Reminiscing I can't help but feel chilled to the bone, I remember it so well. When I lost my age and became a child. A child with nothing to lose and everything to gain in you.
Cold. It was so cold out I could barely stand to move, but you, always full of life and energy, the kind that I never have felt before- I was always told I have an old soul- you were running and bounding through the plush snowbanks. I wasn't sure if I should fake the energy and play a long, or just stare in wonder. The captivating site of you springing between the thickets who had now lost their leaves, and the trees that had shed their covering to reveal the dullest of gray bark. I watched as the chilling air split your bangs across your face, and I watched as your green eyes, not the deep dark emerald green, nor the dull green of algae washed ashore, but just....a unique shade, one that surely not many can have, peered up at me sporadically as you looked down to watch your step then back at me in a sheer childproof manner. The snapped tree trunks made for obstacles as you sprang between the trees an the shrubbery. I wandered how the trunks had gone from full fledged trees, to snapped and splintered remnants of what they once were. In my own way I felt like the shattered remains, I felt as though I had never been seen by anyone when I was in my prime and now I am nothing left but a fragment of a former self for people to leap over and beyond without notice. But you, you noticed these, you took time to peer down at each and ever ruin of what once was an standing example of life on it's own, left to grow as it pleased. You noticed them- you noticed me. Maybe that's what it was, you noticed me, and you understood what I was, and more than that, understood that i am more than I realize and I could be more than either of us will know. You didn't care how fractured or splinted my foundation was, you just noticed me, and smiled, and that is all I needed.
I could hear the gentle rustling of the pine tree branches, ten, twenty maybe even thirty feet above our heads, and as I looked up to find the source of the noise I became enthralled with the overcast sky. The almost seamless sea of gray clouds blanketed us from the view of all others, we were alone and we were ourselves. The darker gray lines, faint as the were outlined where the edges ended, or maybe where they began....who know, but they were infinite in nature and pleasing by default. I lowered my head to the horizon to find you running far ahead, and without warning or even a though of cause you would stop, letting yourself slide across the ice of a frozen pond. Maybe it's the old-timer in me, but my immediate thought was "you'll hurt yourself....what if the ice breaks? What then?" But the longer I watched you in your blissful glee, the more my old-timer self began to feel.....a spark, a spark of what I had let go of, what I had given up on as a hopeless dream of a young man lying awake in bed, unable to sleep. I felt something again, be it a new light, or a young burst of energy. I'm only 24, but if I were to view us from the outside I' see an old man watching a young girl run and play while the old me had the tale tale signs of remembrance of when he was able to perform such feats. You would laugh as you fell on the ice, i would smile. I couldn't help but be taken by you and how freely you acted. 'Obedience, proper appearance, don't be a nuisance, mind your manners', all the things instilled in me as a child meant nothing here, you were bringing me out of my shell......and I think you knew it. It was fun for you. Fun to watch a true introvert smile and take his first baby steps towards being extrovert and having fun without a mind for the consequences.
