Second Childhood

Time Flies
Robin Hoselton

Those old clichés, Life is Short and Time Flies, are meaningful now that I’ve entered the autumn of my life. I realize if any goals remain to be accomplished, I better get a move on. Otherwise the next 20 years could flit by while I’m dawdling.

When I reminisce about past years, I tend to gloss over the successful highs and the disastrous lows and get stuck in the crevices of unsatisfied childhood longings.

However silly they are, these inconsequential yearnings nag relentlessly, chipping at my peace of mind until I fear for my sanity.

I fully admit these are not grandiose ambitions. I do not aspire to climbing the highest mountain or becoming the next Mother Teresa. Shameful as it is, my petty wants are material things. Petty material things.

When I was 12-years-old, like many girls, I was crazy about horses. I did drawings of them, learned the characteristics of each breed, sniffled over Black Beauty, and read all the Black Stallion books. That year I asked Santa Claus for a book, Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry. I didn’t get it. The next year at Christmas I asked for the same book. I didn’t get it.

Fifty-plus years later, I found myself haunted by that unfulfilled request. After mulling it over, I located and bought the book. When it arrived in the mail, everything in the household came to an abrupt stop while I rifled through its pages, scanning the text and pictures. If the house had burned down around me, my skeleton would have shown a foolish grin on the skull.

Since then, I’ve leisurely perused the text and studied the pictures of these magnificent creatures to my heart’s content and I’m as happy as if I’d won the lottery!

Rubber Ducky

Spurred by this trivial acquisition, I then contemplated shopping for a yellow ducky. Lame? Stupid? Inane? Yes, Yes, and Yes. But I didn’t have one as a kid and always felt deprived. My mind fastened on this deprivation and elevated it to a supreme injustice. I began seeing yellow duckies everywhere—TV commercials, magazine ads, department stores.

When I finally gave myself permission to buy the darn thing, I plopped it down almost belligerently next to the cash register.

The clerk smiled and asked, “A baby shower gift?”

Without hesitation, I answered, “Yes.” What else could I say?

At home I peeled off the duck’s price tag and set it on the toilet tank. And, no, I don’t play with it. I’m not totally bonkers, for heaven’s sake. It’s been a month now since Buttercup took up residence in my bathroom. And she still makes me smile everyday.

I think I’ve passed these wacky genes to my offspring. Recently my middle-aged daughter confessed that she loves and uses the big box of Crayola crayons. I shook my head in dismay at the enthusiasm in her voice and the sparkle in her eyes as she expounded on metallic, glitter, and scented crayons. Oddly, this closet child doesn’t desire crayons because she didn’t have them as a kid, but because she did!

Tagged Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry, crayola crayons, life is short and time flies, playing at the beach, reaching remaining goals for baby boomers, rubber duck, rubber ducky, second childhood