i am a child

Tuesday during a staff meeting, my boss did a little exercise. She had a deck of cards called "The Breathe Easy Deck" and asked each of us to pick one at random with the disclaimer "the card you pick will be meaningful to you." For most of the day leading up to the meeting, I had been being me - the born bureaucrat - discussing policy and procedure with the other managers: fire safety, chemical inventories, hazardous materials, risk managment, incident reports. All very boring and dry to the masses, but give me a policy and you can bet I'm going to follow it; I was in my element.

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At my 21st birthday party, a notebook was set up in the bathroom for all my friends and family to write well-wishes to me. The one I remember most is from my aunt Jeanne. She wrote several pages about Peter Pan and Pixie dust and resolving to never grow old. And along with it, she assigned meaning to each letter of my name:

Little
Infantile
Nutty
Dynamic
Always young

Resolved to never grow up
Outrageous
Definitely childish
Really spoiled
Inventive
Giddy
Unbelievably bold
Educated in "How to remain a child"

A grown-up might see those words as an insult. But on the following pages, the true meaning is revealed. "We laugh and shake our heads seemingly in disgust... yet in truth we share her spunk vicariously knowing she desires what we all forever desire: love, security, freedom from life's demands and committments."

Those words written well over a decade ago still ring true. Ask anyone who knows me well - Mom, John, friends, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, Mems - and they can give you countless examples of how not grown-up I am. I may look like a soccer mom, I may be the most responsible bureaucrat you'll ever meet, but the child in me is never far from the surface. If you ever want to see it for yourself, just take me to Disney World!

Which is why the card I picked from The Breathe Easy Deck was so fitting. Upon it was written:

I am a child.

The child you were still lives within
you, and needs to play and feel secure.

I breathe in the innocence of a child's
mind that sees all things as if for the
first time. I am filled with childlike joy
and zest for life. I breathe out the
illusion of age.

No truer words have ever been written!