Sunday Morning XIV

Youth looks at a person who is eighty-years-old, and sees only age. The wrinkles. Bones which have bent and shriveled a bit from the weight of experience. Hair which has lost color and eyes which have emptied the pail of vibrancy, content now to view the world through a waterdowned version of their once fierce expectations.

Only a few gifted seers are able to see beyond the husk of the elderly body to the child that dwells within.

For age never diminishes the child; it merely hides it well.

Camouflages the mischievious imp, the exuberant chick, the cherub, wild with joyous expectation of that magical moment when the heart lifts and song bursts the boundaries of life's confinement.

Then, merriment dances in those pale eyes and what once was full-bodied laughter wheezes forth as a mere guffaw.

Yet, the seer sees the nymph dancing still with the lightness of youth.

At no time is this phenomena more observable than at Christmas when all the yore and lore of ancient civilization coalesces with treasured memories to renew anticipation.

At no other time of year are the elderly more vulnerable.

Christmas! That season when church bells ring, carollers sing and sleigh bells jingle merry tunes . . . that season when the collective unconscious releases the child lurking behind the facade of wisdom . . . that season when the magic of the Universe could still yet happen . . .

It is so easy to look through the distance of years and see not thyself. At twenty, thirty, forty, the mirror reflects only ego; very few walk from under its influence in that small space of time.

Some culture, I've forgotten now which, proposes that as the father dies, his shadow walks on and through the son until the father and son meld and are one. So subtly does this occur that even the most astute believe they have shaken off the cloak of ancestry and, independent of all others, are stepping lively towards their own, separate and identifiable, destiny. Only the seer sees the two marching as one.

Only the seer sees all the hosts of ancestry unite. Marching in one body.

The seer sees the nymph dancing.
Sunday Morning XIV © 2006 Chaeli Lee Sullivan