I didn’t always want to be a writer. Besides being an archeologist and paleontologist, I wanted to be a healer, then an actress. I wanted to use words to change minds, soften hearts. But I only wanted roles in which I could be pretty. (I know. Don’t judge me. I’m already judging myself.)
Like on Halloween. I was an elf, a baby (size large), a devil, but a super-cute one with a pitchfork, and an angel. But in second grade when Olivia McClure dressed as a witch and showed me with glee that she had blacked out her teeth, I was horrified. Not pretty! And by choice! Yet I was also impressed. What substance this girl had! I would have followed her onto the field of battle under fire.
My perspective on appearance has always been highly subjective and hugely self-critical. I know this because I was having lunch with my friend Cheryl at the Severn Inn the other day, and after bemoaning how hard it is to regard yourself mirrored for hours on Zoom, I mentioned I’d recently had a revelation sifting through decades of family photographs.
“Looking at those photos was like observing someone else’s life,” I said. “I was so amazed at what I had had, what we had made. I think I was sleep deprived, stressed out and distracted for about 20 years. I didn’t realize in real time the magnitude of the gift I’d been given.”
Because in truth, scattered in snapshots all over the bed in the loft that afternoon, I saw this beautiful family—a family I wish I had known. A family I’d give anything to have back now that I’m awake and present. But that’s not how this works. That family has now dispersed into the world to become whatever it is that families become when love overflows its banks.
I squinted into the light on the restaurant’s sundrenched deck wishing for a hat and a glass of wine. “And this will sound bizarre, but do you know what else I suddenly realized that I never, ever knew?” I asked.
And without missing a beat, my friend replied, “That you were pretty.”
And I can’t tell you how stunned I was to hear my most-practical, least-romanticizing friend confirm without hesitation the same revelation about her own past. That our self-images had been distorted for years. Probably all our lives. By our own hyper-critical expectations. I would have cried if we hadn’t been laughing. All those decades spent thinking we needed to improve, to be better than we were, both inside and out.
When I was in graduate school, one of my instructors told me that when her father was dying, she’d gone to visit and had spent an entire day joking, reminiscing about her childhood, talking about his career, going for a walk, reading to him, and when it was time to leave, he had clasped her to him and said with such loving sincerity, “You seem like such a nice girl. I wish I had known you.”
It’s like that, I said to myself as I drove home thinking about the woman I’d seen in those photos. I wish I had known you.
And it makes me wonder what I am not seeing accurately now—what else I’m not grateful enough for, as is. Because I know now that come tomorrow, these will be the days for which you would give anything. Because at some point the tide of possibility stops rising.
Proximity to those you love lessens, primacy shifts. You are no longer your kids’ next of kin. And your relationships reach a point of stasis. It’s that moment of slack water, where the river has no velocity, poised to reverse the flood tide for the ebb tide, as it sighs back to the sea.
I remember the day I realized that time had come for my mother—surely it happens in marriages, too. And in friendships. And between fathers and sons. That moment when you realize that what you have between you is all you’ll ever have. For whatever reason, further growth, further change, has become impossible.
Mom and I were on the phone, and I needed her to understand something about the way we related. She was probably responding with unwarranted anxiety to some piece of news I was sharing. (Oh gosh, do I do that to my kids? She stops typing to stare out the window with furrowed brow.) And suddenly I knew the conversation was too complex. Mom was 89, had increasing dementia, and could neither take in what I needed nor ask for what she wanted from me. I stood there in the kitchen, pork chops on the counter, understanding that our relationship could be more of same, but it could never be something more. The tide was rushing out now.
And I hope that is not going to happen to me—that I’ll remain able to change—that I’ll keep trying to see things from other points of view. That I’ll be able to empathize with people I dislike. And then, of course, like them. See? There’s so much easy magic in this world.
I hope the only role I’ll want to play is me and that I won’t need to be pretty. And I hope you are on stage with me in this glorious pageant with a million speaking parts because I think this is the truth: if you are reading these words, we are in the same play, only you are the lead in a simultaneous performance.
