Áine, heading home after winning 2nd place in the Illinois Music Association Piano competition.
I wasn’t present for Áine’s piano competition the other day, being on the road performing out in Iowa. As I drove along, I prayed and sent energy to her, seated there in a room with other pianists, their parents and the judge. She won second place in the competition, which was wonderful. I believe I was more relieved than she was that the competition was over.
And I wasn’t present when she had a talk with Annie on Sunday, who relayed this conversation to me. She told Annie that she wishes she was four again, when everything was about playing at the park, creating and yes, even being carried around on Papa’s shoulders.
She is starting to get older, heading into sixth grade next year and she is becoming aware that the magic of being a little kid is starting to fade.
She mentioned how she is now aware when her uncle comes by that she is still in her pajamas, and so she hid so he wouldn’t see her. Or that joining us in bed for a sleep is getting tough because she is getting bigger. There’s just not enough room. That I don’t rough house and play with her as much as I did during the pandemic, when we would have games for hours, building marble chutes and pretending she was “Supergirl.”
Annie, in an attempt to show her that this is all natural and part of the progress of life, had her listen to Supertramp’s “The Logical Song.” Here are those lyrics:
When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical
There are times when all the world's asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am
I said, watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical
A liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!
Oh take it, take it, take it, yeah
But at night, when all the world's asleep
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please (Oh won't you tell me)
Please tell me what we've learned (Can you hear me)
I know it sounds absurd (Oh won't you help me)
Please tell me who I am
Who I am
Who I am
Who I am
'Cause I was feeling so logical
D-d-d-d-d-d-digital
One, two, three, five
Oh, oh, oh, oh yeah
Ooh it's getting unbelievable, yeah
Áine, upon hearing the song, cried and cried, much to Annie’s distress. Áine got the song and its meaning.
It is hard, growing away. Away from being that kid, doing unbelievable kid things. I remember it too, that weird time in which I found myself still young enough to play imaginary games, but also old enough to know that it was all growing away. I could still pretend I was a cowboy or have an adventure with GI Joe. There was no thinking about teenage things: girls, high school, acne. In two years, I would find myself in the middle of a cornfield detasseling. A couple more and I would be at McDonald’s trying not to burn myself with the fryer.
For me, having chores and seeing animals, like our spring lambs, mature and grow away in a season might have lessened that blow of the end of childhood. A March lamb, jumping and playing out in the pasture is by September ready for market. The cycle is complete and even the most obtuse of farm kids gets the unspoken truth that we all grow up, we eventually become adults, we eventually die. And sometimes we don’t even get to be adults. Life is fickle.
There is nothing much I can do for Áine, except look to this summer, possibly her last summer as a kid, to make sure she has as much time as a kid. Especially playing with her and being her Papa. Her growing away also tears at me, being away and not present for those times, those revelations in which she sees the mystic, magic gates of childhood slowly closing for good. It’s easy to feel the faint, but real pain of that loss of childhood.
As an artist, I will make sure she knows that no matter how old she is, the secret is to know that you can climb over the wall and back into that childhood garden every so often. You can’t live as a child, but you can still see as a child can see, imagine as a child can imagine and love with a purity that only a child possesses. You meet people who do that all the time and they are the ones with all the magic.
Áine grows away. Soon I won’t have that child to carry around anymore. She will eventually, God-willing become an adult. God-willing I will get to be there for the rites of passage as she grows up.
But she, her mom and I will have to make sure we climb over that wall and back into that garden. There, forever will live her child, Annie’s child and yes, my own child. All of our little children in fact. Perhaps if we were to remember, we could temper the idiocy of the adult world. We have to remember, we must remember.
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