BACK TO THE FUTURE

Watching a beloved old movie with my son, my feverish thoughts, and the Marie Howe poem that always brings me back to this moment.

Hi dear readers! I had the flu, hence the delay…and all the old movies I watched, hence the fever dream that is this essay :) Thank you, as always, for being here however it works for you. PS. Skip to the end of the essay for info on how to work with me 1:1, my waitlist is now open and I’m taking free 30-min info calls this week. Sending love to all. Love and fight for each other; hold each other close. xx Alexa

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

Last night, in the throes of fevers from the flu, my son West and I got in bed and watched Back to the Future on my laptop. Just writing that we watched Back to the Future on my LAPTOP is wild to me, as I’m pretty sure I first watched it via cassette in my grandmother’s VHS player. What an effort that was, going to the video store, taking the time to agree on a movie, let alone taking one out and remembering to return it!

Did we have more time back then?

“Were there cars when you were little?” my kids often ask me. “Was everything black and white?”

Boys, I was born in 1981, not 1901.

Yet…lately my childhood, the 80s, feels like an abstraction, much like the sun spots on my hands, and the lines around my eyes, which I am just starting to notice, feel like they’re happening to someone else — not the child in the tutu who watched Back to the Future lying on her grandmother’s wall to wall carpet, eating a Tofutti pop, asking “Isn’t that Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties?”

I was born in 1981.

Back to the Future came out in 1985, the year my sister was born. At her christening, held in my grandmother’s garden, I hid in the rhododendron bush. I didn’t want a baby sister. I thought if I went missing I could stop whatever a christening was — maybe I could stop time, too — as everyone would have to look for me.

I have vivid memories of hiding in that bush. How the sun poked through the veiny branches; how the pink, fleshy flowers seemed huge to me. I saw only feet, like the legs of grown-ups in the Muppet Babies.

Hours seemed to go by, though I doubt it was that long. I quickly realized I couldn’t stop time and, worse, that no one was looking for me. I didn’t know if I wanted to go back or forward. I just knew I wanted, in some feat of confused physics, to skip the pain of that moment all together.

I thought about all this while watching Back to the Future with West. I also couldn’t believe how much of the film I remembered, and how much I completely forgot. As a child, I was of course taken by Michael J. Fox. But as a 43 year old woman, I was taken by Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson as the parents. How a life begins with promise; how it then takes turns you’d never expect.

My son, West is so sensitive, I have to give him a head’s up when a hard moment is coming up in a film. “Okay, buddy, Biff is going to try to break McFly’s arm in a second, so I’ll tell you when to look away, okay?” As he lay against me with his arm over his face, I thought about all the times in his 11 years on this planet I have not been able to protect him.

I thought of the four year old me in the rhododendron bush — “Alexa’s first breakdown!” my parents still tease — and the six year old me rolling around on her grandmother’s wall-to-wall carpet.

How does a life happen so quickly?

In Back to the Future, Marty tries to warn Doc that in 1985 he’ll be shot by terrorists. Doc shuts it down:

“Whatever you've got to tell me, I'll find out through the natural course of time.”

But Marty does intervene, via a letter, and I forgot this twist in the film, as many moments went over my head watching movies as a kid. My sister - who I love to pieces despite the rhododendron bush incident - and I always marvel at things we didn’t catch as kids…like Penny having a back-door abortion in Dirty Dancing but I digress!)

It’s TIME I’m thinking about.

I don’t know if I want to go back or skip ahead to the future, like we used to be able to do with fast forward on those clunky old VHS players.

Lying there with West, I took a deep breath. I remembered the present moment. Maybe that was the moment I discovered in the pink flowers. The grace, the humility, the mystery of right now.

It’s just what it is.

I’ll end my feverish ramblings with the last lines to Marie Howe’s gorgeous poem, “What the Living Do.” These lines, scribbled in many a notebook over the years, always snap me back to this moment, to my breath.

To the “cherishing so deep.”

“…But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you…”

A MEDITATION

May I be present.

Feel free to share an old movie you’ve watched recently, or a moment when you felt the present so profoundly, a “cherishing so deep…”

Sending love to all. And now more than ever: May ALL beings be safe, happy, healthy, and FREE.

Write with me 1:1 for 3 months in FORTRESS…

Sometimes you need more than a room of your own (if you’re lucky enough to have one!). You need a FORTRESS, and I’ll guard the door…

I’m opening my waitlist, and I have limited spots available to work with me 1:1. These will fill fast, so let’s hop on a call!

I’m proud to share that I’ve worked with writers from all over the world and from all walks of life, and that, as of writing this, all of them have continued on after the first three months. (You can read testimonials here).

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Please share with any one in your life who might be interested, too!

xx Alexa