Sweet 16?

So its that time of year again.

The time of year where I officially get older.
(I say officially because technically I’m always unfortunately getting older but its just that on the 2nd of November every year I officially get older in years because the seconds/hours/days/months don’t actually get counted. Just like in maths when you round 3.141592645 to be just 3.14. Anyway.)
(Actually hang on, according to that rule I was technically classed as being 16 years old the day that I reached being 15 years, 6 months and 1 day old because anything five and higher is rounded up in maths and in this instance we are rounding to the highest whole number. ANYWAY)

This year I’m not as excited as I have been in the past to have my birthday. Every year for the past few years I’ve has my birthday (at last!) and decided that I think I will stay at whatever age I just turned. I remember turning 13 and thinking that I would never be 14 because that is simply too old! I could never get that old! I would always stay at the same age of 13 forever, the same maturity level with the same level of smartness that I possessed back then. But life goes on and I got older once again. Being born at the end of the year has me watching all of my friends turn older one after another which leaves me being the only one left still 14 or 15 or whatever. Which means that, although I had previously decided that I want to stay at the age I was, I am now so sick of being the only one who is 14 or 15 or whatever that I’m glad when my birthday comes along and I can be as old as all of my friends instead of being the “baby” of the group. And the process starts again.

But this year I’ve managed to hang on to my will to stay at the age I am now, regardless of the fact that I am classed as younger than everyone else. This year I regard having a birthday and getting older in the same way that I regarded going to year eleven: sort of glad about the change, but knowing that the change brings more recognition yes, but also more responsibility, more work to do, more stress and less sweet innocence that all children are blessed with.

On Monday, due to some complicated circumstances that I can’t be bothered describing now, I had to ride my bike to school in order to make it to a band rehearsal that I was pretty much complied to attend to. To get to school via bike, I had to ride down the road from my house a bit and then onto the start of the bike path. I had not been to this bike path for a few years now. But when I was younger my family and I would ride along here almost every second weekend. (This actually made me realized how much biking was a part of my childhood. Quite surprising actually!)

I remember riding up to the big hill next to the dog park after you’ve gone along the road and preparing myself to get up that monstrous hill. I remember how big and steep the hill going down to the crossing over the river was and how scared I was to go down it in fear of going too fast and falling off. I remember stopping underneath the cars overpass to feed the ducks and watching the goose with half a beak eat the bread we gave him. I remember riding along the creek and thinking I was going a million miles and hour when I was in fact probably going about 7 or 8 km per hour. I remember the huge long bike rides we would do along the track which took hours and hours and which felt like we could have ridden all the way to Sydney judging the distance we just road. We probably road a maximum of about 15km. I now ride a much longer distance in a much shorter time. I remember daydreaming while riding along. I remember when one time the wind was so strong in the other direction coming back that dad had to ride in front blocking the wind with us tailed behind in his slipstream. I remember the creek so chocked with weeds that you couldn’t see the water. I remember the tiredness in my legs when we got home.

Going back there again felt slightly weird. Everything was so different. I could now see the water that was in the creek because the weeds had all been cut back. There were no longer the geese that I remember under the overpass. That huge hill took me hardly any effort to get up. I probably only road about 10km in total from our house to school which took me hardly half an hour. Everything seemed so much more little than what I remembered. Everything was in much smaller proportions than what I remembered: the distance, the hills, the time it took me.

I look back on that time when me and my family used to ride along that bike path and I wish that I was that young again. When I didn’t have a care in the world. When my biggest worry was that I didn’t know which teddy, out of my many, to sleep with that night. When I didn’t know about all the bad things that go on in our world. When I was satisfied with the simplest things like a dried apricot (mum never gave us sweets as rewards, it was always healthy food like dried fruit) or a new hair clip. I was in an ignorant bliss of the potential insecurity of my world and I only thought of the present. I certainly had a good childhood and I thank my parents for that.

I wish now, that I could go back and be that carefree, happy little girl that I once was. But this upcoming birthday brings me one step closer on the long road to saying goodbye to her forever.

*Sigh*