I’m as old now as my dad was when he dunked me underwater in the baptism font at our local Mormon ward, baptizing me into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
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“I was today years old…” people say on Twitter, when tweeting about something that they just learned. Turn of phrase borne out of form and function, out of finding a new way to say something old.
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The other day, one of the essays we’d read and were discussing in one of my classes mentioned 9/11 as marker of time. I looked at my room of mostly freshman students and realized, for the first time, that likely some of them were not yet born in September 2001. I asked them what cultural moments—whether tragedy or celebration or something in between—they thought of as markers of time, moments they remember where they were then they happened, demarcations of before and after. I was surprised there wasn’t an immediate or universal answer, though I wouldn’t have had one when I was their age either. Kurt Cobain killing himself, perhaps. I wanted to add McGwire breaking Roger Maris’ twenty-seven year old homerun record—I remember where I was, who I was with, the excitement amongst my roommates in the moment—but in fact that would have still been another couple of years away.
• • •
Father as parent, as role model, as measuring stick. How big my dad’s hands seemed when he held me and told me to fall back, fully submerging underwater as act of baptism. How fast his beard stubble grew when he didn’t shave for a couple days. The pant size on the label on the back of his jeans.
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On Tuesdays, I play soccer at the YMCA with a group of grad students and one of their professors from the University where I am a Lecturer. I don’t know how old the students are. I presume them to be older than my stepdaughter, who will start grad school in the fall, but younger than I was when I was in grad school.
• • •
I was seven, eight, nine years old when I would go with my mom to the YWCA to visit my grandmother, working there as a counselor, largely helping and talking to women who had left abusive partners, who had nowhere else to go. I was nineteen years old, a month away from beginning my sophomore year in college, a year older, give or take, than most of my current students, when my grandmother passed away.
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I was last year years old when I saw the Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Near the end of that movie, Mr. Rogers says, “I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today.” I was last year years old when I took that minute to think about my grandmother; last year years old when Mr. Rogers encouraged us to “imagine how grateful they must be, that during your silent times, you remember how important they are to you;” last year years old when I cried through that gift of a silent minute.
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I’ve been doing this thing more and more as I get older, more nostalgic. I do the math, backwards, forwards, figuring out how old I was when, how old I am now. Memories and events and people as benchmarks and frames of reference. Venn diagrams of figurative and literal size, age, meaning. The speed, the size, the shape of a parent, a dad, a child, husband, teacher, adult, human.
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I started teaching at the University where I still teach now when I was the age that my wife was when we started dating. We met a few years after I graduated college. Her daughter was as old then as I was when my dad’s large hands held me next to him in the baptism font at our church. Her daughter’s half-sister was as old then as I was when I went on my first date, and is as old now as I was when I moved across the country, Washington to Michigan, to live with them.
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I was a couple months ago years old, when I drove back across the country to spend the summer in the city where I grew up. When I stopped in a city that I’d only noticed the day before to be on my route, and met my biological half-sister, the first blood relation I’ve ever met. She’s one year older than my stepdaughter’s half-sister; I was as old when she was born as my younger brother was when I graduated high school, though I was still years, decades, away from knowing about her. We had dinner, and talked about the years and time and distance and lives between us, these measurements that felt both surprising and not. It became one of my favorite stories to tell during this summer of seeing friends and family.
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I’ve spent the summer having meals and hanging out and going on adventures and reliving the past and telling favorite stories and creating new stories to retell in our futures with friends and family. Friends who are basically family. My best friend’s daughter is as old now as her mom was when she and I went on a date—another favorite story—this little kid date to see Ernest Goes to Jail in elementary school. Their son is as old as my stepdaughter was when I met her. One evening, having dinner with their extended family, I marvel at how little the kids’ youngest cousin is, how he is the same age my best friend was when we met—one more of my favorite stories to tell, waving through the fence in my grandmother’s backyard to this little kid who seemed about my age.
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I was today years old when I thought about that memory of going to the YWCA, when I realized I hadn’t heard or thought about the YWCA in years, when wondered if it is still even a thing, when I thought anew about my grandmother—and my mom, and my dad, and my brother, and my biological mom for giving me up for adoption, for the gift she gave my parents—and how much she, and they, helped me become who I am today. A parent, child, husband, teacher, adult, human.
Aaron Burch is the Founding Editor of Hobart, and the author of the criticism-turned-memoir Stephen King’s The Body and the story collection Backswing. Follow Aaron on Twitter @Aaron__Burch
© 2019 Aaron Burch. Published by LITTLE FICTION | BIG TRUTHS, August 2019.
Images from The Noun Project (credits: Studio GLD).
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