Growth & Development Note:
Taking Time
22 July 2019
¶ My daughter and grandson are paying a flying visit.
The first thing we did was to establish that Will is indeed taller than Kathleen — by two or three inches. He has broadened in the shoulders since the last time I saw him; he is no longer just tall. But his face and his voice accord perfectly with his age, which is nine-and-a-half. He is still an appropriately little boy, at least when you see him up close, and hear what he has to say.
When I was his age, I was growing all the time, too, but I don’t know that I went at quite his speed. In those days of faster-the-better, precocity of any kind was applauded (except, of course, the “hormonal”). One of my best friends in college arrived as a freshman at fifteen. He was already as tall as I was, but he never really outgrew his little-boy face; it just got older. Now that Boomers are notorious for living far too long, I understand better than ever how foolish all that excitement about early achievement really was.
Indeed, at seventy-ish, I’m only now beginning to feel mature.