January 2019: Time Capsule
When I was in the sixth grade I was confirmed. Sixth grade was a rough age for any ritual, but especially one in church. As part of our confirmation, we had to go on a retreat. The only thing I remember about the retreat are the time capsules we made. Everyone was instructed to bring an empty canister of Pringles, which we would then decorate in construction paper and fill with our observations. In our time capsule we would each include a timeline of our future. This felt like flirting with disaster, allowing us to draw our futures in straight lines, outside of the pretense of prayer or spiritual understanding. For all I know it was just an exercise to fill the time, something planned by the mix of nuns and moms who helped out at the retreat, moms with perms and delicate crosses on gold chains that nestled against their turtlenecks.
For someone who was skating through confirmation, torn between wanting to have faith in ritual and being skeptical of anything related to the church, the timeline was a potent exercise. I started with the year I was born, and then the year it was then - 1995 - and still had a wide stretch of paper to project the future upon. I took the exercise seriously. While other children were drawing dots on their timelines for future marriages, children, make a million dollars, go to college, go to California, I did not base my future on fantasy. I thought my timeline had to illustrate the future based on the present. I wouldn’t fool myself otherwise. Brow furrowed, I drew the evenly spaced out dots. Age 16 - parents get divorced. Age 30 - parents die.
Oh, honey, one of the moms said, walking by the desk where I worked. You don’t mean that.
Trust me, I said.
I was off by three years on the former and blessedly way, way off on the later. What I can’t remember about the time capsule, though, is what future I imagined for myself. Did I write that I moved away? That I fell in love? That I went to work every day? That I wrote books? That I had a pet? I wasn’t attracted to the future narratives the other girls so easily picked up, picturing their weddings, their babies, their houses. I couldn’t see myself anywhere. When I pictured the future, the most I could make out was an imaginary cityscape and me, by myself. With books. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I had no idea how to translate that into reality.
The nuns and the moms instructed us to seal the time capsules and open them in six years, when we were graduating high school. For my confirmation name, I chose St. Joan of Arc. I was enamored by the dramatic photos of her surrounded by flames, or riding into battle, or encased in her own slick armor. For my confirmation sponsor, I chose my older cousin Moira, the one who would go to live in Sweden in high school, the one who shaved her head, the one who would pass me a cassette tape of Ani DiFranco while we sat on the asphalt patio at our grandparents’ house. When I think of vision boards and mantras, intention setting, end of year lists, affirmations, manifestation, I think of my naive and unsteady relationship to that time capsule. There was so much I wanted in the future that I was afraid to even articulate. My own desires thrummed within me and I found them too bright, too overwhelming, to engage in. Best to choose a saint who could do it for me. Best to follow the cousin who was her own alarm ringer. Best to trust myself, myself, myself.
Yesterday I had about ten pages left in my journal and wanted to finish it before the new year. The easiest way to fill pages was to make lists. Lists of what I wanted. Lists of what I loved. Lists of what I was proud of. Lists of faith. Lists of surprises. Lists of whispered desires against the dense fog of fear. Lists of books I read. Lists of ways I loved Emily. Lists of days and times and places where I can write. Lists of where I want to go. Lists of what I remember. Lists of who I trust. Over the years, I’ve drawn timelines for friends who needed them. Here, I’ll say, drawing a dot far on the left. This is what you’ve been through. And, here, this dot a little further along, is where you are now. That leaves us with all of this: a dot of success not too further down the road. Dots of love. Dots of futures you cannot yet image. Dots of celebration.
It is always easier to imagine someone else’s future than your own. I go back and I stand in the doorway of the small classroom where my younger self sits tense and determined, drawing a future that she believes must always protract a tether to the past. I want to tell her to draw dots off the page, to keep the faith in herself, and to know that if she cannot picture the future, it’s because it’s more than she could ever imagine on her own.
xo,
c