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"You're growing up, every day, kiddo;" dad would say.
I never really noticed it. Sure, I would get a little taller. Spring would turn to summer, or summer would turn to fall, and I'd end or start a new grade in school.
But this... This is a time that I'm noticing.
I remember my brother's Cross-Over. It looked so cool, seeing him walk across this little bridge toward the members of his new troop. I couldn't wait to cross that bridge.
And... Here it is.
I stepped onto it with excitement. But with each step over the twelve planks that made up its length, I began to realize that something was behind me.
It wasn't something scary. Not like a monster, trying to get me. No... It was something... I was leaving. Leaving behind.
I was leaving behind my pack. Friends I'd made in younger grades. But not just that.
Soon, I would leave behind my school--a place I had gotten very familiar with over the last six years.
As I neared the end of the bridge, I got a familiar feeling in my stomach. That twisting sadness I felt, when I was nearing the end of a really good book; one that I wanted to go on just a little bit longer. But it was tangled up with excitement, for the new stories I could read once I was finished.
I've reached the end of the bridge. Just two more steps left.
Holding onto the railing for support--the last support, it feels, I will get from what I'm leaving behind--my right foot lifts from the plank, and lowers to the ground on the other side.
It's the same ground from which I stepped onto the bridge. The same color. The same tiling. Within the same building.
And yet, it was different, now that I was on the other end of the bridge.
I won't look back. I want to step onto the ground.
But, until I feel my sole make contact, I'll hold tightly onto the railing.
