Too Young, Too Old

It is a frosty December morning - Maggie (17 months) is walking on the sidewalk from the bustop to home because she is getting so good at walking and I'm getting so bad at carrying her weight. She is stopping to look at every little thing - part of a leaf that blows by her foot and gently scrapes the cement, a distant flock of geese cavorting about the sky - things that my eyes are too old to notice anymore. A tiny puddle of water enchants her and she crouches down to investigate, touching it gently with her finger.

I begin to realize why she prefers to walk these days, on our jaunts through town. To walk is an ultimate freedom - freedom to explore a vast world of mysterious objects. I am too old to understand this freedom, and too young.

It is a chilly December evening. We have eaten our fill of a holiday banquet and played silly reindeer games. We are standing around in our winter coats (dry-cleaned for the season, the cleanest they'll be all winter) when I get the chance to talk to Miriam who can no longer walk and for whom swallowing food is a daily miracle. Her eyes delight and disturb me at the same time. I get the feeling that there is so much I don' t know yet, am not old enough to know and have no right to know - about loss and freedom. Yet her beauty gives me hope that I may yet find it - that perhaps one day I'll know again how truly free I am to be able to walk on out into the night, under a cold black canopy that goes on forever, stepping lightly on a ball floating in space.