Fifteen Years From Now

Dear Future Me, 

I almost started this “letter” of sorts with the salutation: “To whom it may concern.” I liked that it implied that the future-me could be far beyond the confines of the present-me’s imagination. I ended up scraping it and writing this instead, since I thought it was a little corny, but here we are nonetheless. 

Fifteen years from now, you’ll be forty and nearing twenty years of marriage with your best friend (we got married young, I knoooow!). While I wish our dogs could live forever, I assume that they have been gone for a few years now. How did we handle that loss? Maybe we’re stereotypical PNW people who treat our dogs like our babies, but I know that the grief was real and raw. In fifteen years, our baby girl will be almost seventeen. It makes me smile to wonder about the incredible young woman she will grow to be. I imagine all the adventures you, Benny, and Dani will have had together. I wonder if you’ll look back wistfully on these early days, with our long family walks, impromptu dance parties, and those treasured nap times.

And in the depths of my heart, I truly hope you will be celebrating 15 years of being a teacher. 

Right now, I’m looking ahead to the coming school year, as I’ll be student teaching at the same high school Benny and I once attended. I imagine that in fifteen years, I’ll laugh at my current self for overthinking what a student teacher should even wear at a school with such a laid-back dress code, or worrying about where I’ll eat lunch like I’m back in the grade school cafeteria. I’m sure future me will lovingly cringe at the enthusiastic lesson plans that will no doubt need more refining. I’m sure you still remember the first time you had a deep dive into ancient history, specifically Mesopotamia, and the way it unraveled so much curiosity and wonder in your little middle school brain. I hope we keep this in mind as we switch perspectives from the awe-filled pupil to the excited teacher.

So, Future Me, these are my hopes for you:

I hope you’re still reading voraciously, perhaps even exceeding the goals I've set, and that your appetite for new stories and ideas has only grown. I hope you read the books your students recommend, no matter how poorly written or corny (remember Twilight?).

I hope you’ve found confidence in expressing all the tangled threads in your mind, or at least learned to stop apologizing if they don’t always make sense to everyone else. You’ve always had so much to say, and I hope you say it bravely.

I hope you’ve mastered the art of writing emails with fewer exclamation points (but also forgiven yourself if you haven’t).

Most of all, I hope you’ve held onto the childlike wonder that’s always been such a part of you, woven so deeply into the fabric of who we are. I hope you still see beauty in small things and share that wonder with the people around you, especially your students and your family.

I hope you’re pleasantly surprised by the person you’ve become, and comforted by the ways you’ve stayed the same.

And like our MAT peer, Olivia, reminded me recently, please don’t be too hard on yourself if the spark you had in these first years of teaching has changed or dimmed. That’s okay. Sparks can be rekindled, and you’ve always known how to find new light.

With all my love,

Your Past Self