Uncles and Aunts

It is in the offering of uncles and aunts that we first use our priestly powers. Long before we can see our parents, we look with gladness upon their brethren. There is no greater historical gift than a brace, a set—a baker's dozen, if at all possible—of uncles. (Dutch uncles will do as well as blood uncles; indeed the inequities of nature make them alsmost indispensible. No boy's priesthood should be imperiled just because his grandparents failed to have enough children.)

...Any ten-year-old boy who would not rather live with his Uncle Henry is a boy to be watched with the gravest suspicion: his priesthood should have been operative long since. He will not be able to choose his own father for years, but, if he cannot offer his uncles now, we may well have an unhistoric monster on our hands. Such a boy should not, of course, be banished. He needs help, therapy, treatment. Accordingly, he should be provided, perhaps at the government's expense, with a deluxe set of uncles for oblation. A 210-pound water skier, for a start, and a 140-pound model locomotive builder to go with him. And, if available, a poetry reader, a crane operator, an amateur violinist and a judge of good whiskey. And, above all, an uncle who can tell jokes which will grow hairier as the the boy grows taller. His cure would not be long coming. The therapy is well-nigh infallible.

-Robert Farrar Capon, An Offering of Uncles, 131-132.

The Emergence of a Priestly Agent

The portrait of a young couple with their first baby is still an elegant one. But the snapshot of a pair of beaten forty-five-year-olds surrounded, overshadowed and stymied by a handful of teen-agers and a clutch of elementary school pupils has less to recommend it on the level of intelligibility. Somewhere in between, elegance left by the back door. Around the end of toddling and the beginning of talking, a second and unnoticed pregnancy began; another and quite painless delivery was accomplished. A person was born. A piece of history began to distinguish itself and quietly proceeded to start a history of its own. A new priest was ordained sub rosa and sent back to his old haunts, with no collar and no letters of ordination, but with all the powers of the priesthood of Adam.

From there on, the story of childhood is the classic story of the unrecognized prince in his rightful kingdom. His poor parents are totally unprepared for his claim. With immense good will, they struggle like peasants and villagers to find out what is going on, but they are always several episodes behind the story. The pains of childhood—the agonies of the teens—are due precisely to the emergence of a priestly agent among beings that are not ready to have him arrive so soon.

-Robert Farrar Capon, An Offering of Uncles, 125-126.

Teenagers

"So, Alvina...how old are you?"

She poured syrup into the cold remainder of her coffee. We hadn't allowed her a refill.

"Eleven and three-quarters."

"You sure it's not eleven and four-fifths?"

She shrugged. "Could be."

"Well," he said with exaggerated dismay, "that's too bad."

She took a sip of the cold, syrupy coffee, decided she liked it, and gulped down the rest. Then looked up at him, debating whether to ask the obvious question. She did. "Why's that?"

He wagged his head grimly. If you hadn't known my father, you'd have thought he had just come from a funeral. "Why? Because you're coming to the end of a beautiful, wonderful time. Your kidhood is almost over. You know what happens next, don't you?"

Experience had taught Alvina nothing—she rose to the bait again. "What?"

"Twelve. That's what happens. And you know what then?"

She didn't really want to answer such a dumb question, but she couldn't resist finding out where all this nonsense was leading. "Thirteen," she said.

My father snapped her a finger-point. "Exactly! In other words, you'll become a teenager." He sighed mournfully. "Such a shame." Alvina looked at me, at him. "Why?"

"Why? Because you know what they say."

"Who's they?"

I thought: Score one for you, girl.

My father ignored the question. "They say teenagers are rotten. They go from being cute and cuddly little kids to monsters who want to stay out late and walk a block behind their parents."

I was a little uneasy. I knew my father was just toying with her, trying to provoke her, but I wasn't sure if Alvina knew...She twiddled her spoon in the empty coffee cup. She shook her head. "Not me."

My father and I were both caught by surprise. The spoon twiddled in the cup. Finally my father prompted her. "Not you?"

The twiddling stopped. She stared into the cup. "No. I'm backwards. I'm a rotten kid now, but I'll be an amazing teenager."

-Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl, 174-175.

Suddenly Five Years Old

I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

-Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There, 36.

Childish Things

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C. S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," 34.

