La Dee Da...

I spend most of my life feeling younger than I am. Even though I see the wrinkles and feel the aches and pains of age, much like all those who are aged, I feel  more young than I am. My life has become a cliche. I always say "in my day kids never wore a helmet when riding bikes and my parents trusted me enough to come home from school everyday and take care of myself." I ate pop rocks and bomb pops, didn't worry about or even know about HFCS,  played video games with quarters, and to me,  presidents were  characters on SNL. One of the things I want most to share with my child ( if I am lucky enough to have one) is how wonderful childhood can be. I want to read to them the stories that transported me when  I was a child in the dark with nothing but my imagination to sustain me. It is almost scary how much the past can ensnare you. The reason I write this is because I just watched H. R.  Pufnstuf. The nostalgia it caused was almost painful in its urgency.  I can feel my childhood in it. That time, the innocence is sometimes, most times, gone, so it feels amazing to touch it again. There are only a few films that can do it. Most are movies made for the child I was. The Muppet Movie, Benji, The Doberman Gang, the Bad News Bears. They may be small things, but I am grateful to have them. Anything that connects me to youth and magic is amazing. The one thing that I want to keep most about myself is the ability to believe. I want to believe in magic always. Even if that means that I am that crazy old women who, alone, claps to keep Tink alive.  Because I do believe in faeries. If that goes away in myself  I might as well be dead.