When I Was Young

3^rd January 2012

Dear Cassi,

    

Another of the cornerstones of my youth was playing with leaves and seeds. We had this old tree in the front yard that shed these leaves that looked to me like spaceships. The flowers looked like little rose of orange and yellow seahorses. The flowers would mature into seed pods which I used as tanks fighting some unnamed war in my head.

    

Likewise, I always thought of fox-tails as little fighter jets who would standoff against the wild oats as mortal enemies. That was the funny thing about youth, to me the world was made of toys. When I was in grade school it was seeds and leaves, and when I was in high school it was bits of old electronics.

    

Somewhere in the piles of junk I think I still have a red bucket full of those things, but where it is I have no idea. I keep telling myself that I will get all that mess cleaned up but I never do. What a youth could be reconstructed from that mass of broken pieces after all these years, but who has the time.

    

Then again, we often see the good times as bathed in a golden light, and the bitter nature of the truth may creep in on closer examination. Needless to say, living in the past will not serve me today, so I should let that business go, but over the past year I have been given need to look back.

    

These childhood pastimes do have a modern iteration. They are the bases of my writings and the foundation for my creativity. Still, that creativity has yet to pay off but that has failed to stop me from iterating. One day I may get something from my old pass times, just as one day my scars from youth may heal.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal