Back Porch Time: On Child


I am a container.  I am a silver bowl.  I am a broken wooden cup.  I am a pool of cool blue water. I am a cow, placidly chewing her cud.  I am a fountain. I am a rosemary tree.  I am a cat, lazing in the sun. I am the fragrance of a blooming tulip poplar in the spring. I am moist warm black earth. I am the wind rustling through the leaves before a storm. I am the storm. I am spring lilacs.  I am a big ole dog lying on his back to have his belly scratched. I am a golden urn. I am an otter, darting through the rapids and sliding down a waterfall. I am quicksilver. I am an osprey, flying far overhead, able to detect the slightest movement below. I am a bridge. I am a vase of yellow roses. I am drying herbs, hung in a kitchen. I am a dark forest, the center of which no one has ever discovered. I am a broken-down barn, home to dozens of living creatures.  I am incense, flowing out over a crowd of worshippers.  I am a crisp green salad with pine nuts in it. I am a featherbed. I am green. I am a flow of daffodils across a graveyard. I am the aroma of a warm puppy. I am a jaguar, peering out from the depths of a jungle. I am a river flowing endlessly along. I am a high sweet voice singing “Pie Jesu.”  I am a cherry nut ice cream cone. I am a decaying body in the earth, feeding the myriad of creatures who live there. I am the elusive colors of a brilliant sunset. I am a drift of snow.  I am a pair of warm bedroom slippers.  I am a spiral. I am Mystery.  I am the Child.      

The opening sentence of James Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family,  “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tenneessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.”  strikes to the heart for so many of us about what it was like to be a child.

During my back porch reveries as a child, my conversations with my imaginary playmate Learny surpassed any depth of reflection I have since had in adulthood. My childhood fears of vampires and giant army ants were an eerie premonition of the shadowy pieces of myself that I would need to face as an adult:  the self-doubts, the need to be a victim and take on others’ burdens, the negative self-image, the self-pity, blocking of creativity, arrogance, jealousy, addictive behavior.

What fears haunted you as a child? Who were the monsters in your closet and lurking under your bed?  What conversations did you have with your imaginary playmate?  What was your favorite story and your secret hiding place?  Where did you go in your imagination?

What questions did you ask?  I can remember that my favorite one must have been the ubiquitous “why?” because I recall my mother frequently answering, perhaps in frustration,  “It just IS,”  and of course my follow-up question:  “Why is IS is?”  I still wonder about that, the great archetypal  “Just Is” . . .

Childhood imagination — let yourself go. It’s back-porch reverie time again, where vampires are real (but it’s daylight now, so I’m safe), and giant army ants from Africa, as big as a house, might be coming over the hill at any moment (I’ll watch, so when I see them, I can run fast), and Learny is telling me the real scoop on why adults won’t ever tell you  “Why.”

Imagine . . .