When I was in school to become a counselor we had an instructor whose specialty in the area of child development was the pre-teen years. She taught a semester’s course on the topic, and part of the requirement for students in her class was to complete an internship in a middle school. For beginning counselors like me it was a tough age to try and counsel. But for our professor it was her favorite age to work with. She fondly referred to the pre-teen years as “the bubble gum years.”
During that semester I interned at a middle school and dealt with kids flunking out, kids with alcoholic or drug-addicted parents, kids who couldn’t function socially with their peers, kids who were thinking about suicide, kids who were drug-runners for gangs, kids who said they didn’t care anymore. It was pretty heavy. Far heavier than I had expected. After all, they were just little kids, ages 11 to 13. Little kids trying to be grown up.
I’d spend afternoons at the middle school fighting my way through the muck. Reminding myself that these were innocent little kids. At times I’d feel sick to my stomach listening to their stories and their dismal outlook on the future. And in the evening I’d go to class where my instructor would smile and nod and say things like, “Ah yes, the bubble gum years.”
The bubble gum years. The age when a child becomes old enough to get a first glimmer of life as an adult. When the body is changing from child status to adult status. Hormones are driving every aspect of life into utter chaos. Emotions flit and flutter in a constant state of movement and change, never lighting in any one spot for very long. The intellect is experiencing one of its most rapid growth phases, making it suddenly possible to approach a situation from several different perspectives and actually analyze things. Thought processes are changing, trying, I suppose, to adapt to the brain’s rapid growth. Life takes on a new seriousness.
And yet, the appearance is more important than the actual being. What others see matters more than what actually is. And in the scariness of all this change there’s a certain comfort in still being a child. Still enjoying play. Laughing. Being silly. Stepping back into the safe cocoon of childhood. For just one more day.
I don’t think I really got it that semester. I read the books. I wrote the papers. I completed the internship, hopefully without damaging anyone. And I passed the class. But I didn’t really get it. I didn’t understand the fondness which my instructor felt when she talked about those years. To me, it was just a stage in child development. A kind of messy stage, actually.
I finished school and became a counselor. And in the first few years I did work some with that age group. But I never thought again about the bubble gum years. Until a few years later.
I had received a note from a close friend telling me that her husband was deploying. I had just finished reading the note when our daughter Kathryn, age 11, walked into the kitchen.
“You okay, Mom?” she asked.
I nodded, choked up. I read a couple sentences of the note to her.
“How many kids do they have?” she wanted to know.
I said three, and told her how old they were. That they were actually pretty close in age to our kids.
She was quiet for a second. Then she walked across the room and sat down at the table by me.
“How long is he going to be in the war?” she wanted to know.
I said I didn’t know.
“D’you think he could get killed?”
I shrugged and said there was no way of knowing that for sure. That war was war. But, I said I thought he would be fairly safe. Safer than many.
She was quiet again. Then she said, “So why’d she write to you about it?”
I explained that she was wanting to let us know so that Dad and I would keep them in our prayers.
She was silent for a second. Then she nodded, and said, “I’ll pray for him, too. For him to be safe. And for his family to be okay while he’s gone.”
I nodded. I told her that I knew she would.
The phone rang then, bringing our conversation to an end. It was for Kathryn. One of her buddies wanting her to go ride scooters. And in that instant, her quiet thoughtfulness was transformed into joyful exuberance. Childlike excitement.
“Okay, meet you outside in five minutes,” she said, and hung up the phone.
I folded the note and stood up from the table. She jumped up and ran to get ready, hurriedly telling me what her plan was. Who she was going with, where they were going to ride, when she’d be home. And by the way, what’s for dinner?
A moment later she was heading out the front door. As she ran down the steps she turned and smiled at me through the living room window. I smiled back and lifted a hand in a wave. She was wearing her standard attire—a swim team sweatshirt, athletic pants, and tennis shoes. Her hair was in braids. Shoelaces untied.
And it hit me. Right then. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to memorize how she looked at that moment. Red cheeks, and bright eyes. Loose hairs curling out all over from her braids. Braces gleaming as she laughed, running out our front door and down the steps to go ride scooters with a buddy. I tried to hold the picture in my mind. The picture of our independent 11-year-old who just yesterday was still a toddler.
And I finally got it. In that instant I understood the fondness my former professor always had when she’d talk about the pre-teen years. I saw it all in that one moment.
“Ah yes,” I whispered under my breath, still standing in the window with my eyes closed watching her leave, “the bubble gum years.”
penniesonmypath 