Last night I was walking Murphy rather late. And the sky was clear and the night sky was star-freckled. And, being unusually — or perhaps not so much lately — unusually maudlin, I remembered when I was a lad how I used to lay on big bales of hay on the edge of the dark town and look up at the sky. I would do that for hours. And talk to God or space or the bigness of everything and in my more studious years I would mark the journeywork of stars. I don’t do that anymore. I am not awed by the vast sky anymore. I also used to talk to my shadow. I would ask it questions. Where will I take you? Where will we go together? As if the future of my shadow depended on my choices, which, of course, it does. I don’t talk to my shadow anymore.

There was so much vigor in me, so much creation, so much imagination, so much hope and, not joy exactly, but thrilling potential. As a child, I was new shirt, vibrant, bright, colorful, clean. Now, as a shirt, I’m well-washed, well-faded, tattered, stained, thinned. I don’t believe in magic anymore. I don’t awe in the stars. I don’t see beauty and potential and life as I used to.

I know. We’re not meant to. People grow up. People stop believing in Santa Claus. Virginia no doubt grew up. Virginia no doubt learned the meaning of grief and loss. Virginia no doubt suffered. And no doubt, Virginia, Santa Claus or no Santa Claus, has long since died.

But, perhaps for just a moment, so as I can remember well, I want to see with those child’s eyes. I want to feel with that child’s heart. And I want to hope and believe in potential with that child’s soul. And then again, it might be too much to bear. An aquarium-bound fish might do better to forget the great big sea. Though they die of nostalgia, they will never return.

SS