19/01/2004 - 7:15 p.m.

The Neverland

I'm not allowed to be a child anymore. I still am, but no one allows me to be one, not really. I want to escape to an eternity in my grandparent's yard. It wasn't anything more than a huge backyard with a barn and a shed, but for me it was everything.

The formal garden for courtly love and royal ceremonies, thick stands of lilacs and honeysuckle became dense forests where the explorers found a path as they worried that they might run out of the Ho-Ho's that served as their only sustinance. The creek was a rushing river that went down the culvert in a magestica waterfall. The shed was a horsebarn, a house, the gypsy hut. The barn was the mysterious dwelling of the old craftsman, his tools hanging all around the walls, the attic an orphan's garret...

Summertime was orange popscicles and fireflies in sweltering heat, playing in and out of the shadows long after dark. Wintertime was lying on your back in snow coming up to your head and listening to the complete silence in the air, feeling the cold and thinking about whether or not to make a snow angel, or just stand up.

And it was always Sunday, so your homework was done and your bath was still almost a million hours away and there was nothing in the world more to do than play until called for.

But now there is always something to be done. I'm only a month from twenty and there is money to worry about, deadlines to be reached, always things to be done. A vacation isn't really a vacation anymore, it's a chance to hurry and get done all the things you haven't the time to get done on the regular days. And if you stop hurrying to try and slow down and collect, you invariably get further behind on this road to nowhere.

I don't want to grow up anymore.