My Second Childhood

            Perhaps I am living my second childhood, the one I missed the first time around.

            Maureen Murdock’s 2003 book, Unreliable Truth:  On Memoir and Memory, resonates with me on all sorts of levels.  She describes my experience with memory and with writing.  There is something satisfying about seeing one’s nonverbal perceptions put into prose.  And when she quotes from Annie Dillard--Shebang! I am struck with recognition and wonder:  “A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she’s living.  A child dreams along, loving the exuberant life of the senses, in love with beauty and power, oblivious of herself, and then suddenly, bingo, she wakes up and feels herself alive.”

            Waking “over and over again” describes my life of memory in which each episode of the past slides away, replaced by the colorful present.  The first time I remember thinking about this was after our family moved from Grandville to Douglas when I was twelve.  One day, walking down the hallway at school, I “woke up” to my new reality.  Suddenly my previous eleven years of life seemed as a dream, as if they belonged to someone else, and there I stood as my new junior high self. 

            Since then I have “woken up” many times as new life experiences unfolded.  Some of the awakenings were of true nightmare quality, others like glimpses of heavenly dreams.  All that waking up consistently landed me smack dab in the middle of the present, whether I liked it or not.

            For three years now, I’ve been waking up in Washington, shedding the old fears of my old life as an old dream.  The present is full of color and music and words.  It is full of trees, of sky, of water and mountains.  It is filled with beauty.  

            The present is filled with friends and family both near and far.  It is filled with a deeper awareness of God and a new joy in living.  It is filled with faith, hope, and love.  This waking to the present moment has somehow clarified the past, bringing both painful and pleasant memories into perspective.   I understand that all our lives are stories to be shared.  My telling of my story heals me and helps others.

            Thus, I get to examine my life both past and present, this time with wonder instead of fear, amazed at the depth of grace God gives in our best dreams, our worst nightmares, and all of our awakenings.