Too Early to be Looking Back

I thought about my nephew all day today. He turns ten tomorrow. He's the oldest person I know who I've known since he was a baby. Now he's interested in baseball cards and starting to learn the cello. For now, he's able to move with the currents of who he is, following an impulse started by a story he reads in school or taking up an instrument he's been pining for for years.

At some point, all of his choices will get more intentional. He'll live his way gradually into a deeper sense of who he is, what drives him, and what he wants to work for or pursue next.

I wonder how much of a pivot it is to turn ten.

Billy Collins offers a solemn take in "On Turning Ten." He calls it "the first big number."

"You tell me it is too early to be looking back
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit."

I'm drawn to the dawning sense of complexity that this young man experiences, holding ten in contrast to the "perfect simplicity" of his younger years. "Now," he says, "I'm mostly at the window / watching the late afternoon light."

Though Collins dwells on the solemnity of this passage, I prefer to focus on the idea of ten as an entry point. It's a threshold. Before long my nephew will be asking even more profound questions of the world and of himself. I am excited to know the young man he is in the process of becoming. He's sure to keep his sensitivity, his kindness, his curiosity, his ambition, his capacity to dive into something with abandon, and so much more. And he's sure to surprise us all. As it all continues to unfold, I am grateful for my window on his journey.