Returning Childhood

This time it will be sweet.

Dear Starlight,

I remember standing with my tiny toes touching the wall, and my face turned towards a clear jar with a glowing golden cube resting, beckoning inside the jar perched on the shelf. I remember thinking maybe this time, it would be candy. I remember knowing it was not candy. I remember thinking that this time, it would be candy, maybe this time. I remember staring at it as my legs grew weary, standing still without moving. I remember shifting my small figure to one side to put my weight on one foot and give the other a rest. I remember having to stand in corners and face the walls for the eternity of childhood. I remember looking at the golden cube and feeling my curiosity grow like hunger. I remember thinking maybe this time, it would be candy. I remember taking the precious gold cube into my tiny hand and holding its firmness wrapped in foil. I remember gently opening it like it was a secret gift wrapped especially for me. I remember sticking the tip of my tiny tongue to taste its slightly mushy mustard-colored body. I remember revulsion as I licked its salty edge and felt my tongue tinge. I remember thinking that if I nibbled, it would get better and taste like candy. I remember putting the cube into my mouth and wishing it was candy. I remember sucking on it, hoping it would change. I remember standing there eating injustice and wishing I had different parents. I remember wishing that I was a child who was given candy. I remember spitting the bouillon into my hand and putting it into my sock so no one could see the pain I suffered as I stood there facing the wall for some infraction I couldn’t remember.

I remember not knowing what I had done to be such a bad little girl.

I remember tugging my bathing suit over my chubby bottom to cover the imprints of kitchen spoons.

I remember chore charts with candy-colored squares indicating vacuuming, dishes, laundry, and trash.

I remember wishing I lived in a place like Candyland.

I remember learning to cook a chicken for a family dinner. I remember cutting little squares of margarine into golden cubes and stuffing them under cold, clammy chicken skin. My hands pressed into dead breasts and thighs. I remember the cavern of its hollowed belly and reaching my skinny arm inside the darkness to pull out the guts. I remember throwing them into the garbage. I remember we didn’t have a garbage can or plastic bag, but instead, a paper grocery bag with the top rolled down to hold it open. I remember that things like chicken guts leaked through the brown paper and left a puddle of scum on the hard wood floor. I remember that the chore of mopping was gross.

I remember my chicken cooked crispy, and cooking became my chore.

I remember eating was sometimes a chore. Every morsel on every plate needed to be ingested before anyone could leave the big table. Some nights, the lights were off, and I sat alone at the table, wondering if the candied canned yams or pickled pink beets would disappear without my assistance. I remember thinking someday I would disappear from that family chair in that family room.

I remember wishing that someday I would disappear from the place I was in; childhood.

—

This week, I met the sunrise as I walked through my neighborhood. I set my alarm early so I could be bundled in warm layers and out the door before 6:30. I said good morning to the luminescent moon, the white hawk, the two swooping bald eagles, the owl, the fox, the deer, and the rising red sun who met me on my way.

I could imagine nothing more thrilling than to be there, awaiting the surprise spectacle of the morning light. I was there as the rapt audience, oooohing and aaahing alongside the birds.

One of these mornings, as I walked in conversation with myself, I learned the most extraordinary thing! I could have another childhood, the one I wished for, because I can be the mother of her, the child in me. I suddenly felt a million me’s in exaltation, “Yesssssssssssss please!!!!!”

And as I felt her, little me, jumping up and down as the sun rose like it was lifting a crown to the heavens, I saw myself, big me, from outside myself. I watched her walking through the sleeping town, and I thought, “That is someone I’d like to walk with,” and like that, I felt like I had fallen in love.