Remember the Strawberry Festival

When I was little there was something in town called the Strawberry Festival every summer held on the grounds of my elementary school. People sold jam and homemade clothes you could dress your baby dolls in. There were booths to make sand art where we stacked different colors on one another in glass containers shaped like mermaids and stars. By the end of the day we’d eat strawberry shortcake then climb the monkey bars with our sweet, grubby kid fingers. Besides those things I don’t remember much else. I remember how it felt funny to be at school in the summer and to see the teachers wearing flip flops and shorts. I remember the angel food cake getting soggy. Now, that time of my life feels like it belongs to another person. The past only feels real to a certain extent.

When I think of myself at this time last year I’m something fuzzy like blue sand and sticky red stained fingers. I’m someone sad and irritable and staying inside. I avoid mirrors and my mother. When I’m with you I have to be high. It’s funny how this is the only version of me you know and the kind of person you’ll remember me as. My face will dim over time until I become nothing more than a vague concept. A reminder of former self— someone your old cells once touched in your 20s.

Because to me, that self is morphing into a person as unrecognizable as the older women who once knew my mother— coming up to me because they know me saying something like, “I used to hold you as a baby.” And I tell them “it’s good to see you again.” Because we’ve met after all, haven’t we?

I think there’s a part of me that wants you — all of you, to say “look how much you’ve changed.” Like I’m a kid again, just please see how high I’ve gone on the swing set just from pumping my feet in the air. If no one is tracking my height with pencil ticks up a wall, how will I be certain I’ve grown?