Poem: The Town That Stayed Young

Poem submitted to Alachua Chronicle, published as a letter to the editor

I live in a college town.

It’s a strange place to grow old.

Every year, a new flock of kids arrives.

Fresh faces. Bright eyes. Cheap backpacks. Loud laughter. Cars with out-of-state plates and dreams bigger than the town they’re temporarily calling home.

And every year, they leave.

Then another flock comes.

You start recognizing the cycle.

Freshmen become seniors.

Seniors disappear.

And somehow, the next September, there are more freshmen standing in their place.

Except they’re younger.

Or maybe I’m just older.

That’s the part nobody warns you about.

When you’re young, you think getting older happens slowly.

You think you’ll notice it.

You’ll wake up one morning and somehow feel different.

But it doesn’t happen that way.

You just keep living.

You work.

You love people.

You lose people.

You make mistakes.

You survive things you swore would break you.

You bury people you thought would always be there.

You watch your children grow up.

You watch your parents grow old.

And then one day, you’re standing in the same town you’ve always known, watching a kid who couldn’t possibly be old enough to drive walking down the street…

…and you realize you remember when his age was your age.

That’s when it hits you.

The town hasn’t changed.

You have.

The buildings are still there.

The roads still lead to the same places.

The old trees are still standing where they stood when you were young.

But the people you knew beneath those trees are gone.

Some moved away.

Some grew apart.

Some changed.

And some are only memories now.

There are places in this town where I can still hear my mother’s voice if I stand still long enough.

I can remember what the air smelled like.

I can remember being young enough to believe there would always be more time.

That’s the cruelest thing about getting older.

You don’t realize you’re living through the good old days while you’re living them.

You only recognize them after they’ve become memories.

Now I watch these college kids laughing outside bars and restaurants, complaining about classes, worrying about relationships, taking pictures of themselves like the world is waiting to remember them.

And sometimes I want to stop one of them.

Just for a second.

I want to grab them by the shoulders and say:

Please slow down.

Call your mother.

Go see your father.

Take the stupid picture.

Stay out a little longer.

Forgive somebody.

Tell somebody you love them.

Don’t waste five years hating someone you might not get another chance to forgive.

And for God’s sake, don’t assume everyone you love will still be here when you’re ready to appreciate them.

Because one day you’ll be 42.

And you’ll look around at a town full of twenty-year-olds and wonder when the hell everybody got so young.

You’ll realize that the girl you used to be is still somewhere inside you.

She just got tired.

She lost people.

She made mistakes.

She got her heart broken.

She kept going anyway.

And maybe that’s what growing old really is.

Not becoming someone different.

Just carrying every version of yourself you’ve ever been.

The child.

The teenager.

The young woman who thought she knew everything.

The mother.

The woman who loved too hard.

The woman who stayed too long.

The woman who screwed up.

The woman who survived.

They’re all still in there.

And sometimes, when another September rolls around and another flock of impossibly young college kids floods the streets…

I swear I can see every year I’ve lived walking past me.

And I finally understand something I wish I’d known when I was young:

Time doesn’t take your youth all at once.

It takes it quietly.

A birthday here.

A goodbye there.

A photograph.

A funeral.

An empty chair at Thanksgiving.

A phone number you can no longer call.

A house that doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Until one ordinary day, you look around and realize…

You are now one of the old memories someone else will someday wish they could return to.

And that’s the part that breaks my heart.

Because somewhere, right now, there is a younger version of me living through a moment she doesn’t know she’ll miss.

And I would give almost anything to go back and tell her:

Honey, you don’t have as much time as you think you do.

So laugh louder.

Love harder.

Stay a little longer.

Take the damn picture.

And when somebody you love reaches for your hand…

hold it.

Because one day, the town will still be here.

The trees will still grow.

The college kids will still come and go.

The streets will still be full of young people who think they have forever.

And you’ll stand there at 42, or 52, or 72…

looking at all those young faces…

wondering how the hell they got so young.

When really…

you just finally got old enough to understand how fast forever disappears.

Tsianina Shaw, Gainesville

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