Wednesday, May 08, 2013

SUDDEN YOUTHFULNESS


"Redbud Path", oil,
by Laurel Daniel
“As for the [old woman], she took on a sudden look of youth; you felt as if she promised a great future,
and was beginning, not ending …”
-- Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs 

     Every so often these days I have a feeling of sudden youthfulness, as if I’m 6 instead of 71, as if spring is just starting in me as well as in the trees beside our house. This feeling flows from somewhere I’m not familiar with, somewhere as far off, I guess, as the farthest stars, and I’m never sure when it will show up. Sometimes it starts when I’m eating something special and sensing, for some reason, how young the universe is and how young my love of life is. It might begin when I’m breathing hard on my bike on far-reaching roads on days that sing of cleanness and new starts. Sometimes it’s only a little feeling, but one that finds me just when I most need to feel fresh and unfenced, when I most need to notice the childish shine on my hands. Since, like all of us, I hold this kind of innocence inside me, all I need to do is see it as if I’m seeing the inside of a miracle, and let my life leap and flit around like the young thing it always truly is.

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