I want to wake up in my bunk bed at 7:00 in the morning and not think about the amount of the sleep i got and convince myself that the quality of my day depends solely on it.
i want to smell pancakes and hear the sound of my mother singing “Rise and Shine and Give God the Glory.” i want to make my way to the kitchen and eat breakfast with my family.
i want to put on the clothes that my mother picked for me and not care that my shorts were pink.
i want to ride down Pumpkin Vine Drive in the back seat of my dads Buick as he takes us to school. i want to see the stain in the upholstery and remember the time he took us to get ice cream and i dropped mine.
i want to wait in line with my friends in the cafeteria. i want to sit with them at the big round tables surrounded by 8 incredibly uncomfortable orange chairs. i want to remember what it was like to talk to my friends when there were so little distractions. we didn’t talk about grades or futures; as far as we knew, we had neither of these things. we talked about things that made us happy. we talked about recess and the adventures we had the day before with the other neighborhood kids. we talked about what WE wanted to talk about. not about what society or our shared interests lead us to. we didn’t have interests like sports, music, or girls that held us together. we had ourselves. we had the fact that we were in the same class. we had the fact that we had nothing to lose, and we had absolutely nothing to worry about.
i want to climb trees because i can. and because i did. and when you’re 10 years old you can do things like spend all afternoon in a tree and not a single person will think you’re insane. they would think you were 10 years old. thats what you’re supposed to do. not a care in the world. just you and a tree.
i want to climb down from this tree and join my family for dinner; my mother, my dad, and my two brothers. i don’t recall much table conversation, but i do recall my mother always asking us how our days went. i love that about my mother. i know that she legitimately cared. i know that she was invested in me, invested in my life, and invested in knowing how my day went. she wanted to know if it didn’t go well and what made it that way. if it did go well, what made it so great? i love my mother and i love every single aspect of hers that i now call my own.
after dinner, i want to meet my father out in the garage where he could teach me about tools and i could just nod and grab whatever he needed. my dad is a genius and he has no idea. i’ve never met someone who could fix the assortment of things he is able to fix with no prior knowledge of said product. he truly has the mind of a genius and the patience of a thousand Adam Sandler’s in 50 First Dates. i love my father and i love every characteristic of his that he has bequeathed to me.
i want to ride my huffy down to the stop sign at the end of the lane late at night. my parents told this was the furthest i was allowed to go. remember when going past the stop sign was the biggest sense of adventure we could possible wrap our 9 year old hands around? i do.
but now, here i am, being swept up by adulthood where it’s hard to let go of adolescence and the time where life felt so innocent and easy, where there just seemed to be so much less worry and hurry.
i don’t look back and wish i were still a kid. i’m okay with where i am now and excited for what’s next and for who i will become and the family i will one day call my own.
nostalgia just reminds us who we are.
and it’s nice to look back and remember.
it reminds me that i’ve lived.
that this is life.
and that life is beautiful.
