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What do we owe the person we are becoming?

I caught myself saying, “I’ll deal with that later,” and wondered who I thought would be there when later arrived. It will still be me, carrying whatever I leave on the table today.

I keep thinking about the person I am becoming. She feels close enough to make plans for and far enough away to ask too much of. I hand her the difficult phone call and the question I have been circling for weeks. Then I imagine she will somehow have more room for both.

Maybe she will. Time can change what we are ready to face. But I know how it feels to inherit a problem that an earlier version of me kept setting aside. The date changes; the feeling waiting underneath it usually does not.

What can I leave her?

I started asking a smaller question: what would make tomorrow a little kinder to live in? Some nights the answer is to write down the thing I am afraid I will forget. Other nights it is to admit that I am tired and let a decision wait until I can hear myself think.

There is something tender about recognizing that the person who wakes up tomorrow will live with the choices I make tonight. I can be honest about what I have the capacity to do now, and I can leave her a little room to choose for herself.

A place for both of us

I also wonder what she might say about me if she could look back. I hope she would remember the context: what I knew at the time, what I was carrying, and how hard it can be to change while you are still inside the life that shaped you.

So perhaps what I owe her is attention. I want to notice the promises I keep passing forward and decide which ones deserve to be kept. I want to give her a life she has some say in, even if I cannot know yet exactly who she will be.

— Susie