10/100 (a letter to childhood dreams of grandeur)

Dear little starry-eyed former self,

It hurts, a little, to break this to you, but I'm going to serve it to you straight: you grow up to be quite ordinary. Certainly you care about things a lot. You feel things a lot. You think things a lot. But you are not particularly original, particularly smart, particularly brave, particularly endearing, or particularly funny. The realisation of this hurts, sometimes. I mean, it hurts the eleven-year-old you still stuck inside the thirty-something me. Because, while gravity has taken its toll on the outside, gravitas hasn't entirely consumed the interior. The fraction of me that is you keeps hoping that when I grow up, I'll be amazing.

To be honest, dreamy younger Danielle, there will be a lot of people smarter and more gifted than you. Very rarely, in a little spark of something halfway between Sehnsucht and illumination, you'll feel as though you are able to look at things for what they really are, and the realisation will cause your heart to beat quicker and your whole world will have an instant of greater, richer clarity. But mostly those moments will ride on the words and wisdom of other smarter people who have similiar experiences on a more regular basis.

There are people in this world who don't just see things for what they are; they see things for what they were, once, and what they could be in the future. Occasionally, you will feel as though you have a good idea. But there are people in this world who not only have good ideas but are able to articulate them so fiercely and so beautifully that they empower others to take hold of these good ideas and run with them until they are no longer ideas at all but clear, living actualities. There are people who will look at what goes on in the world and be able to tie it into the vast narrative of human history, recognising patterns and deviations, the ebb and flow of humanity's mark on the world.

There are people who are good at what they do, and people who are truly brilliant at what they do, and then there are people who are brilliant at what they do yet somehow also possess the voice, and the charisma, and the rare configuration of beautiful facial symmetry that makes people sit up and take notice. These people are able to talk about what's important to them without their features scrunching up into an ugly cry, who look endearing and purposeful even when squinting into the sun.

But this letter isn't to those people. It's to you. You'll grow up, little you, and you won't be especially amazing. If I could slip back through time and let you know that, I don't think I would. Because if you can't have dreams of grandeur as a child, then when can you? It's important that you think big thoughts, hopeful thoughts, foolish thoughts, before the cynicism of the world slaps them out of you.

If I did end up face to face to with you, though, and you asked me whether you'd be brilliant like all those other people? I'd tell you to stop looking at them if all it means is comparison.

But if you are looking so that you can cheer for them, honour them, learn from them, and imitate their goodness, then by all means, go. Know this, however: you won't be a genius, but you can have a go at doing ordinary well. You won't. Not always. But you can try. And if time and again you come up against limitations (even if the primary one is simply that you're too darn scared), then that's okay. Start again tomorrow. If it's possible to do something so earthbound as eating or drinking and yet make it for the glory of God, then it's possible to work extraordinarily hard at your ordinary life.

Chin up, little heart. Normal people still dream.

9/100 (a birthday letter to sylvia plath)

Dear Sylvia,

It's your birthday today. You would've been eighty-one years old, but of course you're not. You're forever frozen in your youthful zeal and passion and confusion, and I suspect that's how you wanted it. But because it's your birthday, I'm forced to confront my bewildered feelings about you.

One part of me admires you. There is no doubt (and I mean there is no doubt; take the cliche away from it and consider what that actually means) that you were gifted beyond belief. You were a woman who knew how to feel, how to string words together in such powerful configurations that they reach in and squeeze the heart of the reader.

But another part of me is a little afraid of you. There is something dangerous about you, for you carry (carried?) with you a kind of infectious, desperate romanticism. You walked the tiny red line that on one side fell to wanting everything and on the other side fell to wanting nothing at all. You took your own life and, after reading some of your thoughts (I am reluctant to dive too deeply into your world) I can't decide if you felt death would be just another great adventure, or whether it was something darker, more irreparable. There is nothing romantic about suicide; it is heart-breaking and lonely and grievous, and it is forever.

