vickie's suburban adventure, day five: when i was (a) ten...

for the past couple of days, i’ve been cleaning out the shelves in my parents’ basement. 16 shelves, to be exact.

for decades, they’ve been filled with books, notes, binders, folders, artwork, photos, mementos, toys and brick-a-brack from throughout my childhood and that of young beatrix. the job had been waiting for me for at least a year, but i wanted to do it when i could focus on it by myself, without interruption and the way i wanted it done. room for piles, for starters, and no one puttering around, checking on my progress or offering suggestions on what to keep and what to toss. i knew it would be time-consuming... mainly because i knew i would linger over each page, each drawing, each knick-knack as memories crept in about what my life was like when the item in question was first realized.

so, now that the parents are away on holiday, time to get sorted.

not surprisingly, it’s been an emotional experience. for some reason, i haven’t yet mastered the art of detachment, so when i pick up, say, an essay i wrote at 17 or a story i penned at ten or a picture i drew at six, i can remember my process from that time, and i can feel the same things i felt then. it’s been hard taking so much of my life – even if it’s “only” schoolwork – and putting it in the recycling bin, thereby (in essence) removing all evidence of my academic history and doing away with the tangible remains of chunks of my childhood. sometimes, nostalgia and melancholy take over and i wind up a teary mess; sometimes, i literally laugh out loud at the stuff i imagined as a child; and sometimes i’m taken aback by the person i used to be.

i used to excel at math. i absolutely loved it. i was great at french, and wrote fluently in the language. i even won the french award in my graduating year of high school. i drew all the time, made up stories all the time, used my imagination all the time, and somehow managed to work film or TV into all manner of school assignments... with positive results, encouragement from my teachers and excellent grades. i used my brain a LOT and in all sorts of different, enriching, expansive ways.

looking through my past, i’m repeatedly struck by what potential i had and, simultaneously, how many of my gifts i’ve squandered as i’ve grown older. what happened to the razor-sharp mind that couldn’t get full enough? where did the hunger to learn go? or the ever-constant need for expression, preferably in a colourful, funny or creative way (often, all three)? as i sorted through the stacks, i started to wonder where some of the vickie of days gone by had gone.

nowhere was this contrast between then and now more revealing than when i opened my “family life” notebook from grade five. i would have been ten years old, and the subject was sort of like a hybrid of social studies and religion, quite literally about life in a family. as i flipped through its pages and skimmed my work, i came upon a collage that knocked me on my adult ass.

i remember the assignment so clearly, and i actually remember cutting out the words that i pasted to my paper. we were told to create a collage of words that represented who we were, what we liked, and what we thought of ourselves. here’s mine:


yesterday, when i found that collage, i started to cry. not just tears welling in the eyes, but full-on crying. i looked at the words i had chosen and was stunned.

“amazing.” “the bestest.” “good company.” “special.” “original.”

then, in the accompanying series of questions and answers i wrote, “the one thing i would like to change about myself is: nothing.”

seeing that collage again was like a giant bucket of cold water being thrown in my face. and the tears came because i realized that, if someone had assigned me that task today, i doubt very much that those would have been the words i would have pasted to my page.

because one thing came screaming off that paper at me:

when i was ten, i liked myself, wholly and without question.

more easily, more readily, more proudly and more lovingly than i do as an adult.

at ten, i thought i was amazing.

and remarkable.

at ten, i thought i was a ten.

i thought it, all on my own, and without waiting for someone else to validate it as the truth.

at ten, i wasn’t self-critical, or self-flagellating, or self-conscious. i didn’t chastise myself for mistakes, or beat myself up over my flaws, or second-guess every action, or obsess about how i might be perceived. i didn’t spend hours worrying about my life, or whether it was going in the right direction. i didn’t automatically assume that everything was my fault or that i’d inevitably done something wrong, and i certainly felt i deserved great things in my life. i never thought of myself as a failure, or feared rejection, or found myself consumed by self-doubt. i didn’t pick at my self-image or undermine my own goals, and i didn’t dismiss my dreams. at ten, if someone didn’t like me, then that was about them... not me. and at ten, playing with animals or drawing or riding my bike or going for popsicles with my friends was all i needed to make my heart glad.

at the same time, at ten i was shy and nervous. i was quiet... unless i knew you well and then good luck getting me to stop talking. i worried a lot. i was introspective, extremely sensitive and cried easily. i was a thinker, careful and meticulous and analytical. i was cautious, and somewhat guarded. i was selective about my friends, preferring quality over quantity, and i found comfort in the oddballs. especially funny, warm, creative ones.

in those ways, i was the me of today, only younger and smaller. but, more importantly, i nonetheless possessed a much stronger, much more secure, exponentially more intrinsic sense of self-appreciation. self-acceptance. self-love.

so, when i stumbled upon that collage yesterday, i couldn’t help but be overcome with emotion because one thing kept bouncing around in my head:

how is it that, in growing up, so much of who am i was already present in that ten-year-old girl, but the one thing that i should have hung on to the hardest is the one thing i outgrew?

today’s casualties: all souls spared.