I want to run outside, grab, them, and sit on the curb. I want to say to them, “Just be still, for a minute.” I want them to remember it: that magical feeling that they and everything in their world is complete and, to their young eyes, just fine. I want them to treasure this feeling, capture it, hold in to them forever. They will not understand me. They will think I am crazy, maybe drunk. They will be obedient, sitting with me on the curb, but as I stand and walk slowly back to my house, they will look at each other, make faces and laugh. They will be disappointed at the loss of 10 minutes, and will play all the more recklessly to compensate. In two weeks time, they will have forgotten.
I forgot once, too. I forgot the ease with which the world unfolds when you are a child. I forgot the joy of simple pleasures. I forgot how to build a bike ramp. I forgot what it feels like to shriek with laughter. I forgot what it was like to get grass stains and dirty fingers and bug bites. I forgot how much pleasure one’s own backyard can hold. I forgot the importance of having a friend to play with. I forgot how to be happy without an analysis of why I’m happy. I forgot how to live in a single moment, so enraptured and free of thought about schedules and appointments and projects and deadlines. I forgot how much more able a child is to just live.
I pause at the doorway, with half a mind to run across the street and do just as I imagined: sit on the curb with the neighborhood kids. Let them think I’m a kook. They don’t understand how much they taught me in the past 5 minutes. Instead, I turn back inside. I know they are destined to forget. I know they, too, will need to be reminded some years from now, long after their bikes are rusted and gone, their games of tag forever finished, and their young, recklessly happy voices mellowed and worn.
Copyright © 2007
