The other night, when our reading was done and chatting began, Bade looked at me with big anxious eyes and told me:

“ Mummy don’t ever eat again OK?”

So I asked why and she replied : “Because if you eat you grow up and then you become old and die.”

For one tiny moment I wanted to laugh out loud but then stopped myself because it could hurt her feelings. And then I became teary eyed. She had come up with such a logical death theory for her own age and I could not help but admire. Of course I comforted her and talked about the long years we have ahead. But this touched me so much that I always want to remember this night, remember her innocence and the genuine  anxiety she carried in her little heart. I seal this moment to my memory with this post.

Do you know the poem “Childhood is the Kingdom where Nobody Dies” ? One of the poems of American poet Edna St Vincent Millay. She talks about how childhood ends when we finally understand we will lose our loved ones in such a natural, beautiful and striking way…

“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it’s much too small, because she won’t curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God!Oh, God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
—mothers and fathers don’t die.And if you have said, “For heaven’s sake, must you always be kissing a person?”
Or, “I do wish to gracious you’d stop tapping on the window with your thimble!”
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you’re busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, “I’m sorry, mother.”To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,
who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.

Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries;
they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake
them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide
back into their chairs.

Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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