Teen Queen turns 18
The teenager who runs my house . . . how many times have I started one of these letters to you this way.
Meghan Suzanne Siroky arrived one warm December morning � 12-12, 1984 to be exact. She had enjoyed her ride of life so far so much that she didn�t make an initial appearance in the world until after 27 hours of back labor. She was a blessing delayed.,
Patti and I had been married 10 years already. For a decade, it is just the two of you � and the omnipresent wog, of course � and, suddenly, there is another heartbeat in the room, another face in your heart.
She has grown from gawky to graceful, from the special smell of summery skin earned rolling around in the backyard to the sublime mysterious scents emanating from the rockin� room at the end of the hall as she prepares for whichever of the
intimidated young men will escort her to the movies or Hacienda that night.
Her friends have grown, too, of course. In the near weeks, Patti and I will sit in the darkened Bowen Auditorium at Bremen high School and watch these amazing young men and women on stage who only yesterday were rushing breathlessly from the kindergarten classrooms to inform us B follows A and precedes C.
There were those white-knuckle driving days down the straight old country road, the same hands now masterfully adept at spinning the wheel as the rocket which used to be a respectable family car hurtles into the driveway and flies away again.
Eighteen is such a wonderful age. Seventeen is no longer Sweet 16 and not yet 18, which also means the last lap of the teen years. As I remember it, Archie and Veronica and especially Jughead were always 17, high school juniors not seniors. Almost there.
She is a senior, of course. She knows next year she has to begin to make those serious life decisions. Next year.
For now, she can swoop and giggle with Mik Mak, her younger shadow by 15 years but the same person and personality, if in a different body, of a generation from which we have not yet heard.
Megs is beautiful, which is a blessing I do not deserve but accept nonetheless. She has always been smarter than me, but that is an attribute to her mother and I and all the ways we have always challenged and supported her from soccer to piano to ballet to softball to the theater arts.
We will spend at least one day near her birthday on the traditional family trip of seeing the lights in Chicago and tapping into the flow of a big city ending another year with a party. She gets to pick another destination and, I�m told, it is the Shedd Aquarium this time
Eighteen is such a cool age. It is a life marker to be celebrated.
And so we shall.
|
|
| Community Calendar |
|
No events listed.
|
|
Interactive Calendar
|
