If I'd Known You When We Were Children

...we would meet by the brick wall in front of my house on sweaty summer nights, hop on our Schwinns, and ride around the block looking for dead things to poke with sticks, stray cats to pet and name, evidence of a life only found in our untamed imaginations. We wouldn’t speak much. We wouldn’t have to. Our mutual escape into a world of monsters, swords, and adventure would say more than any of the words in our childish vocabularies. We would find connection in our play.

After our mothers would call our names, we would go inside our houses and eat supper, only to return as soon as the last dish was dried. We would help each other climb trees. I would give you a boost, so that you could wrap your legs around the trunk of the sturdy young Maple in front of my house. You could reach the lowest branches then and shinny your way up to thicker branches where we would perch and pretend we were birds or super heroes or angels.

Or, maybe we would meet on my front porch and play with our Barbies, all the while giggling about breasts, kissing, and whatever else our older brothers and sisters had taught us. We would peek beneath Ken’s swim trunks at his rounded plastic mound and shift our eyes back to forth to make sure no adults were watching. We would share conspiratorial secrets about our impossible crushes on movie stars and musicians. Barbie and Ken would always somehow end up naked together on the ledge of my porch. More giggles.

I would always pick you for my Capture-the-Flag team, even if you never found the flag or ran the fastest. If you were captured and sent to the other team’s “jail,” then I would risk getting caught in order to engineer your escape and probably end up sitting next to you in “jail” where we would talk about the giant black ants scurrying across the sidewalk or the neighbors across the street in the rental house with the Husky named Pete.

We would call each other “best friends.” We would tell each other the things we wouldn’t tell anyone else, and then, we would race through the sprinkler with shrieks and laughter. I would help you rake your yard and you would help me rake mine, doing each other's chores side by side, feeling the bite of blisters together.

If I’d known you when we were children, our love would be the simplest kind. Our play would be easy. We would be capable of spending an entire afternoon melting things with a magnifying glass or standing in awe of a picked scab or playing kickball until the ball would get stuck on a garage roof.

We would discover constellations at night, point out the Big and Little Dippers and Mars and Venus, lie in the wet grass and contemplate the craters of the moon.

I wish I’d known you when we were children.

Upon Closer Inspection

Years from now, they will find her bones covered in the dust of forgotten years. The archeological find will be headlines around the world—the fossil of a woman from the 21 century.

Maybe they’ll give her a name like Lucy or Sue or Jane. Something catchy enough to sell souvenirs.

This will humanize the bones and allow scientists to personify them and use phrases like “Jane’s skeleton speaks to us about the past” and “Jane whispers her secrets with each sweep of brush bristle on bone.”

Jane will be touted as a specimen of ordinary life in the 21st century. They will construct computer images of what she would’ve looked like. She was no leader, no queen. She was no one of importance due to her modest burial—remnants of an oak casket and brass rails.

They will determine her clothing was synthetic and something worn for the ceremony of burial, most likely a dress. Their artists will do their best to recreate the primitive gown, so foreign to their own modern fashions.

Her teeth will reveal some dental work, a crown or two. The wear and composition will help determine the types of food the “typical 21st century woman might’ve eaten. Exotic words like pizza, French fries, and chocolate will be discussed as a common diet for Jane.

Tests will be conducted on each femur, rib, cranial cavity. Marrow will be scrapped and analyzed. Jane did not die of head trauma. They will not find the jagged grooves of bite marks. Not a warrior, they will decide, knowing what little they do of such a bygone era—most artifacts lost to the fickleness of electricity and outdated technology. No geniuses of the age, only empty plastic boxes with blank glass screens. They will call us the Lost Age, unable to access the words and thoughts of generations of great minds.

Jane will be all they have, and they will be unable to understand her.

Jane was anything but a typical 21st century woman. No computer imaging will recreate the tears of those who knew her and mourned her. No tests on the bones will reveal how much she was admired by her children, grandchildren, and even the most distant acquaintance.

Her importance cannot be compared to the supposed icons of the age: politicians, entertainers, or leftover monarchs. Her accomplishments were quieter than laws or the laughter of crowds, but they were no less weighty and vital. How can you ever measure the impact of one human being? Every day, we come into contact with others from the grocery store to the post office. Is there a scientific test for the ripple effect of a single smile?

Jane was a warrior and a leader. Every night, she clasped her hands and spent hours on her knees—praying for herself, for others, for the world. Her impact impossible to determine by her mere bones.

She volunteered at hospices, spent an entire afternoon a month baking communion bread for her church, took meals to those who could not cook for themselves, donated clothing, recycled her papers and plastic, held the hand of anyone facing a fear in their lives.

Jane fought cancer for years—lost both breasts and all of her hair. She endured radiation treatments and experimental drugs. Just when she thought she’d won, the cancer would return and ravage her body again. But, Jane’s spirit was stronger than her body, and she refused to go gently into that good night, a beacon of strength to other sufferers.

Jane used a walker, but it did not keep her from supporting her grandchildren during their special moments. Though weary, she smiled and clapped and showed them all the power of the hope in things unseen.

No expert will understand that Jane was so much more than typical. No scientist can see how much she was loved and explain the remarkable beauty of her soul. No archeologist will be able to touch Jane by brushing a fingertip over her bones.

Jane’s bones cannot tell the stories of the strongest women who live in the 21st century.

We who wake up each morning and try to make a better life for our children and children’s children. We who suffer the horrors of incurable diseases with grace. We who quietly work our jobs, earn our paychecks, and try to be the best people we can be—better and wiser than we were the day before.

We are anything but typical.