I was seven the first time I realized that growing up was hard. The summer before was what I have now determined to be the summer of my childhood. My three brothers, Teddy and Andy who were eight, Michael who was four,  and six-year-old me had so much time to spend together. We had sleepovers in my older brothers’ bedroom, we ran around the house playing “Bug Busters,” but best of all, we made a fort. This was not a normal fort, it was a mega fort. It was a collection of blankets, mattresses, couch cushions, and furniture canvasing the third floor, which when constructed, made a masterpiece, with little spaces for each of us. My older brothers led the build by making the main areas. In hindsight, the fort wasn’t that stable, so we had to have the self-appointed “handymen” aka my older brothers, fix parts of the fort constantly. And yet, despite the constant fixing, the fort was our wonderland. 

I went into the following summer thinking we were going to recreate our wonderland summer. The next summer I turned seven, my little brother Michael turned five, and my older brothers were nine. Nine; however, is a big kid age, so the older boys decided that they were way too cool to hang out with Michael and me. At the start of summer Michael and I decided that we wanted to make the mega fort again. We went to go ask the twins to build the fort with us. We begged and begged but every time they said no. So, what did we do? We did what every little kid does, we told our mom. My mom having enjoyed seeing us make the fort the summer before, ended up forcing Teddy and Andy to build the fort with us. I thought, yay, everything is perfect again. But as we began building, I noticed something was different. The twins didn’t care. They were building the fort with shortcuts, making it smaller than the year before. It was barely a mega fort, more like a medium-sized fort with no roof. “What happens if it rains?” I pleaded with my older brothers. “It won’t”, they said in a uniform response. Finally, after begging them for a roof, they threw a soft green blanket over just my portion of the fort. Even though we wanted the twins to be there, Michael and I knew that they just wanted to do “big kid things.”

 My heart was crushed. Why don’t they want to play with us like last year? I thought. After hours of building it was time to sleep in what was almost our wonderland. Yet, all of a sudden, Michael and I were faced with a hard no from our older brothers. And once again we went to our mom who forced them to sleep in the fort with us. No matter how much I wanted it to be the same as the year before, it never could be. 

The realization I came to that night while staring up into the soft green blanket that marked the roof of the fort, was that Teddy and Andy didn’t care because they grew up. In just one year of time, they stopped caring about stupid little forts and “Bug Busters”. But the funny thing about growing up is that we all do it at different times. I didn’t stop caring, I hadn’t grown up yet. Why don’t they care? Why don’t they want to build the fort? Why did they have to grow up? I never realized the pain of growing up until that moment because growing up had always been exciting, new, and something to look forward to. 

I had always looked up to my brothers wanting to be their age, excited to be a big girl, an elementary schooler, a middle school, a high schooler. Now I am realizing how much I've wanted to grow up my whole life, always wanting time to zoom by. Even though I’m excited to grow up, why do I let myself wish time away? I can’t ever be six again sleeping in a mega fort with all of my brothers. I can’t ever be seven, eight, and nine, again, spending my summers with my grandparents. I can’t ever be ten again going to sleepaway camp for the first time. I can’t ever be eleven again going through a summer of covid, surviving off of ice cream, tiger king, and my family game nights. I can’t ever be twelve again spending my summer hanging out with my friends. I can’t ever be thirteen again, getting ready for my last year of middle school. I was seven the first time I realized growing up was hard, staring up at the soft green blanket marking the roof of my portion of the mega-fort, our almost perfect wonderland.