Cyn Kitchen: Dreams that never come true

There was a gift-wrapping station just off the elevator at O.T. Johnson’s. I don’t remember which floor it was on, and I might not even have the location exactly right, but what I do remember is that a woman stood behind a counter where behind her were large rolls of colorful paper hanging on the wall that she could peel off to fit any size gift.

I thought it was magical the way she creased a corner, lined up paper patterns and shushed a ribbon into strips with a splayed set of scissors that made the ribbon curl. The sound of her scissors cutting through the heavyweight paper was crisp and satisfying. I could have watched her all day.

In fact, I wanted to be her. I found the exacting nature of her job utterly mesmerizing, and I marveled that everything she wrapped brought someone joy. How was the world not a better place for her work?

Do you ever remember what you wanted to be when you grew up? I had a whole litany of wildly unrelated dreams from the time I was very young until reality took over, and they began with wanting to be the gift-wrap lady at O.T.’s.

When that business closed, I decided I would be just as satisfied with doing it at the new Bergner’s because they too had an impressive gift wrap station at the back of the store in that customer service area tucked behind housewares.

Inevitably, my gift-wrap dream fizzled, and I replaced it with others. I could be the lady who drove a Cushman around town checking parking meters. I could open a candy store like Nelson’s Confectionary.

By middle school, I was determined to be an Olympic athlete. Some days I was a high diver, others a swimmer. In junior high, I was going to play on the USA women’s basketball team and set my name in the history books by becoming the first five-foot-tall female to slam dunk a basketball.

I wanted to be Nadia Comaneci or Olga Korbut and tumble my way into the history books. Maybe I could be Janet Lynn or Dorothy Hamill and ice skate my way there. What if I could leave a mark like Babe Didrikson Zaharias who made her name in golf but was an all-around stellar athlete?

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I even lived vicariously through men like Karch Kiraly, one of the USA’s best volleyball players of all time.

Plus, regardless that I lived in the flat Midwest, I fancied the possibility that I could learn to downhill ski like Franz Klammer.

Reality finally hit in sobering ways that assured me I was not now, nor had I ever been in a position to compete athletically on the world stage. Still, the dreams of those formative years sustained me in fantastical ways.

Abruptly, I quit dreaming. I admitted that I didn’t know what I wanted to be; I only knew what I couldn’t be and that was a long list.

No one had ever told me I could be what I wanted. I was surrounded by realists, not necessarily a bad thing, but there was no room for dreaming.

I figured out I could admire high achievers without becoming one, though that sounds tragic to me as I write it. If I couldn’t imitate those I admired, what could I do? I hadn’t a clue, so for a long time, I didn’t do anything.

I didn’t go to college out of high school. I didn’t know what kind of career I wanted. I stopped having aspirations of any kind, and I spent many years responding to circumstances rather than orchestrating them.

Instead of stepping into my adult life with a plan and a list of goals, I let fate deal to me whatever it wanted. It brought me some satisfying elements like marriage and a family, but it delivered quite a few bumps and bruises along the way too.

Eventually, I remembered that kid I once was who’d aspired to do great things with her life. She had all but disappeared.

At long last, and thankfully, before it was too late, I decided to begin thinking in different ways, to set goals, to follow my heart, to experiment and forgive myself when I failed, and then to try again. By fits and starts, I discovered I was a writer. She’d always been there; I just hadn’t realized it.

Who knows why some epiphanies take so long. I’ll tell the story someday and it involves $18, a Thursday night in January and Oprah’s Book Club. We appreciate what we have to work for, and this one was a fight. I likely wasn’t ready to be a writer a moment sooner.

Besides, if I’m honest, I’m terrible at wrapping gifts and have never been able to figure out the magic trick of curling ribbons like that lady did at O.T.’s.

Cyn Kitchen is an associate professor of English at Knox College. A native of Galesburg, she is the author of TEN TONGUES and also publishes poems and nonfiction.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Cyn Kitchen: Dreams that never come true