When you’re a child, everything feels big. The days stretch long, the friendships feel forever, and even the smallest moment can fill the whole sky. Childhood is made of contrasts — light and shadow living side by side.
I remember the joy first. Endless days with Robert, three doors up the street. We played until the light faded, our worlds stitched together by imagination. Summer brought its own magic — walking barefoot along melting bitumen to the local pool, the smell of chlorine, the cool shock of water, the laughter that came easily. Those were the bright parts of the canvas.
But there were shadows too. The shapes on my bedroom wall that turned into bears after dark. The nightmare that returned night after night, leaving me small and frightened in my own room. I learned early that the same imagination that fills your world with joy can also invent its monsters.
I remember wonder too. Bees in the garden, mysterious and beautiful. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck painted on my wall by my father and uncle, reminding me that joy could be drawn large and loud. And I remember mystery — the friend who disappeared one day, the silence that followed, and how adults often protected children with quiet instead of explanation.
And then there was pain. A moment in the garage when a frayed cord knocked me out cold. My father thought I had died. I don’t remember it, but I remember how the garage became different after that — how love can hold both remorse and relief, and how safety is never simple.
To be a kid at heart, I think, is to live still in that wide space between joy and fear, laughter and loss — not erasing one with the other, but holding them together. It’s to let life stay big enough for wonder, even after you’ve learned what can go wrong.
When we grow up, we tend to flatten things — to make life manageable, predictable, safe. But a child’s heart knows that light and darkness share the same sky. To stay young inside is to keep that tension alive — to still be moved by beauty, still undone by mystery, still brave enough to feel everything.
The Afterword 
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