Growing Up

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about growing up. Summer 2019 has been a patchwork of show-tunes and dust clouds, dust everywhere, of hot afternoon rain, drumming on my roof, of paper wasps building a home outside my bedroom window. It has been long walks home and the ant hills lining the pavement. This summer tastes like undiluted matcha and smells like laying face down on the basement carpet. It's been a good one, I think. There are about four weeks until we get haircuts and bus passes. Four weeks of a slow sort of freedom. 

When I stop and think about it, this is how my summers always are. Sleepy and too warm for anything more than old sheets. Often, they're spent alone, but occasionally, I'll catch a glance of an old friend underneath the grocery store florescent lights. I honestly don't mind. Of course I miss my friends. Of course it'd be nice to see more of them, or to play flashlight tag at 8 in the evening, when the sun is (miraculously) still up. But I've found that alone-ness (which is quite different from loneliness) is excellent for introspection. We can all use a little quality time in our own minds, right? 

Monday through Friday, you can find me at the library. Sometimes, I'll be browsing the cookbook section. Others, I'm at one of those singular desks by the window. I like sitting by the window, because then I can look out at the library's Mediterranean-tiled roof and the cloudless sky. If I woke up motivated on any given day, I'll be working on my online math class or taking notes on Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front. If I woke up groggy and realized all of my clothes are wrinkled in the dryer, I'll be at that same desk, reading a memoir or some poetry, or writing. Do come and say hello sometime.

I love my time at the library. It's very sunny, and the air conditioning works much more consistently than it does in my bedroom. There is a cafe downstairs, where they make a killer over-priced cappuccino. I'm also left to my own devices in the quiet and calm, because I'm surrounded by a bunch of elderly men in flat caps. And as the saying goes, if you give an old man in a flat cap a book, he'll be very quiet so you can concentrate on your homework. You haven't heard that saying before? Oh. 

(Shout out to the lovely young woman in a pink sporty tank top sitting three desks away from me. Yay to us for messing up the demographic of this here library.) 

Here's why I'm so fascinated about the flat-capped old men around me. I start to wonder what they did when they were my age, how they spent their youth-filled summer days. I begin to think about the adventures they must've had with their friends, before the age of social media and the phenomenon I like to call Eyes Glued to Screens. I want to hear their stories. I want to know what in their lives led them to being here, in this library, every day of the week with a cuppa coffee and a new pirate book. And as I think about them, about the lives and stories all around me, I begin to think about my own life. How I've changed. What I've experienced. The things in my life that led me to being here, in this library, every day of the week with a cuppa coffee and a TI-84 graphing calculator. 

March 2007

The other day, after returning home from the land of bookshelves, I logged into the family computer and started scrolling through photo albums. I found a selfie I took of myself on March 15, 2007. A few minutes later, I found another selfie of myself, this one from May 2019. With a few clicks of the mouse, I'd emailed myself both of these pictures. They are kinda crazy to look at. In 2007, I must've been four or five. My hair was still relatively blonde. Now, it's morphed into this sort of in-between color; my driver's permit says I'm brunette, my passport says I'm blonde. In 2007, I could never have imagined having a driver's permit. Heck, back then, I would never have been able to walk to the library by myself! My mom was always worried about my sister and me crossing the intersection at Orchard Road, and to get to the library, you have to cross Orchard, so it was a big no-no. In 2007, no one had died at that intersection. Now, there is a memorial on the corner for a girl named Phoebe.

May 2019

Growing up is a bonkers thing. We don't notice it while it's happening, we don't feel any taller as the days go by. But when we look backwards, it is evident that so much has changed. My sister Abby has glasses now. My dad's goatee is speckled with gray. "Love Story" by Taylor Swift is freaking ten years old. How is that even possible? I swear it just came out. I swear I am still six, dressed up in a Cinderella dress. I am six, and I am in a hot-pink limo belonging to the local kid's salon, and they are having an event called Girls Night Out. I am six, and the wind is rushing in through the windows, and Taylor Swift's new bop about Romeo and Juliet is blaring from the speakers. 

I'm ten and I'm riding in the bed of my grandpa's white pick-up, and if my mom could see me now, I'd be in so much trouble. I'm in the bed of his truck wrapped in a red towel, and my cousin Brandon is eating a blue otter-pop and Abby is holding a shiny penny she found at the pool. There were always dead mosquitoes coating the water. But no. I'm not ten. I'm not six. In fact, I'm just a few months away from being ten plus six. We've grown so much. And the beautiful thing is, we still have so much growing to do.

There are new places we have yet to venture to. We still have to have an affogato in Italy, and pho for breakfast in Vietnam. There are sunburns we have yet to regret, from days splashing carelessly in the sea. We have friends to make. One day, we'll have driver's licenses and on Sundays, we'll meet at the art museum. We have songs to play on repeat. We have first kisses in cinemas to be had, books to explore, rainstorms to dance in. Maybe we'll all be someone's mom, dad, or parent. Perhaps we'll break a bone, learn how to play piano. We have so much. We have a life to live. And when I think about this, in the moments I am alone but far from lonely, in the moments between the pages of a book, I realize that Peter Pan had it all wrong. Without growing up, there is no living. Growing up is not synonymous with losing our youthful joy, but with learning how to reclaim and redefine that joy. Aging is a joy. It is a privilege. It is terrifying, because there is so little we can control and so little we can be sure about. We are scared because we know that time can cause pain and loss. We are scared because we know that we will fall in and out of love. We are scared because growing up reminds us of our mortality. 

But I don't think mortality has to be scary. Mortality is special because it forces us to live. We have one shot. I have one shot to breathe in this moment. I have a single lifetime to fill with memories and people and bursts of art and color, and what an exciting prospect that is. I don't know where I'll go, or what will happen. I know very little about life, and I have so much to learn about, quite frankly, everything. What I do know is - growing up is living. Let's grow up together, shall we?

Thank you for wondering with me. Now, you go have the most wonderful day, and I will go buy an over-priced, killer cappuccino from the cafe downstairs. Adieu, adieu. Don't forget to live.

Love,

Maya

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash, Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash,

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash, Photo by Val Vesa on Unsplash,

Photo by Maya, Photo by Maya, Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash,

Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash, Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash