If you read these often enough, you may remember that I have a journal where I like to write three little lines about what I did every day. I’ve done it for about a decade now. Its main purpose is to be able to look back to a month ago or a year ago or three, and see what surprises or mishaps I felt were worth recording. But I’ve found that in the last year I’ve stopped reading back so much. I still dutifully write down the small happenings of the day, but I can’t bear to look back at the doings of pre-COVID Alice, because I find myself thinking that she didn’t know. She just didn’t know.

Yet over the last few weeks as I’ve presented my final project, wrapped up last assignments, turned twenty-nine, and realized how very numbered my days in the Regent building are, I’ve been thinking back to my past self quite a lot, involuntarily. Specifically, to the Alice of fall 2018, the one who walked in bone-weary and wide-eyed in her brave gold shoes, unconcerned over whether she would make a single friend. And I’ve begun to wonder, as I squint through the fog of this month’s impending goodbyes and the summer’s personal tectonic shifts, if she’d have anything to offer me. What if she did know some things, things I’ve since forgotten?

So I imagine that she and I could find each other and sit down on a bench together in some wood between the worlds, some place between then and now, and have a talk. The trees in that place are very tall and let in a lot of light, and where we sit we can hear voices in the distance, but they never get any closer. It is warm and still there, and we are dressed for August. I begin by telling her all about how tired I am here in Spring of 2021 and all the things that have made me that way. 

I am trying to impress her with my feelings, but she is difficult to impress. She only nods placidly. So I up the ante and tell her that in my old age (read: in the last few months) I have become bitter and sometimes angry.

She does seem surprised by this and turns to face me fully. “I don’t know about that,” she says.

I look down at my hands. “You don’t know about a lot of things,” I say to her in triumph.

She grins and laughs. “Yeah, ain’t that the truth?” Annoyed that her self-deprecation is disrupting my narrative, I slouch down against the wooden bench. She sees this, and tries again, her voice low and earnest, “Listen, you can withstand a lot, kiddo. You know that.”

“But I shouldn’t have to,” I say.

“Maybe,” she says. “But it’s not forever.” I stay very still and quiet, brushing my bare feet back and forth against the soft grass. I know what’s coming next. Crouched sideways on the bench, knees poking towards me, she continues, “Do you remember how when you first came here, you didn’t think you’d ever really be happy again? Like you didn’t even know it was possible?” 

“Yeah,” I say, because I do remember.

Sounding awed because she is talking about her own present, she says, “And then you were. Just like that, you were happy.”

I let my tight-folded arms drop into my lap. “Yeah, I remember. It was like…fresh air.” She waits. She knows me, so she waits. At last I say, “I do think I’ll be happy again. I don’t worry about that now.”

“You’re not scared,” she says. It’s not a question.

I let my feet drop through the grass to meet the cool soil. “Not most of the time, no. Just overwhelmed. And small.”

She shrugs. “Small is good.” 

“Small is good,” I admit. It’s not really worth fighting her. She knows I know she’s right.

We sit there being small for a little while. And then she speaks up again, her voice slow because she has another idea. “When you first came here you could only process everything by writing poems. Because you could only understand one new thing at a time. And you were content to see just the trees and not the whole forest. Could you try that now?”

I think for a while, honest thinking. “I could try,” I tell her at last in a little voice.

“Trying is all you have to do,” she says.

“I forget that.” Then I smile, which is a relief to my whole body, and add, “But I forget a lot of things, I guess.”

She twists her body on the bench to face forward again, clearly pleased with herself and her work. “So I came to remind you. Trying and failing is my area of expertise, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” I laugh at her and she laughs at her.

We are quiet again and she glances over at me appraisingly. She’s such a stare-er, I realize. More than I ever knew when I was her. Not sure if I’m joking or not, I ask, “So is my sadness interesting?”

“Not very,” she says, looking away.

I feel a rush of affection and shake my head. “Bless,” I say.

She glances back in slight horror. “Do you say that now?”

“Oh, I say that now!” I tell her.

“Lord, help,” she says.