I'm not sure when exactly, but I know that at some point the whimsy and fun drained from my body. What was left was a crude and rudimentary approximation—like aliens studying sitcoms to decipher how to act human. Everyone knows it’s not quite right, but no one says a thing.
Even now—see how I wrote about enjoying life as if I have never enjoyed a single day of it?
I was such a serious child. The unintended consequence of being an only child raised by a single mom whose friends were all childless. I was surrounded by adults the whole time.
Recently, I've been reading books from my childhood. I don’t always remember the titles, so I describe the books to ChatGPT and it seems to find them with ease.
Oh, the things I remember from books.
Like: there’s a girl who changes into an owl and is in love with her middle-aged science teacher, and I remember her describing his arm hair as a field of wheat. Then she meets a boy who can also turn into an owl and falls in love with him—and he’s the science teacher’s son.
Or: there’s a young girl named Catherine who’s engaged to an old man, and she kills fleas by shaking them onto white sheets and makes soap from lye, and it’s set in medieval or feudal times, or something equally long ago.
Or: it’s told from the point of view of a cat—maybe named Socks—who is adopted by a young couple. I mostly remember that he sits in the lap of a woman who is fat and plump, unlike the couple, and he likes how soft she is.
After ChatGPT gives me the title, I borrow the book from the library and finish it in about three days. A young adult book written at a sixth-grade reading level doesn’t take much time.
At the end, it feels like I’ve finished an excavation of myself. For years I thought I stumbled and fumbled my way to where I am today. No one sets out to be a miserable grey person after all!
But no—the building blocks were always there. They’re written in the books I read and loved as a kid. I was making this woman I am now when I was just a girl.
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