Something You Miss

I'm growing up. For so long, I've dreaded it, but at the same time, I couldn't wait. That seems impossible. But all things are possible... I can remember when I was little. We were living in the apartments in Mandarin at the time. There was supposed to be a hurricane. People kept talking like it was so horrible. I wanted to see it. I think it was Grandma, making us stay away from the windows, and do something else. I don't remember much about the waiting, except for the waiting. We heard noises of rain and not much else. It didn't seem so bad. As soon as we could, we went out to see what had happened. I remember peeking out the door first, to make sure it was safe. Then we ran out into the street. It wasn't raining anymore, but there was water everywhere, like the world had been washed clean. Colors were brighter, too. The grass was greener. The sky was bluer. I don't think there were even any clouds. I looked around at everything, and it all looked so clear. How could people be so afraid of something that only made things so much prettier?

When I got older, and heard so so many stories about the detrimental effects of hurricanes, and learned about the "eye" of a hurricane, whose effects I must have been seeing then, I had to change my former perception of them. With age, generally, comes experience. The experience necessary to navigate the world, which, so I've heard, isn't at all pretty. It's difficult, and biting. It's bitter and unforgiving and dirty. The grass is dying, being uprooted along with the trees and weeds to be replaced by a mixture of asphalt and brightly-colored paint. The sky shares its space with poison released by factories and mills. As we grow, we learn. We lose the innocence that was the major motivation of our actions when we were seven years old.

I want to go back to that. To Barbies and Legos, Scooby Doo and Brady Bunch marathons, multiplication tables, buses, book fairs, scrunchies, lunch boxes, smiling fast food take-out boxes, barbecue sauce on my jumper, scrambled eggs and flaky biscuits, girl scout cookies and badges, swinging in the local park, singing in the rain on my porch with Katy in our underwear and Barbie bikinis, riding never driving, tall stacks of books I had time to read, an obsession with mystery untouched by romance, cafeteria lunches, hammocks, jumping off the hammocks in time to N*Sync, uncontrollable laughter and giggling for no reason. It all used to be so easy. My biggest problems were dealing with a fear of the Boogeyman and a light crush on a boy who laughed at me.

But I wanted to be older, because it was all so glamourous: not having to wait for someone to take you places, no homework, money to spend how you wanted, grown-up friends with grown-up spaces. My favorite show has most always been Friends. I wanted to be them. Now I'm on the way to having that chance, and all I want to be is that little girl again, cleaning out her backpack every day, as soon as she got home from school, at five, because that's when Sailor Moon was on. Now all I want is a really good rain, to clean everything so it is new again.