Getting Smooshy at the Clip-n-Climb

Occasionally, when funds allow, we take our kids to a rock climbing centre. It’s bright and colorful and noisy, and even though I don’t usually climb, I always end up feeling shattered just watching them.

The climbing centre is manned entirely by young adults. It is a massive responsibility, I feel, to keep an eye on multiple climbers, shouting encouragement, helping little ones suddenly frozen in terror midway up a wall. The first time we went, it was a hot day, and we followed the kids around, trying to ignore the increasing stench of sweat.

I sidled over to my husband, nodding at the staff. 'They're young, aren't they?'

'Really young.'

'Babies. Can you believe we were that young when we first met?'

We were young. 17 and 20 respectively. (I realise this might cause some consternation for my US readers, but in our defence the age of consent is different in the UK, so please don't come at me.) I knew almost instantly that he was my person, and, as these things tend to go, it was completely the wrong time for me to fall in love.

About six months after we got together, Chris had to go away for his last year at uni. Before he left, he said something along the lines of, ‘When I get back, I’m going to get a job and buy you a ring and ask you to marry me,’ and I said something along the lines of, ‘Cool, I’m going to say yes.’

That was that. We got married just before my 21st birthday. Never looked back, and never regretted it for a second.

But time is a funny thing. It gives you hindsight, obviously. And in hindsight, in our wedding photos, we look about twelve years old. We had no money for a wedding, so everyone just kind of pitched in. I got a shitty job in a call centre to save some money. Our families made all the food. My parents bought my dress, and way too much booze. We had our first dance to Aqualung’s Brighter Than Sunshine in a village hall with, it has to be said, fucking horrendous curtains as a backdrop. Everyone was drunk and high on sugar from all the sweets I bought. It poured with rain, and it was the best day of my life.

We were (and are) extraordinarily lucky that we spent our twenties growing with each other rather than growing apart. It all sounds romantic, but getting married young has disadvantaged us in a few ways, mainly financial, and we’ve had our share of stress and difficulties as life becomes more complicated.

But sometimes, I see him with fresh eyes for a moment: the fact that he accidentally has a bit of RBF, for example, but every time I walk up to him in public his whole face lights up as though he's just seen me for the first time. Every single time, for the last 18 years. His realism, which somehow lives alongside his ability to see the best in people, and the way he stops me from becoming hardened or bitter, which I think I would if it wasn't for his gentle insistence that people are worth loving even when they're being unlovable. The way he adores our children with the kind of devotion they probably won't be fully grateful for until they're much older. A million things I should be more thankful for. What luck, that we happened to work at the same place just at the right time. What a twist of fate.

I know this is a ‘mildly drunk and philosophical in the pub’ kind of conversation but, if you could go back in time for one day, would you? Which day would you go back to?

Until the last few years, I didn’t think I would want to. I was very much a ‘forward-thinking’ person. What’s the point of going back? But I’m going soft now. There are a ton of days I’d like to do over again. In reality, I wouldn’t mess about with time travel, mainly because I wouldn’t want to risk doing anything that would undo the delicate balance required to create our children and have them be exactly the way they are. Plus, what if I overshot it and ended up in some ancient era? I’ve watched Horrible Histories, I know what went down. Too risky.

But I think I would like to go back and watch my life, maybe. Look, but not touch. I think that would be nice.

I've just finished playing Tell Me Why, the episodic Life is Strange-esque game by Don't Nod that came out in 2020 and completely escaped my notice for some reason. Honestly, it didn't grab me as much as LiS to begin with because it's a little more passive than I was expecting.

In the Life is Strange games, you have the power to change stuff. That's the point: you can shift things around depending on the protagonist's powers. You can rewind time (Max) or manipulate people's emotions (Alex). Often, the ultimate message is: don't change shit. I feel like there are a lot of instances of time travel in pop culture I could talk about in which the protagonist messes around with time and regrets it. There's always this underlying message of 'what will be, will be (so don't be an arsehole and change it because you'll ruin it for all of us).'

