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            My childhood was filled with tragic moments.  It was a Neverland, filled with action - youth joy and liberty.  It should have been an awesome time, those years, but of course it wasn't. How should I have known. I was learning who I was and what was my place in the scheme of things.  Many times I went out on a limb for what I thought was my due.  I challenged everything in those days.  I challenged the physical world, and I challenged the philosophy that threatened to hem me in. I was full of questions, all spoken.

In fact, the questioning was endless.  I sharpened my wits in the game of language.  Each new word enlarged my world.  New objects, ideas, and relationships enabled me to think about and do things I was not even aware of before.  The answers I got to my questions led me to more questions, and those answers demanded that I ask even more.

Before long, I learned I must not so much challenge the physical world as protect myself from it.  I must subdue it and eventually control it.  The same, it seemed, applied to the world of ideas.  Everyone had an opinion, and the opinion that prevailed was the one most people could be talked into.  Proficiency in the language game was of utmost importance.  The strategies were endless for the accomplished player.  I learned it was not a question of what the language could do but what I knew it must do; and what it must do was not to challenge but to convince.  Though the purpose and rules of the game were changed somewhat, I experienced some of the awe I could not appreciate as a child.  The difference was, of course, I knew now what I was doing and had a plan for where I was going.

            As I grew from childhood, I found that more and more of my questions were unspoken.  The few I needed to ask got the answers I wanted, and I was able to answer more and more of them for myself.  As a result, the answers I got provoked fewer and fewer questions. I was finally learning what life was all about.

I thought once in a while of Neverland, but that was a childish dream, and the irrepressible actions of the child gave way to the tethered, thought-out motions of a responsible adult.  Quite successful at putting aside childlike roles, I now expended my efforts at being me.  After all, I was pretty sure who I was now, and if I didn't know by now where I belonged in the scheme of things, I'd never know. Not long ago, however, in the water of an ocean beach, one of those tragic moments of childhood repeated itself.

          The ocean was rough. Not far out I could see the waves swell and roll, gather strength, and crest.  Knee-deep in water, I confronted a wave as it surged, thundered, and crashed in front of me.  The angry water swept me toward the beach, and, as the next wave swelled, the undertow tugged to wash me under the looming crest.  An ill-timed move and I would be clobbered, or swallowed in its churning underbelly.  I dove through its spine.  Poised in the air for an instant, I looked back and watched the wave collapse into a rapacious foam, tear at the beach, and pillage the spot where I had stood.

It was Peter Pan, wasn't it, who knew what action was; who, full of youth, joy, and liberty, insisted, "I'll never grow up!"

                Bill Reynolds