Since Milo's birth, I've been having not flashbacks, exactly, but very vivid images of places or experiences from various stages of my growing up: sitting under the cherry trees at lunch in springtime on the front lawn of my high school and closing my eyes so that the cars zooming by on East West Highway sounded like waves; the basement room in which I reluctantly took part in the Brownies; annual yearly photographs with my brother at Sears; bag lunches that my mother packed, always with a note in them. And the varying significance of these memories or senses of things notwithstanding, it seems to me as though my brain is having some sort of reaction to having a child of my own, that my neurons are responding to having become a mom and are showing me this flipbook of my own childhood as if to say, "Guess what? You're going to do it again, but from another point of view." This is both frightening and intriguing. People always have that fantasy of re-living their lives with all of the knowledge they possess at their wisest moments, but doing so is, of course, impossible. Impossible, as well, I suspect, to impart whatever it is I perceive as the wisdom I've gained over the course of thirty-four years -- of screwing up, accidentally succeeding, making truly wonderful decisions and flopping head-first into moments of grace -- to Milo. He's got to do it for himself, and every day now he is creating his own montage of images and understanding, and how grateful I am to be able to help him, and ultimately just watch him, make the trip.
Since Milo's birth, I've been having not flashbacks, exactly, but very vivid images of places or experiences from various stages of my growing up: sitting under the cherry trees at lunch in springtime on the front lawn of my high school and closing my eyes so that the cars zooming by on East West Highway sounded like waves; the basement room in which I reluctantly took part in the Brownies; annual yearly photographs with my brother at Sears; bag lunches that my mother packed, always with a note in them. And the varying significance of these memories or senses of things notwithstanding, it seems to me as though my brain is having some sort of reaction to having a child of my own, that my neurons are responding to having become a mom and are showing me this flipbook of my own childhood as if to say, "Guess what? You're going to do it again, but from another point of view." This is both frightening and intriguing. People always have that fantasy of re-living their lives with all of the knowledge they possess at their wisest moments, but doing so is, of course, impossible. Impossible, as well, I suspect, to impart whatever it is I perceive as the wisdom I've gained over the course of thirty-four years -- of screwing up, accidentally succeeding, making truly wonderful decisions and flopping head-first into moments of grace -- to Milo. He's got to do it for himself, and every day now he is creating his own montage of images and understanding, and how grateful I am to be able to help him, and ultimately just watch him, make the trip.
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