Growing Up

I remember vividly , as if only yesterday, lying on my bed as an 8 year old and wailing that I didn't ever want to grow up . Now history is repeating itself as I've just spent a tricky half hour re-assuring my own 8 year old that I understand how he feels and that growing up can be fun as well as sad. His little tear stained face made me want to weep. Red eyed and sobbing he trudged off back to bed clutching an eclectic selection of toys plucked from a basket that was destined for the charity shop... a small stuffed rabbit , a robot pencil sharpener and a set of alphabet stamps. Re-assurance that all of his old toys that we had passed on to younger children when he'd outgrown them , fell on deaf ears. The Leap Frog electronic reading tablet that went at the last car boot sale was lost forever and with it , he felt , a part of his childhood. Inconsolable . Now I realise why the ritual of sorting toys to pass on to charity or friends' children makes me SO anxious. I must attribute them with a little piece of my children's childhood soul which will now become lost forever. I've never been very good about dealing with change and growing up is the saddest kind of change. I never buy into the myth that growing up is all part of 'life's rich tapestry'. Who coined that ghastly phrase ? The minute I hear it I know I'm being persuaded to swallow some old guff. Fobbed off with a cliche because there's no decent alternative explanation. ... a bit like any sentence that begins with '... with all due respect' when you know damn well that no respect is involved whatsoever.

Anyway, he's finally settled, off to the land of nod clutching his little rabbit. Tomorrow it will all be forgotten, or will it ? Will he, in 40 years time, be writing some cyberblog or whatever equivalent has been invented by then, about the perils of growing up ? I hope I'm still alive to read it.