The phone is ringing. “Oh lowercase god,” you gulp. “It’s her.”
Her voice makes her sound like a young, round Keebler Elf. No more than 12 or 13, maybe, but she claims to be 17. Are you going to be cruel to this sweet cookie of a girl? She’s asking if we made it, if we got through all these years okay. She is more hopeful than you feel, but of course she is. She has you—something that you never had. A direct line to reassurance.
“It’s all okay,” you encourage. What else can you do? “You will walk through sadness, but Joy will be a friend of yours. And, believe it or not, that guardian whose hand you hold, without knowing their name? That is Humor. She’s the third amigo with you and Joy; it is not a lonely walk.” She is smiling now, you can hear it in her voice. She knows all of this, in her bones, but they haven’t broken yet. It’s a knowledge that lives in feelings before it finds words.
And this is when you hang up, full of love, and you realize how much your body has been your mother—telling you when to wake, when to pull your hand away from heat, when, at last, to rest. It reminds you to come home, day after day, to yourself.
To return to that girl you were at 17 with soft eyes and an infinite heart.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, look at a picture of yourself from when you were 17 and tell her it’ll be okay. Then listen into the distant quiet—is that? Could it be? 43-year-old you is saying the same exact thing.
Answer the phone, it's me 📞