There are fewer instances in which people go back just to kind of … observe. I love this as a storytelling mechanic because it’s often a healing experience. Tell Me Why doesn't give you the chance to change things, or to control or influence anyone else. It's about the quiet unfolding of memories, represented here by glowing, sparkling versions of past selves. It's about two siblings with blurry, tragic memories about the death of their mother, heading back to Alaska to clear out their childhood home, and learning to love each other again after years of separation.

At several points in the game, it's up to you, as the player, to decide what to do, and often these choices are subtle: do you stick up for this character, or defend your brother? These small decisions have the power to make or break a tremblingly delicate sibling relationship. I suppose it is much closer to Life is Strange 2 in that respect. I am famously shit at making these kinds of decisions so I agonised over Tell Me Why.

What's fascinating is that they sometimes have to decide what to do with their memories. It's not as simple as 'this is the truth'. Instead, it's 'what do we think the truth is?' Ultimately, this leads to them making some incredibly tough choices, and the knowledge that there are certain things you never know for sure: you just have to learn to interpret the memories you have and try to make peace with them.

I've been thinking about my own memories and how I might have rewritten them over the years. We tend to remember the worst days clearly. Or at least, I do. The day we found out our friend passed away at the beginning of 2020, for example: I remember very clearly that my children, suffering from chicken pox and in a kind of proto-quarantine before the real deal hit a month or so later, had made an obstacle course out of cushions to keep themselves busy. I paced the living room, feet sinking into the cushions, following my happy and spotty kids. I remember the blank feeling of shock. The disbelief. The emptiness that followed. I remember standing in the kitchen and wondering how on earth someone we knew could just die, randomly. I remember not knowing what to do: should I cry? Is it weird that I'm not crying? Should I start referring to him in the past tense from now on?

I remember feeling my own mortality, previously soft and comfortingly fuzzy like looking through frosted glass, coming sharply into focus for the first time. It stands out in my mind as a horrible milestone. I don't need to go back in time and bring a shimmering, glowing version of these events back to life. I live with the ghost of it in our house, and I think of it often.

But what about happy memories? I'm lucky enough to have a lot of them. There are helium-high days, of long drives and holding hands and falling in love, of wedding days and positive pregnancy tests and childbirth and gentle, quiet days with a baby in my arms. There are a million days I’d want to go back to. And yes, obviously, I remember the highlights. Perhaps I erase the shit bits that happened alongside them. But they still happened, this I'm sure of. They were, at one time, a reality. How lucky I am, to have those moments still in my head. How lucky I am to be making new ones all the time.

Right now, as I type this, I am sitting across the road from the department store in which Chris and I first met. It’s abandoned now, a local eyesore, riddled with asbestos. Sometimes I walk by and stare at it. I try to see inside it, maneuvering myself to stare up at the empty stairwell I used to tread. If I saw a glowing version of my past self up there, I'd do everything I could to get to her. I want to see it all over again, that version of me, from eighteen years ago. I want to be close enough to touch those memories again.

One day stands out to me. It had been a long, hot, terrible day at work. The only thing that kept us all going was each other, the bond of our friendships forged by the shittiness of our jobs. We were fueled by the occasional moments in which we'd bump into one another, to exchange an eye roll or a sigh or a complaint about a customer, until we could meet again at 6pm and claim our freedom. I remember grabbing my bag and a can of coke, I remember us spilling down the stairs and out of the door, my arm around Chris, feeling tired and sweaty and ecstatic with post-work joy. I remember us all joking and laughing on the way back to Chris's car. I remember Chris blasting Nina Simone as he dropped off our friends one by one. I remember feeling the kind of inherent optimism you feel when you're young and with your people: the invincibility of it all, the endless future rolling out ahead of us. If I could pick one, right now, one memory I could walk up to and allow to wash over me like a great healing rush, it would be that one. It's not a grand, exciting moment in my life, and reliving it wouldn't change anything. But I could just feel something from that moment, maybe. I could gain some kind of clarity or peace or acceptance just from being in the proximity of it all.

I don't know. I've been going through a hard time recently and sometimes, I think those memories are the thing that keep me moving forward, that they're the reason why I still have optimism that I'll feel that joy again, even on my bad days. You know? A comfort blanket, kind of. Maybe I don't need to see them up close. Maybe the fact that they live so clearly in my mind is the same thing, in the end.