The girls proclaim 'I love you' to each other as though they are practising using those potent words in front of the boys for some future time. The boys don't understand. They can't. One runs through the long grass and starts rolling down the hill. He bellows for attention and a girl races after him, shrieking with laughter in the sunset.
The other boy sits on the bench with arms folded, considering his peacocking options. He unscrews the cap off a bottle and glugs back the acrid liquid, the great confidence boosting elixir he thinks he needs.
I am twice their age, maybe more. I sit on another bench, further down, close to the rustling trees and the steadily darkening woods. Twice: enough to have lived their lives two times over with change to spare.
I remember a Reebok baseball cap, floating in the river at Caversham. I remember my friend Sarah rolling with laughter on the sunlit grass as I stood there, running a hand through my thick, curly-black hair. The hat bobbled away, under the bridge and downstream out of sight. I did not fully understand what had happened. Or why. I see it now though.
These daughters and sons live in a different world. They're smarter, better connected and well-informed. Yet here they are, friends together, showing exactly the same behaviour as we, their parents did, twenty five years ago. There is a human need to be together and this group of teenagers is figuring it out perfectly.
There is an end to the story by the river, but I am not ready to tell it. In any case, there was no end really; the chapters changed and a long sequence of events led me exactly here, to the bench further down and the rustling trees. That moment and this are absolutely connected.
Their voices carry in the still air. They are young, yes. But I do not envy them.
No comments:
Post a Comment