The girl I was once upon a time

A couple of weeks ago, Aubrey asked me something about when I was a kid.  She wanted to know what I thought and how I felt about life when I was her age. 

So, I rummaged through the basement until I found a box filled with my old scrapbooks and journals.  Together we looked through the pictures and awards from my elementary and jr high life.  She laughed at my big early 90's hair and she just rolled her eyes when I showed her how to peg the bottoms of her jeans (which was all the rage during my jr high years).  She laughed at my autographed picture of Boys to Men who I saw in concert and met backstage in ninth grade (thanks to my brother, Josh, who won tickets and took me with him...what a sweetheart).  I told her about how Sting also performed at that concert (I still love him today, but watching him in Dune still makes me cringe).  I told her about how as we were standing in line to use the payphone to call our parents to come and get us the kid next to me threw up all over my leg.  The bathrooms were locked to I just had to manage the best I could without much help.

We found pictures from girls camp, passes from a ski trip, plane tickets from an excursion to Washington to see Phantom of the Opera with my Aunt Denise.

Me in elementary school.

She laughed and wanted to know more about my life way back when, so I handed her a couple of my journals from those years.  She has spent the last couple weeks reading them and it has been really fun.  She will come running upstairs yelling, "Mom, do you remember when you..." and telling me some obscure thing that I did or thought or said that I have completely forgotten about. 

My beautiful elementary aged daughter.

She's read about my arguments with my parents, my annoyances with my brother, my crushes on every single boy that ever crossed my path.  Mostly, she has just been able to see that she and I really aren't that different (or the I that I was at her age anyway).  It has been a lot of fun to watch.

And it has made me really grateful that I kept a journal all those years ago.  I need to be better about that now, but what an unexpected delight to have my daughter plunge into my past and come out feeling a kinship with the girl I used to be.