Zibby Mag

By Clothilde Ewing

As the cooler weather and shorter days descend—and the time of year with all of the barbecues, soccer games, and trips to the neighborhood pool comes to an end—I often find myself reminiscing about my teenage summers.

My first official job was as a lifeguard where I got paid to hang out with friends and teach swim lessons. In retrospect, it was pretty great. But I still wanted more. After a day at the pool, I’d head home to my parents and my life as a teenager, frustrated with the rules I had to follow. I was ready for freedom, like when Denise Huxtable, Clair and Cliff’s free-spirited daughter, went off to Hillman College. I yearned for that decisive moment in my life.

Over twenty years later, I now have constant reminders that I am officially middle-aged. I’m saving for a retirement that I hope comes one day, my knees let me know in the morning whether to expect rain, and I’m no longer plucking the single grays but going for full color.

My daughter has heard me reminisce about my stint as a lifeguard, and how it was the best job ever. “You should do it again,” she tells me playfully. Of course I know this isn’t possible, but wouldn’t it be great if I could go back and tell my 16-year-old self to soak it all in while I can?

My first official job was as a lifeguard where I got paid to hang out with friends and teach swim lessons. In retrospect, it was pretty great. But I still wanted more.

I was always in a rush to grow up and live in what seemed like a world without rules and measurable responsibility. As a mother of two children, ages six and eight, I see it already with my son and daughter and other young(er) people in my life. They have a unique ability to look forward optimistically, while also being firmly rooted in the present.

When they are five years old, they want to be six so they can lose a first tooth. When they are six, they want to be seven and stay up later. They have visions of the world’s best party starting once they go to school or off to sleep. They fantasize about the games they could play if they had their own phones, or the things they would buy if they had their own money. They can’t wait to try wine and think of work as an opportunity to talk to their friends endlessly and play on the computer.

As I was working on my latest picture book, I polled a group of tweens to see if they missed anything about their own younger years. Their answers were illuminating: riding on their dad’s shoulders, playing with “little kid toys” and not being judged, not caring what people thought about their clothes and their invisible friends. They were living the days they thought they wanted, but something was missing.

As we age, that romanticized version of our new lives doesn’t always make room for the simpler things that we loved before. There’s an unspoken tension between young kids wanting to grow up and eventually becoming wistful for their youth.

Through my children, I have been able to relive the thrill of a water slide and the meditative experience of coloring books. I have an excuse to blow bubbles and play tag again. While I want my kids to grow up in due time, I hope they hold on to the same rush they feel as children. As adults, I hope they still feel butterflies when they’re experiencing something new, rather than dread or heartburn.

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Clothilde Ewing leads communications at The Chicago Community Trust, a community foundation committed to advancing economic equity, and is a former television producer for CBS News and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her first picture book, Stella Keeps the Sun Up, is available now. Listen to her interview about it with Zibby here!

She is a wife and mother of two children.