...sometimes, I wonder whether the little one I used to be was happier than I am now. Mostly in the night, as I watch a star fall and instantly correct myself to 'meteor' or when I walk in the woods, classifying plants and sounds to bring up in a lesson on science later, I wonder if it was better to be young and to wish on the star, to sing to the wind, to find new plants and make up stories about them, to find a shadow of a fairy behind each leaf….
but then I think of the terrors in the night, the conviction that something wicked would eat me if it caught me, the fear of the darkness, the horror of being lost in unfamiliar woods when I would leave the trail, the heartbreak when someone—a well-meaning someone, but o, so cruel—told me that the Fair Folk were but stories…all the heartbreaks of childhood, with their sharp, sharp grief...
and I compare it to my quiet life of now, when all is mostly in order, and I have children of my own to read to and sing the old songs, to teach and to love, with someone who is not a prince, but my own love at my side, with almost all the creature comforts that we desire…
now, we have small dreams, shared dreams, but dreams that come true. Then, I had large dreams, empty dreams that floated away on the breeze, but they were dreams all the same and remained ever so
my children now have the same dream light in their eyes, and I want to keep it there as long as I can, knowing the taste of summer, the song of dreams, the shadow of Peter Pan against the moon and the moonlight on a waterfall...
but I often wonder, though I lack the words for poetry and fancy prose…
if it is better to walk on slender bridges and fall from airy heights as a child does and poets do, and be always longing after something we may not have...
or to become as a grown up, walking on the simple, hard road of day, with all the pleasures and pains that brings
for we all must grow up someday
Was Peter Pan ever truly happy?
(The manuscript ends here)