Chapter Text
Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! - Persuasion
June 2000, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Did you know Joni Mitchell was only 23 years old when she wrote Both Sides Now? That was one of the songs Grandma used to play on our CD player at home when I was a kid; she said it was one of Mom’s favourite songs, and so Grandma always played it when she was thinking of Mom. I was too little to properly remember Mom when she died, so that song was one of the things I grew up associating with her. I love how poetic the lyrics are, the way she paints pictures of dreams with the words. But now that 23 years old is not that far away for me, I wonder how she got wise enough to have those words in her mind when she wrote that song.
Oh oops, I forgot to introduce myself. My name’s Anne Elliot, I’m 22 years old, and I just got engaged 2 days ago to the love of my life. But if you think that’s romantic enough to make you swoon, um, well, it’s not. Because I’m living the absolute anti – fairy tale right now, since the reality of being an adult is just starting to hit me and it means I have a lot of big responsibilities to take care of. For starters, a girl who just got engaged isn’t supposed to be alone, but I am, because Frederick, my fiancé, has flown off to Lackland to start a year of military pilot training. And I don’t have the luxury of sitting around making moony eyes at his photograph when I need to turn in my keys in a matter of hours; I’m in an empty apartment, with the best memories of my life all packed up in boxes, calling up the movers to figure out how to ship a beat-up car across the country because I will be going to work for Boeing in Everett. The car is Frederick’s, and he asked me to junk it for him because he’ll be able to afford something better when he can live in someplace other than the single dorms on base (hint hint – that would mean military family housing once we’re married), but how could I possibly let it go when it’s the biggest tangible reminder I have of the four years we’ve enjoyed here in each other’s company? That leaves me spending the first days of my engaged life buried up to my neck in the logistics of moving cross-country, travelling two thousand miles away from my beloved. Yeah, right, the greatest height of romance, indeed.
Three days ago, we were students. We actually, y’know, belonged here. We knew all the short cuts to get to class, all the alleyways we could zip through on our bikes. Memorized all the rooms by heart, never mind that MIT is this weird dorky place where rooms go by their numbers, not their names. We knew our routines like the backs of our hands: our favorite places to dash out to for mid-afternoon coffee fixes, which food trucks we would get our lunch from on which day of the week, which corners of the libraries were the quietest to park ourselves in between classes, where the sunniest spots were to chill outside in spring and summer. Worked nights and weekends in the lab, only to turn in our key cards and forever lose access to that very building we practically lived in. Planned our spring break vacations, eager for the next backpacking adventure to satiate our wanderlust. There was always something to look forward to, someplace to go, and someone to hang out with. Graduation was the fairy tale we lived for, and now that graduation is over, what happens? We get booted out of campus, and those buildings are going to be right here in the fall, standing witness to another generation of students, as if we’d never existed at all. I realize, heartbreakingly, that the minute I close up the apartment and hand the keys over to my landlord, that will be the moment when both of us have left this place, and this time it’s forever. Forever and ever and ever. That just sounds so permanent, when the only thing I’ve ever known how to do is go to school, but now I don’t have a school to go back to again, and that thought is barely sinking in.
Someone needs to make up a word for this – what do you do when overnight, you go from being – not quite a kid, but still, a college kid, a student – to being “an adult”, just because you’ve graduated? And engaged – that word sounds so serious, so adult too. Oh of course, I love Frederick to bits, and I want him in my life forever. I’ve always known that I want to marry him, but at the same time, marriage is something you do when you grow up, and being grown-up hardly feels real right now when I'm still on campus and haven't even started my very first real job yet. In that respect, I’m one of the lucky ones; I actually have the Boeing job waiting for me, so I will be able to earn and save money for Frederick and me. Not like some of our classmates, who have to suffer the inconvenience of becoming boomerang kids going back to their teenage bedrooms and "the parental units" because they’re still looking for jobs. And I’ve been to work before, done summer jobs and internships, so none of this is completely new. But this time, there will be no end date when I can ditch the sensible shoes and briefcase to go back to living in carpenter jeans and Chuck Taylors, schlepping around town with my messenger bag. I may be an adult now, in name and technically in age at least, but dressing like an adult (how stodgy is that!) is still the last thing I want to do.
It’s more than 10 years ago now, but sometimes, I remember my childhood almost as if it were yesterday, as if I could go right back there tomorrow. The cotton-candy-pink bedroom that was my haven after school; Austen and Bronte and Sweet Valley High and Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume and V.C. Andrews all on my bookshelf; the years when I had the luxury of spending entire days in fairy-tale daydreams, staring at the blue sky with gossamer clouds that Mom painted on my ceiling when I was three, a year before she passed away. She might have been gone before I could properly get to know her, but she gifted me with the ability to dream. And I’m taking you there with me right now.