Child-Like
Tonight I reached back and touched my childhood. Map pencils. Fun with stationery and a list of wishes. Scotch tape for the wall. Suddenly I remember how I used to stay up late at night drawing, using scissors, sewing, writing or painting, until my mom padded into my room half awake in her thinning nightgown (“I bought this twenty years ago in West Germany and it’s still good. They just don’t make clothes like this anymore”). She’d berate me in a high-pitched whisper to go to bed. “Whaaaat? Still awake? I’m going to count to three. One. Two.”
To be a child by nature, to not need to remind yourself to seek ways to express myself. To shed your pretenses and judgments, to stop measuring, counting, timing, and most of all, thinking. To operate without all those skills they told you you needed to cope with growing up and becoming self-sufficient. That is to be a child.
To feel momentarily, imperceptibly centered on the treadmill of grownup obligations, because the dishes are done, the bed is made, the laundry is folded neatly and put away, the floor is hairball-free and Puck’s tiny poops are dust-busted from the bookshelf. Then suddenly, to need to set the back foot in front of the forward foot again, to try to find that instant of perfect balance again, only to realize that the new back foot now needs to go in front, because you’re hungry and the drain is clogged and the plants are dry and the parents haven’t been called in a week, and somewhere in the back of your mind you’re thinking, yeah, I guess I can wait until tomorrow to start writing my witty personal column that will be eagerly translated into a comedic monologue and make me the new critically-acclaimed pop culture sensation, fresh, intelligent, energetic and never trite. To dream, and then to decide you don’t have time. That is to be a grown up.
-November 2001
To be a child by nature, to not need to remind yourself to seek ways to express myself. To shed your pretenses and judgments, to stop measuring, counting, timing, and most of all, thinking. To operate without all those skills they told you you needed to cope with growing up and becoming self-sufficient. That is to be a child.
To feel momentarily, imperceptibly centered on the treadmill of grownup obligations, because the dishes are done, the bed is made, the laundry is folded neatly and put away, the floor is hairball-free and Puck’s tiny poops are dust-busted from the bookshelf. Then suddenly, to need to set the back foot in front of the forward foot again, to try to find that instant of perfect balance again, only to realize that the new back foot now needs to go in front, because you’re hungry and the drain is clogged and the plants are dry and the parents haven’t been called in a week, and somewhere in the back of your mind you’re thinking, yeah, I guess I can wait until tomorrow to start writing my witty personal column that will be eagerly translated into a comedic monologue and make me the new critically-acclaimed pop culture sensation, fresh, intelligent, energetic and never trite. To dream, and then to decide you don’t have time. That is to be a grown up.
-November 2001
posted by Justina at 11:47 PM
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