Wave me on my way

A good-bye letter from my younger body to my older self

Dear Rita,

As it continues to get harder for you to rise from sitting on the floor and to put your socks on while standing, remember me. Remember how I once turned cartwheels in the front yard of the Burien house, grass tickling the leathered soles of my bare feet. Remember the time I outran all the boys on 4th grade field day, slick Keds slapping the playground’s hard pan. Remember the time you went to Kimberlee’s house after school and you rolled me down a dirt hill over and over and over again, laughing. Remember your delight sitting in a bathtub with her afterward, your bodies slick as seal pups, and how her mother shook her head, smiling at you girls. As the body you now inhabit continues to change, I want you to remember how it was—how you were—when you didn’t think about me, or how I might change, or what I once was.

Remember, too, the years when Grandpa called you Slats, when I grew so fast that Mom had to re-make all our pants because none of the ones she could buy in the stores were both long enough for my legs and small enough for my waist. Remember how warm and gentle his voice was, how he said it with love, to help you love me. I know you didn’t, and I know you think having that kind of shape would be a nice problem to have now, but it really wouldn’t be. You know it wouldn’t. Just like you know I have to go–as surely as children have to leave home–and that I’ve been on my way out the door for years now. Remember all of these things, and then let’s say a gentle good-bye. Don’t make me peel your fingers one by one away from my birdbone-thin wrist.

I know you miss the parts of me that are no longer part of you: my thick, blonde hair and how voluminously it feathered back in 1979; the bright, white, teeth in my dazzling post-braces smile; my hips that more than one boy circled with his two hands, fingers meeting in the small of my back. But those were not the most important things about me. Think, instead, of all the ways I made it possible for you to feel strong and weightless and free: through running, skating, dancing, skiing, swimming! (And fucking! Don’t blush. You know that’s how it made you feel, and you loved me for it, as well you should.) Maybe those things don’t feel quite the way they used to, and maybe you don’t look the same way I did doing them, and maybe you can’t do them in all the ways I did, but pleasure’s still there to be had in the body you have today. Take it! And revel in the many ways you have of feeling good that don’t require my supple flexibility and strength. This fall, go kick your feet through piles of bright, brittle leaves; shape dough into loaves of warm, yeasty bread; plant bulbs you can reasonably expect to see blooming come spring. (These things contain their own kind of ecstasy.) Hold your beloveds’ hands in yours and be grateful for all I gave you– two children, for god’s sakes, and the gaze of men, which–admit it–wasn’t all bad. It got you things you wanted, some of which you still enjoy today. But notice, too, (even more) the gifts that come in the absence of that gaze. I know you sometimes miss it, but you don’t need to be beautiful in the ways you once were. You really don’t. You have other assets now. Make better use of them than you did of me.

And stop kicking yourself for not appreciating me more when you had me. For not taking better care of me. I’m glad you could take me for granted during those hard years of working and parenting and healing from earlier hurts I had not nearly enough armor to shield you from. It felt like the least I could do, and it’s all OK now, really. You’re OK. I mean, sure: Your body today is not as OK as I once was and there will come a time when it’s not OK at all, but that, too, is just the way of things. Accept it. Accept it and let me go so you can embrace the gifts that come with the body you have now. Stop trying to wear the kind of clothing that looked good on me but just…doesn’t…on you. Stop wasting time wishing away your soft belly, your thinning hair, and the shadows under your eyes. Remember how you used to love snuggling into the pillows of Grandma’s body, how you loved the give of her? Remember how you tried to tell her that once, when she was complaining about being fat, so that she would know why you wouldn’t change a thing about her? Remember looking at a photo from that time not too long ago and realizing that she hadn’t been fat at all? And that she was younger in it than you are now? And how tenderly you felt toward her, how sad that she couldn’t see how beautiful she was? Pay attention to those things. Nobody cares as much about what’s under your eyes as they do about the light within them. That has always been true.

I shouldn’t have to tell you these things. There’s so much I shouldn’t have to tell you, but I will, I am, because you deserve this kind of truth-telling, this kind of love. You always have, and not because of me. God, but I wish you’d known when I was fully here the things that you do know now. (It’s a common lament.) My biggest hope for you is that 20 years from now you won’t saddle today’s body with the kind of regrets I’m going to be taking with me. Love it the way you wish you’d loved me. Please, for once in what is turning out to be your long life, stop looking back and stop looking forward and just be in the body you have now, in the life you that is yours to live today. Be in the sturdy legs that still walk you through your days; be in your teeth that can still bite into an apple; be in the hair that still grows past your shoulders; be in your eyes that still see, your arms that still carry, your ears that still hear; be in your strong heart and its dumb, steady drumbeat of blood; be in the brain that assembles these words and sends them out into the world through your increasingly knobby, crepe-skinned, age-spotted, wondrous hands. Kiss their fingertips for me and then wave me on my way.

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Ah, I know, I know: It’s been more than a minute since I’ve shared anything with you. The second half of September took it out of me: back spasm, migraine, first cold since 2019 (!), more migraine, plugged-up achey ear. All of which prompted this letter to my body, which began its life as a response to a prompt in

Jeannine Ouellette

’s current writing intensive The Letter Reimagined. (I love Jeannine’s work and the writing community she hosts. If you are a writer, I strongly strongly strongly urge you to check out what’s going on in her space. I’ve been having breakthroughs, and it is a delightful thing to feel myself growing after so many years of working with words.)

And then, of course, there are all the things happening in the world. I don’t need to list them. You know. But still, when I look through my camera roll over the days that have passed since I last chatted with you here, there have been bright moments in this life that’s been even smaller than it usually is: baking a peach cobbler, seeing my daughter settle into her new home, sharing jokes with my son, organizing our pantry (with a label-maker! be still, my librarian heart), reveling in the late-afternoon sun suffusing our cozy house, visiting a small bookstore/yarn shop (such a genius hybrid!), gathering with fellow humans to watch swifts circle and swoop and finally dive into the chimney of a church as the sun disappeared at the end of a sunny September day.

I would love to hear how you’ve been. What’s been happening? What’s on your mind? Please do leave me a note to let me know. And if you like what I’m doing here and think others might, too, please give this post a heart (right down below here). The algorithms like hearts, and I do, too.