of that stuff and throw it out?"†††
"Why do you have all this clothing that you do not like and never wore?"
"Also, these shoes? This is a really nice pair of shoes. Why did you not notice this? And on the subject of shoes, what's with three different worn-out pairs of the same pair of sandals? Yes, shoes you can get dirty are handy, but you can only wear one pair at a time; just pick the nicest one and trash the others."
"Are these notes? You actually studied these and got good grades on tests? How on earth did you ever learn anything, dear?"
. . . and so on. She never answers, but High School Miriam was like that, quieter, more reticent, less likely to put herself out there, more often lost in a book. It's not as if I expected her too, so I just monologue at the physical traces of her time in this house.
And yet, and yet . . . Going through old notes from high school, I find bits of written work, and the voice that speaks to me out of those pages is my own, in fiction, but especially non-fiction, telling stories I still tell, stories that I had forgotten I'd ever written down. "Grandpa R. and the Airplane." "Why I Am Not Afraid of Phones." Fragments of truth shining between lines in "Dirt and Other Middle-School Menaces."
On Monday I went to the Arboretum with . . . we'll call her Tegan. Roberto told violaclaire that she should be friends with the people who ate at the Table Under the Stairs, and she took me. I liked them all; they made my first two years of high school so much better. But it was Tegan I was closest to, Tegan who wandered off for club meetings least frequently, Tegan violaclaire and I talked with most, Tegan who had the same lunchbag as me, the one with the gradient multicolored cats. Tegan is two years older than I am, or at least two grades, and she graduated at the end of my sophomore year. We'd never really talked outside of school, and after that, we didn't talk. She went to college, and I didn't hear from her again. I have historically been bad at keeping in touch with people. Junior year I moved to this house, which is a block away from her house, but I'd never been there, so even though I was aware that she lived in this general vicinity, I wasn't moved to renew the connection. I sometimes run into J's mother at contra dancing, and heard a little about her, and some of the other members of the Table, but never Tegan. A friend of my mother's knows Tegan's aunt, and sometime this past semester my mother encouraged me to reach out to her. We emailed when I was home for break, but she was in Florence, Italy, which rather prevented any sort of get-together. But last week I got around to emailing her again, and we hung out Monday afternoon. And . . . I should have done that a long time ago. I'd forgotten how much we have in common, or perhaps never truly realized, forgotten how much I enjoy her company. Never considered how similar she is to some of my Smith friends.
So I guess what I'm saying is, "High School Miriam, sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all. I'm pretty sure that I'm happier being now-me than I was being you, which I suppose is a good thing, at least from this end. I'm glad that I/we/you got back into writing. I may sometimes wonder a bit about your decisions, but you managed to pick a college where I had a marvelous four years, and I will say that you definitely had good taste in friends.
--------------
*With the exception of a box of winter stuff and a box of pictures and blankets that are currently in the basement wrapped in plastic.
**Mom's house. One of these days I need to consolidate mom's house and dad's house into something somewhat neater, but dad's house is pretty intimidating because I've been hording into that room since I was eight or ten.
***I didn't say all of these were necessarily good changes. Or necessarily bad. And I am still capable of being on time to things.
†Or maybe I just haul around different junk. I definitely didn't used to have^ and entire large tub full of yarn.
^This is an expression that is very natural in my spoken English, and I never know how to write it. I think what I say is, "didn't yuse to have," but I have the impression that there's a d in there, somewhere . . . thoughts?
††Although now that I think about it, I was always pretty good at that last bit, at least for trips. I'm put in mind of the Senior Spanish Class trip to Costa Rica, when I think that I traveled with a smaller bag than anyone else in the class, somehow managed to condense it even more to fill my backpack with ceramics on the trip home . . . and people were still borrowing my sunscreen and aloe vera.
†††In the defense of High School Miriam, perhaps the end of field hockey season was not the best time to move, as far as organized packing goes. I do sometimes wonder how I managed to pack up the Haines Street room at all.
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Date: 7 Jul 2010 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 Jul 2010 01:04 pm (UTC)