Full circle

We spent the long Labor Day weekend in Maryland, visiting my family, celebrating my 40th birthday, and roaming through Ikea. I took T. for a walk on Saturday, down familiar streets, past the old tree stump that had once been a tall tree, and marked our old school bus stop, past a particular triangle of grass where our family dog had liked to pause, to sniff the No Parking sign still jutting from that spot, past a favorite college haunt of mine, where I used to sit with my friends on sunny Friday afternoons. I remember a book from my childhood—its pages depicted scenery and backdrops from particular time periods, and in-between the pages were clear plastic sheets, with additional images printed on top. When you placed the plastic page over the backdrop picture the scene leaped to life-the streets were filled with people, the landscape dotted with farm animals, or old castles, or a market scene. I thought about that book on Saturday when I walked the old neighborhood, T.’s little hand clutched around mine. There I was, at 40, passing by the same places where seven-year old me had once walked, then twelve-year old me, then twenty-one year old me, and now forty-year old me. I felt as if the me I was now was super-imposed across all the other old forms of me who had walked those same sidewalks over the years. Even though the landscape of my parents’ neighborhood has changed quite a bit over the years, it’s also remained remarkably the same. I’m always grateful I can go back and reconnect the threads of my past to who I am today; that I can see my own children’s footsteps overlapping mine, as surely as T.'s hand fit cupped into mine. *********** On Friday night, after I tucked T. into bed, she dissolved into a flood of fearful tears. “It’s too dark!” She cried out, clutching the sheet to her chin. I found a nightlight and plugged it in. “It’s too light!” She wailed. I sang her a round of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. “I’m scared!” I stifled some impatience, and lay down with her for a few minutes. All of a sudden, I realized that she was lying on the exact same side of the room that had belonged to me when I was a girl. My sister and I shared a room right up until my brother left for college, and my bed had been on the right-hand side, near the windows. It occurred to me then that T. was looking at almost the exact same rectangle of light through the door that I had gazed at for years and years, while my sister and I fell asleep. I told T. this. I told her about the many nights I had lain in bed in the dark, training my eyes on that patch of light, listening to the rise and fall of my parent’s voices coming from downstairs, and the comforting clatter of dishes while they tidied up. If I felt scared by the windows, or the dark around me, I would pull the blankets up around my face, grab a stuffed animal or doll close, and turn my back to the shadowy windows. Later, when I came to bed that night and checked on T., I found her that way: curled on her side, her stuffed blue unicorn clutched against her chest, the windows a frame around her back. Full circle, I thought.