You said, once, that your realest self was the poetry self, that it was the truest you. Conversely, your self which fell in love and had babies and made a home and was outwardly happy -- at least in moments stalled in time -- was your false self. Your nice self was your false self, you said. I wonder if that's true or whether, rather, both selves were equally you and the writing self, the not-nice self, was the insistent one, the intense one, the one with the emotions that felt the deepest, the self that you thought must be obeyed.

History is still undecided about you, Sylvia. Some paint you as a victim. Others point to Ted and the children left behind, the sad legacy played out in Nicholas's life, and paint you as the criminal. It is none of our business either way. Your story is history now and it is not absolutely necessary for us to decide what was right or wrong. But by your own urgent, desperate life and your own urgent, desperate death, you force us all to look at you and take sides, to consider something that has no bearing on our lives and yet feels weighty.

Sylvia, we are confronted by who you are. We are confronted by you. And although there was deep sorrow amongst your deep joy, I have a feeling this would make you smile. You've been gone fifty years, Sylvia, but you're still intriguing people.

Happy birthday, Sylvia Plath.

Danielle

[image source]

8/100 (letter to my great-grandmother)

Dear Evelyn,

I've been spending so much time with you lately that it feels strange to have stopped.

For several weeks in a row there, you consumed most of my thought space. I had expectations when I set out to write about you. I expected that there would be little to say, for we know so little of you. I expected to be comfortable with gaps in our lack of knowledge. And I expected to be emotional.

That last part, of course, turned out to be true. But I did not expect to be so emotional. I did not expect to feel a shaking to my fingertips as I found out more things about you. I did not expect the writer part of me to thrill at the story aspect of your life while the woman, daughter, and sister part of me grieved for your loss, for your lonely hours confused and misunderstood (and possibly mistreated) in a mental asylum now abandoned and left to the ghosthunters. I did not expect to relate so deeply to you, to find kinship with you even in the ways we both -- you and I -- attempt to make sense of the quirks and deviations in our expected picture of a happy, mature, adult life.

The other expectations were, of course, proven wrong. For a woman of whom we know so little, you offered us so much. I could not get to you, immediately, so I had to get to the space around you -- like when one can't see the shape of something, only the negative space that surrounds it. If you can fill in enough of the negative space, then eventually there's an entire outline, a portrait in reverse. And that's what I was able to make of you, Evelyn. There is no record of your words, no list of the people you met, or reports of how you filled your days. But we have this negative space, and with that, it's possible to paint a picture of where you were, of how you lived. We can speculate about what you experienced. We can empathise with you. It does not matter if we do not know what you did. We can consider what you felt. As one memoir theorist puts it, we can move away from thinking of you as an achieving subject and instead look at you as an experiencing subject. And you certainly experienced a lot.

One last thing I did not expect, Evelyn. I did not expect that writing about you would open doors full of stories and memories with my grandmother, your firstborn daughter. I knew she would share and that I would cherish it, but I did not think that it would be something I would recognise as rare and precious even while I was experiencing it. She is almost eighty now, and times for sharing cannot go on forever. I'm thankful that you gave us the opportunity for this one.

We would not be here now if you were not there, then, and it still saddens me that I could not have known you; that my mother, your granddaughter, could not have known you; that my grandmother, your firstborn, did not know you.

But we are doing our best to know you now, and what we know, we love.

Danielle

PS. The day after I finished writing about you, I came across this passage in a book by Jandy Nelson. I can relate, and I think you would, too:

"Whatever makes a woman leave two little kids, her brother, and her mother, and not come back for sixteen years... I mean, we call it wanderlust, other families might not be so kind."
"What would other families call it?" I ask. He's never intimated anything like this before about Mom. Is it all a cover story for crazy? ...
"Doesn't matter what anyone else would call it, Len," he says, "This is our story to tell."
This is our story to tell.

7/100 (dear someday)

Dear future me*,

I don’t always like to think of you. I mean, I have enough trouble with present me. There’s so much I want to do and still haven’t done. There’s so much I wish for. There are so many ways I could be a better version of myself. And of course there are the grey hairs I keep finding lately (I am too YOUNG for that, I tell you). What I’m probably actually saying — what I’m realising even as I type this, future me — is that I have high hopes for you but I realise not all of them will be fulfilled.

