Icons of My Tween Years Are Gone

The deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett on the same day has jolted a good many of us, and for various reasons. For me, it was because these two celebrities were icons of my youth, of my tween years. I so remember trying to learn to moon walk in our basement with my friends. (I never figured it out.) And who didn't want Farrah's fantastic mane of gold?

These incidents have also served as a reminder to me of what it's like to be a tween, when you're trying so hard to fit in and understand the world around you.

But loss is one of those things that's so hard to get your arms around, isn't it? And so I watch the news and read the paper and remember my youth and the figures who were so prominently a part of it. And I watch my tween, too. Because her youth is slipping away as fast as mine did, and I want to be a part of as much of it as I can. Because one never knows.

More on the deaths of Fawcett and Jackson: