Memories for Most Young Children,

¶ … Memories

For most young children, birthdays are a time of extreme excitement and joy -- there is the endless amount of possibility that exists in each papered package before it is unwrapped, the special treatment throughout the day at home and at school (sometimes prolonging the festivities by a day or two, should the birthday fall on a weekend or school holiday), and the grand seeming-importance of having your personal biographical odometer turn over -- one day your this old, and the next day you leap forward a full digit. All of these contributed to the joy of a childhood birthday, and all of these also contributed to the anticipation in the night -- sometimes the nights -- preceding that desperately-waited-for annual event.

All of these feelings contributed, at the ripe old age of twelve, to my realization that I was no longer a kid. More correctly, it was the lack of these feelings that led to this realization. Childhood is not something that one is especially aware of possessing or being caught up in, I suppose -- there are, of course, the moments of supreme frustration when told "you'll understand when you're older" or "you're too young," but this does not really place the important aspects of childhood into any sort of meaningful context. When I was lying in bed the night before my twelfth birthday, however, I cam to one realization that then slowly led to others, culminating in my most profound realization up until that point in my life -- those features of my personality and experience that had typified and even defined my childhood had largely fled, leaving me not at all grown up and yet strangely un-childlike. I lay there, staring at the darkened ceiling, caught in a train of morose and somewhat self-piteous thought, kept awake by something other than birthday anticipation.

It wasn't that I wasn't happy about my birthday, or even excited about my presents. But I wasn't nearly excited as I had been the previous year on all counts. Toys and other gifts no longer held the same appeal to me -- already I could imagine when the books would be read, or the game already played a thousand times, and the brand new shine of each present seemed to fade with this knowledge. The wrapping papers, so many squares of petroleum-processed soon-to-be-confetti, were carefully un-taped and unfolded instead of being ripped off of each package, and though they would simply be making their way into the trash I folded each one ontop of those that had come before, forming a neat stack of flattened celebration, before I turned to examine the gift itself. There was something very bittersweet about the whole experience, and I remember savoring every moment of it.