I swept my arm overhead, forming a half-moon shape as my body bent into a side stretch. I could almost hear the ballet instructors of my childhood calling out steps: Plié first position. Legs straighten, lift your kneecaps.
Stretch toward the barre. When I started experimenting with ballet as an adult, it had been well over a decade since I last took a class. I started alone with no mirrors, clutching my kitchen counter in tennis shoes.
It was as if this routine had been lying dormant in my muscles and my memory. I could still hum music that had been paired with certain exercises. But now, this melody was accompanied by my knees snapping, crackling, and popping.
In addition to being floored by what I could recall (even if my body couldn’t quite execute it), I was taken aback by how an activity that defined my childhood and young adulthood felt like an opportunity for my preteen self to tell me something about who I was now. McAdams, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, focuses on narrative identity. Part of that entails “this business about going back to the past, sometimes the distant past, and bringing something forward,” he said.
While he hasn’t studied that exact process with a childhood hobby, he said that bringing something back that you feel good about “can be a very positive experience and make you feel like you're kind of integrating your life around something that was once really important to you.” For some, revisiting these activities brings up memories. Kristen Martin, author of The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow, grew up in a multigenerational household, and her grandmother was constantly knitting. She was known for making everyone slippers in different color combinations of stripes, in addition to full-sized blankets.
She taught Martin to crochet as early as kindergarten, and by fourth grade, they made a blanket for Martin’s childhood dog together. She typically practices her hobby at night with the TV on, a wind-down activity. She loves making things for other people, just as her grandmother did.
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