I once went back to my old elementary school. I believe I was a few years since my “graduation,” but the time frame of the memory is hazy. This I remember with absolute clarity; I felt big.
Not in a figurative sense, I quite literally felt that my body had grown. Actually, I lied. My initial thought was the oh so human deduction that the school shrank. How many times since have I formed assumptions based on that exact line of logic. There was no way I am the modified element, I never change as an individual.
I remember stretching my arms out wide. One hand touched the very same painted cinder blocks that likely supplied all of my childhood illnesses. The other was markedly closer to the other side than it was when those walls grew familiar. Surely, the halls condescended. There was no way I was ever that small.
Strikingly, my feet almost entirely filled the colored square floor tiles. That was not possible. How many times had I cautiously placed my feet within the grout lines to avoid a mid line step? My feet had never been in such peril as they were a few sizes bigger, and well within danger.
I remember commenting to my mother, “I feel like the school shrank.”
I half expected, and in many way hoped, that she would confirm my underlying theory that indeed, it was a strange anatomic phenomenon, but it was a thing. Elementary schools shrink after a few years, nobody knows how it happens.
Instead, she laughed and said, “Yeah, weird right?”
My spirits sank a bit at her response; just a bit. I was forced to accept the fact that my elementary world view was distorted because it was formed by a small body and a growing mind. It was not as I thought it was, it was much smaller.
That is when I realized that small things quite literally seem big to children; like school, blockbuster, fairs, grocery stores, a car trip to Washington DC. It was difficult to accept that children was a noun that included me.
As I’ve grown older, I like to think that I have moved past mourning the loss of pride that inevitably follows a realization of naivety. In a few years, I will likely realize that statement is a paradox in and of itself.
At this stage in my life, the world seems boundless. On good days, my potential feels as mammoth as the amount of art I never took the time to appreciate when I lived in Italy. I see children passionately caring for things I deem small and unimportant. I see young adults caring for things that I presume out of their reach and unattainable. I see old people seemingly revert back to their childhood status of living largely in small spaces. What I mean by this, is caring passionately for things I judge to be small and unimportant; like town hall meetings, and ushering church services.
I wonder if I am on the inexorable track headed for ambition, disillusionment, and a reversion to simplicity. I wonder if the timeline for human wonder and growth, so repeated in literature, is worth relinquishment. All of the similarities of the human condition that draw me in admiration to art and history sometimes feel like a trap. I am afraid that one day I may wake up and realize that I am not special at all, but just another member of the human pattern.
I think what I mean by this is I am afraid that in time I will find the world small again. I know that most modest matters aren’t actually small at all; but right now I can not grasp that fact with my heart. Admittedly, at this stage in my life, I want to fight and emancipate myself from small walls. More likely than not, I will soon realize that I was not only formerly a child, but am still a small body with a growing mind forming distorted realities.
