Returning to Three

Returning to Three

Dour dawns, where do they come from? I wake up in danger and fear.  When did that start? The last few years, a decade maybe. I know as a young man, in my twenties, thirties, forties, and so on, I woke up as bright as the morning sun, ready to have fun, knowing I could walk into the day feeling the warm swathe of life about me, knowing good things were afoot. But that has changed. Perhaps after I left, the kitchen, the desk, the pulpit, after I turned the corner of my careers to a certain age and began to wander about– beginning to feel mortal, wondering how far this retirement thing is to go; what do I have left to give, get or be; that’s when it started.

So I ask, what is here for me to make into a worthwhile day? I have the three writing groups, conversations with my son, wife, friends. And grandchildren, yes three granddaughters. Hey maybe that’s the secret about grandparents and grandchildren, there is pure innocence in the one and the search for lost innocence – no, the search for a path to return to innocence in the other. I mean us oldies, once knew what innocence was and now we so much want a reprise, an encore, a déjà vu. But we fear it’s no longer to be had at this age, because, in truth, we can’t quite recall the look, feel, and touch of that pure, fresh morning-sky-innocence. We feel lost in the vapor of a memory in which innocence resides, fogged over now in a dissipating contrail of time and fears.

Somewhere, out of the depths of our past, our innocence calls for a rebirth. And this seems impossible. Decades of mortgages, performance reviews, words in conflict and confusion with significant others, strangers and friends as to just how we can do this life together have drowned our connection with the virtue of the uncontaminated and good life. But each granddaughter lives. She lives in the pure field of expectation that life is here for her simply because she is alive. She smiles and the world smiles back. She is a special person and it is all good.

Maybe in the next decade I will find the courage to return to those plains of grace where I know I am special and life is here for me. As it was for me then, as it is for her now, as it should be for all of us, always, equally. I mean there is enough to go around. The stars cannot not contain the hopes and the faith we wish to have about those hopes. But, if we look closely, if we allow the natural compassion and grace in our hearts to have their say, we find we do retain all the beliefs and love of the pure soul of the three year old.

William Caldwell