late nights and loud fights
it's all just a blur

1:11 p.m. | 2004-07-06
And 13 Bags Later...

Things change with age, and I'm coming to realize that.

As I grow older things too age. I was eating popsicles last week with a friend, enjoying the memories and we got a joke that went as follows:

"What's happening all around the world but at different rates?"

Pause. Ponder. Pause. Ponder.

Answer? Getting older.

Here's what gets me. A year is...a year, right? Even though the Chinese year isn't our year, even they convert to our ages. Odd.

But then it hits me. We are going at different rates. You change little from 31-39, but in that same 8 year span look at the change in a new born. They go from a ball of nothingness to a coherent human being who can talk and be independent and do just about anything.

This really does have a point, though. I was mowing the lawn today, nicely mowing the neighbor's too when I noticed something. This bush that I used to play in as a child (and bears this strange purple berry that I think I remember eating multiple times) had grown. Not only grown, but had overshadowed the perfect chair shaped rock I used to sit on and the small douglas fir I used to decorate for christmas.

This maybe 3 foot, maybe, little plant was now not only taller than me it was huge.

It used to be cute and quaint, and well trimmed, always flat on the top and nice and rounded on its sides so I could easily slip my fingers in for those bitter berries.

Now it has branches far longer than others, bare patches, and at about 7 feet simply reaches for the sky.

I understand that things change. But why had I been so caught up over the last 8 years not to notice? I've mowed that lawn countless times in those years. And yet somehow I forgot that bush, and the hours I'd spend playing in it, the time I took all those berries and mushed them together (careful to take out the seeds) and offered it to the cat. How did they not matter.

It's that classic thing of growing up and coming back home, that humbling thing. But why did I notice it so early? Why wasn't there a movie soundtrack in the back of my head and why when I saw the giant bush did I automatically deny that it was the bush I used to play in?

As I put the mower away I went back for one more look. Sure enough, right at the base of that rock that you could barely see, let alone sit on, there was a small jar, filled with dried berries. Something I carelessly left out in the rain one day and never came back for. There was a last time. A last time I sat under the bush. A last time I thrust my hands into it, pricking and tearing my entire arms, just looking for the best berry. A last time that I didn't realize was my last. I always assumed I'd come back to that bush, I suppose.

I'm still young enough to swim and splash and eat lick-a-sticks. But I'm too old to sit by that bush.

It's something that plagues our society I guess. Growing old.

Signing off--Lauren

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