growing up

(im on the far right, in case you wondered... my dad, on the left, used to take us all over the place to look at different graveyards because he loved history, and he called it "vacation." we laugh about it now.)

this is a story I wrote about childhood about 2 or 3 years ago: enjoy.


Used to be that days were spent inside of the woods. They were like a cave, swallowing up our hours. We were kids then, without responsibility-- in fact, if you asked me then I wouldn't have been able to even define the word. Adults used to say it when you'd misplace your school book or fall into the mud after getting dressed for church. They'd say I'd have to learn responsibility someday, and to enjoy youth while I could. I didn't know how else to hold youth in my hand, and so I simply lived it.
I'd watch adults enter bakeries with a glove over the handle so as not to mix their fingerprints with another's, or I'd watch my Mom make piles of notes to herself, so that she could remember all that she had to do and I didn't want this thing called responsibility. It sounded like a disease that climbed onto you when you grew boobs and started wearing heels even in the wintertime. It's what took the color out of your eyes, and made you manipulate the way you laughed in public or put the spoon next to the plate.
I remember the very first time I made a responsible decision. It was also the day I knew the cave of the woods had changed and that swinging on the vines near the pond was not going to be my top priority any longer. My older brother had grown and was now attempting the guitar and singing through his nose, and my neighbors voice was changing and he was not the same boy that used to wake me up at six a.m. when the dawn was still rubbing it's eyes. I'd watch him standing outside from my window, imploring me to join him on the trampoline or the gravelly streets with our bikes -- or more often, find the woods and wake them with shouts or scar the trees with our marks of territory.
The day I grew up was different. It was uncomfortable like wearing the color yellow when you wish you were a part of the wall. That day, he was not looking at the trees and their potential for roofing for out TP or at the ground for its twigs. This time he was looking at me, and his voice was a little shaky and I didn't know if I wanted to be kissed at all. Turning around that day marked growing up. I said something unkind in a cheerful voice so he'd think this wasn't rejection. Now I see him in pictures online with his middle finger extended and a beer in his hands. His face is fatter and he holds these unhappy lazy eyes in his eye sockets. In each picture his arms are stretched around different woman--pages and pages of pictures with the beer, the ladies, that middle finger. And it makes me wonder at growing up. It makes me dislike it so. Disagree with it.
My father used to wrestle with us in the camel colored living room, next to the brown chair that had a very distinguished back to it, the one he was always sitting in. We would all be wearing those footie pajamas that you'd wake up your Mom about in the middle of the night because your feet were sweating. We'd attack him, from behind, the sides, the top. I understand stopping when your back gets old or your shoulders freeze, but, one day it just ended. A silence that I believe we all felt, and still feel. Age is a crafty fellow that I plan on ignoring. Sure, growing up it still holds onto us. Sure, we still wake up one day with a wrinkled face and bad knee joints, but do we let it catch our spirit? Must we fit into the mold of society? Or can we still find the woods as that safe cave and fear age less because our spirit never gets old? Can't we laugh at our bodies as they sag and pull but still have these eyes that are lit? I will not grieve at age. I will not grieve, and I will pray that someday my neighbor reads this and polishes those vacant eyes.