Out of the woods: On having a child spirit
Everyone always wants to go back to being a child. I have to admit I envied the little girls who stole the show from the T-Tones at the Farmers’ Market last Saturday. Two imps sidled in front of adoring T-Tone parents and twirled around in long flowered dresses and winter boots. Completely oblivious of their audience, they swung and dipped and spun the length of the parking strip–leaving taller kindred spirits like me aching to join in.
As legend goes, children are unhampered, unspoiled, un-jaded and un-worried. Children can dance wherever they want to or jump up and down for no reason. College seniors feel the same of incoming freshmen classes. Jewett lunches, Anderson dance parties and Ankeny sunbathing inspire pangs of nostalgia.
But I do not want to be a child. I don’t even want to be a freshman again. What I want is for the “child spirit” to take form in the context of what my life is now.
A person can have a child spirit and be wise too. I asked a friend recently how she was doing, and she threw her hands into the air, saying, “I’m full of light.” The image stuck with me. She looked so simple, so like those little Farmer’s Market girls with sassy hands thrust skyward. What does that mean? A 22-year-old woman wearing a too-big orange sweatshirt stands up and proclaims such a thing. We spoke about how “full” we used to feel in the early years of life at Whitman College–full of Plato and hookups and late reading room nights and multifold answers to the simple question: “How are you?” I went through a phase when, refusing the complexity of that question, I would answer with a color, like, “Today I feel periwinkle.” Sometimes passion-fruit color, Delft blue or chartreuse.
Now, this friend says, she is full of something different. I think I understand what she means. As a young adult, you’re always boiling over with tensions and revelations.
Eventually you reach equilibrium. You learn to fill up without becoming heavy. Children are light because they’re literally less full. Those dancers weren’t thinking about whose view they would block or how people might react when they tangled their arms up and had to start over. But smart adults can think about those things and dance anyway. Even better than childish lightness is the awareness that helps you to relish it.
My birthday is quickly approaching. For a long time I was worrying what people would plan for me, just like when I was a kid. It dawned on me I could plan something myself. I could ask everyone to come over wearing exotic hats. I could ask them to go on a morning bike ride with streamers blowing behind us (I did.) A firecracker 75-year-old I know wanted everyone to write her a letter about their life goals when she had her big birthday. I think what people gain with age is knowing how they want to live: how they eat, how their living space is, and how they like to celebrate. I’m impressed with Mare Blocker’s story about the famous frilly dress she wears for artist talks and May Day : She walked into the Purple Parasol and told them, “I need to look like a princess.”
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