My daughter has my 1,000 yard stare.
It’s a stare that gazes out into the space ahead, it wanders through time and it questions what the day will look like and the various experiences it will bring. It frequents the morning, the liminal space after waking up before one feels actually ready for the day.
When I was younger, I’d often chew toast while staring at the mist rising from our backyard. Sunlight filtering through the damp air, I’d lose myself in potential conversations I’d have to navigate or various questions that might be directed my way. It always bothered my mother. “What’s the matter?”
That stare represented a beautiful moment that occurs in the quiet of a day where one’s mind is not filled with to-do lists and instructed directions in class, or at work, or in the logistics of family structure.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask my kid, when I catch her softened gaze. She continues to stare onward.
Earlier this year, I told my partner, “Our baby has a busy mind.”
She thinks a lot, I catch her in thought. She comes up with questions that seem random until you figure out her imagination led her there during a quiet car ride.
“She’s like you,” he says back.
He’s correct. I frequently catch my partner off guard with questions based on previous moments that occurred, providing zero context to help him understand how my thoughts got there. I forget that he hasn’t time-travelled to past moments with me, exploring social facets that I felt required more reflection. It’s now a running joke between us. “Sorry, I forget that you’re not inside my mind, sometimes.”
When I first met him, I explained to him that I have a rich interior life. And that at times those closest to me weren’t always along for the ride. For a long time my sense of identity, both as an Indigenous and queer person, existed primarily in my thoughts. I mulled over who I am through memories and wonderings — connecting them to my relatives and my ancestral history; through clumsy encounters and friendships — rifling amidst the curious ideas that meandered through my very being. I was very much in community but how I understood myself in conjunction with it took a lot of personal bandwidth in my thoughts. As I grew older, I told him I sometimes get scared that I’m forgetting to catch people up. That people don’t fully see aspects of myself that I’ve protected over time, the parts that are really important and special to me.
Sometimes, when we don’t feel free to fully be ourselves we run risk of segmenting our identities into palatable versions of ourselves. My thoughts absorb every aspect of myself and webs meaning that doesn’t necessarily translate to tangible representations that others can read clearly. Instead, each loved one in my life experiences a curated version of me that’s mostly true but also omits aspects of myself that deserve to be visible, brave, spoken and heard.
Lost in thought, I sometimes take the time to write about them. In the past, I crafted tweets that cryptically shared glimpses of my thoughts. I wrote poetic captions that I didn’t expect people to understand. Buried my words on social media posts that were sandwiched between meme’s or aesthetically pleasing photos. Many of us do this. We code our identity into digital ephemera that we upload to followers that might not ever really know us.
These days, I’m more intentional about how I lose myself in thoughts. I journal for myself which I sometimes share with my partner or my close friends. I pull back from the dopamine hit of posting to many and instead, I lean on the few. I share as a conversation, as a gentle will to want to understand those I know and love better.
Lately, I find myself lost in thought but I’m not looking for answers. I’m not imagining best-case-scenario’s or potential dialogue I’ll have throughout my day. I let myself drift and I think of my child. I think about her running through a field peppered with buttercups and oxeye daisies. I think of how we catch ourselves in laughing fits and how she turns towards me to laugh smile to smile, against my face so our teeth almost touch. I think of all the songs she sings off-key, the ones she makes up the melody for.
When I see her stare off, I cuddle in next to her. I lean near, touch her cheek. I hope her thoughts are curious and silly. Inquisitive and reflective. I wish on a million stars for her to share them with me when she gets older.
The magic of those liminal spaces where one stares off into a space beyond our physical environment is so sacred. It’s a place we can live beyond what those see of us and expect of us. It’s a world we dream that allows us to feel free in who we are and reflects on how we can become that person actualized.
And where ever my daughter is going with her thoughts, I whole heartedly want her to know that I’ll come, too. I’ll meet her there.
