Lessons from the past.

When I moved from Arkansas to Tennessee the last time, I moved in a hurry. I also moved in a minivan. My mom and I came out here by ourselves with as much stuff as we could cram in, and we lived very meagerly in an apartment by ourselves for two weeks, if I remember that number correctly.

The rest of my family and more of our possessions eventually came, but for four years there has been a room full of my stuff that never made the trip over here.

Yesterday, Sunday, May 16th, before coming back to the Boro, my family and I went up to our home on Wye Mountain, and loaded up my car with everything that we could make fit. After not seeing those things for four years, it was like Christmas. Bigger than Christmas, really, because I've never acquired so many things at once. Today was spent unloading everything from my car and stacking in along my bedroom walls.

I have explained all this to you, because while sifting through everything today, I ran across a couple of things that I thought would make perfect blog fodder.

When my parents bought me the animated movie Anastasia for my tenth birthday, it came with a book titled My Anastasia Memory Book. In it, it says things like "Anastasia loved to dance with her father when she was little" and then it gives you space to write down things about yourself when you were little. The whole book is essentially a place for you to write about yourself, with every subject in relation to Anastasia. Anastasia has a family, I bet you do too! Who are your friends? Anastasia had great friends, too. So on and so forth.

I, of course, loved this book. And my ten-year-old self wrote in it. In the section dedicated to favorites, there is a blank to list your favorite song. Music lover that I have always been, I couldn't narrow all of the many songs out there to one favorite. I crammed as much as I could onto that one line, and then I continued listing out into blank space as well as onto another line set aside for another favorite. (It was favorite magazine. I wasn't a magazine reader, so it's all good. I'm still not.)

Reading those songs today made me laugh. My musical horizons have broadened and my tastes have changed. Out of all of them, there's only one that I would still put on a favorites list today. The list reads as follows (be prepared to laugh):

My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
Testify to Love - Avalon
My Friend (So Long) - dc Talk
Jesus Freak - dc Talk
Lean On Me - dc Talk's version, although I appreciated Bill Withers too (Even though I didn't know his name was Bill Withers.)
Man, I Feel Like A Woman - Shania Twain
Don't Be Stupid - Shania Twain
From This Moment On - Shania Twain

So I was obviously heavy on dc Talk and Shania Twain. The last time I listened to Shania Twain was......................... And the last time I listened to dc Talk was today. So I obviously only still care about one of those. By the way, odd combination of favorites. But that's always been me, listening to The Devil Went Down to Georgia one minute and El Shaddai the next. (Side note: I'm pretty sure I still know all the words to Man, I Feel Like A Woman, despite not having heard it in years.)

My next find is slightly less comical and the one I wanted to talk about most. It's a list I titled, "What I Want." It's just on a sheet of loose leaf paper and it's not dated, so I'm not entirely sure when I wrote this. But taking into consideration my handwriting, the content of the list, and the very fuzzy memory I have of writing it, I'm going to say I was somewhere from 12 to 14. I'm thinking I may have been 13, but it's possible I could be off a year.

I think this list is very telling, not only about me, but about how I grew up. Here it is:

What I Want

A very Big House
big Kitchen
big Living Room
big Library
Bedroom for me
My own big Bathroom
Room for Mom and Dad
their Bathroom
Bedroom for Calyn
Bedroom for Austyn
Bathroom for them both
10 guest rooms
3 or more other Bathrooms
Project Room
Formal Dining Room with Big Table
Entertainment Room (TV etc.)
Game Room (Pool Table, etc.)
Walk-in Closet in my Room
Whatever Closet Everybody else wants
Coat Closet
Large Bathtub in my Bathroom
Walk-in Shower in my Bathroom
Lots of Cabinets and Counter Top Space in my Bathroom
All the Best Appliances in the Kitchen
Laundry Room
Brand New Washer and Dryer in Laundry Room
I want to wake up around the time the sun comes up
I want to go to bed no later than 9:00
Keep the house clean
Do all my schoolwork
Wash clothes and dishes
Make things
Go places
Have Enough Money to Help People
Be able to Buy what we Need and some of what we want
Make Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
Have People Over
Have a Garden with Flowers and Vegetables and Herbs
Feel Better
Not Waste Money going to the Movie Theater and Renting Movies


The much used phrase "the more things change, the more they stay the same" comes to mind. At 22 years of age, I am still the same person who wrote this list, yet someone different as well.

There are some things on this list that a part of me still wants, but there's another part of me that has come to let them go because I know there's something better. Like the nice, big house, for instance. Who knows, I may have a nice big house before I die. But my living space has become much less important to me. A big house could be a good thing, but like any material possession, it would tie me to itself. So I'm all in favor of being minimal and simplistic. A feeling I already had even then, as evidenced by my want to not waste money on movies. I still hold that want in a slightly less harsh measure. At the time, I really did despise the idea of going to the movie theater, but I'm fine now with going on occasion for the really special ones. Which is why I spent a small bundle on three tickets to see Alice In Wonderland in IMAX and felt no guilt.

Sleep was also very obviously already a point of concern for me. A morning person I have never been, and I have spent my life in varying states of consciousness through the night. It's easier now as an adult to make good use of time spent awake at night, but as a child there wasn't much I could do. Parents want their children to sleep at night, so they make them go to bed, turn out the light, and be still and quiet. Obedient as I was, I did all of those things, even when I would turn over and look at the clock at 1 AM and wonder why I was looking at the clock instead of exploring my dreams. It was distressing and it still is on the rare occasions I find myself lying in the bed, unable to do anything else.

And what 13-year-old wants to do work? Me, obviously. I was such a domestic child. And a mom. Cleaning the house and making a meal for everyone was a completely normal idea for me. If my mother had asked me at the time to make Thanksgiving dinner practically by myself like I did last year, I probably wouldn't have batted an eye. I've been taking care of people, if not my whole life, at least since 1990 when my first brother was born.

I also detect loneliness in this list, and a great desire to be with people. I wanted my big house to be filled with people, not only living there, but visiting often. And I wanted to "go places." Why? To visit people. That's still why I want to go places, and why I've been to almost every state that borders my own in the last year as well as some that don't. And I've also had an increased number of houseguests in the past year. I guess my wants are finally becoming haves.

In relation to that loneliness, the want I find to be most poignant is "feel better." Teenage years are confusing for most, and such was the case with me. My confusion, though, came from how bad I felt so much of the time. "Rebellion" tends to be the word that people use to characterize teenagers, but "depression" would be a more accurate one for me. I think it peaked the first time when I was 15, but from about 13 to 17, I felt like there was a cloud hanging over my head most of the time. There was brief respite when I was 17, then it came back for one more storm complete with tornadoes, a storm to blow away all previous ones, in my 18th year. And I can tell you why it happened that way, although I won't go into it right now. I did a lot of looking inward during those years.

I think that was the whole purpose of making this list. The "Not Waste Money going to the Movie Theater and Renting Movies" seems like an after thought. "Feel Better" should be the end. I wanted all of these things because I believed they would make me feel better. People would make me happy. Order would make me happy. Less struggle would make me happy. I'm glad I've learned that's not the case.

I've learned a lot of things. Such as the reason kids were so hard to relate to was because I wasn't really one. I was a grandmother trapped within a child's frame, not aware that I was such, therefore trying my best to be a kid and not being very successful. I've also learned that Shania Twain isn't the greatest thing since color television. Who knew?