It’s inevitable: you visit your family, and out come the old pictures. The ones of them wearing questionable hairstyles and bell bottoms are amusing… but the ones of you with French waiter hair and slouchy socks with dress shoes are not.
read more ↓On Saturday morning my Spiritual Mom and I started pouring over decorating books. She’s got it in her blood – this DIY spirit that enables her to take a crappy end table and somehow transform it into a work of art that fetches hundreds of thousands of dollars at a Christie’s auction. We were talking about this thing I could do to my kitchen and that thing I could do to my bathroom when she piped up and said, “I swear that I have old pictures of you somewhere. Let me go find them.”
“I don’t need to see them,” I called after her.
“Yes you do,” came her voice from the depths of her office closet. “Everyone needs to be reminded of where they came from.”
I shuddered. This was the moment I’d been dreading since I’d stepped foot back in Canada in mid December. My Dad had been threatening to sit down with his photo album and go through it with me, showing me pictures that would make my toes curl. (I am not proud of my mall hair, nor will I ever be.) Somehow I’d miraculously dodged that bullet, but now the bullet had hunted me down, sitting in front of me in a pile of photos that showed trips to Greece and Hong Kong, good friends with 80s hair, and finally, me.
“This was your first day of seventh grade,” she said.
My hair was short. Why? Because Madonna’s hair was short at the time, of course. I was wearing a black and white striped t-shirt and my favorite khaki shorts, black slouchy socks and little white pointy-toed shoes. And then there are the glasses, with lenses so large that if my cheeks had decided to sprout eyes they could've seen for miles. Suffice it to say, I would be mortified if anyone saw this picture outside of my family, who were at least partially responsible for my appearance.
Mom shook her head. “You dressed yourself – I had nothing to do with it.”
Whatever. What was odd to me, though – as if my fashion choice wasn’t odd enough – was that I was crouched in a ball looking terribly uncomfortable, but also like I was trying not to look uncomfortable. One hand was partially covering my face, the other curled around my knees… almost protectively.
“I told you to look natural,” Mom said.
How fitting.
The next picture showed me standing, my hands shoved in my pockets, looking at the camera as if to say, Alright, here’s your goddamn first-day-of-school picture. Can I go now? I shuffled past that one to look at the shot of me dressed in white, acting as Mom’s maid of honor when she married Dad. And then another shot of me, this time sitting in a brown velvet chair and wearing those same kakhi shorts, except this time I was wearing the navy and kakhi striped shirt to match. I also had the slouchy socks and pointy-toed shoes, this time in black. (Seriously, why did I need two pairs of these shoes?!?) And I looked miserable.
“This is typical you at Grandma’s house,” she told me with a laugh. “You look miserable.”
“I was,” I replied quietly.
We shuffled through the rest of the pictures until we reached the end. As mom started sifting them into place to slide them back inside the bag that held them, she started to sniffle.
“Can you get me a tissue?”
I looked at her, her eyes red rimmed, threatening to burst. I grabbed the Kleenex from the coffee table behind us and handed her some, and found myself becoming overwhelmed with emotion. I wasn’t sure why. But as she sniffled, I hugged her… and I started to cry. And as I did, the words started tumbling out of her mouth in a tangle...
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that, Carly, it was supposed to be different for you! It wasn’t supposed to be so hard! It wasn’t supposed to be that hard, and it hurts my heart every single day to know that it was so hard for you, even though I know you’ve done a lot of work on yourself. It was supposed to be different!”
“I know,” I said, trying to keep my composure but losing the fight. “I know, but it wasn’t, and if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be here in the same way.”
“I know, and there might’ve been the chance that we never would’ve crossed paths,” she sniffled, still hugging me tightly. “And I do believe that if you come in shitty, you go out good. And good things are coming to you now – I believe it. I do.”
By that point I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I buried my head in her shoulder and began to cry in earnest, with deep, rib-rocking sobs that made me feel so weak, so young. Like I was a kid again. Like I was vulnerable and afraid and I just wished it would all go away… all that stupid pain…
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay, let it out. You can let it out now. You’re home. You’re home.”
I don’t know how long I cried for, but I do know my head started to pound and my throat felt raw. I finally caught my breath and inhaled deeply, and felt this fear in my heart – the same kind of fear anytime I clear some kind of blockage in my life. I wiped at my eyes with tissue and blew my nose, then took another deep inhale and looked around with new eyes.
“Do you feel better?”
I nodded, fearful to speak in case I burst into tears again.
“Should we get ready and go out now?”
I nodded again, hopping off my chair to get in the shower, where I cried a little more, but felt an intense sense of relief. I thought about the good things coming to me. And for the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.
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