When I Was a Child...

When I was a child I read voraciously. The printed word was the passion and I read books beyond my years, each of which carried me into another world where I could live the lives of people who's existence seemed far more exciting that the one I trudged through day after day. Instead of walking along the sidewalk on my way to school, I often found myself stepping through a woodland path, lined with the quiet blue of violets and touched by the sweet kisses of the warm summer sun, filtering through the lace canopy of trees that hung overhead. The sound of birds calling to one another was the music that followed me along that peaceful road. Hardly lifting my head as I stepped off the curb became an act of picking my way across the water-worn rocks that poked above the brook that forever found its way down to the sea. The blaring horns of city traffic were not worthy of notice in the face of the clarion calls of trumpets and the clash of armour and booming artillary or the whispered words of a lover scorned. These were the worlds that I moved about in, like a wraith that longs for what once was, lonely, haunted, and haunting.

Then my children were born, and the books were put away. The act of my sitting, whether to read or to write a letter, became a signal that I was available to be climbed on or simply cuddled with. Good purposes all, but not something that could be done at the same time that I was trying to find out what had happened in that other world. Printed words and far away places and times were set aside for the place in time that had become my new lot in life.

But now, the children are long grown and gone, and only one grandchild who tomorrow, will again be far away. Our big projects are winding down and the winter winds are on their way. My eyesight began to change a long time ago and I'm wondering how long it will be before the reading glasses from the pharmacy will meet the increasing limitations that I find myself struggling with, so the art that I used to fill the time with before is becoming less comfortable to do. I am turning back to the books that used to draw me in and allowing them to illuminate my world again. Paint their pictures with words carefully chosen. Giving back to me the worlds that I used to haunt