When I was younger, I had a perfect picture of who you’d be, future me. You were going to have long straight locks (of a rich chestnut brown). You would be suave, confident, a sophisticated city-dwelling executive. Also you would wear a canary-yellow power suit with matching heels. Obviously you were gonna be one classy lady.

When I got a bit older, the picture of future me shifted a little. Future me was going to be a hippie type who wore ravelling sweaters in unflattering shades of green and did her hair in two plaits, who never wore makeup, and whose favourite shoes were gumboots. She would paint and draw and write things, and she’d chase hens around the chicken coop.

Present me is less sure of what future me will be, but funnily enough, present me sits fairly smack dab in the middle of my two earlier projections. If this says anything at all (and more likely it says nothing), it suggests that future me will be less about personality and individual style, and more about the series of choices I make between now and then.

So dear future me, I don’t care whether you wear canary yellow heels or gumboots, whether you have a favourite hairdresser or you’re a wash-and-wear kind of woman. I acknowledge that the grey hairs will probably increase rather than decrease (at least in reality, if not appearance; there ARE such things as hair dyes. Please don’t be disgusted, hippie seventeen-year-old self).

I want you to assure me, future self, that there will be a good man to love and children to love on, but I know you can’t make those kinds of promises and so I won’t hold you to them. Instead, future self, I’d just ask that you learn from what’s going on now, so you can be more of a person because of what happens to you. Be braver than current me. Be kinder than current me. And please, always be faithful. Cling to the rock. I’ll keep my end of the bargain.

Love,
your fanciful younger self.

*this post was entirely the result of a meme prompt left for me at tumblr by Hayley.

6/100 (a tentative love note)

Dear Queensland Summer,

I don't want to speak too soon; after all, it's only been -- what -- almost six years? But I think I'm finally beginning to like you. Don't worry; I'm surprised, too.

Please continue to be kind?

Yours in wary affection,

Danielle

5/100 (letter to a closing year)

Dear two thousand and twelve,

Dude. I feel like you've been hanging in the shadows a bit. One moment you're on the way, and the next moment -- or so it seems -- you're leaving. It's my fault, really. I should have paid more attention to you. I should have slowed down, stopped to look at you from a different angle, analysed you, explored you. Instead, I got caught up in living and you drifted by while I was hardly noticing.

I have to say, 2012, you're not my favourite year. We don't part as best friends, that's for sure. But we're definitely not enemies, either. There are things you failed to provide, but there are many many things you brought with you, too: opportunities for writing, learning, working, and being challenged. I'm especially thankful for doors that opened onto new chances to learn from clever people, and the privilege/burden/adventure of getting to do some brain-moulding of my own -- not wisely or well, but with gusto at least.

While spending your year, 2012, I let slip old habits which I'd once thought very important, and formed others that I hope might stick around a little better. Some friendships got shuffled around in the busyness of the everyday humdrum, and suffered for it. Other friendships -- some of them surprising -- blossomed and deepened into very cool things (it's always the unexpected ones). Still other relationships -- the long-term ones, the friends-forever ones -- grew solidly and well with only the much-loved, occasional watering and sunshine of face-to-face meetings.

2012, you answered some questions I hadn't even realised I'd been asking, some that had been floating around in the back of my mind and heart since I was a little kid. That was a gift I'm very thankful for. But the gift of the year -- your crowning glory, 2012 -- is the one you brought in September: a new nephew to love on and squish. Thanks for that.

I feel like you passed by unreported and unexamined in some aspects and I wish I'd had -- made -- taken more time to really look at you while you were here. But you're leaving now and I think it's for the best. You were good, 2012, but (and no hard feelings here) I'm ready to replace you with another.

Leave the door open for 2013, will you? It's soon to be shuffled in straight from the Timemaster.

Farewell,

Danielle

4/100 (letter to a tiny pink person)

Dear Seth,

At just three days old (or is it four? I'm not certain how to count these things), you are far and away the youngest person I have ever written to. But you are currently the youngest person that I love, and so it makes sense that I'm scrambling to translate that love into words.

