On Childhood
The Last Day of Childhood
Jillian Hand
I don’t remember my last day of childhood; the last day of scraped knees and Spongebob Band-Aids; scoreless soccer games and silver bicycles; sidewalk chalk and sandcastles. Because somewhere between two summers, the marks of childhood started to slip-- one grain of sand at a time-- through my fingertips.
The memories remain, compiled like dunes along the beach. I’d have to sift through each grain to find the one I want; a difficult task when they all look and feel the same. But, when my feet find the waves, and the first rush of ocean wraps around my ankles, I am five-years-old again.
I am three-years-old and I’m collecting seashells. My mother takes a picture of me-- it’s now in a frame displayed in our living room-- my brows are furrowed in deep concentration. A strap from my favorite overalls hangs loosely off my shoulder but I don’t seem to notice because I’m too preoccupied with picking through a mound of flat rocks and soft pink shells. There’s a plastic yellow bucket beside me to house the shells I deem worthy enough; it’s far from full.
Even then, I was serious-- searching for perfection-- but still happy in solitude. On the days I struggle to remember who that little girl is, my eyes drift towards that photograph and I’m comforted by the familiarity of it. No matter how far she is from five, or from that beach in Montauk, she is still the same. I’ve only been there once since Grandpa died, but she and I meet sometimes in the summer on the South Shore of Long Island. Just the slightest scent of sunscreen and salt sends me back to the middle of that memory-- to the middle of my childhood.
As I stand at the shore, I look out at the line that separates the sea from the sky and I start to wonder about the rest of the days between then and now. Some of us may lose our childhood in seconds, but for me, the loss was steady and slow. It faded in the way ink does on an old letter; every day it gets a little lighter until it is erased completely. I’m still holding on, though, clinging fiercely to the remains-- the few words I can still read.
It is seldom, but sometimes I am able to relive the days of my innocence. Like the days when I visit the beach and spot a perfectly curled, unscathed, pink shell. Or when drops of melted vanilla ice cream roll steadily down my wrists and I lap at it with my tongue. Then, there are the times when I find my beloved stuffed and tattered bear and hug it to my chest like the day I did on my seventh-birthday.
And sometimes I find pieces of childhood hiding behind boxes in my garage-- like the red, deflated rubber ball. It’s the ball I spent years kicking and throwing, losing and finding, falling over and getting hit with. It too has lost its youth-- no longer round, or even red, but I cannot seem to part with it because it reminds me of school nights when I begged to play outside for just ten more minutes. It reminds me of the long summer days when every kid on Abbey Street convened outside under the old oak tree on Tony’s lawn. We’d kick it until we couldn’t see it-- up to the clouds and over the park-- then we’d drink the lemonade we meant to sell at our corner stand.
The memories of these days remain but what I fail to recall is the final day. The final lemonade stand. The final game of kickball. Did we decide one day we were too old? Did we stop when the ball became too limp to kick? Did we ever know it would be the final time? In just one day we went from trading secrets about crushes and complaining about school, to perfunctory waves from across the street before getting into our cars.
Tony’s now gone and so is the tree; perhaps the fragments of our childhood uprooted along with it.
I am far from the days of careless kickball games and collecting shells on the beach. Adulthood has barged in with an abundance of baggage and I’m still sorting through the boxes. My childhood will always linger, maybe in the corner, collecting dust, but always there to remind me that there doesn’t yet have to be a final day.
