English Other General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters

Hello everyone,

I was glowing with joy when the girl who played Louisa von Trapp (my singing sibling) took me by the hand and brought me into the yard in front of the house. Louisa had been one of my favorites in the play; she was tall and thin with long golden blond hair and bright blue eyes. Her face was innocent, like a Cabbage Patch doll who had shed her baby fat and now could sing and dance and drive a car. We sat in the grass for a bit, and then Louisa asked me if I wanted to try something cool. I said yes. While many a story that starts this way ends with the first time someone smoked or drank or something like that, this isn’t that kind of story.

Louisa told me to get on my hands and knees. I did. I could see my breath as it froze in the space between my lips and the ground. She told me to close my eyes. I did. She told me to feel the earth in my hands below me. I could. It was cold and hard and wet and prickly. It was getting ready for winter, for the first snow that would come only a few days later, erasing any evidence we had been there.

Then Louisa told me to imagine, instead of just kneeling there on the grass, ***a bystander on the earth***, that I was holding it. That as I felt the cold ground beneath me, it was actually in the palm of my hand. She told me to recognize that, at this moment, on this piece of earth, I was holding the world up with my own two hands. I opened my eyes with my hands firmly entangled in the grass, holding on for dear life. The world had never looked so new.

Louisa spoke softly then, as if to herself, as if she knew the pain of being eleven, being in sixth grade, of not wanting to wear a training bra, and of the cruelty of other children. As if she knew that the world can be tough beyond sixth grade. On all fours herself, she whispered that when the world was getting the best of you, all you had to do was take a moment to hold it in the palm of your hands. That’s how you know you still have a place. That even if it’s just this one piece of land where your hands are planted, there is a place for you and the possibilities for you are infinite.

https://www.lexico.com/definition/bystander

bystander
A person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part.

Then Louisa told me to imagine, instead of just kneeling there on the grass, a bystander on the earth, that I was holding it.

If "bystander" refers to Louisa, it makes perfect sense to me.

But I have a feeling (although I might well be wrong) that "bystander" in that sentence refers to the author and, if it is the case, I don't understand what it means and why the author chose this word.

Thank you.