Growth

While out on my lunchtime stroll, I waited at an intersection for the light to change when a truck turned at the corner and raced off hurriedly down the street, leaving in its wake the unforgettable fuel smell of another vehicle - my grandparents' old lime-green golf cart. A golf cart used more often, I believe, for the purposes of Alex and I racing it through the trees in the yard or haphazardly lodging its front or back tires in the irrigation ditch, rather than for its actual intended purpose of golf. I crossed the intersection and as I walked and reminisced, I became acutely aware of the phantom lump that in recent days has taken up residence within the warm confines of my throat. No matter how hard I swallow, I cannot make it disappear, though the very nature of its invisibility leaves no physical traces to begin with.

Sometimes I find it utterly impossible to embrace the necessity of growing up.