A Beautiful Morning

A Beautiful Morning

This morning, I saw some children waiting for the school bus…

It is such a beautiful morning, and the children look so happy. It makes me pause for a moment and remember a time in my life when I was a child and I waited for the school bus on a morning just like this. The sun well above the horizon and summer is in the air. The dreams and anticipation of picnics, baseball games, a sandy beach on my toes, all dance in my mind this beautiful spring morning. 

I remember this same wonderful feeling as a child when after school I would be outside with my friends and had the rest of the day to do whatever I wanted. And knowing all the while that summer vacation was near.

The innocence of children is quickly corrupted by the world and at some point in time we all lose the child that lived inside us – or at least it seems to me that most of us do.

Today, as I watch the children waiting for the bus it occurs to me that that the child inside of me never really died and that this makes me different. I think this is what makes me rebellious and unusual – some would say I can be bellicose; others say I’m weird. But I have a child’s heart. That is to say, I have a soft heart. Sometimes I really do have a heart of gold.

When you’re living in an adult body, but you look at the world through the eyes of a child it makes for an odd stew — a strange concoction of feelings and emotions. The child struggles with the man – sometimes the child wins, and then sometimes the man wins too.

I don’t think I’ve ever really felt part of anything because some medical experts would say I’m “conflicted”.

I always feel an outcast when I’m in a group of adults. Looking at these school children waiting for the bus I feel part of me wanting to run over to them, grab a baseball and a couple of bats and start choosing sides for a game of pick-up baseball in some old deserted, grassy field.

I can hear a distant window breaking as I hit a home run, over the street, and into Mrs. Maloney’s front window. We all run away in fear that we will be discovered — but it isn’t a bad fear – we are just a bunch of kids having an innocent game of baseball on a beautiful, sunny spring day.

My dad will make me pay for that window if I’m found out. My friends though, true, and loyal, won’t rat me out. I’m safe if Mrs. Maloney didn’t see us running away.

The children are smiling and laughing, I can hear their giggles – such sweet music to my ears. It touches my heart and I want to linger and watch them get aboard the school bus – but I cannot. I don’t have time. The man inside me has things to do and places to go – and too much on today’s agenda to waste time on this beautiful spring morning.

But to be honest, I’m mostly busy contemplating my innocence lost.

As I start to drive away, I stop. I think about things. I watch the children waiting for the school bus, and I realize that we are all children – children of the universe. We are all minute specks of starlight, flickering for a fraction of a millisecond in the unbounded dark cosmic ocean of time. We all are as meaningless and meaningful as anything and everything else.

We matter not at all, and we are all that matters.

It’s been a good morning. summer, though a few weeks away, is floating delicately in the air; but it is still spring but rumbling headlong into summer. The decreasing slant of the sunlight, the more northerly sunsets, the leaves news and bright green and full of life as they dance in the spring breeze are all signs that summer is on its way. And it will creep in slowly, softly – and gently – so much so that I’ll have to check the calendar to make sure it really is summer. It won’t be long though and the days will be hot, long, and lazy.

One day, in the heat of the summer I will wake as if from a dream and wonder where time has gone. Just yesterday, it seems, I walked a snowy winter path and waited for the snowdrops and crocuses and dandelions to remind me that spring was on its way.

And now with sweat on my brow, I sit in the shade of an old maple tree sipping an icy glass of lemonade. And wonder at the speed at which times passes.

Time flies faster the older I get. Seasons, which seemed to last forever when I was a child, pass so quickly now. And I realize that I am now long past the summer of my life – but the child inside me keeps drawing me back giving me teasing glimpses of what I once was. I will not go gently into that good night. My child inside won’t let me. But trying to gracefully surrender the things of youth is exceedingly difficult to do -I suppose some of us never completely surrender.

Summer is coming — and it’s a time for being outside and a time for remembering all those wonderful summers past.  But I won’t let go of the child inside. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. He’s part of me and I am part of him.

I watch the children board the school bus and turn my eyes to the road ahead. And I sigh…

It is such a beautiful day.

The Child Inside

I remember long ago
Snowmen standing in the snow.
And drifting silent frozen flakes
Fell on the ground below.

I remember blazing stars
And looking up and finding Mars.
And seeing wonder in the sky
As silent castles drifted by.

I remember memories.
The soft and gentle summer breeze.
The feelings all remain inside
But I don’t remember where they hide.

I wonder where that child went
The one so happy and content?
Could it really truly be
I’ve lost the child inside of me?

Today I’ll brush myself aside
And try to find that child inside.
I’ll make the world a better place
By putting on a child’s face.