Yesterday I cut out ten pieces of paper and numbered them sequentially. I folded up the pieces, placed them in a bowl, and randomly drew out one piece of paper.
I initially marveled that I had drawn the highest number in the container, 10, until I realized that the odds of drawing that digit were the same as drawing out any other. Then I irritably considered why I could not have drawn a more interesting number, like three, my favorite? Or five, the members of my family? Or even seven, the supporting cast in Snow White?
My self-imposed creative writing challenge is to compose an essay about this arbitrarily drawn numeral. I flounder around, searching for content. Ten fingers and ten toes, making the Top Ten in a competition, attending public schools for ten months per year, the highlight of hitting ten years of exercising every single day, the British Prime Minister’s home at 10 Downing Street, the years I would turn the lights off at 10:00 p.m., the base of the decimal numeral system, the Ten Commandments, and a full baseball team roster plus one back-up player.
None of these ideas stir me.
And then it hits me. Ten years is the confluence of childhood and pre-teen years, that wistful period when parents catch their first glimpse that they will one day let go of their precious young person. The “double digit” birthday is when we tease fathers that their daughters will soon want to go to school dances and warn mothers that their son’s sweetness is about to evaporate like a shallow puddle on a hot Arizona sidewalk. The simplicity of single digit numerosity is replaced by the prospect of impending teenage years.
My tenth year was the last year of my childhood, but it had nothing to do with numerics. It was the end of my just-shy-of idyllic childhood, one that was untroubled and blissfully unremarkable. My life was full of rhythmic certainty: that my mother would gently reprimand me for not practicing my flute, that my father would go to and from work with regularity, that my parents would endlessly discuss arcane subjects following Unitarian church Sunday gatherings, that my brilliant sister would continue her ballet, that my rambunctious brother would do everything with aplomb, and that I would rail against almost everything required of me other than hanging out at the stable with my horse. The steady beat of our family’s culture was thoughtful, watchful, and joyful.
The innocence of my youth vanished the next year with my father’s death and the following year with my sister’s. Instability replaced reliability, and fragility supplanted security. I became untethered from parental expectations of success. Routines ceased. My mother no longer asked to see my report cards, or oversaw the condition of my bedroom, or cared about how I spent my afterschool hours. I knew my mother loved me without reservation, but the effort of emotional survival extinguished her ability to attend to anything else.
My adulthood, or something akin to it, began immediately at age eleven, skipping over tumultuous pre-teen and adolescent years within the vigilant view of attentive parents. I made plenty of mistakes and bad decisions. At first, lack of accountability felt like a luxury.
Capricious tragedy is a cruel and heartless teacher, but an effective one. I grew, bit by bit, responsibility providing the foundation for maturity. In time, I discovered that the beauty of not having a safety net is that you are forced to walk the high wire cautiously. I learned that the best way I could support my mother was by not troubling her. I recognized that the only way to combat chaos was through discipline. I realized that I was accountable for my own achievement.
Ten may have been the last year of a childhood characterized by blissful trustfulness, but it also equipped me for the swiftly searing events that came next. Ten was the tranquil lull of a year before the unsettling and devastating storm that followed.