Since school has ended, I have been spending a lot of time with the children. Because I might be talking about them a little bit, I thought you all should know a little bit about them.

K and V have four children alltogether, two girls, Sunshine, my best friend, who is also a senior in High School, and Rowan, who is nine and has a very colorful personality. Then the boys, Everett, who is twelve, and Dennis, who is ten.

Then there is one of Rowan’s best friends, Eloise, who is eight and whom I babysit sometimes.

Something I’ve noticed: they are nothing like I was when I was their age, any of them. Of which i’m very, very glad.

When I was Eloise’s age, I had sat in the car while my mother had seizures and watched as the ambulance men took her away. I had been to six different schools and had lived in nine different houses that I could remember. I look at Eloise, who is in love with Hannah Montana, adores the Jonas brothers, and loudly proclaimed in the zoo the other day that “We must help the poor creatures before they’re all gone!”, and i’m so happy she has never seen anyone have a seizure, and i’m so happy she has a secure, safe place to live.

When I was Rowan’s age, I had sat for three days looking at what I thought was my mother’s corpse. I had shaved her legs for her, fed her, cooked for her, done all of her laundry, and my mother had pulled over on the sides of the road to yell at me to “Get the hell out of sight and never come back!” Rowan is very spunky, which sometimes gets her into trouble, but she lives in an environment where she is allowed to thrive. Her mother takes care of her, and she still believes that V has the power to do anything. 

When I was Dennis’s age, I had seen drugs, been in an environment with them, not because my mother wanted me to, but just because we lived in that neighborhood. I could differentiate the smell of pot from cigarettes (not so hard after all) and I could identify the prostitutes that walked on our corner. I had found out that two girls can have sex because two of my classmates got jealous and accused my friend and I of doing it, just because we were the best students in the class and got special treatment for it. My mother had begun telling me I was white trash and that I had ruined her life, and she began making Alex talk to Saint Germain in three hour long increments. He therefore got to ask questions about everything from her uterus to why the “E.T’s” were performing surgery on her. I am so glad Dennis is still a kid. He still loves Pokemon cards, and watching Anime, and he barely remembers to eat, let alone cook for everyone in the family.

By the time I was Everetts age, I had moved across the country to Washington. We had to deal with the fact that the Apocalypse was coming and everyone except us was going to die. Xander was a smoker, and I had fallen into a pattern of not feeling any emotion at all.

 I grew up feeling like I was being immature, and like I was selfish and stubborn. Now, as I look at the kids i’m around all the time, all I do is get angry. Not angry at my mother, not angry at society, just angry. Because if I was forced into a position of maturity at an early age, other kids were, and are still. Children should be allowed to be children for as long as they need to. I admit, I occasionally get frustrated with the kids, but when I take a deep breath and reflect a little more, i’m always glad that they have the ability to thrive at their own pace. =)