The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson

by Ellen Baker

I was Cecily McAvoy, she imagined beginning. Born June 5, 1920, to Madeline and Thomas McAvoy.

Some days, you could not imagine in the morning what they would hold by the time they closed.

Hope was a thin thread to hang on to, but sometimes it was all you had.

It was a strange thing about getting old: everyone imagined you knew nothing about anything, or that you couldn’t “handle” it—as if you hadn’t handled a thousand things they had no idea about before they were even born.

And with the warmth of that touch, all the possibilities of the world tumbled and strained and broke open, and Cecily’s tears flowed freely and were a relief and a joy, because in this moment she finally knew what it meant to be a human girl—not a performer, not an orphan, not someone trying desperately to prove her worth. She was just a human girl, full of frailty and doubt and hope and striving, and if all the forces of this same world would be stacked against her soon, she didn’t care; just right now, she didn’t care at all.

Avoidance and evasion are the things that will keep you stuck.

Tell him that light comes out of the darkness; that without darkness there could be no light,