Did you ever do/like anything as a child that you've kind of forgotten but which has stuck with you, is a part of you? Kind of like "Puff the Magic Dragon" I guess I'm thinking of:

"A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys."

When I was around 9 or 10, I didn't have friends, was an anxious, solitary child, and I picked my favorite poem of all time and decided that I would try to memorize it (still haven't :-) Robert Louis Stevenson's, "The Land of Counterpane" from A Child's Garden of Verses.



I wasn't a sickly child, rarely got sick, but when we were sick, we sort of had this experience (or I wish we did?) and I think I identified with the lonely, bored, no-energy feel of the poem? My stepmother would make "orange ice" and other special foods and if she had to go out, she'd bring back a new toy or little surprise. Sometimes I'd be put in the parents larger bed at the top of the house. I was insulated by the illness and from my day-to-day world where I was expected to perform.

My father was in the Navy and my next youngest brother and I use to (when I was 6 and 7) play with his Army men so maybe I was longing for that "simpler" time too. We had moved after a stable period in my life and maybe I was looking back and wishing. . .

Looking back now, I wonder what part of me uses the remembered stable period or the ability to use the poem to comfort or whatever the heck. I wonder why I think of it all now. I think I'm entering into a transition period.