Photography by Lori K. Tate
The other day I was driving through my neighborhood when The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” came on the radio. The first guitar chords of this song instantly take me back to eighth grade, where at the height of cool, I opted to write the lyrics of this tune on my yellow Tretorns. I wasn’t a complete rebel because I wrote in pencil, but I still thought those lyrics coupled with an anarchy sign certified me as a badass.
Thinking about that girl as I drove my sweet minivan made me laugh, and then I realized that I was wearing Tretorns. Sure, they’re now a fancy gold color and there’s no writing on them to be found, but they’re still Tretorns, and I’m still that girl. So many parts of me are the same, and the parts that are different simply evolved from that nerdy eighth grader with a bad perm.
I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately because vastly different levels of it surround me. There are my 10-year-old twins who have entered tweendom in full force. Graydon has embraced sarcasm, and Margot is obsessed with clothes. (That apple did not fall far from the hanger.) It’s fun to watch them explore who they are and who they want to be.
Then there’s my dad and my in-laws. Dad misses mom terribly, and I’m right there with him (this year is so much worse than the first one), and my father-in-law has had a rough seven months with Parkinson’s, a bastard of a disease. Though my mother-in-law’s strength is astounding, everyone has a breaking point, whether they realize it in time or not. I worry.
Right smack dab in the middle of all this are my husband and I. He’s 50, and I’m not far behind him. As we run the circle of life together, I frequently visit adolescent Lori in my mind. When I worry about what the pandemic is doing to my kids, I think back to how I thought when I was a pre-teen. By that point I had discovered anxiety, so I would have been frightened by how strange the world is right now. But I also would have escaped my fear by focusing on important things like Rick Springfield, Judy Blume books and pondering whom I’d have on my TV Christmas special. (I continue to do that to this day. I’m looking at you Michael Bublé!)
And then there’s Christmas, a time when holiday memories take up some major real estate in my brain. Christmas connects me to my youth more than a scrapbook. I still search for candy cane pens as soon as Christmas decorations are in stores because they remind me of going to McCrory’s at Carolina Mall with mom to pluck one off of the store’s cardboard Christmas tree. I still listen solely to Christmas music until New Year’s Day, and my Snoopy ornaments hang prominently on our tree, just as they did at my parents’ house. Holiday trends come and go, but my traditions are just that — mine.
The girl who wrote on her Tretorns is embedded in me; she just has a lot more layers than she did back then. Now, she’s a composite of scars, life lessons, joy, depression, triumphs and daydreams. Regardless of where I am or where I’m going, my younger self will always be there to remind me of who I am and how I got there. I couldn’t ask for a better travel companion.