Oh, to Be 10 Again
/The Boston Herald
Xena turns 10 today. If there is a perfect age, it is 10. Ten is still a child, but not a little one like 8 and 9. Ten doesn't have to be watched or coddled. Ten is self-sufficient. Ten is, after all, double digits.
But 10 is still a bit too young for heavy-duty responsibility. So 10 doesn't have to wash dishes or change sheets or babysit all by herself. Maybe next year at 11, but not at 10.
Older kids don't burden 10 with their problems, either, because 10 wouldn't understand them, and younger kids don't have problems - only complaints, really.
I want to be 10 again. I want to go to sleep on clean sheets in a bed someone else made and wake to the sounds of the table being set downstairs. I want to get up and find my drawers full of folded shorts and T-shirts and matching socks.
Every morning Xena collects the eggs the chickens laid. I can do that. I'll risk a few pecks on the ankle if someone else scrambles the eggs for me. Every morning Xena helps clear the table and load the dishwasher and dress her baby brother. I can do that, too. Because after she's finished, the whole day is hers, all day, every day, all summer long.
Xena can play in the woods behind her house, or follow her father as he feeds the animals and tends the land. She can dream as she colors or blows bubbles or rides on the swings or hangs upside down on the jungle bars. She can play jacks or rummy or sit up in a tree all day or roller skate, skip rope, ride her bike, read, or watch TV.
She's too young for braces and boys, which eliminates a host of problems, and far too young to drive, which eliminates even more. She doesn't read fashion magazines yet, or care a whit about what's good or bad for her. So she can eat candy bars without guilt and ice cream without remorse and her head isn't someplace else, wishing some boy would like her.
She's not interested in boys, not yet, not in the way she someday will be, so she isn't tethered to the phone or saddled with self doubt. When you're 10 you still like yourself.
I look back at 10 and remember freedom - walks to the Dairy Queen and to the movies and playing marbles in the driveway and freeze tag on the front lawn and riding my bike around the block.
I remember Janet Butler's square vinyl swimming pool, a deluxe thing that you could practically lie down in, a luxury that made running through the sprinkler for babies. Summer afternoons Rosemary and I lazed in the woods behind the school for the deaf. The moss that grew in the shade there was cool and sweet and moist. We never tired of it, never wished we were anyplace else.
I remember punching holes in the tops of jars and catching butterflies and praying mantises and feeding them dead bugs, making bracelets of gimp, toasting marshmallows, rubbing Noxema on burned skin and begging to go back to Nantasket.
On hot afternoons when my mother was working and couldn't shoo me outside, I'd hide in the cellar where it was damp and dark and I'd read comic books, "Little Lulu" and "Archie," and eat fireballs and root beer barrels and Turkish taffy, the kind of candy that lasted while I read.
On summer nights we'd play tag or Red Rover until the street lights came on, and then we'd sit on someone's steps until our mothers called us in to our clean rooms with clean sheets.
Ten was a long time ago. But it stands out because it was a perfect time. Ten was old enough to be independent, but young enough to be tucked into bed and kissed every night.
Xena turns 10 today. It doesn't get much better than being 10, having parents who love you, and the whole summer off.
