Eden Lost

I see myself in the mirror and look at what I’ve become …. I am not 4 anymore… when I would stand with my feet in my mother’s high heels, petulantly pouting, waiting to grow up. Those shoes don’t fit me now; they’re 3 sizes too small...
I remember long walks on the beaches of Goa, where I had to run to keep up with my dad’s long strides, refusing stubbornly to be carried... Today at the end of a flight of stairs I wait for my dad to catch up.
Finger painting with my mother, I compared my handprint to my mother’s and felt tiny…

In a magazine, I once saw a piece of art, the artist claimed to prove the difference in perspectives of an adult and a child through it. At 12, all I saw were dolphins in the picture, for days I tried to see something else. Now, at 22 I see the artist’s muse, a pair of lovers in a passionate embrace… the dolphins have disappeared and I search in vain hoping to catch a glimpse of a fin or a tail somewhere.

Oh yes Ma, I remember you holding me close, and I remember wriggling out of your arms when you said I’d always be your little girl. I wanted so much to grow up.. and today that girl is not so little anymore, she stands taller you and she really wants to be your little girl again. To hide in your bosom away form the big bad world.
Alas, growing up has extracted its price from all of us, the blood money that is our innocence. We gave it up happily ignoring the consequences. The harsh realities and the cold facts of life have eroded my innocence like a slow growing cancer and I realize that the return to innocence is a myth….. An urban legend.
Today my soul mourns for my loss and I cry silent tears into the velvet night. And like the lament for a lost lover its harsh obvious presence fills the emptiness of my days.
If only I had known the price for growing up would me my cocoon of bliss, I would have asked my mother to hold me back for a while longer. But, then I realized that’s exactly what she tried to do. And the harder she tried the more I struggled to be free of the shackles of childhood, the more I vied the apple of knowledge.
Eden is lost time and again for all those who grow up. And I watch a little baby smile in its sleep I feel jealous. It’s like a warped joke played on us by gods with a macabre and twisted sense of humor who never tire of the monotony.
It’s all around us, in every house, in every playground, the back of a car on a Saturday night… Eden is lost again…. and again and again.
I compare a recent picture to one taken years ago and I see only the eyes, how the difference glares at me. My eyes have aged.
Through a sepia tinted haze I look back at memories of me running naked throughout the house and the joyful screams of abandon reverberate. Today, memories of the joy have disappeared and all that remains is shame that colors my cheeks even now as I think about it. Now, even my memories of days gone by are tainted.

I wake up in the morning and walk to the mirror. Through sleep ridden eyes, I see not who I am but what I’ve become.