Reinventing Childhood

I stretched my arms overhead, interlacing cramped fingers and groaned. Rain splattered the window in mad pelts, creating a dreary curtain over the cottage. The smell of oils and turpentine was sharp in the air as I scrutinized the half-finished painting in front of me. The forest trees were full, mature and protected the faint ring in the lush grass below. A Fairy Ring. There had been one at my home as a child. Many days I would lay in the middle of the ring, arms askew, the tickle of the occasional ant on my tanned bare leg.

“It’s a Fairy Ring,” my mom would say with a twinkle, “so you have to be careful.”

“Careful of what?” I’d ask.

“To not be carried away! The Fairies love children you know.”

Ah, if only! I longed to be carried away by the beautiful Fairies! The Fairy Ring had lately been haunting my dreams. I was wandering around, lost, almost frantic for something or to get somewhere. – you know the feeling of anxiety in your dream that something terrible is going to happen if you don’t get where you’re supposed to be going? Sometimes I was in town, sometimes just hurrying around my house. But I kept ending up at the Fairy Ring of my childhood. Why? I hadn’t thought of that place in years.

As I peered at the painting though, I remembered the joy of being barefoot in the grass. The thrill of riding my bike down the biggest hill in the neighborhood, the wind slapping me in the face. Playing German Spotlight in the neighborhood on a cool spring night, damp grass on our knees. Kickball in the streets and rounding third bass marked by the street drain. When was the last time I went barefoot in the grass? Ugh. What if I stepped in dog poop? And my bike? It was home to a happy clan of little house spiders in my garage. As for German Spotlight and Kickball…well, I think maybe Carter was president last time I yelled “You’re It!”

And, there in the grass, a tiny hand clasped the edge of a blade of grass. Unblinking eyes stare back at me from a face the size of a grain of rice, peeking out from its hiding place. I leaned closer to my own painting, frowning in concentration. I didn’t paint that. Was it a weird play of brush and oil? Like when people see Jesus in their toast? A trick of the light?

I stared and tried to bring the bewitching face more into focus, but it turned with a whoosh of the grass, and disappeared into the still wet mix of green paint.

And through the gentle patter of raindrops on the window, I swear I heard a faint call say, “You’re It!”