The Album

After flipping through the pages of my past, turns out my current album is spot on. / Thought Cookie: Edition 36, Vol. 4

Thought Cookie: Edition 36, Vol. 4

I’m starting to think about life in a whole different way these days: not as gradual, indistinct iteration, but as albums of time, crisply showcasing distinct versions of who I am in that moment.

Since I am locked within my own head, within this body, this time around, I observe life from my own point of view, and with me as the main character. From that perspective, I used to imagine myself as a character who was there, but not changing much.

Gently evolving slightly, one subtle iteration of me after the next, all along the way recognizable and boringly the same.

This past weekend, a box literally came flying off a shelf as I was pulling out the piled-high red and green plastic storage bins of holiday cheer. Inside the box was an album filled with momentos and images of my 21st year of life.

My 21st year was a momentous one for me. I lived and studied abroad, traveled in Europe with friends, fell in love, and was finding my way into adulthood with more distance from my family and my home than I ever had before.

Looking back at all of these momentos, I recognized where I was in that moment of life, the iteration I had been then.

As I flipped through the pages of Eurorail train tickets, Thyssen Bornemisza and Prado postcards, printed photographs taken on my fancy 35mm Canon camera with a separate zoom lens (one of my prized possessions), the snapshots from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the photograph of me above the bay of Capri, huge round glasses I imagined to be tres chic hiding eyes crinkled by a giant smile.

I recalled who I was trying to be then.

How I was leaning into the adventurous part of me, the art lover, the observer of the world and people.

I remember that sense of stretching, and how I felt the push-pull of the world as I was experiencing it.

I remembered what I had left behind to be there – and what was around the bend for the short-haired, brown-eyed 20-something who had enough moxie to put herself into challenging and expansive circumstances and commit to figuring out a way through.

Astonishingly, I was the same age in those photos as my eldest child is today.

Taking in my slightly confusing and very utilitarian clothing choices, I realized I was not yet comfortable in my own physicality.

I was crunched between the models of appearance I had been given being raised as a Catholic girl (loose-fitting, non-flashy clothes, many of which came as hand-me-downs from our neighbors who had five daughters, paired with sensible walking shoes) and the inner free, creative spirit I really wanted to show to the world, but could not quite figure out how.

After going through all the precious things, I shared a photo with a dear friend who has known me for the last 10 years, and more intimately for the last five.

She didn’t recognize me. “Who are these people?” she said.

“It’s me! On my 21st birthday!”

“Where? I don’t see you in this photo,” she retorted sincerely.

I pointed to my wrinkle-free round face, raising a pint of lager.

“No,” she said, gesturing to my blue-eyed friend to my left. “Is that you?”

I laughed so hard.

Twenty-six years later, I’ve spent the last year of my life profoundly wrestling with the now version of myself.

I have struggled to be complacent, or accepting, or satisfied, or even familiar with, me. I have tussled with how I have changed. I have been stymied by the complex math of how my appearance corresponds to my construct of who I am.

Given my baseline thought that change would be gentle and gradual, I kept thinking I should look like I did 10 years ago, or maybe even 5 and a half. Or maybe even 2 and a half years ago.

And I kept not.

I kept making these damaging comparisons between who I was circa 2018 to who I am today.

It’s been an experience I would call, in a word – disconcerting. And in another word – exhausting.

I had this weird sense that I lost track of myself.

Enter the album.

I heard John Mayer interviewed recently. The interviewer was asking him about his past albums and what he thought of them, if he was proud of one over the other.

He paused and then replied that he saw his albums as reflections of where he was at that moment in time. He separated himself from judging their quality and saw them more like a catalog of what was on his mind, his heart, and what he was experiencing just then.

I thought I would feel longing for the 21-year-old version of myself.

I was decades younger. My skin was soft and supple and had a lovely, consistent olive butteriness.

I was out in the world, mostly without responsibilities, having grand adventures with good friends.

My hair was darker and my waist was smaller.

And yet, I compared that girl to the woman in full I am today.

Physically stronger than I have ever been.

Emotionally stronger.

A better friend.

A wife of more than two decades of loving commitment.

A mother who has raised two other human beings pretty successfully.

Accomplished and respected in my career, with meaningful work.

But MORE than all of that, and despite the disconcertion I’ve faced this year – I know who I am.

Yes, I am still wrestling with some of the same struggles of my 21-year-old self: how to make music between my practical self with my creative free spirit.

How to put the words together and share them.

I’m still wrestling with how to love people well. (I hope I am always doing this because it’s an essential part of loving people well.)

I’m still trying to keep myself safe and hold boundaries while staying as open to the world as I can be.

I’m thinking about my contribution alot more than I did when I was 21.

In this iteration of me, I am a completely different album.

And it’s a cool album.

It’s acoustic and jazzy for a few tracks, folksy Americana and lusciously lyrical in the middle, soft and whispery in moments, and there are one or two ragers as well.

All part of the current album of me.

I will change again.

I will put out another new album. I have no idea when or what the cover art will look like, or what the pages will contain.

I am collecting experiences for that album even now, as I sit at my writing desk, composing this for you.

It’s really lovely that my dear friend didn’t recognize me.

It was freeing and validating, all at the same time.

That girl can be who she is, in those photographs, in that moment. And I love her fierce, trying-to-become self.

I know her so well.

And this woman can be who she is now. And I love her fierce, still trying-to-become self.

I know her so well.

What a joy to carry through life – and what an anticipation.