You are my newest nephew. You came into the world with a minimum of fuss, and at the moment you continue in a similar polite vein. You are tiny, but you have big hands (farmer's hands? mechanic's hands? architect's hands? potter's hands?). You look startlingly like your dad, but you are also incredibly you, with a serious, thoughtful mouth, and a forehead with a few tiny crinkles in it. It's as though this new world is a puzzle you're trying to solve, and I guess perhaps it is, and you are.

I think maybe it's your name, Seth -- a manly little man's name, and an ancient one, too -- that has many of us already looking ahead to your future. You're so tiny and new, and I promise that we will let you take all the time you need to grow up; please don't hurry it. But in the meantime, we wonder about who you will become.

"Mitch, Dan, and Seth," said your aunty Andrea, tasting the sound of the three boy cousins' names all together in a group. It sounded good, and I imagined a trio of bold, cheeky young men who might distract the girls at church. Uncle Tain is already talking about how he will fish with you, wrestle you, and watch superhero cartoons with you. I, on the other hand, had this vision of you growing up to be a lovely paradox: an artist -- one who rides motorcycles -- is the picture that leapt into my imagination when I heard your name.

But guess what, Seth? You don't have to be any of these things. You've introduced yourself to us as a tiny bundle who honestly wants little more than to sleep and occasionally eat (though not much). Yet already there's a story about you and its pages are filled with amazing things. Someone better than any of us has written it; we're just here to read along and help you out with some of the words.

Be who you are meant to be, Seth -- whether that's a wrestling cheeky fishing artistic motorcyle rider, or a chef who reads poetry and wants to get his pilot's licence. If you love God and you love the people He made, you will be a wonderful, mighty man, and that is enough and plenty.

Thank you for coming into our world.

Love,

Aunty Dee

3/100 (letter to a teenage me)

Dear little seventeen-year-old Danielle,

I write to you at age seventeen because apparently that was your -- our -- favourite age. I don't even remember now why it became so, but I suspect it's something to do with being a sort of magical inbetween time: not really a child, not really an adult, and yet it's entirely possible to be one or the other or both. A good age.

The teenage years were kind to you, little beaming, optimistic Danielle. I don't mean in the sense that they blessed you with an unforced grace of movement, milky white skin, and gorgeous long tresses of wavy hair. I don't need to tell you that none of this happened; after all, why do you think there is no cheesy retrospective picture topping this letter? It's because I couldn't find a picture of teenage Danielle that I was willing to share with the internet. So no, Danielle, you will never be the beautiful, ladylike Meg of Seven Little Australians with her delightfully romantic ways and the adorable sprinkling of light freckles over her nose. Sorry about that.

But your teenage years were brilliant in altogether different respects. You lived in cool places and had cool friends and your siblings were cool companions and you got to make stuff and paint stuff and think stuff and read stuff and all those horrible things you'd heard about intense emotional and hormonal confusion and the teenage years totally being the pits? They didn't actually come true.

I'm not saying things were perfect, and I'm not saying things are going to be perfect. Life's messy and, while hormonal confusion won't dog your teenage years, emotional confusion will definitely pop its head in during your twenties. You know how you knew it all and had all the answers when you were seventeen? I'm afraid to tell you, kid, that all that dries up. By the time you hit mid-twenties, you'll be starting to realise that things are less black and white than you'd once thought. Pat answers don't actually satisfy. Also, life sometimes punches you in the stomach -- hard -- and this may dent your breezy seventeen-year-old demeanour. I have to tell you, Danielle, that far from being more confident, more interesting, and more funny, you will likely be less of all those things. In short, Danielle, you will turn into one of those people you said you never would be: a grown up. What's more, it'll come over you slowly and before you even realise it, you're there, never to return to the kingdom of the kids.