I hope that it won’t require a look back from the future to recognize in this holy moment how beautiful you are, how beautiful we all are.
How very beautiful we have always been.
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
Elizabeth Heron says
When I was a little girl my Dad called me Princess. Then my younger sister arrived and he called her Gorgeous. So I thought I wasn’t pretty because a princess could be ugly, or plain. I would rather be gorgeous. And whenever photos were taken of us, I posed with my head tilted, thinking I’d look better that way. In every picture.
Thank you Laura, for your gorgeous words.
Laura J Oliver says
Oh the things kids do, think and feel in response to the most innocent and well intended of gestures. I kind of love the notion of you with your head tilted–it feels like there’s an essay in there if you look for it–and it will be about what your Dad meant to give you, not what you found. Thanks for writing!
Michael Pullen says
I am inspired by how you express what we all would love to keep close as we go through each day. Thank you for bringing so much to the surface from your heart. Your stories make me glad for being who I am, not perfect or better, just me. Thanks.
Laura J Oliver says
Wow, thank you Michael. I couldn’t ask for more.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Very arresting story, with last two sentences brilliant. What hovers out of sight here, huge and powerful, shimmering? Unspeakable, beyond words, almost. Particularly now, in modern times.
Or is it just a lost of vocabulary? Or A death star? A resurrection? All of the above, depending?
Great stories demand higher levels of respect. One must tread slowly, lightly, with care. These higher order of stories are akin to Mona Lisa’s smile. Where you must return again and again, respectfully.
Reed Fawell 3 says
To some of us, the roots of this story seem to go back a very long way, to the beginnings of written words inscribed in the forecourt of Greek Temple to Apollo at Delphi: Know Thyself.
So then there followed the myths of Echo and Narcissus that includes many variations, while delving into the deepest pools of our human consciousness of being and its perils, including, and here I take great liberty in interpretation, that is my own, personally;
When the young mountain nymph Echo, who did not know herself, felt in love at first sight with the beautiful boy Narcissus, who also had yet to known himself, Echo could only answer his questions by echoing them back in her own voice, questions such as “who’s there?” and “lets us enjoy each other,” and then she Echo when so confronted by reality, and with he Narcissus suddenly scornful, she Echo fled in internal shame, and he fell terminally in love with himself.
This Greek/ Roman story of Echo and Narcissus likely is an echo of the Adam and Eve story in the Garden of Eden, them both eating the apple of good and evil, whereupon both are punished by their Biblical God creator with their paradoxical feelings of shame, pain, hard work, and overweening pride, on Earth forever. And so there unfolds the New Testament story of Christ’s suffering, offering us redemption on a cross should we overcome our fall on Earth with love, and faith.
Only recently have the increasing majority of us lost our memories of these vitally important stories, their meanings, their wisdom and their truths.
For example, in the fall of 1943 at the Marine Boot Camp at San Diego, the boots of one platoon there, most aged 17 to 2O years old, confronting WW 11, had a favorite hymn they sung among themselves in Barracks, Why Should He Love Me So. So armed they went into battle, confronting hell on earth in ways that are unimaginable to the great majority of us today, especially our young.
Laura J Oliver says
Thank you, Reed, for both your comments. I’m happy you read the stories at all, let alone more than once. I’m grateful.
Reed Fawell 3 says
This is a very fine story, a great story. So by definition we will never get to the bottom of it, but we will find new elaborations and insights each time we re-read it as we have changed and/or are changed with each re-reading. Such stories live forever, though may ebb and flow, as cultures and people changed around them, so long as even a few retain the eyes to seek, see, and feel them.
Amanda Gibson says
Laura– You’ve captured beautifully some half-formed thoughts I’ve been mulling lately. Thank you for your clear-eyed wisdom and lovely words.
Amanda
Laura Oliver says
Thank you, Amanda. For both writing and reading.
Liz Freedlander says
Laura,
I keep rereading this and I have sent it to my daughters and friends. There are many truths to ponder and digest.
Thank you.
Laura Oliver says
Thanks so much, Liz! I appreciate it!