A Lovely Time Machine

Dear Addie, 

1. Do you ever find something you can beat Aidan at?

No.

Albeit some fortuitous times, I regret to inform you that your 2-foot-taller and 3-year-older brother stays consistently better than you at Call of Duty, rock climbing, and thumb wars. You will follow him everywhere for years, competing, getting calluses and biceps, but then you will become a teenager and make girlfriends who say wearing his electric orange PLAYMAKER t-shirt isn’t in, that your hands are scratchy, and the BMX park is for boys. So you will go to Pacsun with Mom and get some ripped jeggings that aren’t so easy to do a wheelie in. 

2. Are buttered noodles still your favorite food?

No.

The world is going to tell you butter is bad and that will scare you so you eat your noodles bland for a while. You won’t understand why you do it, but you will taste the difference and think back to the days of sitting on your back porch with a can of Orange Fanta, testing how much butter you could add before Mom made you stop. 

3. Did you become a famous singer?

No.

At the ripe age of seven, you will find Guppy gray and dead in his tank. You will grab your fluffy poodle notebook, flush him down the toilet, and write your first song on that bathroom floor. It will be called “Dying Love” and its morbidity will disturb your parents, but they will say it’s good nonetheless. You will write a lot more not-good songs; about recycling, Aidan being mean, the horse you want, and being able to fly. You will sit at the piano and guitar for hours and Aidan will beg for you to stop; going from Addie be quiet, Addie shut up, to Addie shut the fuck up as you both age. You won’t want to be the same nuisance for your college roommates, so you will only sing when they’re in class and hope the walls are thicker than they appear.

4. Can you snowboard with Dad?

No.

Dad hurts his back right after teaching you, but Aidan will force your 4-foot self down the glades before you can even reach the sign that says experts only! You will run into many trees and complain about your frozen toes. Then you will return from college one day and realize how lucky you had been. You will go board on your own, feeling the fluidity of a motion you have earned, and the love of the place that raised you. And on the plane ride back to California you will find that you can’t have the best of both worlds like Hannah Montana could.

5. Did you make the volleyball team?

No.

Unfortunately you never grow too much and the volleyball girls are scary and one hits you square in the face on the first day of tryouts, so you will reluctantly resort to the sport of your childhood. It won’t be what was cool, like volleyball was, but tennis will grow up with you, right onto the Cal Poly club team—where those people and that sport will become your home. Although, you will realize that not even a new home can erase who you were in an old one—so you play holding your breath, terrified to be less than the standard that very soon you’ll create.

6. Have you seen the world?

No.

After Grandma and Grandpa die, Mom and Dad are gonna be sedentary for a while, making travel extend to the borders of Omaha, Nebraska. You’re going to stay in your bubble and think it’s very big. But then during freshman year of college, you’re going to set your heart on going to another country and no one will believe you, which might even be the reason you actually go. You will fly alone to an infinitesimal island in Panama and work in a hut barefoot for a man who falls from coconut trees. You will realize how small your bubble was and how blue oceans can be. You will learn Spanish for real and regret the times in high school when you played Snake instead of conjugating verbs. The trip will make you wonder, ¿he estado haciendo todo malo?

7. Are you happy?

…

Well, it seems that all my answers to your questions have been no, so maybe I haven’t lived up to your dreams. But this world has a way of changing one’s dreams, so maybe I lived up to the ones that somehow managed to escape such a premeditated death. In regards to what you dream of now, it’s a bit bifurcated. Half of you never changes and remains a little girl with dreams so big her head can’t hold them, and the other half becomes tired of the headache. Guess we will have to wait and see who wins out.

Love, Addie 2025