Something to Grow Around

I suppose I understand why parents feel sad watching small babies grow and why they feel sad watching large babies grow, why my mother sobbed in the hallway of my college dorm when she and my father dropped me off for freshman year.

I would almost equate growth to dying. One part of you has to leave for the new part of you to take hold but that old part keeps living on somewhere in the deepest parts of you. For some it’s more obvious than others, I have a tooth my grandfather gave me, not one I keep in a box but one I keep in my mouth. It is slightly skewed now but before my braces it was very crooked, just like the one he gave my mother and his father gave him.

Even after years of orthodontics, my tooth will never look right, and I’m okay with that because it's a part of him that’s still living. I can run my tongue over the backs of my teeth and when I reach that uneven spot where that tooth sits I am reminded of the people I look like, the people I come from.

From what I hear I am anxious like my grandmother was. The things I can’t control keep me awake at night and I hate keeping secrets. She gave me that but she also gave me my sense of humor. Young lungs sometimes need to be taught to laugh and she did that for me.

I’ve made that tooth mostly straight. I try to be less anxious and laugh more but I can’t completely let go of what I was. Maybe I like the occasional sleepless night because it reminds me that those parts of me aren’t as dead as the people who gave them to me. Maybe I’m glad the orthodontist couldn’t make my smile a cookie-cutter one and that I cannot suppress my laughter when someone slips on ice.

My mother says I am still very much the baby she used to hold. I get angry when I am overtired or hungry and I laugh when people get hurt.

Right now I’m growing, I feel it happening. I feel me changing but my tooth and sweaty palms are touchpoints in the dark. I may not always wear it on my skin but it is in my bones and teeth and the part of my brain where happiness happens.

I will never be a person whose spirit is not tethered to a farm, a once red barn, and two names on a mossy gravestone. That will always be me and I am so proud of that.

I guess these are the things we grow around. At the core of every vining plant, there is a structure, maybe it's a fence row beneath honeysuckle or the trellis in the wisteria that has grown out of control in my parent's garden. These things may look freestanding but there are bones in it, something holding it, something for it to grow around.