The International Writers Magazine: Big shoes to fill

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Wishing for Tomorrow • Rowena Betts I sit watching over my cousins, always aware of their every move, in case one should fall and hurt themselves. Although they’re not really babies anymore. I watch with pride as Luke takes charge over his younger sisters, helping them onto the swings and slides and taking care for them not to fall. He’s only eleven, but already he’s beginning to enjoy his role as the older brother. Beth, being the middle child, is as bossy as ever, telling Luke to leave her alone and telling Emily exactly what to do. At nine, she's at that age where she thinks she’s perfectly old enough to do whatever she likes, although many things prevent her from doing so, which aggravates her. Emily, who, when asked, is four and three quarters, watches in awe of her brother and sister, wishing she was as big as them so as to join in with their games.

I watch them with a strange sense of jealousy. I envy their childhood, wishing so much to go back to my own. I have so many happy memories of being their age, I wish that I could tell them just how lucky they are to be so young. I tell my sister the same thing, and she just laughs at me and tells me not to be so stupid. Haylie is fifteen, and as any other teenager her age, she is desperate to be older. She spends hours in front of the mirror, doing what she believes to be the most important things in the world - applying more make up, doing her hair one more time, checking that her skirt is just short enough.

We spend our entire lives wishing for tomorrow. We always yearn for the weekend, long for the holidays, Christmas, birthdays, secondary school, college, university. What we don’t realize is just how quickly that time will come, and how quickly it will pass. Dreams become reality, then memories. Each stage of our lives is a lesson, whether it is good or bad, we will always come out of it a better person having learnt new things about ourselves and the people around us. We need to appreciate lives lessons as a way of growing, and accept that nothing is forever, it is only a stage in which will soon pass and become a distant memory.

So as I watch my cousins, I look on in jealousy, wishing that they could know what I know and appreciate everything for what it is. But then, in retrospect, I think, would I want to go back and start again? And I think, no. Not in a million years. I may wish for the past, but the future holds far too many possibilities, too many opportunities and hundreds of dreams to ever want to give that up.
© Rowena Betts Nov 2004

Rowena is a first year Creative Arts student at Portsmouth University

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