Good morning…
Sometimes there is a “before,” and then there’s an “after.” Developmentally, our magical thinking evaporates around at around age ten, replaced by concrete perception and object permanency. There is no recovering what is lost. Good-bye peek-a-boo, magic elves doing mischief in the middle of the night, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and make-believe worlds. We can never go back to un-know what we start to know. Once our tiny eyes are open to the adult world, we cannot go back and un-see.
I met an interesting poem this week which gives voice to “the beginning of sadness” from the perspective of a child turning ten, shifting from the single to the double digits of life. Double digits are what most of us experience for the rest of our earthly years, until a handful of us turn one hundred someday.
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On Turning Ten by Billy Collins
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
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.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
******
There are things being lost right now, never to be recovered. We may grow up and around this gaping hole, yet we are marked for life. It seems only yesterday we used to believe there was nothing under our skin but light. But now we have fallen. Now we bleed.
On a good day, enjoy yourself;
On a bad day, examine your conscience.
God arranges for both kinds of days
So that we won’t take anything for granted (Ecclesiastes 7:14, MSG).
…Sue…
