The End of Something

Lily is always begging me to tell her stories "about when you were a little girl," and I search my reserves of memory for them, telling some again and again--the summer my mother banned Popsicles, the popcorn-induced babysitting fire--and occasionally remembering a new one.  When she says "story" she means a juicy memory, not necessarily one with a plot but with a flash of lightning, burst of flame, satisfying denouement. And if truth be told, these are, in fact, the memories that exist closest to the surface, the easiest ones to recall. But they are not my only memories. They are not even the memories I cherish or hope to hold onto.

No, those are the fleeting, seemingly ordinary scenes, the moments that appear or occur to me unpredictably, with no context or framework, the thoughts or actions that would never be captured in a photograph, or, typically, in words. 

Lily's preschool experience ends next week, and I am thinking all of the time about transitions, about endings. And beginnings, too, of course, but more about the finite nature of experience, and the duration of experience, and endings most of all.  And I found myself one day sitting on a chair in my dining room remembering an afternoon twenty-one years ago, just around this time of year, when I was days away from graduating from high school. I remembered walking through the dining room in my parents' house, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror that still hangs on the wall, and hardly recognizing myself: a wash of dark hair, a pale profile, a faded navy blue T-shirt that was partly disintegrating even then and is still kicking around today. I remember, quite specifically, thinking the words: This is the metaphorical end of my childhood. And then, sitting in my father's den, on a velvet sofa that is no longer there, thinking: What will happen to me? This is the beginning of my very own life.

I wonder what Lily is thinking.