Potato Chips in Heaven

In what ways do you revert to your childhood, and does frequently "going back" mean the end of your world is on the horizon?

For all our maturations and hard-fought wisdom, what does finding ourselves longing for our past mean? Does it mean regression of what we have struggled for in our recent modern history? Is it acquiescence to aging? Is it depressing? Mustn't it be disheartening to experience a breakdown of all we have strived to identify with as "grownups", seemingly beyond our will?

A novel line, (literally, a line in a novel) once told me that the first fifteen years of life are the ones most vividly recalled throughout life. While later years represent the parts of our independent adulthood and all the events of struggle to become "who we are", it is these earlier years that eventually override our thoughts in simple recollections. For good or bad or both, those times of our lives are not just formative, they are reformative.

Because they reform us, back to who we were. Who were you as a child? We were the essence of who we would become, I think. Time and experience can transform sensitivity into callousness, or stubbornness into mellowness...somewhat and for some time. But our traits never really leave us; they are only managed, subdued or highlighted, to accommodate our realities. While we are influenced by our outer worlds, our inner beings are rarely shaped beyond our recognition.

Don't we all both love and hate that we are who we are, come hell or high water? Don't we all both love and hate the experiential times that shaped us?

The thing about childhood is the innocence. The sponginess, the ability to absorb and never forget the very best and the very worst. Amazing the dark times we all had, the detestable dark times that lighten with the ages. The same increasing years that rob us of so many good things also replenish our spirits with selective recall. Most of the time, when we choose to recall, it is of the things that bring about happiness, and away with the grim reminders.

Not so when we are trying to "find ourselves." When our days revolve around who we want to become, it is as if shedding our past skin is the only way forward. We obsess about the shaping of our formative years, dwelling and blaming and shuddering to break free, to be the forgers of our future way.

And then comes the day a tuna sandwich, potato chips and a glass of Lipton iced tea just sounds so good again. Somehow, the "progression of time" made Mom's lunches passe', even unhealthy. Bologna? Spam? A Sunday fried chicken dinner? All poison now (for some good reason) but do we all know that Mom meant well?? Didn't Dad mean to give us an expression of his fondness for us when he piled us into the back of a pickup truck to take us to the country byways?

How will we feel some years down the road if and when our children mock the foods and experiences we gave them, are loath to pass them on to their own? How will we feel if and when science proves the healthy nourishments and the safety accoutrements we insisted they have were pointless, some even harmful?

Oh yes, what goes around comes around. Always has, always will.

Some of the best wisdom in the world, even unbelievers concede, is Bible-based. I speak of golden rule living, and encouragement that love supersedes all. My personal favorite rule is that bottom line, we must come "as children" to meet our final fates. Whether one considers eternal life a possibility or not, the essence of "coming as a child" maintains that humbling ourselves and acceding to our ultimate parent is akin to acceding to the parent(s) we knew as children. Seemingly harsh, they knew best and required much, toward our better interests.

What movie was that where it was said that most soldiers, when dying on the war field, call out for their mothers, likely their most nurturing parent? What do anguishing scenes like this tell us? For me, it says we are all children at heart, who never lose the need for a parent. The natural order of things dictates we most often go to our graves without one, but believers in the Father Almighty never will.

I thrive on that sustenance. I'm not so old I don't have hope for many more years to come, but already I have reverted to coming as a child to the God I believe in. His "nourishment" (word of the bible) I resisted long enough, because it was averse to the "nourishment" of choices I preferred. Now that I am allowing my "Parent" to direct me again, I love that I don't mind this, and wish I would not have minded it sooner. And, I wish, HOPE that I can be better at it.

It is not the end of my world! It is my happily-ever-after, started in good time. And I JUST KNOW...there WILL be tuna sandwiches and potato chips in heaven!!