Rereading the Past, Perhaps With Love

Tonight, I picked up a book to re-read. Sticking out of it was a page of notepad paper I used as a bookmark the first time. Inside the book's front cover, I'd written "December 25, 2007, from Mom and Dad." That brought back a couple memories.

First, Dad was still alive then but, the book was, as most presents were, picked out by Mom, according to a list I'd given her. By then, I'd been making Christmas lists since 1974. Most of the time Mom got most of what I'd listed. It occurred to me, holding the book, how seldom I mention that about her.

A second memory came from the notepad page. On it were notes for teaching. This was when I taught at-risk kids at Cortland Alternative School. I recall almost exactly what I'd planned on that page: making a piece of student prose look like a poem so kids would see how periods work. I wanted them to understand that only one thought should lie between capital letter and ending period. Switching to the next thought, it's time for that period and another capital letter.

All this brought me to a couple conclusions.

First, that was a hard job that I did well. I didn't think so then because I measured success poorly. I thought I had to do impossible things and so I kept failing.

Which is why conclusion two was a realization that my supreme unhappiness and depression then wasn't all because of the school, the administration, or any outside force. It sprang from within me because I hadn't learned how to measure myself, how to know that imperfection could still be wondrous and was almost always better than good enough .

I really wish I could have felt that then. Might have saved what came next.

About half a year after reading that book for the first time and writing that notepad bookmark, I came to where the road diverged not in a yellow wood, but within my mind. I chose a path that led to so much destruction and hurt.

I often wish I could go back, choose again. I can reread a book, remember teaching notes from a career I've since left, but there's no changing what was done. Instead there's me learning to apply better measures. There are all the choices I make now.

And Frost wasn't wrong. There's no real difference between the paths. Way leads onto way. Had I not chosen poorly then, I'd have chosen poorly some other time. Having chosen poorly then, I've made good (and bad) choices since. Life really does go on. We keep reading, turning pages one after another.

Turns out that living can be a hard job, but with the accurate measures and continued choices, I come back to myself and smile at the man I meet.

I recall the man I was sixteen years ago and find room to be loving toward him. I remember the child I was, receiving what Mom bought me for Christmas. I see her trying her best, probably measuring success and failure as inaccurately as I have. We learn these things from one another.

Maybe eventually, choice after choice, rereading after reading, we come to some understanding, perhaps even to grace. Despite all we've learned, we look at ourselves past and present with tenderness and maybe even something like love for who we are becoming.