Growing Pains

We’ve all had ‘em, growing pains,
those painful adjustments to life’s changes
and demands, asking us to keep up,
to stand on two feet, wobbly on our chubby legs,
teetering and losing our balance, to fall ker-plop
onto well-padded bottoms to try again, and again,
a gentle hand or word to encourage us, to help
us rise until we run, chasing the dog or from
a parent’s stern commands, and then to balance on two
wheels too slow and falling, bruising knees and elbows
and egos, an ego bruised as well when our courage
mustered, we ask Suzy Smith out and she says no, no easy let down,
and our spirits fall painfully, or rise up maybe when she says yes,
courage rewarded, and beaming we hold her hand until she leaves
us standing by ourselves, unloved, “was it something I said,”
and how can we go on, but we do, to four wheels turning, shifting
gears and taking corners, sharp rights and wider lefts, and braking
just right without a jerk and the painful bump of our first accident,
first ticket, too afraid to tell anyone and more scared not to, but to lie
about it, just the growing pains of growing up and out of the house,
on our own, to school, to work, facing it alone and stuck in an imagine
we cannot maintain, nor can we change it, but we do,
and we find the pain going away as we coast into adulthood,
perhaps too used to pain and disappointment, numbed by it
until the mind and body remind us of the passing years and the things
we can no longer do, can no longer remember, and the aches and pains
of aging, no escape, and the body slowly decays, but it survives, it goes on,
if not in ourselves then in our sons and daughters and the growing pains
of watching them struggle against their own pain, and watching them leave;
 
America is a lot like this, facing some growing pains of its own,
facing the changes of age herself, wobbling and falling “ker-plop,”
teetering for balance and learning to change gears, breaking and turning
left and right, egos bruised and courage rewarded, afraid of
that first ticket, an accident of the nation, afraid to tell, and more
afraid to lie, the growing pains of traditions changing, new
regimes, new laws, new ways of doing things, new ways of looking
at things, new governance, the mind and body reminding us of passing
years and wanting to remain the same somehow, “the good old days”
when life was simple and we all survived, worked things out, afraid
of the sons and daughters growing to replace us, the growing pains
of watching them struggle and watching them leave, watching them
replace us, yet trusting, painfully, that America, as it always has,
will survive these growing pains, even as the body politic decays,
giving way to youth, and the growing pains of change are just a part
of living, a part of growing up, of going on, a part of being a nation.