At seven, pedalling my bicycle by the rockeries, full of daffodils. I made a decision to keep turning left, rather than ride into the river. What would life be like, if I didn’t? … My family weeping, my school desk with the big pink eraser that says ‘for big mistakes’ being given to Debbie Briggs (“here, take it,” my grandmother says, “she’d want you to have it”). It’s always like this for me – this way or that way? If I kill the butterfly, will I become a dentist? If I press it on page five instead of six, then what? If I wish on the right star, my dreams will come true, if I wish on the wrong star, failure.
At eight, I realize all of these things happen at once. 79 on the math test? No problem. One Tracey has 92, another 40. These are the living Traceys. Some Traceys can’t even walk – smashed in an airplane tragedy; some Traceys are in the Ice Capades. The Tracey I know best watches the Olympics on television secure in the knowledge that in one of the worlds, Tracey wins for high jump!
All the possibilities like a thick web, a giant layer cake all around me make the decisions less difficult. If everything’s going to happen anyway, why bother? I tell my grandmother that I’m glad to know her in this dimension, but of course I have thousand of other mothers, some better, some worse, I reason. At any moment, one of them is always buying me Legos. I don’t use them in the world I know, but there’s comfort in the fact that some of me have huge Lego collections, like I’ve seen on television. Chess? I won’t bother. Even now, some of the Tracey’s are castlelling on a huge marble board. Easy going easy going easy going Tracey who knows that all thing happen. Until the bigger question – why do I remember this and not that? Why do I choose to be nine here, now, with brown hair and brown eyes, no Legos, no prizes for research into ventriloquism? Why this plain-ish not very extraordinary life? The question changes, becomes very very hard – instead of red shoes or brown shoes and what will happen if red/ if brown…. Why are the red shoes on my feet real and solid and hurting my toes and not the brown? Why? Is it fate is it God is it karma? Or is it because the rockeries were filled with daffodils and not violets?