This is me... a long time ago. Maybe forty five years ago. For me... that is a long time. This picture still haunts me when I look at it. It was taken in the school yard of the elementary school where I spend eight years of my life. I'm not posing for the camera... at least it doesn't look like I am. I am alone, which was often the picture for me in the playground. I look happy, there is a smile on my face. The grass seems to have me mesmerized.
I wish I could read her mind. Pardon the tense change, but that girl is not me anymore. Every molecule in my body has changed, multiple times since she was me. I don't even remember this day, this moment in time. It is a complete mystery to me. What if... what if that was the same day?
I woke up too early again and couldn't get back to sleep, because a memory kept me awake. I don't remember how old I was or what grade I was in, but I remember. I remember the place I stood when a classmate of mine, by the name of Darwin, asked me a question that no one had ever asked me before. We were standing in the teacher's lounge. I don't know why we were there... we were students, and that place was off limits to students, but my memory has that one etched in deep.
"Do you believe in God?"
I wish I could walk back into the mind of that child and discover what that question initiated. It would be interesting to see the spark, the beginning of an ember that had to hold itself for four more decades. No one had ever asked me that question before. I was four days old on the first trip I made to church. I was born Christian. Believing in God came with the package. I was taught and raised with the assumption that God was and my opinion in the matter wasn't relevant. But that day, to Darwin, it was.
There was no discussion, no philosophy, no inquiry as to what he meant by "God" . We both had in our minds what "God" meant, even at that age. We had been told what "God" meant. So whatever story we each had received from our parents and Sunday School teachers, we embraced that as reality. My answer was simple.
"Yes"
No further discussion needed. No bravery to discover that maybe in that moment I could have asked him what he meant or why he asked. No conversation to be had. But forty-five years later, those two verbal exchanges haunt me like the picture does.
What if after that interchange, I went outside to find a space to be alone in my thoughts. The thing in front of me was the grass, so I pick up a blade and caress it in my hand. What if that was the only place that question could really be answered.
I, like so many, had been given narrative to embrace. No one... well, other than Darwin, asked me how I interpreted my existence. No one asked me, other than Darwin, if everything that I had been given was something I wanted to receive for myself. No one... other than Darwin thought my opinion mattered on the subject. And all I could give him was the one word I had been given to say. "Yes". I couldn't give him my thoughts, because my thoughts on that subject were not my own yet. But one day they would be, and one day, I would look back on that very moment and whisper, if only Darwin could here.
"Thank you! Thank you for asking. Thank you for valuing my opinion on the matter. Thank you daring to ask what no one else ever did... Thank you!"
