What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

T. S. Eliot

I see the girl sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the stairs. She is very quiet and still.

Her blonde head is bowed over a small book – a journal that she nestles is her lap like a kitten.

She is writing.

She is feeling very smart in her mod, mushroom colored, faux-suede pantsuit (the outfit and diary are new, both are birthday presents).

It is New Years Day, and she is composing a fresh new entry.

It is five years later and I see the same girl, ash blonde – a teenager now – she is propped up in bed. The hour is late. She writes in a spiral bound book, the words rambling and messy. There are tears in the corners of her eyes.

And time passes.

And doesn’t.

Because here, today – I am that same girl, sitting at my writing table.

I am that same person and I doubt if any of the journal entries differ profoundly.

T.S. Eliot wrote that all the roads we did not take, and the doors we never opened, point to one end – the rose garden?

So I’d like to think that the poet is letting us middle aged folk off the hook. He’s saying – so what if you’re not living that other life that glitters in your peripheral eye?

So what, the past life and this one are one and the same.

In this moment’s breath.

Like, if I close my eyes, I can conjure that small person. She is here within – she speaks, she remembers.

She is the end that is always present.

I have to say that I was not a little girl who ever had a Barbie Dream Camper kind of fantasy life. What I wanted was sorta what I already had, just a little bit bigger maybe.

I remember always wishing for a best friend, a partner, a child. And I always wanted to write, but it was never the capital W kind of write.

I loved the feeling of putting down letters, then words. I loved to hear my own written voice.

I craved the feeling of getting the exact word to define my sentence. It was pure joy when I could read back my own words and listen to the music.

Just saying them, they tasted delicious. They still do.

I think I am living the parallel life to any other beautiful life I could have imagined. And what I dream of now (not Barbie roller skates), is not all that far off from what the mini-me dreamed.

That girl knew what she absolutely wanted, and didn’t feel compelled to edit her words inside out. Or exhaust herself striving to write for anyone else.

And why did I ever think I’d stray from that dreamy girl who bit her lower lip and constantly hummed continuously, like a swarm of bees, under her breath.

I think it’s how we choose to see ourselves – and do we want to run from the inner girl or do we recognize that as impossible?

Anyway, I still like that small version of me, in fact, I love her. She was sweet and thoughtful and she had the best ideas.

Like the Easy Bake Oven home recipes of sugary egg and pickles and Worstesteshire sauce that she concocted for her sisters in her lil test kitchen. They loved it!

Artists thrive on self-delusion.

But mostly I liked who I was when I sat down to write in my Holly Hobby journal. I loved what I wrote.

It was fluid, easy, emotional. I barely erased. In fact, I always used my rainbow pack of felt markers, that how confident I was.

And now it is me, at 60. I want to be proud, like her, of my grit and my refusal to judge my writing against a capital W.

Because time present and time past are the same things, and there’s no correction fluid allowed.

Time past and time present – we’re simply who we’ve always been.

I want to wholeheartedly embrace it all and keep writing. This afternoon I wish for words, words that I’ve already used, but still.

They are my roses, my garden, my world. My here and now, my intention and luck, and all of my redeemable beauty, available to me for always.

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at
sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my
beginning