Go up the next step ready for a different view

ON Thursday I met a group of girls who were singing on top of their voices how they would miss each other.

At first it did not make sense to me. As I have said before, I do not just get to understand something at once these days.

It is the age, I guess. If my youngest daughter Chido was around she would have looked at me and with her eyes open would have exclaimed: “Mamma!”

Besides that, being my name and title, she would have called that name just to show how shocked she was that I was not getting it!

How could I have missed something that is “obvious”. Teenagers.

They forget that at some point grey haired as we are, we were at some point bubbly and energetic adolescents too. But years have gone by and taken their toll on us.

“Kare haagari ari kare” The past does not remain the past.

I digress. It is not to talk about my age and my coming of age.

So these girls were singing loudly that they would miss each other.

I did not get a chance to ask them what was happening. Instead I watched them sing with a lot of innocence. Then I waited more patiently to ask two girls what was happening.

The two girls then told me that the happy bunch had just finished the most of their exams, and were left with one science practical at the end of the month.

As for now they had done the bulk of the work. So was it not too soon to sing that they would miss each since they were going to write another exam in about two weeks?

These are questions that adults ask. They were on a build-up of how they would miss each other.

It took me down memory lane. Nostalgia. I remembered the year that I wrote my Ordinary Level examinations. That was a long ago. But those memories are very vivid. It is like I completed my examinations a few months ago!

As the girls sang and went their way, I felt a surge of emotions. I remembered that there are some girls from high school that I never saw again after the Ordinary Level examinations.

We hugged and said that we hoped to meet when we went for Advanced Level after the O’Level results.

It was not to be.

O’Level was the closing chapter, never to meet again. I have no idea where some of the girls that I was in school with are or what happened to them.

Maybe today’s generation is fortunate in that they have each other’s contact numbers so it is easier for them to remain in touch.

Whatever the case, some of the stages that we go through in life have a tendency to separate us.

Painful but true. So as the girls sang and went their way, I felt a tug of emotions at my heart. At the end of the month, for some of the girls it will be a final goodbye.

When one is young they want to be older. When one gets older, they long for their youthful years. Being young looking from the side of being older has the advantage of looking from a higher point.

One realises that they missed some points of adolescence that they could have really enjoyed as they longed to be grown up. The irony of life. One never realises how precious something is until they no longer have it.

With life some of these things once they are gone, they are gone for good.

What remains are memories that can be bitter or sweet. What is worse is that one can reach a point where they say out loudly or just to themselves, “If only I had…..” Let go of the past. Let it stay in the past where it belongs.

Those girls singing how they would miss one another is a reminder, that everything in life is staged.

They are at the stage of writing their second national examinations after the grade seven ones, while at the same time, they are writing their first examinations in high school.

There is an adage that celebrates the past more than the present, the good old days. It seems to denote that it was better then than it is now.

The life cycle takes us through different terrains.

I remember the time we did not have breasts, we longed for them.

When they started growing, we were not happy with the speed at which they grew. When they had fully blossomed, we met others who had a fuller blossom than others, oh how we stressed!

Some of us sometime back said that we would never miss our menstrual flow. What would we miss? Now as we have to deal with pre and menopausal symptoms, we remember the good old days when the phase seemed short. Now it is an everyday occurrence.

We have normalised creating a fan so that we cool ourselves. We have to be mindful of what we eat, what seemed fine and enjoyable some time ago may leave us bloated or constipated these days!

How we looked forward to no menstrual flow! How now we long for it!

So like the young girls singing out in the streets as they go home, normalise expressing yourself in the present, understanding that there is always a build-up.

Our bodies tell us so many things but at times we ignore what they say because we want something else.

When something else comes, we want what we had back.

Just as the girls next year, will be at a new stage as they proceed with different career paths, so shall your reproductive health cycle. It is staged.

Each time go up the next step ready for a different view!