Grieve a little over all of that, if you want. I know you have big dreams and plans. But when you're done, dry your eyes and start looking ahead. Good things will happen. You'll be surprised by the doors God opens for you. You'll be startled by the amazing gifts that come in from all corners at surprising moments. You'll be in awe when some of your dreams, the ones you've had since you were little, will actually be realised. Some of the friends you're starting to get to know now -- they'll still be majorly important in your life fifteen years later, plus you'll get to know some amazing new people. You'll grin when you realise that you don't have to click with everyone straight away. Some strong and deep friendships can start off slowly, and others can burst into existence like fireworks. Have fun enjoying all of them.

You will have friends all around the world. Your book collection will continue to grow -- alarmingly. The internet will only get cooler. You'll be less of an extrovert than you once were; try not to think about it too much. In fact, try not to think about most things too much. That's always been your downfall. Stop beating up on yourself; you're not fat. One day you'll look back and wish you'd appreciated your size now, because you sure won't stay that away. Again, sorry to have to put it so bluntly.

Chill out about the whole driving thing. You're a late (late late!) bloomer, but you work it out eventually -- you even figure out how to read maps and get yourself to strange places. As I said, your skin will never be porcelain, but the horrid teen-face days will eventually disappear. And here's something cool: you finally, eventually, actually work out how to style your hair in a way you like. After years of experimentation and grief, you WILL settle on some styles and cuts that work for you. The frizz shall be tamed! I mean, to a degree. Pantene-ad-perfection will probably elude you all your days.

I know, I know -- you want me to cut to the chase already and tell you who you end up with. But here's the thing, little hopeful-faced Danielle: there is no who-you-end-up-with, at least not yet. I know you secretly think you could get married by eighteen or twenty-one. After all, it's what your Mum did, and you really just want to have babies and stuff. But you're so not ready for that. I mean, you would've muddled through, joyfully and optimistically, and grown up next to whoever you married (don't worry; it's not him. He eventually finds someone else, so you can breathe a sigh of relief). I've seen other baby brides do that, and life is lovely for them. But I'm glad for your sake that it won't pan out this way. I hesitate to even tell you any of that. What seventeen-year-old wants to know that she still won't be married at the age of thirty-two? It's the truth, though, and there's no way you'll really get this, but while it's definitely rough at times, life is good.

Thanks for spending all that time in reading and study and soaking up the word of God. It'll come in extra handy in the future, especially when you no longer have time to sit for hours and digest good meaty stuff. It will be so helpful, particularly when you realise that there's so much you don't know. Eventually you will turn into your mother, Danielle, and cry during movies. That's payback for all the times you laughed at Mum. Actually, you'll cry a lot, sometimes even in front of people. I know you worry sometimes that you're an emotionless robot, but seriously. Quit worrying about that. It's so not true.

You will keep secrets, little-version-of-me, that you can't imagine having to keep. You will see things broken down and built up again. You will develop a rich and thankful appreciation for your amazing family. That's all I can really tell you. I'll leave the rest for you to figure out on your own.

I wish I could have some of your starry-eyed optimism to keep me company nowadays, but I don't really think I'd trade that for what these years have shown me -- will show you -- of grace. God keeps His promises, Danielle. You don't need to be scared to grow up.

With you all the way,

Danielle

2/100 (letter to a piece of plastic pipe)

Dear S-bend under the vanity sink,

There are only brief spaces in time that I actually feel like a grown-up. I may be in my early thirties (ugh) but most of the time I feel as though I'm stuck somewhere between about seventeen and twenty-two.

However, there are occasional moments that my psyche has somehow determined to be marks of maturity.
Filing my tax return is one of them. Buying jars of vitamin C tablets is another. Leaving the house before 8am for social appointments or work also gives me that no-longer-a-teenager vibe. And the other day I felt that unexpected grown up mood when I went all plumber-fu and pulled you apart in order to remove whatever was blocking my little vanity unit drain.

You're just a piece of plastic pipe, bent into a weird gravity-defying shape. I don't know why pipes exist like you anyway. They make life difficult for girls like me, who invariably hover over our bathroom sinks doing facial scrubs or straightening our hair. And though girls like me try to be fastidious about not letting the insoluble detritus of tooth-brushing and face-scrubbing and hair-straightening slip through those tiny pizza-slice-shaped gaps in the plug hole, of course stuff gets through. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be writing a letter to you right now.

