Ashy Knees and Stone Washed Jeans

Once while visiting my in-laws, I saw a picture of my husband as a child. He was about 7, and was wearing a tight t-shirt, red I think, and cut off stone washed jeans with ashy little legs and those 80's style glasses that looked more like protective goggles than anything that could improve one's sight. As a man, my husband is clean cut, wearing a low fade with no hint of the potential curl his fairly straight hair can have. As an ashy kneed little boy, he had a head full of hair, curly, shiny, and black, which only empasized the disparity between the size of his head and the size of the rest of his body. Whenever he mentions his childhood, I think of that image, with him walking on the side of the road in beat up, formerly white hight tops of no recognizable brand kicking the rocks in his path, carrying a Voltron lunchbox with a bookbag that was far to large on his back. I don't know how much truth there is to this image, but it's one that I hold dear. When given the opportunity to day dream, I imagine what a day in the life of this little boy must look like, and how much different it must have been from mine. . .

If he were 7 then I was 9 and living the life of an inquisitive child who never wanted for anything. I spent my days at school waiting for it to be over and my mother to come and get me from the afterchool program where I would cross stitch and make friendship bracelets. As a child, I enjoyed being outside in the sun, and as a result, my hair had faded to an Aboriginal red, worn in braids, and I managed to have ashy legs as well, as I have always suffered from overly dry skin. My glasses we also too large, and were designed in a way that made strangers stop me on the street and inform me that my glasses were upside down. I don't know if you've ever put on glasses upside down, but know that doing so requires some effort, and keeping them that way requires even more effort, so one would have to be a certified idiot to not notice their glasses were on upside down. But clearly, as children, we are at the mercy of our parents whims and awkward fashion sense, and decisions like those are often made hastily as you just want to get the hell out of the doctor's office. The rest of my fashion decisions revolved around Bart Simpson and cut off stone washed jeans. My book bag was too large, and I never had a lunch box as I always bought my lunch at school, but I did manage to kick every rock foolish enough to wind up in my path. . . That little girl couldn't be further from the woman I am today.

So in my day dreams, when I have the time to really committ to them, I think about the little boy and the little girl, both with ashy legs. I think about their mothers and how the little boy's mother loved herself more than her son and how the little girl's didn't love herself enough, and only loved her children. I do not think of the boy and girl in their teenage years. I don't care to ponder first kisses or our respective band or orchestral experiences. I just think of their lives on a random day at 7 and 9, both enjoying the sun of the south, both eager to learn in school, both with ashy little legs.

At some point, these awkward looking kids came to be not so awakward looking, and the split screen image of two kids carrying too big bookbags becomes one picture screen with two adults milling around the kitchen, talking about financial plans and starting a family. We chat about work and our futures and don't spend much time talking about the past anymore. At some point in our relationship, all we had to talk about was a time called "then." Now "then" has been replaced with "will," and in an effort to ensure we never tread on "then" again, so that "then" never causes us to look back, we simply never talk about "then."

But I still think about "then," and I see him on his stroll down the street after school, I on my ride on the school bus, and both of us, looking to the same sky, la misma sol, and wondering what was next for us even though, at that time, there was no "us." Just a "me" and a "him" in different places but at the same time. And no matter how different our days were, we were still the same skinny kids with cut-off stone washed jeans and ashy knees.