Tidying Up

[Mrs. Darling] does not often go out to dinner, preferring when the children are in bed to sit beside them tidying up their minds, just as if they were drawers. If Wendy and the boys could keep awake they might see her repacking into their proper places the many articles of the mind that have strayed during the day, lingering humorously over some of their contents, wondering were on earth they picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When they wake in the morning the naughtinesses with which they went to bed are not, alas, blown away, but they are placed in the bottom of the drawer; and on the top, beautifully aired, are their prettier thoughts ready for the new day.

-J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, Act I.

Childish Things

When I was ten, I read fairy stories in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C. S. Lewis, quoted by Alan Jacobs, The Narnian, xxii.

A Quiet Chamber: Part II

Let me be more specific. We were living in Edmonton, Alberta, then. The year was 1954, and I was ten, the oldest of seven children. I’ve implied that we were all excited on that particular Christmas Eve morning, and so we were; but though my brothers and sisters could manifest their excitement with unbridled delight, I could not mine. I absolutely refused to acknowledge or signal excitement. They loved the sweet contractions in their stomachs. I was afraid of them. For I had that very year become an adult: silent, solemn, watchful, and infinitely cautious.

So my brothers and sisters laughed and clapped the day away. They spilled colored sugar on cookie dough and covered the kitchen table with a sweet mess, all unworried, unafraid. They claimed, by faster stabs of the finger, their individual treasures from Sears catalogs, and so they allowed their dreams to soar, and so they passed the day. I didn’t blame them. They were innocent; they could dare the dangers they didn’t see. These children could rush headlong toward the evening, recklessly. But I could not.

I held myself in a severe restraint. Because—what if you hope, and it doesn’t happen? It’s treacherous to hope. The harder you hope, the more vulnerable you become. And what if you believe a thing, but it isn’t true? Well, the instant you see the deception, you die a little. And it hurts exactly in your soul, where once you had believed. I knew all this. I had learned that excitement is composed of hope and faith together—but of faith and hope in promises yet unkept—and I was not about to let excitement run away with me, or I would certainly crash as I had crashed the year before.

Last Christmas Eve, in the midst of opening his presents, my brother Paul had burst into tears. I didn’t know—and I don’t know—why. But I was shocked to discover that the Christmas time was not inviolate. I was horrified that pain could invade the holy ceremony. And I was angry that my father had not protected my brother from tears. There was a fraud here. The traditions were as thin as a crystal globe and empty. I could do nothing but sob in sympathy with my brother, nothing but grieve to the same degree that I had believed.

But by ten I was an adult; and if Christmas gave me nothing really, and if the traditions could not protect me from assault, then I would protect myself.

No: the more excited I was, the more I was determined not to be, and the more I molded my face into a frown.

I’m speaking with precision now. None of us could stand the season’s excitement. But I was frightened by mine and chose to show it to no one, not to my father, not to my mother, and not to myself.

Adult.

-Walt Wangerin, The Manger is Empty, 59-60.

Time

One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time moves more slowly in Kid World—five times more slowly in a classroom on a hot afternoon, eight times more slowly on any car journey of more than five miles (rising to eighty-six times more slowly when driving across Nebraska or Pennsylvania lengthwise), and so slowly during the last week before birthdays, Christmases, and summer vacations as to be functionally immeasurable—it goes on for decades when measured in adult terms. It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.

-Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, 29.

Disobedience

James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James
Said to his Mother
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Put on a golden gown,
James James
Morrison's Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James
Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
"I can get right down to the end of the town
and be back in time for tea."

King John
Put up a notice,
"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES
MORRISON'S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN
WANDERING VAGUELY:
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN TO THE END OF THE TOWN—
FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!"

James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
James James
Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town
without consulting me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Hasn't been heard of since.
King John
Said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and the Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
"If people go down to the end of the town,
well, what can anyone do?"

(Now then, very softly)
J. J.
M. M.
W. G. Du P.
Took great
C/o his M*****
Though he was only 3.
J. J.
Said to his M*****
"M*****," he said, said he:
"You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-
if-you-don't-go-down-with ME!"

-A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

Big-Kid Eyes

By the end of third grade, most of the kids’ baby teeth were gone. The permanent ones had arrived in their mouths. Around fourth grade something similar happens with eyes. The baby eyes don’t drop out, nor are there eye fairies around to leave quarters under pillows, but new eyes do arrive nevertheless. Big-kid eyes replace little-kid eyes.

Little-kid eyes are scoopers. They just scoop up everything they see and swallow it whole, no questions asked. Big-kid eyes are picky. They notice things that the little-kid eyes never bothered with: the way a teacher blows her nose, the way a kid dresses or pronounces a word.

-Jerry Spinelli, Loser

Do it Again

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy