Talmage and Sydney watched cars whiz underneath them. The fun ended when a professional lady reprimanded me for allowing Tal and Syd to crouch on the metal grating of the skybridge. Too dangerous. Against the rules. Dad has been here the past several days. He came for Ruth's funeral (mom's dad's cousin's wife). Her son quoted the last lines of a poem by Mary Oliver, "When Death Comes." It goes like this:
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Children inherently understand this. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, the natural ease of living life fully can be discarded. Or forgotten. Or counterfeited. We are too busy or too embarassed, too restrained by convention and rules, to get not just get down on our hands and knees, but to prostrate ourselves against the earth, and Look.
Einstein said, "Never lose a holy curiosity." And so. I shouldn't have apologized.
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