The Then Me

The date: October 26, 1996. The game: Honeybears vs. Cheetahs. The place: Frank Love Elementary School.

Until last week I had never seen a video of myself as a child. My parents didn't (and still don't) own a camcorder, and I grew up in the gloomy, grey Zoloft days before cell phones. All the documentation of my childhood has come in the form of 35mm film rolls that spent years in cardboard boxes before maybe being developed.

In elementary school I had friends whose TV room shelves were stacked with home videos of ballet recitals or summer barbecues on the front lawn. Though I never once uttered this sentiment aloud, I was deeply envious. An immensely analytic child, I convinced myself that the reason there were no videos of me was that I wasn't cute enough or interesting enough, that I didn't say the darndest enough things. It was shameful to be that kid--the one who had already, at age eight, disappointed her parents to such an extent that they wanted no video record of her appalling, nail-biting, flat-footed ways.

Last week, in an attempt to make our guest room suitable for my friend and her husband who were visiting from Minnesota, I was cleaning our obscenely cluttered shelves full of movies. As I sorted through VHS after VHS of recorded episodes of CSI and Law & Order: SVU, I came across a videocassette tape (that's right, I said it) in a sleeve that was labeled, simply, "Olivia." Curious, I slid it out. Printed in small all-caps were the words "1996 Honeybears vs. Cheetahs." I was holding the world's only video documentation of myself as a child: the final game of my eight-year-old soccer season. I felt what I imagine Buzz Aldrin must have felt upon becoming the second person to ever walk on the moon. This colossal thing was happening in his life--was, in fact, happening to him--but someone else had already felt it. By the time he wafted down the ladder onto the moon's surface, Neil Armstrong and the rest of the world were already thinking, "Meh, this space thing--I'm over it."

I know that people have been making home videos for, like, millenia, so I'm hardly the first person to experience the sheer delight at seeing the gawky child prototype of her more grown-up self on camera. This being the first time it had happened to me, though, I was in awe. I popped the VHS into the player (because yes, we still have one of those) and after a moment of blackness there was Alexa (whose dad was the one filming), holding up a piece of poster board with the date and our team name. The shot cut to the field and there was little Tessa in her gigantic shorts that went practically down to her ankles. There was Nicci, whose dad you could hear in the background shouting his standard "Take out the coach's daughter, Nicci!" Kevin and Chris, my coaches, were pacing up and down the sidelines like they did every game, trailed by the teeming throng of us, the substitutes, calling out the positions on which we officially had dibs. The other team had a throw-in in our half of the field and Kevin shouted, "Girls! Back up! Defense up!", an instruction I'd heard for nearly 13 years and yet never quite understood, as "up" the field was the completely opposite direction.

When the ball rolled out of play and Chris yelled "SUBSTITUTION!" I got my first glimpse of the Olivia I had once been. My hair was long--close to halfway down my back--and pulled back in the high ponytail that I always thought made me look distinguished. My red knees were peeking out from below my shorts and I was standing with my legs crossed, as I still stand today, waiting for the ball to be thrown back into play. There was a look on my face of intense focus and what I can only describe as unbridled elation. The soccer field was my universe. I lived for hollow pop of the ball when it made contact with my cleats. At eight, I was content to spend all of eternity sprinting across the field like a wild horse, stopping only at halftime and only long enough to scarf down a couple orange wedges.

It was strange to witness myself in the act of living an experience I don't specifically remember. It was like I was watching someone else, but someone whose exact mistakes I'd already made, whose future I just so happened to be living. I felt like a voyeur. I knew this girl--knew that she loved making daisy chains, that she was terrified of the basement. I knew that she preferred a book to a conversation, that her favorite flavor of LipSmacker was Pink Lemonade, that she wanted to be an architect. I even knew that she wasn't entirely sure what being an architect actually meant.

I am now 26 and still so much that girl. I still love daisy chains, still descend into the basement with thick-soled shoes (the higher I am off the ground, the farther I am from the rats) and trepidation. Books remain my closest companions. (Though no one can tuck a person into bed quite like a good book, I'm met with resistance if I ask Jane Eyre to take out the trash.) I am so like my eight-year-old self that I wonder if she was the person I was meant to be all along, if my lifelong hunger for movement--to college and Europe and Australia and Orcas--has been nothing more than a subconscious search for who I used to be. While I am still her in so many of the obvious ways, I can't help but think that she was the one who had it all together. She knew her position on the field, could anticipate the bounce of the ball on a dirt field. Now, most days I feel like I'm still waiting to sub into the game.

The video ended--a resounding 5-0 win for my Honeybears--and I ejected the VHS. I spent so long feeling sorry that I'd never seen my younger self on video, but I was--and am--so proud of the girl in that footage. It's best to keep the things you need, I decided, sliding the video back into its sleeve and replacing it on the shelf next to my collection of Disney movies. It's best to keep the things you were. You may become them again one day, and it's good to know how to get them right the second time around.