There was something pure about them, like elements. Life was long with so much sameness and repetition, life had a way of tempering you out, smoothing and polishing you down. Teenagers were pure like animals, elemental, hot and bright or dark and cold, sparking off each other, reactive and explosive. But sloppy and blind and foolish, with bravado so charming and pathetic; they were mere children who had grown too big, still smashing into things.
She remembered earlier years when she did not like teenagers, saw something cynical in that bravado. But her only child had died before birth and it had left her so fatally humbled and longing. She saw so much wounded innocence and longing in them. And pride and vanity and struggling to pull themselves out of the bewildering madness of youth — the struggle to become someone, even only just themselves.
excerpt from
youth
