Occasion/Staci Wilson

Last week, my sister was talking to her oldest son, Trent, explaining why he couldn't sit on the four-legged chairs for dinner, but he had to sit on the bench. "You have to sit on the bench, the chairs are for adults." she patiently explained. Guileless and wide-eyed, Trent asked in his soft and curious voice, "Is Staci adult too?" Except when he said it, it actually came out as "a dolt".
Later, when I arrived for dinner, I was told this short exchange, I laughed and heartily agreed that I was in fact a dolt. But after the laughter died down and I sat watching the fray of children snickering, crying, screaming, and playing, I thought again what my nephew said. "Is Staci adult (a dolt) too?"
Reflecting, as I usually do, I asked myself that very question seriously. I felt that often times I was still a little girl, chasing white garden butterflies, giggling in pure elation. Other times, I feel older than my actual years, with too many worries and far too much pain.
Then I realized, I really am being a dolt. A fool in my thinking, my attitude. Being an adult is not only being independant from your parents or being an eighteen year old. It really is being a dolt. Losing innocence, belief, trust, confidence, and often times purity and love of everything you see. We forget-we become adults-and like me, we watch the children racing around the house and wish we were children again. Simple and pure. No longer adults, or a dolt.
From that moment on I decided that I would do my best to not become an adult, but stay as a child; guileless, wide-eyed, soft, and curious. Like my nephew, I want to sit on the wooden benches in life, never moving into the world of "adult" behaviors that demoralize and diminish everything we aspire to be and dream.