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Monday, April 17, 2006
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prep it. prep it good.I have to admit it: I grew up preppy.
When all the girls around me had sky-high bangs fashioned from a dried-out shock of frosted hair and wore shredded t-shirts (with beads threaded on the shreds, no less...) I was rocking a chin-length bob in my original shade of mahogany brown and wearing my dad's hand-me-down Lacoste and Polo shirts with the collars flipped.
It was a reaction, really.
You know how Catholic schoolgirls roll up their skirts and untuck their oxford cloth shirts as soon as they leave their nuns behind? Well, I was basically doing just the opposite. I got so tired of feeling like I was stuck in a Whitesnake video that I pushed back with a little bit of "khakitude."
Now, of course, my wardrobe and style is a balance of rock n' roll, preppy, businesslike, vintage, boho, casual, princess, etc. -- just like most women I know -- and I can no longer quote the Preppy Handbook verbatim (don't worry, I only ever did it to be ironic, anyhow...)
But I still kinda dig these flip flops with the little alligator dude.
Just call me Muffy.
10:26:15 PM 
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going back.
I went to church with my parents on Friday morning, for their Good Friday service.
I hadn't been to that church in fourteen years.
When I left it behind, I was determined not to return. Not because it was my father's church, because I've always loved listening to him preach with passion and conviction and joy and wit. Not because it was my mother's church, because she is one of the most genuinely loving and accepting people I know.
And not because I was turning my back on faith, either. I don't know that I could pull that off. It's too much a part of me.
No, I didn't want to go back because I blamed the town in which it was located -- and the community at our church, by extension -- for every problem or deficiency I felt I possessed. For every disappointment. For every last thing about me that made me insecure or frustrated or hurt.
It has always been easy to pile my resentment there like a foreboding little inukshuk and walk away. I was so certain I'd never have to look any of it in the eye again.
This wasn't true. But I believed it at 18.
When my parents moved on to a different church a few years after I left, I breathed a sigh of relief that they would no longer encourage me to visit them at that little converted office building in the middle of nowhere (the church's location had changed before I'd left, as the congregation had voted to move to an area of town where they could minister to families better.)
When we'd moved there, I was in the middle of my fifth grade year, and riding high on the waves of friendships and crushes and school plays. I saw our move as an end to all of that, and then subsequently turned my fears into self-fulfilling prophecy.
My shyness started there.
My health problems started there.
My capacity for worry and insecurity found their most lethal root in my displaced little heart.
And it was all ridiculous. I made friends. I had people in that new church who cared. I laughed and played and did all the kid things I could do, and my parents made every good thing possible in my life.
But something had changed inside of me, and it cast a pall over all those blessings.
During my high school years, in the midst of editing the school newspaper and discovering good shades of eyeshadow and going to ski club and making new friends at youth conferences and doing a million other things that most of the children in this world can only dream of doing, some difficult things happened that I don't intend to talk about here, because it's just not necessary.
They made some of my fears real, and created some new ones for me, as well.
Some of them I talked about at the time, some I never really have.
But I blamed everything on that town and on moving, and I know I broke my parents' hearts with my sadness from time to time. They couldn't understand how I could be such a happy kid, and then cry with such feeling at other times. And sure, that's what it means to be a teenager, that dichotomy of new beginnings and growing pains.
But parts of it were bigger than that.
And they couldn't fix them.
I wouldn't have let them, anyhow.
Besides -- when I left, I wasn't looking for a fix. I was just looking to leave.
Cut to Friday.
My dad is at that church again, through a set of circumstances that seem random, but are likely something else entirely. It's not easy to be there, but he has a role and a task, and both of those things bring out the best, most helpful sides of who he is. But as soon as I knew he was there, I laughed and said that I hoped they weren't waiting for me to visit.
I don't think they were.
And I didn't intend to, from the depths of my immature, grudge-holding little soul.
Then I did it anyway.
I saw old ladies that I hadn't seen since I was a teenager, who hugged me and asked me if I was a lawyer yet, which had been the plan back then. One of them seemed so genuinely surprised that I hadn't followed through, that I'd ended up on a different path. She had all faith that my words would become actions, and that absolutely touched and shamed me at the same time.
How could someone else believe in me more than I did?
But I don't want to be a lawyer anymore, and I believe in what I do now. I could say that confidently to them as they told me how pretty I was and how small I'd been when they first had met me and how much they missed having me at church and how thrilled they were that my parents were back.
Mostly, those conversations were about them telling me that they were fine, and me saying the exact same thing.
A year ago today, I could not have said the same thing.
At 31, I was terrified that I was going to end up jobless and homeless and an embarassment. And that was the worst possible realization of all the fears I'd had growing up in that town, at that church. I don't know why I'd felt it so acutely as a young person, but I managed to stave off that feeling again until it resurfaced last year.
I could never be smart enough or pretty enough or successful enough for myself. And all that time I'd thought it was the failure I'd felt in that place, in that town, in that life.
But that little town that had no power over me but that which I'd given it.
And I can see that now, but only now.
32 is going to be -- has to be -- to be a year of possibility, of positive changes and hope.
If I had to go back to a place with difficult memories, there could have been no better time than this last Friday, because my eyes are full of optimism now, even with all the uncertainties ahead. Even as some wounds are still healing, even as dark places still exist inside of me.
I wasted so much time resenting that place. But I was likely just resenting the things I'd allowed to happen to me in the time I was there.
The past is the past, though. And that's what I learned.
I sang alongside my beautiful mother, my melody lending foundation to her harmony as we sang old hymns. I beamed at my amazing father, so intuitive with his congregation and so natural with a guitar in his hand, just as he has been since I was little. I saw them light up to face their calling.
And I saw people from a broken, marginalized neighbourhood -- because that's what this "family-oriented" haven has actually become -- receive grace from the tiny community at this church.
They are doing good things there. I'm doing good things in my world, too. But I couldn't have seen either thing only months ago.
So here is to Easter, and to a time of redemption and beginnings and hope for those who celebrate it.
Spring comes around every year, too, even though in the dark depths of the winter, it's easy to believe that it will never reappear. It's easy to believe that the nights will last forever.
But light always prevails, somehow.
Whatever you might believe, and whatever I might believe -- because doubt has been the hallmark of my faith lately more than anything else, even as my life steadies in other areas -- I hope that to be true.
I couldn't face my history without it. Or my future.
12:55:09 AM
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© Copyright
2006
Meg Fowler.
Last update:
5/1/06; 1:36:04 AM. |
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