Have you ever seen a forlorn little thirteen year old girl like this one? Whatever could be so troubling at such a young age? For this young girl, it was taking that first bumpy step towards "growing-up."

When does a child know it's time to put away the toys of their youth, and start moving into a more adult world? Better yet, how does a parent know that time has come and they should gently help their child move on towards "growing up?"

Solomon said in Ecclesiastes "...there is a time for everything ...". For me, that time to begin growing up came when I was thirteen. Now forty years later, I can still vividly remember the night my parents made that decision for me, though I had not yet made it for myself.

It was Christmas Eve, or maybe a day earlier. My oldest brother was in the Army, and we had to drive him that night to catch a late plane to take him to begin his tour of duty in Germany. This year we would open our presents early so that he could share Christmas 1960 with his family.

I never thought of my family as "poor." We always had clothes to wear and food on the table, and it was delicious! Certainly, we didn't have some of the "modern conveniences" of the time, and the ones we did acquire seemed to come a few years after others got theirs, I guess. But I don't really remember that bothering me at the time. We were a large family, 6 children, and I was the youngest. We always had four or five presents each under the tree; some handmade by my mother or dad, some "store bought."

I didn't think of it at the time, though I have often thought of it since becoming a parent myself, but it must have been incredibly challenging for my parents to come up with such a "nice" Christmas for their family ... especially since four of us had birthdays in December and the other two in late September and October. Can you imagine the difficulty of providing 6 birthdays and Christmases within less than four months, on a tight budget at best?

So there I sat, in my felt green skirt with a green and white sweater (school colors),and wearing my brother's Army hat, just hours before he was to leave. I remember to this day how miserable and misunderstood I felt at that moment. I kept wishing one present was somehow lodged under the tree skirt, or would suddenly appear from behind a chair, or discovered left in a closet by mistake. But no, my destiny was sealed that night; it was time to grow up.

A couple years ago my oldest sister was visiting and we ran across this picture. She said she still remembered how sad I looked that night, and how devastated I must have felt that our brother was leaving the comfort and closeness of the family nest. She was even a little surprised at the obvious depth of my misery; she didn't realize my brother and I were that close.

I laughed a bit and said, "But sis, that's not why I was unhappy at all. I was unhappy because it was the first year that I didn't get any toys, and I wasn't ready for that!" We laughed over this for awhile, and then my oldest sister went on to say she always felt short-changed because she had to wait until she was 18 to get her driver's license and couldn't drive many places, while our middle sister got hers at 16 and drove everywhere. We both wondered aloud what our middle sister had felt "cheated" about all these years!

Sometimes we may not know what's best for us, especially at the age of 13, and just have to rely on the experience of our parents to make some tough judgement calls for us, I guess. Looking back, they were probably conflicted over whether it was time to nudge their "baby" into the next phase of "growing up."

Mom and dad, I'm glad you made the right choice.

Maggie
© 1998



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