And I write not to remind you of what a pain you can be, just sitting there whitely and plasticly, catching stuff that you should let go of, causing blockages and weirdness, and reminding me that I'm a girl and not a manly man. I write to thank you.

Because I put aside my natural ineptitude for DIY and instead I tackled you head-on. I pulled you apart, emptied you out, ran some bleach and baking soda through your system, and narrowly avoided turning the tap on to rinse out the pipes attached to you (this would have been an altogether different letter, in that case). Then I put you back together, tested for leaks, and saw you ran like a dream. And didn't I feel grown up. So thanks, lowly s-bend. For just a second, you helped me act my age.

Of course, then I went and ruined it by taking weird self-portraits in the bathroom mirror. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Yours (just a little smugly),

Danielle

* * * * *

Conversations:

Andrea -- we are book brain twins currently! You'll have to blog your responses to the books you're reading :).

Katie -- oh no, your world does sound particularly busy! I hope you survive through the rest of term okay.

Caitlin -- I'm reading Hard Times, and loving it just as much as I did when I was younger. I honestly think it's my favourite Dickens, even though hardly anyone else seems to like it. Narnia exhibition? Sounds amazing!

Bloss -- loved your comment, as always! Ooh, you have to try more Dickens! David Copperfield is brilliant. So too is Hard Times, the one I'm reading currently.

Staish -- you are welcome.

Meaghan -- goal for tonight: de-sting eyes by not staying up too late. 

1/100 (a letter to July)

Oh July,

Dear seventh-month-of-the-year, I have to apologise. Quite honestly, I haven't always thought of you with kindness. Actually it's worse than that. Mostly I have never thought of you at all. And if it's a sad thing to be thought of with distaste, it's a million times sadder simply not to be considered in any way. And this is what I have done to you, July.

It's not that you are so very worthless. It's just that... the other months have always had so much going for them. Sure, December is either stifling or sticky, but it has Christmas. March brings Autumn with it. April gets by because it sounds pretty and, well, September actually is pretty, you know. And while we all know that (with a consistency that follows through year after year) August has the most disgusting calendar pictures ever, it also has my birthday, and I quite like birthdays. So there's a lot of competition right there, July. In the lineup of good months of the year, you barely even rate a mention.

You're just there, July, in the middle of Winter -- neither the relieved end of something, nor the exciting beginning of a new season. If I look back and consider your presence in my childhood, mostly I remember chapped, dry winter hands and that terrifying moment after stepping out from the bath into the breath-stealing air.

July, you have kind of been a nothing month to me, and for that I am sorry. But I'm also happy to say that my perception of you is changing. I don't want to be discriminatory or anything, but I like Queensland July better than New South Wales July -- and that's saying something, because Queensland and I have had something of a rocky relationship. But you, July-in-Queensland, you are quite lovely. You remind me of Autumn in New South Wales, which is special because I have always loved Autumn.

You're a month of dramatic moods, July. You are beautiful, brilliant, and crisp. Your days are bright, bright blue and clear skies. Your nights are cold and cosy, sharp and bitter. There are whole weeks of heavy grey rain that turns the ground to chilly swamp and sends us all a little bit crazy. But that also gives us the chance to wear ugg boots, cover our laps with quilts (and kittens), and sip chamomile tea. You have dolphins, July. Dolphins. I saw them carving and leaping through the water last week while I was sitting with a coffee in one hand and a textbook in the other. It was quite amazing.

I guess what I'm trying to say, July, is that I'm warming to you -- even though my feet are cold.

(Newly-developing) love,
Danielle

* * * * *

(This is the beginning of my new creative blogging project, picking up where the last project finished off. 52 pictures gets replaced by one hundred letters -- to anyone (or anything). I'm excited!)

* * * * *

Conversations:


Andrea -- once a week is a lot easier to keep momentum than once a day!


Lauren -- thank you :D