My inner child needs to learn some patience.
I sat down with her yesterday afternoon, in the warm spring grass of April 1978. Wild strawberry blossoms dotted the meadow like tiny white stars. Bees buzzed in the dandelions, birds sang in the trees, and puffy clouds piled on each other along the horizon to make fanciful castles—a wonderful moment to be savored for as long as it might last.
(Creative Commons image via flickr)
But, truth be told, my inner child wasn’t appreciating it nearly that much. Well, except for the castles, from which she pictured angels and fairies swooping down to grant wishes. And what was she wishing for? To be grown up already. Just being a child with nothing to do besides sitting in the grass was too boring, you see. She wanted to get on with all those exciting grown-up adventures that surely had to be waiting for her.
“If you bring me forward in time, just a few years,” she said out loud to the imaginary angels and fairies, “then I’ll…”
And here she ran into a bit of trouble, having nothing to bargain with for the time travel she wanted. She had no precious jewels to offer a fairy, nor was there a magical jar anywhere nearby from which she could release a grateful genie.
“Then I’ll be happy even if it’s the end of summer,” she finally said, which she thought would be a great sacrifice. After all, she liked spring and early summer the best of all the seasons. Picking the wild strawberries in May and the raspberries in June always was great fun; and later she would look back fondly on her memories of sitting in the spring grass with the strawberry blossoms and the dandelions, even if she couldn’t have been persuaded of it at the time.
I did try, though, when she paused to listen for fairy-voices amidst the birdsong, just before I reluctantly left this peaceful scene. I couldn’t stay any longer, but had to go back to my exciting grown-up world of mortgage payments, work schedules and to-do lists.
“You don’t have to be in such a hurry,” I told her. “That wish is one you’ll get soon enough.”
