When my eldest granddaughter was 3-something, I showed her our wedding photo, which happened to stand on the family mantel in her home. I said it was Grandpa and me. Obviously she’d never made the connection, for she looked back and forth from the photo to me, comparing the young woman with long dark hair inside the frame to the woman with short grey hair and glasses who was holding her.
“Grandma,” she finally said, earnestly, “did you turn into someone else?”
I can’t remember what I said in reply, though I chuckled. I still chuckle, thinking of it more than a a decade and a half later. What a great question.
I could have said Absolutely, yes, I’ve turned into someone else, in fact I’ve been a number of “elses” over my lifetime, at the cellular level for sure, but in other ways too, in awareness, knowledge, thinking, views on matters theological, political, and otherwise. Change is the stuff of life and I’ve tried to be open to changes and conversions of all kinds Here’s hoping it shows.
But no surprise my granddaughter was confused. I get confused about myself too. I shopped for pants this week. Strolling the mall, seeing the window displays, I realized that when I look at the mannequins, in some weird way I still inhabit the sense of being a teen, assume myself slender and taut. Once inside the change room then, with my items to try on and it’s Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s that you’re looking at? and it’s someone with soft belly, soft thighs. With a sigh, recognition realigns with reality.
On the other hand, I could have said, No, no, no, same me, or better said, same old me. Surface is surface, and underneath is the me I’ve always been. It seems to me that there’s something basic in personality and sense of self that threads back as far as memory can take one and furthermore, that this thread, at least for a child with a reasonably happy childhood, doesn’t want to break. Shouldn’t.
I was struck by something I heard at an online funeral recently: the deceased person, on getting their terminal diagnosis, had said, “I’ve enjoyed being alive.”
Me too, I thought, I enjoy being alive.
Joy and wonder. That’s the part that feels unchanged, or when lost, can be recovered. It’s the entering the kingdom like a child. Being four or maybe five or six, the wonder of hearing exquisite music come out of a huge tape player above my head on the table. The wonder of fields and hills we played in, the wonder of “swimming” in a foot of creek water, the wonder of those letters on a page that make up words and can be read, the wonder of God is love.
Oh you sweet, bright grandchild of mine, did I turn into someone else? Yes and no. No and yes.
And you, what about you? Did you turn into someone else?