I turn 33 this week. Lately, I’ve thought a lot about how life, and we, change over time. Darren and I have said many times how we feel like completely different people from the ones we were before our children were born. I can think of many breaks in life where it feels, though I didn’t recognize it at the time, like I moved from being one person to another during a time of change.
From the scrappy, resourceful, dreaming tomboy I was growing up, to the still dreaming but much more girly teenager I grew into. I was outgoing and adventurous when I started college but much quieter and reserved by the time I finished. I was one girl before I fell in love with Darren, left my parent’s home and moved across the country to begin a new life married and working. And certainly the greatest break and change in person came when my son was born and I became not just myself, but a mother also.
So, looking back, it feels as though I’ve been many different people in my life. As though different seasons and circumstances have revealed many different facets of the same complicated soul. A line I’ve always loved from the movie Little Women comes to mind. Jo March is told she should have been a lawyer and she responds with:
I should have been a great many things.
Indeed, Ms. March, we all should and could have been a great many things were the circumstances and timing of our lives different. But as Jane Austen once said:
It could have turned out differently, I suppose. But it didn’t.
It seems much of my growing up and becoming happened quite young — in hard circumstances, in soil that allowed only for survival and not for petty or silly things to grow. I was scrappy because I needed to be. I was a dreamer because sometimes those dreams of something else were the only thing holding my head above water until the tide changed and landed my feet on more solid ground.
When life became more comfortable, I became more petty. Sometimes, I walk though the house I live in now, my house, filled with comfort and nice things, and I have to ask what the twelve-year-old version of myself might think. Why? Because at 12 I knew well what life was and was not about. I could separate the wheat from the chaff with a discerning eye because I had lived with only what I needed to survive and knew exactly how much I could do without. It’s a lesson I need to be reminded of often now that I have so much more and can easily get carried away in the currents of comfort and convenience.
Though we grow through many selves in our lives, sometimes our younger selves knew more and lived wiser than the older selves we’ve grown into. Age does not guarantee wisdom.
I believe now that our souls are ageless. The bodies in which our souls are housed grow, change, decay, pass away. But the soul is born with a certain depth beyond years and maintains a certain childishness it never grows out of. That is why children sometimes say and understand such profound things beyond their years. And why, I at 33, would gladly climb a tree or build a treehouse to play in if being an adult didn’t keep me too busy and proud to do such things. The soul is as it was — outside the restraint of years. The mind and heart grow and change as does the body but our soul remains the same — ageless, eternal.
So I reflect and wonder today about who I’ve been, become, and who I am yet to be. There is a thread of the soul, of my truest self, that has remained throughout each change. The dreamer. The romantic. The adventurer. The writer. The tender-hearted. The short-tempered. The restless. For all that has changed, these have remained.
Each season, a different apparition of the soul. Spritely, fleeting visions of ourselves hidden and unearthed as we move and change through life. Our true self only to be fully known and understood on the other side of heaven. For now, we are each of us, sojourners in a strange land. Sojourners at times even in our own hearts and minds. Traveling ever onward until we find our way back Home.
Later that month we found out we were having a girl. A girl! I couldn’t stop smiling that day and my heart is still so full. She’s all magic and sunshine and I’m so very thankful.
Next, Darren and I flew to South Carolina so I could be in a dear friend’s wedding. This was our last trip just the two of us before baby. We walked around the campus where we met and relished a million memories from our college days and falling in love.
Finally, I spent a girl’s weekend away at the Cape celebrating another 30th birthday. Though it was the end of March, we still nearly froze trying to explore the boardwalk and ocean 🙂 
My belly really began to show and I couldn’t wait for warm weather and that sweet girl to be in my arms.
Next, Darren’s best friend came to visit with his family and after his wife and I took off to Ikea, the boys were good enough to put Roman’s new big boy bed together. It felt strange having Roman out of the crib and nursery and in his own “big boy” room. We celebrated Easter together before they headed home to Maine. 
My parents and grandma came into town anticipating our daughter’s arrival. Baby girl’s due date came and went and I grew frustrated by all the extra doctor appointments, poking and prodding, and being over-due in the July heat. 
Roman turned three and we celebrated his birthday with family and lots of construction vehicles in his honor 😉
Last photo right before we left for the hospital.
I was apprehensive about being induced but the whole labor went far better than Roman’s and just a few hours after we arrived at the hospital our little Aletheia Rae was in our arms at last. 
I got my nose pierced while we were there mostly because I wanted to do something a little spontaneous 😉
So whatever this new year may hold, I remind myself, all is grace. However beautiful. However hard. Every bit is breathed out in His love and mercy.
When I think back to the year my son was born, I often associate that time with negative memories—tremendous change, loneliness, stress and strain, drowning.
And yet the photos I scroll through tonight do not tell that story. What I see is joy, baby snuggles, new parents finding their way, excitement, daring endeavors, love stretched and grown, beginnings.
I see stepping-stones and two people learning to grow beyond themselves and the small world they had always known. And instead of remembering the hard and bad things from those transformative days, tonight I’m reminded of all the good. Of all the love and happiness and hope that filled those times too.
How can I forget what it was like, holding my son almost constantly that first year? He napped on my chest every single day and together we saw the world for the very first time—he with eyes brand new to all things and me with eyes opened anew as I watched the world through his lens.
Yes, I was very lonely. It was a difficult time of life in relationships, in adjusting to motherhood, and to staying home. It was stressful financially with gigantic projects undertaken. There are things I regret.
It was good to be reminded tonight of all the sweetness those years held. Of the baby giggles and kisses. Of the growing as a person and finding my way. Of the marriage that made it and the house now built. To remember all the love and joy I felt along the way even in the hardest of days.
This life is a bittersweet journey. We ebb and flow through heartache and hope and there is rarely a clear divide when the two don’t somehow mingle together in our story. How good it was to be reminded tonight of all these things ❤
This is how he will remember childhood–summer days at the lake or beside the ocean. The salty, tangy smell of water will remind and take him back to the sand and waves where he adventured from the time he could first walk.
How strange it seems that what will someday call my son to remember and reminisce remains a novelty to me. My childhood was red barns and cornfields, gravel roads and barn kittens. Though I love New England, My heart belongs to the Midwest prairie–and yet that is a place my son will barely know.
The Midwest will be a place he goes every once and a while to visit grandparents and family. He will hear me talk about it and perhaps he will always say “ya” like his Midwest momma–but it will probably never be a place he really knows or loves.
And yet this place is becoming familiar too. After nearly nine years, Massachusetts is as much home to me as Missouri ever was. I’ve come to love the cities and beaches, the summers spent camping in Vermont or eating at all our favorite burger stands. I anticipate the gorgeous falls wading through colorful leaves, sipping apple cider, and chasing the sun through the last days of warmth before we descend into these unforgivable winters.
This is where my son was born, where I brought him home brand new and where I’ve learned to be his mother. This is where I’ve grown in love for my husband over the years–where we’ve gotten to know each other and learned to live life side by side through all the good and bad. This is where I’ve grown as a woman–from the girl I was when I moved here at 22, fresh out of college and newlywed.
Outside Air 