Summer vacation when your twelve is tanning and swimming, teen magazines and hanging out with your girlfriends and hoping your parents don’t sign you up for anything organized – like camp. I got all this (except camp, praise the Lord) and more.
The ‘more’, was that I grew two inches, got my period and was fitted for my first bra. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough – acne! What the hell!!! Life gave me my first big taste of change and I didn’t want it. All it brought me was what comes with being ahead of everyone else. Teasing from my dad, groping from my peers and knees that fell apart. I wasn’t ready and apparently my knees agreed and reflected my stubbornness to not accept and embrace who I was becoming.
Today – girls are maturing as early as eight. Egad’s, no wonder they’re playing house with Barbie and Ken at age three. Boy’s you get to put off the inevitable. But by age ten, things are going to begin to happen.
Returning to school that fall I was the tallest in my class. I stood out. Not because I was pretty or talented or the envy of anyone – I stood out because I was five foot five when every one else was not five foot five. I was also what they called “big boned” back then. Boy’s were husky and girls were big boned. Maturing physically has nothing to do with being mature, but for some reason adults automatically expect more. You do the same silly stuff that your friends do and they get the “Kids will be kids” whatever attitude and I’d get “We expected more from you Sharon.” Why? My hormones are out of control. Underneath this exterior that looks like I’m on steroids, I’m just as immature as the rest of them.
At this time I had three brothers, my brother Storm would arrive two years later. When my brother’s behaved badly, my mom had this mantra, “Well, what do you expect, look who their father is.” True my father was pretty absent and irresponsible, but even then I knew innately that that just didn’t fly. Regardless who our parents were or were not, how we turned out was up to us. I felt if I’d been a boy – I’d have been excused for far more wrong doings, but being a girl and those two wretched inches had done me in.
The rapid growth caused my knees to swell to the size of melons. I was forever having them adorned in badges to try and keep the ballooning under control.
We lived in the country and that meant a country doctor in a nearby village. He told me that if I didn’t get this situation under control and stop making all this up, I’d turn out to be an alcoholic or drug addict. Wow! Did he really believe that swollen knees would lead to addiction? Yes, I’d started smoking at age nine, but pretty much only during sleep-overs with friends and drinking, yes, that had begun. But again it was just weekend giggles with a girlfriend. We’d drink beer in tea cups while we played the piano. And yes, come to think of it – when my dad wanted a cocktail, while I made his, I’d make one for me – but hey, cocktails then – Tom Collins, Side Cars, Between the Sheets, were pretty lame. Before you get all ‘judgey’ — this was the “Mad Men” era. However, my grandparents and their siblings on both sides of the family did have issues. The doctor did seem pretty serious. I wondered; could you really get all that intuitive prophecy from a twelve year old’s puffed up knees? Nora Ann, my mom, was shocked and went looking for a different diagnosis.
Nora Ann found a top-notch bone surgeon to check me out and yes, the growth spurt was the culprit. Seems my cartilage kept cracking and simply couldn’t repair itself before it would crack again. Hence the pain and swelling. His comment was, “Little girls don’t make up knees like this.” Nice guy – he called me “little”. The next summer was three stints a week in physiotherapy. Wasn’t a cure, but I improved and the tensor bandages were no longer a daily part of my wardrobe.
Life is interesting. We receive key information, solutions, direction at the most uncanny times. Sometimes, long before even so-called mature girls have the maturity to understand it, let alone make use of it. Life sends you a message, a whisper – seeds are planted, and then you go off and do the living that is necessary in order for you to comprehend the wisdom that has been bestowed. The country doctor’s attitude may have been considered absurd at the time. But there would come a day – the light would turn on and I would understand what he had given me.
At the same time my knees crumbled I developed allergies 365 days of the year and then as I progressed through my teenage years, I managed to come down with a monthly cold. And when that wasn’t enough, my back began to deteriorate. What a mess! Fat knees accompanied by snot, mucus, congestion and now this sad and sorry back – oh my!
Being sick, having something wrong with you creates attention. Sometimes we think attention – any kind of attention; equates to love. But constant illness – will in time become boring, stale and eventually ignored. So unless you are prepared to have the maladies escalate to something incurable – it is probably better to just get healthy.
In my mid twenties while watching the 1982 film, “I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can,” a true story about the documentary filmmaker Barbara Gordon and her addiction to prescription drugs, I woke up. There is a scene with a therapist who says, “If you have to be ill to be loved, it isn’t love.” I didn’t feel loved and my string of ailments were not helping. Inside, I heard. “This is you.” The country doctor’s whisper, made sense and I now knew what to do with it. I began to heal. It was a miracle.
“12” energy symbolizes the concept that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. However, many of our teachers will not manifest in a classroom, with you sitting at a desk.
I woke up, and the prediction of becoming an alcoholic or drug addict never became a reality. However, addiction is a habit that has control over you. Constant illness can become an addiction. Just as not being able to get through the day without a five mile run. Now this; I’ve never had a problem with.
To be continued.
“12” Illustration; Internet Clip Art