Trials of Twelve

Twelve isn’t an age for the faint hearted. Having a grandson and a granddaughter that age around the house this week took me back  to a time long long ago when I was their age.  I was  twelve when I attended 4-H camp at Stony Lake.  My mother saw that I was developing and bought my first bras to wear at camp.  

The girls at camp slept in a big open room with bunk beds and we had to dress and undress in front of each other.  I wasn’t used to a bra and how it felt.  I so wanted my cotton t-shirt with the little ribbon at the neckline.  I tried to get into my shortie pajamas at night and dressed in the morning as privately as I could.  I was uncomfortable with the young woman I was becoming and missing the little girl who was slipping away.

Twelve is awkward.  Twelve is uncertain.  Twelve is the last step of childhood which some kids aren’t ready to leave behind.  For girls, twelve is discovering changes to mind and body and discovering that boys can be both interesting and intolerable.  

Seventh grade was an uncomfortable year for me.  There was only one class of 7th graders at my school and we must have gotten out of hand daily because Mr. Thomas, one of our teachers who later became the principal, on a regular basis gave us a lecture on citizenship and being good people.  

I spent 7th grade and age twelve with crooked teeth, knowing that the braces I was soon to get would only make me uglier.  I was conscious of the clothes I was wearing and wished I had more than what hung in my closet.  

I read an article this past year that said childhood nowadays ends closer to ten than twelve.  I watched my grandson Jay with his cousin Adrianna this week.  They were born a day apart in May of 2002.  They like to discuss their world of school and friends, but I noticed they weren’t as chatty with each other as they have been in the past.

On the 4th of July they were playing a game in the yard and got in a tiff over how the game should be played.  Jay got sharp with Adrianna and she sat at a distance and cried.  I took her for a little ride in our golf cart and she told me how Jay had hurt her feelings.  Forgiveness comes easily though and later when they were sitting together for a picture, Adrianna leaned over and gave Jay a kiss on the cheek.  

The look on his face was captured in a photo I took and tells me what it is like to be a boy of twelve.  Yet the simple time of childhood is past for both Jay and Adrianna.  The days when they played together for hours is gone. Their relationship is changing and even though they chased each other around the yard the last night they could be together, next summer at age thirteen I'm sure things will be different yet. Then there will come a time when Adrianna doesn't come to spend a week at Grandpa and Grandma's.

After Adrianna and Bella left to go home to Novi, Jay came back in the house with me and said, “I didn’t know I would feel so bad when they left.  I’m probably going sit in my room and think about how fast the week went.”  I remember so vividly in my teen years sitting for hours in my room contemplating the world. How does time go so quickly?

Jay's look after Adrianna kissed him on the cheek.  

Adrianna at twelve

Jay at twelve