For Emily

A friend of mine posted this thought on Facebook today:

"You know...I still feel like a little girl inside...so unaware of my age. But today I feel rather old and stiff. Skin is itchy. Barometric pressure is changing. Feeling my age on the outside. Trapped little girl on the inside."

I identified with it more than I wanted to admit.  Time has a way of weathering the outsides of us.  The knees grind like rusty gears when we stand, the back creaks like an old stairway, long worn with time.  Our bones ache and our skin feels dry, our wrinkles mock us from the mirror every morning.  These bodies are unworthy vessels of such wonder and light as lives within us.

We are trapped, for a while, in these failing vehicles that carry us from place to place.  We must surrender to them when they tell us we must slow down, have a rest, take something for that headache.  We are bound by fate, it seems, to care for these hulls of humanity, lest they fail us long before our spirits are ready to flee.

I believe there is a little girl inside us all.  In every 90 year old woman who smiles at me from behind her wrinkles, I see the twinkle of a girl in her eyes.  I know that at night when she dreams, she's lost in her girlhood fancies; she's falling in love, swinging from a tire, playing in the creek with her brothers.  I too know the girl inside me is still there.  She comes out to play now and then when I'm giggling with my boy or swinging my granddaughter in the hammock.  She's there in the songs and memories, her love for ice cream and chocolate milk all but forcing me to scarf both of them down, despite the extra pounds on my hips.  Little girls do not worry about such things.   They are about the business of living, of playing and learning all about everything.  Little girls try to find the beauty in all, in everyone, and they try to hang onto their ideals, long past girlhood.

That little girl in there, she gets us in trouble sometimes with her idealism.  She's had to learn the hard way about a lot of things.  She has seen disappointment and grief.  She has seen ugliness and fear.  She has been a winner and a loser, but she has tenaciously held fast to her girlhood all the while.

So even when the creaky bones and achy joints of these human-encasements try to trap her spirit, she shines strong.  Oh, she feels the aches and pains, but they are a small price to pay for one more day to laugh and play; one more day to walk among the living and find love shining back from the weathered faces of their dearest friends.  Little girls, all of them, no matter their age.  The flutter of youth still beats inside their chests--the hope of every girl, enduring and free, even if only on the inside.